This professor of philosophy thought about how people can best get along with each other: about how they should behave to be able live together in harmony. He wrote down the results of his reflections in books that are still studied today – but probably are not understood by all readers.

Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in the city of Königsberg in what was then East Prussia (the city is now called Kaliningrad and is situated in Russia). At the early age of 16, he began to study philosophy, mathematics and natural science at the Königsberg University. After this, he worked as a private tutor. He later became a teacher at the university, where he wrote his famous book “Critique of Pure Reason” in 1781. Kant was an sharp thinker: for example, he examined the question of whether there was a universal answer, valid for everyone, to the question of how each person has to behave if people are to live together peacefully in the world. One of his answers was: Act in such a way that your principles could be applied by all other people as well. Many of Kant’s ideas and insights were very modern. For example, he was far ahead of his times when, in his essay “Perpetual Peace” (which is still very famous and widely read!), he called for a kind of United Nations and demanded that no country should interfere in the affairs of another. When he died on February 12, 1804, in Königsberg at the age of 80 after a long and full life, his last words were: “It is good.”