Bruno Wille

Born in Magdeburg on February 6, 1860, Bruno Wille studied theology, philosophy, mathematics, and physics in Bonn and Berlin, and earned a doctorate in Kiel with work on Thomas Hobbes. After a short period as a tutor, he settled in Berlin in 1886 and became an active presence in the city’s political and cultural life.

Wille was closely involved with the literary and intellectual movements that gathered around Berlin naturalism. He helped found the Freie Volksbühne in 1890, an important people’s theater movement that aimed to bring modern drama to working-class audiences, and he was part of the Friedrichshagen circle, a well-known writers’ colony near Berlin. His career also touched radical politics: he was a leading figure among Die Jungen, the left-wing opposition that broke with the Social Democratic Party in the early 1890s.

Later in life, Wille turned more fully toward writing and public education. Sources describe him not only as a writer and journalist, but also as a preacher and popular educator. He spent his later years increasingly withdrawn from public life, living with his second wife, Emmi Friedländer, in southern Germany, and died on August 31, 1928, at Schloss Senftenau near Lindau on Lake Constance.