Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German physicits, mathematician, astromoner, and satirical writer, best-known for his aphorisms he collected in his notebooks (waste books). He was admired by such writers and philosophers as Goethe, Nietzsche, Schopenhaeur, Tolstoy, and Wittgenstein. In his notebooks Lichtenberg examined unsystematically a wide variety of subjects, from society and philosophical questions to psychology and art and literature. Throughout his life Lichtenberg suffered from poor health, but he had hypochondriac tendencies, too.

1 The great artifice of regarding  small deviations from the truth as being the truth itself is at the same time the foundation of wit, where the whole thing would often collapse if we were to regard these deviations in a spirit of philosophical rigor. 

4 The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate.

(from The Waste Books by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg,  translated with an introduction and notes by R. J. Hollingdale, New York: New York Review of Books, 2000, pp. 2-3; first published by Penguin Books 1990)

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was born in Ober-Ramstadt, a small village near Darmstadt. He was the first of seventeen children, most of whom died at an early age. From his childhood Lichtenberg suffered from a malformation of the spine. In spite of becoming a hunchback and the target of crude and offensive remarks, his writing do not show bitter attitude toward life. And as much as his own outlook was observed by other people, he observed their behavior and his own life. His physical handicap Lichtenberg also could deal with humour. "My head," he said, "lies at least a foot closer to my heart than is the case with other men: that is why I am so reasonable." (The Waste Books, p. 31)

Lichtenberg's father, Johann Conrad Lichtenberg, was a Lutheran clergyman. He died in 1751 when Lichtenberg was only nine. Henrietta Catharina (Eckard) Lichtenberg, his mother, came also from a clerical family; she died in 1764. Later Lichtenberg said, that he had dreams of his mother every night.

At the age of sixteen Lichtenberg lost his Christian faith. Being of a scientific bent of mind, the Bible, a book written by erroneous humans, did not satisfy him. However, it still was to be treasured because it was "the best manual of help in trouble ever written". (A Reasonable Rebel: Georg Christoph Lichntenberg by Carl Brinitzer, translated from the German by Bernard Smith,  London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960, p. 147) In 1763 Lichtenberg entered Göttingen University, where he studied mathematics and the natural sciences. His first printed work was 'Von dem Nutzen, den die Mathematik einem Bel Esprit bringen kann' (1766), which was published in Hannoverische Magazin. After graduating, he worked as a tutor for three years. He had no academic degree. During this period Lichtenberg started to read Kant, but later he was more drawn to Spinoza's way on thinking. Nevertheless, he remained an admirer of Kant, his humble "student". (Thoughts Concerning Education in the Works of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Svein Øksenholt, The Hague: M. Nijhoff,, 1963, p.  19)

His first sexual encounter Lichtenberg may have experienced in 1766 with Maria Justine Schulzen, a cleaning woman. In 1777 he met Maria Stechard, a weaver's daughter, who was then about thirteen years old. She started to visit his house daily as a housekeeper and from 1780 she lived with him permanently. Maria died in 1782. "She reconciled me to the human race," Lichtenberg recalled, but soon he found another love, Margarethe Kellner, and again a much younger woman with a working class background. They lived together from 1786 and were married in 1789. Margarethe gave him six children and outlived him by 49 years.

Lichtenberg left Göttingen only three times. He visited England twice – in 1770 and 1774-1775. These journeys made him an Anglophile; especially he enjoyed the atmosphere of political freedom. In London he met scientist who had accompanied Captain Cook on his journeys. Lichtenberg became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

According to a story, one morning George III once arrived unannounced on his doorstep, asking in German whether the Herr Professor was at home. A rumor or joke began to circulate that Lichtenberg was George II’s illegitimate son. Lichtenberg's interest in English life and art led him to write a comprehensive study on Hogarth's engravings, Ausfürliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupfertische, 1794-1835. Lichtenberg produced the first five of 14 instalments.

In 1770 Lichtenberg was appointed assistant professor of physics at Göttingen and in 1775 he become Professor Ordinarius. He taught mathematics, physics, astronomy, and a variety of other subjects. Despite being underpaid, Lichtenberg took his teaching responsibilities seriously. As his fame spread, his lectures on physics started to attract students from different parts of Europe. At that time it was very common that physicist were also mathematicians, and passed readily from mechanics to astronomy. Among his students were the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), the geographer, naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), and the romantic poet Novalis (1772-1801). Trying to hide his hump from the curious students, he always came into the lecture room facing his audience.

From 1778 Lichtenberg contributed to the Göttinger Taschenkalender, a publication intended to spread the philosophy of the Enlightenment. With G. A. Forster he edited the Göttingisches Magazin der Literatur und Wissenschaft between 1780 and 1782. 

In 1793 Lichtenberg started an affair with his servant girl, Dolly. Probably he recorded in one of his notebooks (the K book) intimate details of this amorous adventure, but most of the book has been destroyed. During his last years he drank more than before. One of his neighbors have told, that Lichtenberg woke up late, had coffee, bitter, and wine. With lunch he drank wine, and in the afternoon he drank wine and liqueur. And in the evenings he read and wrote. Lichtenberg kept on filling up his notebooks until a few days before his death. He died at fifty-seven, on February 24, 1799. Various monuments have been erected in his honor. The bronze for the sculpture of Lichtenberg, designed by the Albanian artist Fuat Dushku and placed in 1992 at the market place in Göttingen, came from toppled statues of the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha.  

"We can use Lichtenberg's writings as the most amazing divining rod; whenever he makes a joke, a problem is hidden under it," Goethe said. (quoted in 'Remarks on G. C. Lichtenberg, Humanist-Scientist' by Franz H. Mautner and Franklin Miller, Jr., Isis, Vol. 43, No. 3, Sep. 1952) Lichtenberg has been credited with introducing the aphorism into German literature. However, his notebooks in which he wrote his aphorism for his own amusement, were published posthumously. The names of the volumes followed the alphabets from A to L, which has several pages missing. Notebooks G and H have disappeared.

It is possible that Lichtenberg began keeping his notebooks, or Südelbücher ("waste books") as he called them, while still in school, but his earliest surviving notes are from the mid-1760s. He also kept a diary. Lichtenberg's aphorism were first collected in the posthumpus edition Vermischte Schriften (1800-05). It consisted of nine volumes. Lichtenberg's style is intimate and direct. Human nature and its foibles provided much material for his observations. "Humans write much about the essence of matter. I wish matter would some day start writing about the human soul. I would become clear that up to now we have been far from really understanding each other." (quoited in The Lichtenberg Reader: Selected Writings of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, translated, edited and introduced by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hartfield, Boston: Beacon Press, 1959, p. 20) Lichtenberg ironized the Sturm und Drang school of writers and the irrational tendencies of the movement. Michel de Montaigne was the only French writer, whom he read with a pencil in his hand.

At that time writers seldom recorded their dreams, but Lichtenberg showed genuine interest in them. "Many conclusions about men's characters could perhaps be drawn from their dreams, if they would report them exactly. But quite a few would be needed, not just one." he wrote. (Aphorisms & Letters, translated and edited by Franz Mautner and Henry Hatfield, London: Jonathan Cape, 1969, p. 25) (Aus den Träumen der Menschen, wenn sie dieselben gnau anzeigten, ließe sich vielleicht vieles auf ihren Charakter schließen. Es gehörte aber dazu nicht etwa einer sondern eine ziemliche Menge.) Later Freud referred to him several times.

In the spirit of Enlightenment Lichtenberg was an empiricist, who opposed dogmatism and wanted to substitute knowledge for fancy. "Superstition," he explained, "originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere." (The Waste Books, p. 5)

Lichtenberg questioned accepted truths, but his ironic rationalism was balanced and cultivated. In the early  phase of of his research on color Goethe turned to him as an authority on the physics of light. In 1793 he sent Lichtenberg his work on coloured shadows (Färbige Schatten). Committed to Newtonian physics, Lichtenberg did not take seriously Goethe's subjective, anti-Newtonian theory – politely and with great respect. "Despite the striking experiments, with which  your Excellency supports your theory, and so much they appear to support the observations of your Excellency," he said in a letter to Goethe, "I cannot yet commit myself to accept them without reservation." ('Lichtenberg's Letter to Goethe on "Färbige Schatten"': G. C. Lichtenberg, commentary by Ulrich Joost, Barry B. Lee, Qasim Zaidi, Color Research and Application, Volume 27, Number 4, August 2002) In geometry Lichtenberg come to the conclusion that Euclid's axioms based on common sense might not be the only right ones. 

Lichtenberg's first important work was Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen (1778), a satire on Johann Caspar Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente. Lavater's theory, that people's characters can be read from their portrait silhouettes, prompted also 'Fragment von Schwänzen,' published in Baldingers Neues Magazin für Aerzte in 1783. Imitating Lavater's pretentious language, Lichtenberg examined the "expressive" qualities of tails, tails of dogs and pigs, and "pigtails" of men, all presented as silhouettes. "What kindliness in the silky tender slope," he wrote of a pigtail, "effective without any masking hemp-hiding ribbon, and yet smiling bliss like plaited sunbeams. Soaring as far above even crowned heads as saint's halo over a nightcap. . . ." (quoted in 'On Physiognomic Perception,' in Meditations on a Hobby Horse: And Other Essays  on the Theory of Art by E.H. Gombrich, New York: Phaidon Press, 2001, p. 47) Also the early satire, Von Konrad Photorin (1773), was directed against Lavater.

For further reading: "Euer Konzipient war ein sinnreicher Kopf" und andere Beiträge zur Lichtenberg-Forschung by Bernd Achenbach; herausgegeben von Ulrich Joost (2021); Zwischen Naturlehre und Rhetorik: kleine Formen des Wissens in Lichtenbergs "Sudelbüchern" by Elisabetta Mengaldo (2021); Fragments of Lichtenberg by Pierre Senges, translated by Gregory Flanders (2016); Schrieben: Literarische und wissenschaftliche Innovation bei Lichtenberg, Jean Paul, Goethe by Jens Loescher (2014); Nach London!: der Modernisierungsprozess Englands in der literarischen Inszenierung von Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Heinrich Heine und Theodor Fontane by Robert Radu (2010); Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: vom Eros des Denkens by Wolfram Mauser (2000); Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs Konzept aufgeklärter Kultur by Volker Schümmer (2000); Körper und Seele bei Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Friederike Kleisner (1998); "Unsere ganze Philosophie ist Berichtigung des Sprachgebrauchs": Friedrich Nietzsches Lichtenberg-Rezeption im Spannungsfeld zwischen Sprachkritik (Rhetorik) und historischer Kritik (Genealogie) by Martin Stingelin (1996); Im Dialog mit Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Friedhelm Zubke (1993); Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Rainer Baasner (1992); Lichtenbergs literarisches Nachleben: eine Rezeptions-Geschichte by Dieter Lamping (1992); Lichtenberg, das grosse Ganze: ein Essay by Rainer Baasner (1992); Lichtenbergs Funkenflug der Vernunft, ed. by Jörg-Dieter Kogel, Wolfram Schütte und Harro Zimmermann (1992); Dieses ephemerische Werckchen: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg und der Göttinger Taschen Calender by Günter Peperkorn (1992); Science, Satire and Wit: The Essays of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Ralph W. Buechler (1990); Ein Abend-Essen zu Fuss: Notizen zu Lichtenberg by Kurt Bracharz (1987); Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Dorothea Goetz (1980); Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Hanns Erich Köhler (1973); Thoughts Concerning Education in the Works of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Svein Øksenholt (1963); A Reasonable Rebel, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg by Carl Brinitzer (1960); Forster und Lichtenberg; ein Beitrag zum Problem deutsche Intelligenz und Französische Revolution by Wolfgang Rödel (1960); Lichtenberg; zum Problem der deutschen Aphoristik by Paul Requadt (1948): Versuch über die Bemerkungen Lichtenbergs by Georg Seidler (1937)

Selected works:

• Briefe aus England, 1776-78
• Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen, 1778
• Göttingisches magazin der wissenschaften und litteratur, 1780-85 (edited by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Georg Forster)
• Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes, 1782
• Ausfürliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupfertische, 1794-1835
• Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Vermischte Schriften, 1800-06 (edited by Ludwig Christian Lichtenberg and Friedrich Kries)
• W. Hogarth's zeichnungen, nach den originalen in stahl gestochen, 1840 (edited by Franz Kottenkamp)
• Briefe, 1901-04 (edited by A. Leitzmann and K. Schüddenkopf)
• George Christoph Lichtenbergs Aphorismen, 1902-08
• Aus G. C. Lichtenbergs Correspondenz, 1905 (edited by Erich Ebstein)
• Aphorismen, 1913 (edited by Albert Leitzmann)
• Lichtenberg's Visits to England, as Described in His Letters and Diaries, 1938 (translated by Margaret L. Mare and W. H. Quarrell)
• Tag und Dämmerung; Aphorismen, Schriften, Briefe, Tagebücher, 1941 (edited by Ernst Vincent)
• Aphorismen, Briefe und Schriften, 1946
• Werke, 1947 (edited by K.R. Goldschmit-Jentner)
• Aphorismen, Briefe, Satiren, 1948 (edited by H. Nette)
• Kritik des Lebens. Eine Auswahl aus den "Bemerkungen", 1948 (edited by Hermann Frasch)
• Gesammelte Werke, 1949 (2 vols., ed. by W. Grenzmann)
• The Lichtenberg Reader: Selected Writings, 1959 (translated and edited by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield)
• Aphorismen, 1966 (edited by Friedrich Sengle)
• The World of Hogarth; Lichtenberg's Commentaries on Hogarth's Engravings, 1966 (translated by Innes and Gustav Herdan)
• Schriften und Briefe, 1968-72 (4 vols., edited by W. Promies)
• Hogarth on High Life. The Marriage à La Mode Series, from George Christoph Lichtenberg's Commentaries, 1970 (translated and edited by Arthur S. Wensinger with W. B. Coley)
• Tobias Mayer's Opera inedita: the First Translation of the Lichtenberg Edition of 1775, 1971 (by Eric G. Forbes)
• Lichtenberg in England, 1977 (edited by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
• London-Tagebuch: September 1774-April 1775, 1979 (edited by Hans Ludwig Gumbert)
• Schriften und Briefe, 1983 (edited by F.H. Mautner)
• Lichtenberg: Streifzüge der Phantasie, 1988 (edited by Jörg Zimmermann)
• Lichtenberg: Essays Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of His Birth, 1992 (edited by Charlotte M. Craig)
• Observationes: die lateinischen Schriften, 1997 (edited by Dag Nikolaus Hasse)
• The Waste Books, 2000 (translated by R. J. Hollingdale)
• Aphorisms, 2002 (translated by R. J. Hollingdale)
• Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Philosophical Writings, Selected from the Waste Books, 2012 (translated, edited, and with an introduction by Steven Tester)
  
• Lichtenberg lesen!: Inspirationen und Interpretationen, 2016 (herausgegeben von Diane Coleman Brandt, Ulrike Leuschner und Thedel v. Wallmoden)
  
• The Reflections of Lichtenberg, 2018 (selected and translated by Norman Alliston)