- Lived:
- 1858–1918 · Berlin and Strasbourg
- Tradition:
- German philosophy at the birth of sociology; the first great thinker of modern city life
- The Big Idea:
- Society is not a thing but a happening — a ceaseless weaving of interactions whose forms can be studied like geometry — and money and the metropolis are where modern life shows its true face.
- In their words:
- "The stranger… who comes today and stays tomorrow."
- If you remember one thing:
- The feeling you get on a crowded city street — surrounded by thousands, connected to none, free and lonely at once — was diagnosed, explained, and named by Georg Simmel before your great-great-grandparents were born.