Early Life
Ebbinghaus was born in Barmen, Germany, the son of a wealthy Lutheran merchant, Carl Ebbinghaus. Little is known about his infancy except that he was brought up in the Lutheran faith and was a pupil at the town Gymnasium. At the age of 17 (1867), he began attending the University of Bonn, where he had planned to study history and philology. However, during his time there he developed an interest in philosophy. In 1870, his studies were interrupted when he served with the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War. Following this short stint in the military, Ebbinghaus finished his dissertation on Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosphie des Unbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious), and received his doctorate on August 16, 1873, when he was 23 years old. During the next three years, he moved around, spending time at Halle and Berlin.
Read more about this topic: Hermann Ebbinghaus
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)