  The extraordinary long life and active teaching career of Albert the Great (c.1193–1280) produced many benefits for the inception of philosophy in medieval Germany. Besides the vast corpus of his writings that fostered a generation of Dominican scholars in the German-speaking province, Albert lived long enough to impart continuity to this generation, which included Ulrich of Straßburg (c.1225–1277), Dietrich of Freiberg (1250–1310), and Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1327). All of these men made extraordinary contributions to medieval philosophy, theology, and in the case of Dietrich of Freiberg, natural science. However, of all those who were formed in the shadow of Albert, Dietrich showed the most marked tendency to Albert’s universality of interests.