Cologne

Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from PopArt, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of... the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It also features many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Kasper König is current director of the museum. The museum emerged in 1976 as an independent institution from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. That year the chocolate magnate Peter Ludwig agreed to endow 350 modern artworks - then valued at $45 million - and in return the City of Cologne committed itself to build a dedicated "Museum Ludwig" for works made after the year 1900. The recent building, which was designed by architects Peter Busmann and Godfrid Haberer opened in 1986. The new building first became home to both the Wallraf Richartz Museum as well as Museum Ludwig. In 1994 it was decided to separate the two institutions and to place the building on Bischofsgartenstrasse at the sole disposal of Museum Ludwig. The building is surrounded by the Heinrich-Boll-Platz, a public square designed by Dani Karavan.
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Oksana Aleksandrovna Chusovitina is an Olympic medalist and World Champion gymnast who has competed for Germany since 2006. She was formerly a... citizen of, and a competitor for, the Soviet Union and Uzbekistan . To date, Chusovitina's career in elite gymnastics has spanned more than 20 years. She won the USSR Junior Nationals in 1988 and began competing at the international level in 1989, before many of her current rivals were even born. She is the only female gymnast ever to compete in five Olympic Games, and is one of only two female gymnasts to compete at the Olympics under three different national teams: the Unified Team in 1992; Uzbekistan in 1996, 2000 and 2004; and Germany in 2008. Chusovitina has also competed in 10 World Championships, three Asian Games and three Goodwill Games. In addition, Chusovitina holds the record for the most individual world championships medals on a single event .
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Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the... 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music" . He is known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music, aleatory in serial composition, and musical spatialization. He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne, and later studied with Olivier Messiaen in Paris, and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music, but also on jazz and popular music. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms.
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Joachim Król is a German actor, known for his appearances in the films Run Lola Run, Maybe, Maybe Not and Anne Frank: The Whole Story. Joachim... Król was born in Herne. His father was a miner of Polish descent. He studied from 1981 to 1984 at the Otto-Falckenberg-Schule in Munich. He is best known as a film and television actor. In 1993, he starred in the film No More Mr. Nice Guy. In the 1998 film, Run Lola Run, Król portrayed the homeless man, Norbert von Au. He is also known for playing Hermann van Pels in the TV movie Anne Frank: The Whole Story . Despite the large television and cinema success, Joachim Król returns again and again to the stage. Several times he played in the Bochumer Schauspielhaus and the Schauspielhaus Köln. He is married to Heidrun Teusner Król, with whom he has a son, Tom.
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Anna-Katharina Samsel is a German actress. Samsel grew up in Wolfsburg where she completed her Abitur. In 1999 she became the German artistic roller... skating champion and won the World Championships in 1999, 2000 and 2002. Samsel appeared in the music video of Coldplay's 2008 single "Lost!". Since December 2009, she has played the role of Katja Bergmann in the RTL soap opera Alles was zählt. Samsel now lives in Cologne,.
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Max Christian Friedrich Bruch , also known as Max Karl August Bruch, was a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including... three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire. Bruch was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, where he received his early musical training under the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, to whom Robert Schumann dedicated his piano concerto. Ignaz Moscheles recognized his aptitude. Bruch had a long career as a teacher, conductor and composer, moving among musical posts in Germany: Mannheim , Koblenz , Sondershausen, , Berlin , and Bonn, where he spent 1873-78 working privately. At the height of his reputation he spent three seasons as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society . There he met his wife, Clara Tuczek. He taught composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik from 1890 until his retirement in 1910. Bruch died in his house in Berlin-Friedenau.
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Werner Klemperer was a comedic and dramatic actor, best known for his role as Colonel Klink on the CBS television sitcom, Hogan's Heroes. Born in... Cologne to a musical family, Klemperer was the son of the renowned conductor Otto Klemperer and Johanna Geisler , a soprano. He had a younger sister named Lotte . Klemperer was musically talented, being a violinist and an accomplished concert pianist. He broadened his acting career by performing as an operatic baritone and a singer in Broadway musicals. He can be seen playing in the violin section of the New Philharmonia Orchestra on the EMI Classics DVD "Otto Klemperer – Beethoven Symphony No. 9." at a concert performed on November 8, 1964, at London's Royal Albert Hall. The Klemperer family emigrated to the United States in 1935, settling in Los Angeles where Otto Klemperer took up work as a conductor. Werner Klemperer began acting in high school and enrolled in acting courses in Pasadena before joining the United States Army to serve in World War II.
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Stefan Konrad Raab is a German entertainer, television host, comedian and musician. Raab began his television career hosting the comedy show... Vivasion in 1993 and has been hosting the late-night comedy show TV total since 1999. He became well known in 1994 after composing a hit single spoofing national football coach Berti Vogts in 1994. Raab has also been the creator of a number of other television shows, such as Schlag den Raab and Bundesvision Song Contest. He is considered the "most powerful man in German entertainment television". Raab is also known for his recurring role as producer, writer and performer of German entries to the Eurovision Song Contest. He was involved in the organisation of the national pre-selection show Unser Star für Oslo , in which Germany's winning entry at the 2010 contest in Oslo was determined. Raab attended Jesuit boarding school Aloisiuskolleg in Bonn. Before entering the entertainment business, he worked as a butcher and studied law before dropping-out of university after five semesters. Other than this, there is little known about Raab's private life, which he deliberately keeps hidden from the media.
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Willy Millowitsch was a German stage and TV actor and the director of the Volkstheater Millowitsch in Cologne. Millowitsch was born in Cologne. His... parents were Peter and Käthe Millowitsch and came from a long family tradition of engagement with the theater which can be traced back to 1792. It was not until 1895 however, that Millowitsch's grandfather stopped using puppets and resorted to real actors instead. Millowitsch was interested in theater at an early age and took to the stage for the first time in 1922 at just 13. He quit school without a degree to pursue his acting career fulltime. At first he worked under the auspices of his father who had to give up his theater after the inflation hit. This forced them to go on tour in and around Cologne until they got a permanent theater in 1936, the now famous Volkstheater Millowitsch, which Willy took over from his father in 1940. In 1939 he married his first wife Lini Lüttgen, but they got divorced soon after.
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Kurt Moll is a German operatic bass, now retired. Moll was born in Buir, near Cologne, Germany. As a child, he played the cello and hoped to become... a great cellist. He also sang in the school choir, and the conductor encouraged him to concentrate on singing. He studied voice at the Köln Hochschule für Musik with Emmy Müller. He joined the Cologne Opera at 20 and remained until 1961. He then sang for three years in Mainz and five years in Wuppertal. In 1969, he accepted an engagement with the Hamburg State Opera, and he then sang in all the major opera houses of Europe. He made his US debut with the San Francisco Opera as Gurnemanz in Richard Wagner's Parsifal in 1974. His Metropolitan Opera debut followed four years later, when he sang the Landgraf in Tannhäuser, Rocco in Fidelio, and Sparafucile in Rigoletto. From that time he has performed all over the world. He retired from stage in 2006. His last performance was the role of Nachtwächter in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in the Münchner Opern-Festspiele. He continues giving master classes .
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William Steinberg was a German-American conductor. Steinberg was born Hans Wilhelm Steinberg in Cologne, Germany. He displayed early talent as a... violinist, pianist, and composer, conducting his own choral/ orchestral composition at age 13. In 1914, he began studies at the Cologne Conservatory, where his piano teacher was the Clara Schumann pupil Lazzaro Uzielli and his conducting mentor was Hermann Abendroth. He graduated with distinction, winning the Wüllner Prize for conducting, in 1919. He immediately became a second violinist in the Cologne Opera orchestra, but was dismissed from the position by Otto Klemperer for using his own bowings. He was soon hired by Klemperer as an assistant, and in 1922 conducted Fromental Halévy's La Juive as a substitute. When Klemperer left in 1924, Steinberg served as Principal Conductor. He left a year later, in 1925, for Prague, where he was conductor of the German Theater. He next took the position of music director of the Frankfurt Opera. In 1930, in Frankfurt, he conducted the world premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Von heute auf morgen.
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