On Stefan Cohn-Vossen and his family

Abstract

Many mathematicians know and appreciate the book “Geometry and the imagination” by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen [15]. It was first published in German in 1932 and has been translated into many languages. In contrast to David Hilbert, the second author, Stefan Cohn-Vossen, is less well known. In an effort to find out more about him, we realized that his life and that of his family had been affected by many dramatic and historic events.