Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), one half of of the renowned Brothers Grimm, was a German philologist, jurist, and mythologist. He was also a linguist, and discoverer of "Grimms law," and wrote several of the Wests best known fairy tales along with his brother Wilhelm. He was born in the town of Hanau, in what was at the time the Holy Roman Empire. He was a graduate of the University of Marburg.

The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) ranks among the most important figures in Western psychology. Freud is responsible for the theories of parapraxis (Freudian slips), dreams as wish fulfillment, the Oedipus complex, repression, the unconscious mind, and other ground-breaking concepts.