Rudolf Christoph Eucken (5 January 1846 – 15 September 1926) was a German philosopher, and the winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Early life
Eucken was born in Aurich, Kingdom of Hanover (now Lower Saxony). His father died when he was a child, and he was brought up by his mother.

He was educated at Aurich, where one of his teachers was the classical philologist and philosopher Ludwig Wilhelm Maximilian Reuter (1803-1881). He studied at Göttingen University and Berlin University. In the latter place, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg was a professor whose ethical tendencies and historical treatment of philosophy greatly attracted him.
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German philosopher, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1908. Eucken was an idealist philosopher who saw that man has an inner spiritual life, which soars beyond everyday life and the physical world. In his work Eucken transformed idealism into a quest toward elevated spiritual level. Eucken's fame was short-lived and today Eucken's writings are more or less forgotten. Besides philosophical studies, he also published works in religion. Eucken's award was in tune with the partly incomplete will of Alfred Nobel, in which he had intended the literary award to recognize "excellence in works of an idealistic tendency".

Rudolf Christoph Eucken was born in Aurich, in the province of East Friesland. His childhood was shadowed his poor health and the death of his father, Ammo Becker Eucken, who worked in the postal service. Also Eucken's only sibling, his younger brother, died.

Eucken's mother, the former Ida Maria Gittermann, was a deeply religious woman. Her father was a liberal-minded clergyman. To support the family, she took lodgers, and was able to provide her son a good education.