THIS DAY IN GERMAN HISTORY: TRANSCRIPTS
THIS DAY... JULY 13TH
1024
Death of St. Heinrich II in Göttingen. St. Heinrich II was born in 972 in Bad Abbach. He would become the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (often called the German Empire). He was the son of Heinrich, the Duke of Bavaria. After the death of his father, he became the Duke (Herzog) of Bavaria. In 1002 he became the King of Germany. After assisting the church in its struggles for unity in Italy, he was crowned “King of Italy” by Pope Benedict VIII. As was frequently the case, there were problems in Italy again later and the German King again crossed the Alps to restore order. On this occasion he was crowned emperor (February 14, 1014). During the 10 years of his reign as emperor, he worked continuously to consolidate the integrity of the empire and the church. Heinrich was entombed in the cathedral in Bamberg. The grave monument was created by Tilman Riemenschneider. (Heinrich had founded the Bishopric of Bamberg earlier.) Heinrich was canonized in 1146 by Pope Eugenius III. His feast day is July 13. Heinrich’s wife, Kunigunde, who was also canonized, lies next to him in the cathedral in Bamberg.
1608
Birth of the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III in Graz, Austria. He was the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire during the 30 Years’ War. He agreed to the Peace of Westphalia which ended the war. He had 11 children from his 3 marriages.
THIS DAY... JULY 6TH
649
Death of St. Goar. Born in Auitaine (modern France) around 585, St. Goar became a priest. He determined to live his life in isolated prayer. In about 618 he found a location at Oberwesel near Trier (modern Germany). Word of his holiness soon spread, however, and his isolation was interrupted by numbers of pilgrims to whom he gave pious advice, thus further developing his reputation and the numbers of pilgrims. At one point the Bishop of Metz is said to have offered him the position of Bishop of Trier. He declined in favor of returning to his life of isolation and prayer. The city on the Rhine, St. Goar, is named for him.
1415
Jan Hus is burned for heresy in Constance, Germany.
1476
Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller) dies.
1806
Birth of the magician, Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser in Vienna, Austria. He was a noted inventor of card tricks.
1808
Birth of the historian Johann Gustav Droysen in Treptow, Germany (now Poland). Droysen was a devoted Prussian who was one of those influencing the ultimate unification of Germany under Prussian leadership.
1817
Birth of Rudolf Albert von Kölliker in Zürich, Switzerland. The biologist was the first to recognize that tissue was made of cells.
1832
Birth of Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph in Vienna, Austria. He was made Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III.
1854
Death of Georg Ohm (1789-1854) in Munich, Germany. Ohm was a physicist at the Jesuits’ College in Cologne and the Polytechnic School of Nürnberg. He discovered Ohm’s Law, the flow of an electric current through a conductor is directly proportional to the voltage and inversely proportional to the resistance. In electricity, the unit of resistance is named for him
1901
Death of Chlodwig Karl Viktor Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland (born in Rotenburg an der Fulda, Germany). He was the chancellor of the German Empire from 1894 to 1900 during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was replaced by Bernhard von Bülow in October, 1900.
1950
The German Democratic Republic signs a treaty with Poland recognizing the Oder-Neisse Line as the permanent border with Poland. (The Federal Republic of Germany does not recognize the border until 1970).
1959
Death of George Grosz in Berlin. An artist known for his social satire, the Nazis called him the Cultural Bolshevist Number one.
1973
Death of Otto Klemperer in Zürich, Switzerland (born in Breslau, Germany (now in Poland)). Klemperer was one of the world’s leading conductors. He conducted the operas of Hamburg, Barmen, Strassburg, Cologne Wiesbaden and Berlin. During the Nazi period he conducted in Los Angeles and after the war in Budapest.
2004
Death of Austrian President, Thomas Kleistl. Kleistl died in office two days before he end of his term of office. He had been president since 1992. He was born on November 4, 1932 in Vienna. He had been the Austrian ambasador to the United Nations (1978) and the Ambasador to the U. S. A. (1982).
THIS DAY... JUNE 29TH
1721
Birth of Johann Kalb in Hüttendorf, Germany. Experienced as an officer in a German regiment of the French infantry, he secured a commission in the American Continental Army and immigrated in 1777.
1779
Death of Anton Raphael Mengs in Rome (born in Aussig, Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic)). Mengs was a painter who studied in Dresden. In 1745 he became painter to the Saxon court in Dresden. He was a close friend of the critic Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a man with whom he shared great enthusiasm for classical antiquity. He became the leading artist of Neoclassicism and worked not only in Germany but also extensively in Rome and Spain.
1831
Death of Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein in his country home in Westphalia, Germany. Stein was chief Prussian minister from 1807-1808 and personal counselor to the tsar of Russia, Alexander I from 1812-1815. Drawing on the experience of the English self government, Stein developed a philosophy of the desirability of an “organic relationship” between the state and its people. The population, he felt, should have participation in and a sense of responsibility for the state. Stein put his ideas on civil liberty and organization into practice while chief minister in Prussia.
1875
Death of Ferdinand I in Prague, Austria-Hungary. Ferdinand was the Austrian emperor from 1835-1848. Although retarded, Ferdinand was elevated to the throne to assure the line of succession. During his reign, thus, the empire was run by Klemens, Prinz von Metternich. Ferdinand abdicated in the face of the revolutions of 1848.
1880
Birth of Ludwig Beck (1880-1944) in Biebrich, Germany. Beck was Chief of the General Staff and opposed Hitler’s plan to occupy the Rhineland in 1936. He was a central figure in the plot against Hitler in 1944. When the plot failed, Beck was arrested and he offered to commit suicide with a pistol.
1919
Death of Karl Brugmann in Leipzig, Germany. Brugmann, a Neogrammarian, was a professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Leipzig. His Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1893, enlarged edition, 1916) remains the authoritarian grammar of Indo-European.
1940
Death of Paul Klee, who was considered both a German and Swiss painter. Klee was born on December 18, 1879 in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland. He studied art in Munich. In 1906 he married the pianist Lili Stumpf and they made a home in Munich. He became a member of the influential expressionist artists group “Der Blaue Reiter”. He developed a style combining the primitive, surrealism and cubism. “Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible,” he wrote. He and his colleague, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture after World War I. In 1931 he began to teach at the academy in Düesseldorf. When the Nazis gained power, he was dismissed from his position and his work termed “degenerate”. He returned to Switzerland in 1933.
1955
Death of Max Pechstein in Berlin, Germany. Pechstein was a painter who was a member of the Expressionist group, Die Brücke. After 1910 he was a member of the Berlin group, Neue Sezession. The Nazis denounced his work as “decadent”.
THIS DAY... JUNE 22ND
1767
Birth of Wilhelm von Humboldt in Potsdam, Germany. Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt was a Prussian philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1949 (and also after his younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt, a naturalist). He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice of education.
In particular, he is widely recognized as having been the architect of the Humboldtian education ideal, which was used from the beginning in Prussia as a model for its system of education and eventually in countries such as the US and Japan.
1803
Death of Wilhelm Heinse in Aschaffenburg, Germany. Heinse was a novelist and literary critic who wrote in the Sturm und Drang style. His novel, Ardinghello und die glückseligen Inseln (1787) is the most remembered of his works.
1805
Birth of Ida Gräfin von Hahn-Hahn, in Tressow, Germany. She was a poet and novelist.
1898
Birth of Erich Maria Remarque in Osnabrück, Germany. A novelist, his most known novel is Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). At the age of 16, Remarque had made his first attempts at writing; this included essays, poems, and the beginnings of a novel that was finished later and published in 1920 as The Dream Room (Die Traumbude). Erich worked at a number of different jobs, including librarian, businessman, teacher, journalist and editor. His first paid writing job was as a technical writer for the Continental Rubber Company, a German tire manufacturer. When he published All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque changed his middle name in memory of his mother and reverted to the earlier spelling of the family name to dissociate himself from his novel Die Traumbude. The original family name, Remarque, had been changed to Remark by his grandfather in the 19th century. During the 1930s, Remarque had relationships with Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr and then with Marlene Dietrich. The love affair with Dietrich began in September 1937 when they met on the Lido while in Venice for the film festival and continued through at least 1940, maintained mostly by way of letters, cables and telephone calls. A selection of their letters were published in 2003 in the book Sag Mir, Dass Du Mich Liebst (Tell Me That You Love Me) and then in the 2011 play Puma. Remarque married actress Paulette Goddard in 1958 and they remained married until his death in Locarno on 25 September 1970, aged 72.
1906
Birth of Samuel (aka Billy) Wilder in Sucha, Austria. He immigrated to the U. S. A. where he became a renowned movie director. Among his best known films are Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, Some like it Hot and One, Two, Three. Wilder died in California on March 28, 2002.
1910
The first passengers are taken up in an airship, the German Zeppelin, invented by and named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin. The principal feature of Zeppelin’s design was a fabric-covered rigid metal framework made up from transverse rings and longitudinal girders containing a number of individual gasbags. The advantage of this design was that the aircraft could be much larger than non-rigid airships, which relied on a slight overpressure within the single pressure envelope to maintain their shape. The framework of most Zeppelins was made of duralumin (a combination of aluminum and copper as well as two or three other metals— its exact content was kept a secret for years). Early Zeppelins used rubberized cotton for the gasbags, but most later craft used goldbeater’s skin, made from the intestines of cattle.
1936
Death of Moritz Schlick in Vienna, Germany. Schlick was a philosopher of the Positivist school. He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg, Switzerland and Berlin. His doctorate from Berlin was in physics. He became a professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna. In his work, he attempted to bring the methods of the natural sciences to bear on philosophy. Among his books are, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918) Raum und Zeit in der gegenwärtigen Physik (1919), Fragen der Ethik (1930), and Grundzüge der Naturphilosophie (1948).
1941
Germany attacks the Soviet Union in WWII.
THIS DAY... JUNE 15TH
1520
The Roman Pope, Leo X, threatens to ex-communicate Martin Luther.
1866
Prussia attacks Austria as a result of a dispute over Schleswig-Holstein. Prussia won the war by the 1st of July at the Battle of Königsgrätz.
1890
Birth of Georg Wüst (1890-1977) in Posen, Germany (now Poland). Wüst was an oceanographer who developed the first understanding of the physical structure and circulation of the Atlantic Ocean.
1905
Death of Carl Wernicke in Thüringer Wald, Germany (now in Poland). Wernicke was the neurologist who discovered that nerve diseases relate to specific areas of the brain. He was a pioneer in the understanding of aphasia (brain problems which inhibit the ability to speak and write), Lehrbuch der Gehirnkrankheiten (1881).
1932
The newly appointed German chancellor Franz von Papen lifts a ban against the Nazi SA in an attempt to appease the party.
1938
Death of the expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davos, Switzerland.
1961
Walter Ulbricht announces that there is no intention to build a wall. “Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.” (He starts the construction of the Wall on August 13, 1961 at 2:00 am with the placement of barbed wire at the border.)
1988
First launch of the European Space Program of the Ariane rocket.
THIS DAY... JUNE 8TH
1650
Death of Maximilian von Trauttmansdorff in Vienna, Austria. Von trauttmansdorff was an Austrian diplomat who had played a key role in Habsburg imperial politics for many years when he was called upon to negotiate an end to the Thirty Years’ War. After negotiations lasting for five years the War ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
1727
Death of August Hermann Francke in Halle, Germany. Francke was a Protestant religious leader who was an important promoter of German Pietism. He founded Pietist groups at the University of Halle. Francke taught theology and Oriental languages at the University.
1768
Death of Johann Winckelmann in Trieste, Italy (born in Germany). It was the archeologist and art historian, Winckelmann, who directed the attention of German intellectuals to classical art. His Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture
1755) and Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Ancient Art 1764) became the influential works of an age. He defined Greek art and aesthetics for German thinkers (although he was never able to travel to Greece himself and never saw the originals of many of the works he described). His comments on the Greek sculpture,
Laocoön (lay·aa·kuh·waan), were the most influential in German intellectual circles.
1794
Death of Gottfried August Bürger in Göttingen, Germany. The poet, Bürger was one of the leaders toward the Romantic movement in German literature. In 1787 he was appointed Außerordentlicher Professor at the University of Göttingen, a position which allowed him to teach but unfortunately did not involve a salary. Thus, as a professor, he continued to live in the same poverty in which he had spent his earlier life.
1810
Birth of Robert Schumann (1810-1856) in Zwickau, Germany. Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law to return to music, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. In 1840, against her father’s wishes, Schumann married the pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher, the day before she legally came of age at 21. Had they waited one day, they would have no longer needed her father’s consent, absence of which had led to a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favor of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career, the earnings from which formed a substantial part of her father’s fortune. For the last two years of his life, after an attempted suicide, Schumann was confined to a mental institution, at his own request.
1815
German states, left separated by the fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, unite under the Act of Confederation.
1877
Birth of Robert F. Wagner in Hesse, Germany. He moved to the United States and became a U. S. senator.
1986
Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General of the U. N. is elected President of Austria, even though he had been accused of Nazi crimes. He had earlier served two terms as the Secretary General of the United Nations.
2001
Roman Herzog is awarded the “Staatsbürgerpreis”.
THIS DAY... JUNE 1ST
1035
Death of St. Simeon. Simeon was born in Greece. He was educated in Constantinople. As a youth he lived and worked in the Holy Land. He lived for a number of years in monasteries in Bethlehem and in the Sinai preparing himself for the life of a hermit. He then moved to Trier (modern Germany, at that time the Holy Roman Empire a.k.a. the German Empire). In Trier there still stood (and stands yet today) the massive NorthGate of the defensive wall of the Romans, the Porta Nigra, from the period when Trier had been an important city in the Roman Empire. For the purpose of leading a life of total prayer and meditation, Simeon moved into a small area of the stone gate and had the area walled in with only a small opening through which food and drink could be passed. He lived in the darkness of his chamber in prayer from 1030 until his death in 1035 without seeing nor speaking to another human. He died on 1035. He was canonized later in 1035 by Pope Benedict IX. In 1041 the gate where Simeon had lived was converted into a church and a monastery was attached to it. Both were named after St. Simeon. Later under Napoleon the church structure was removed from its stone skeleton, the Roman gate, was revealed once again. The Porta Nigra stands today as the Roman gate of the 1st century with the buildings of the monastery attached. His feast day is celebrated on June 1 in the diocese of Trier.
1503
Birth of Wilhelm von Grumbach near Würzburg. Grumbach envied the power and land of the Bishop of Würzburg and at one point plundered Würzburg.
1765
Birth of Christiane Vulpius, in Weimar, Germany. Vulpius was the wife of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. While wandering aimlessly in one of the parks near Rome, Goethe was accosted by a young girl, named Christiane Vulpius, who presented him with a petition in favor of her brother. She was a comely damsel, with golden curling locks, rosy cheeks, laughing eyes and a neatly rounded figure. The poet took her to his home, and she became his wife in conscience and the mother of his children, though he did not marry her until 1806, when the terrors of the French occupation made him anxious for his eldest son.
1780
Birth of Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) near Magdeburg. His book Vom Kriege established the concept of “total war”. He spoke of war as “eine Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln.”
1867
Death of Karl von Staudt (1798-1867) in Erlangen, Germany. Staudt was the mathematician who developed the theory of imaginary points, lines and planes. He taught at the Polytechnic School of Nürnberg and the University of Erlangen. He did research on the arithmetical properties of Bernoulli numbers and was co-developer of the “Von Staudt-Clausen theorem”.
1899
Death of Klaus Groth in Kiel, Germany. Groth was a professor at the University of Kiel. He had grown up speaking Plattdeutsch and was moved to write poetry in his native dialect (Ditmarschen). He was inspired by the dialect poems of Robert Burns in Scotland and those of Johann Peter Hebel who wrote in Swabian dialect. Some of his poetry gained much wider recognition after Johannes Brahms set them to music.
1932
Franz von Papen is appointed chancellor in the Weimar Republic by president von Hindenburg. Von Papen will later be responsible for arranging for Adolf Hitler to be appointed chancellor with the thought he will be able to control Hitler and his party and achieve his own political goals. However, Papen and his allies were quickly marginalized by Hitler and he left the gove rrnment after the Night of the Long Knives, during which the Nazis killed some of his confidantes.
1848
The begins publication under the direction of Karl Marx. Friedrich Engels is the publisher. Other noted communists working with the paper are, Ernst Dronke, Georg Werth, Wilhelm Wolff and Ferdinand Wolff.
1973
Birth of Heidi Klum, a German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and an occasional actress. In 2008, she became an American citizen while maintaining her native German citizenship. Klum became internationally known for her appearances on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. In 1997 she became the first German model to become a Victoria’s Secret Angel. Following a successful modeling career, Klum gained acclaim as the host and judge of the reality show Project Runway which earned her an Emmy nomination in 2008. She has worked as a spokesmodel for Dannon and H & M, and has appeared in numerous commercials for McDonald’s, Volkswagen and others. She is ranked second on Forbes’ list of the “World’s Top-Earning Models”, behind Gisele Bündchen. Forbes noted that since ending her 13-year run as a Victoria’s Secret Angel, Klum has become more of a businesswoman than a model. She was married to English singer Seal from 2005 until 2012.
THIS DAY... MAY 25TH
1521
The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V officially declares Martin Luther a criminal and heretic for refusing to recant at the Diet of Worms.
1848
Annnete von Droste-Hülshoff dies in Meersburg, Germany. She is one of the leading writers of the 19th Century. She is most noted for her poetry, Gedichte (1838) and Das geistliche Jahr (1851). Her novella, Die Judenbuche (1842) is also highly respected.
1901
Birth of Carl Wagner (1901-1977) in Leipzig, Germany. Wagner was a physical chemist and metallurgist who advanced knowledge in the chemistry of solid state materials.
1913
Suicide of Alfred Redl in Vienna, Austria. Redel was head of Austrian army intelligence from 1907 to 1912. Unfortunately for Austria, he had been a spy for the Russian tsar since 1902. During that period Austria had few military secrets from Russia. Redel’s activities were discovered in 1913. He took his own life shortly thereafter.
1921
Birth of Jack Steinberger. Steinberger immigrated to the United States in 1934 and studied physics at the University of Chicago. He was a professor of physics at Columbia University. In 1988 he got the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on neutrinos.
1923
Death of Hans Goldschmidt (1861-1923) in Baden-Baden, Germany. Goldschmidt was a chemist who invented the Goldschmidt reduction process (the alumino-thermic process) which is used in welding along with other applications. He is principally noted as the inventor of thermite and co-inventor of sodium amalgam. The thermite (or aluminothermic) reaction is one in which aluminum metal is oxidized by an oxide of another metal, usually iron oxide, producing great heat in the process.
THIS DAY... MAY 18TH
1616
Birth of Johann Jakob Froberger in Stuttgart, Germany. Froberger was an outstanding composer of the early Baroque period. He composed at the court of Vienna from 1641-1645 and from 1653-1657. He composed primarily for the harpsichord and organ.
1782
Birth of Adolf von Lützow in Berlin, Germany. After Napoleon had defeated Prussia, Lützow organized a cavalry numbering over 3, 000 troops (the Lützowsche Freikorps) which operated in guerrilla fashion behind French lines. His corps continued activity until the final defeat of Napoleon.
1797
Birth of Friedrich Augustus II, king of Saxony, in Dresden, Germany. Friedrich Augustus had granted a certain degree of democratic reform in Saxony prior to 1848. However, he felt that the constitution adopted by the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 went too far and refused to support it. As a result he experienced a revolt among his own people in 1849 which he was able to put down only with the help of Prussian troops.
1824
Birth of Wilhelm Hofmeister in Leipzig, Germany. Hofmeister was a botanist who was a pioneer in comparative plant morphology. He was a professor at the University of Tübingen. His most important work is found in Vergleichende Untersuchungen (1851).
1848
Opening of Germany’s first parliament at the Church of St. Paul in Frankfurt. The parliament is constituted to have 649 members but is never able to achieve the full number. On the average 400 to 450 delegates attend sessions. The parliament developed as a result of the revolutions in the winter of 1848.
1876
Birth of Hermann Müller in Mannheim, Germany. Müller was a member of the SPD who served twice as chancellor during the Weimar Republic. He was able to negotiate the Young Plan which somewhat reduced the reparations demanded by the Versailles Treaty. He resigned as chancellor in 1930, unable to deal with the disastrous effects of the depression.
1883
Birth of Walter Gropius (1883-1969) in Berlin, Germany. An architect who was director of the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1919-1928 Gropius designed buildings at the Bauhaus complex in Dessau, The Harvard University Graduate Center ant the U. S. Embassy in Athens. Gropius studied in Munich and Berlin. He pioneered the prefabrication of building components. During World War I he served with the German cavalry. In 1915 he married Alma Schindler, who at various times also married several other European notables including Gustav Mahler and Franz Werfel. Gropius left Germany in 1934 and in 1937 accepted a position at Harvard University in the United States.
1891
Birth of Rudolf Carnap in Ronsdorf, Germany. Carnap was a philosopher within the school of logical positivism. He studied at the universities of Jena and Freiburg. His academic career began at the University of Vienna where he was very influential in the “Vienna Circle” of philosophers. He became interested in the philosophy of science and in 1930 he founded, with Hans Reichenbach in Berlin, the journal “Erkenntnis”. Among his books are, Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928), Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934), Meaning and Necessity (1947), and Logical Foundations of Probability (1950). In 1936 he immigrated to the United States and taught at the University of Chicago. In 1952 he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and in 1954 the University of California at Los Angeles.
1911
Death of Gustav Mahler in Vienna.
1912
Death of Eduard Adolf Strasburger in Bonn. Strasburger, a plant cytologist, earned his doctorate at the University of Jena. He taught at the universities of Warsaw, Jena and Bonn. Strasburger developed an accurate understanding of the embryonic sac in gymnosperms and angiosperms. In his Über Zellbildung und Zelltheilung he developed the principles of mitosis and showed also that nuclei can arise only from the division of other nuclei. In 1882 he coined the terms “cytoplasm” and “nucleoplasm”. He discovered that the rise of sap is a physical rather than physiological process.
1917
In the United States the Selective Service Act is passed to raise the army needed to participate in WWI.
1917
Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) undertakes his first trip to Germany as ambassador of the Vatican. He will take up a residence in Munich.
1918
Death of Blessed Blandina (1883 – 1918) Blandina is the name chosen upon her entry into the Ursulan order by Maria Magdalena Merten. She was born in the village of Düppenweiler, Germany in 1833. She entered the Ursulan order in 1908 and took her final vows in 1913. She was active as a teacher in Saarbrücken and Trier. She contracted tuberculoses in 1916 and died of the disease in 1918 in the convent in Trier. During her lifetime she was noted for her great piety. During her illness she was noted for her deep faith and patience. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 1, 1987. Her day of remembrance in the Church is May 18.
THIS DAY... MAY 11TH
1686
Death of Otto von Guericke in Hamburg, Germany. As a German scientist, inventor, and politician, Von Guericke invented a different kind of air pump in 1650. It made vacuums. He was the first to learn that light travels through a vacuum, but sound does not. He was also the first to demonstrate that a vacuum can, in fact, exist. Through his demonstrations of vacuums he also demonstrated the effects of air pressure. In 1663 he built the world’s first electric generator.
1720
Birth of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen (Baron Münchhausen) in Bodenwerder, Germany. Münchausen had been a soldier in the Russian army fighting against the Turks. In 1760 he retired to his estates in Hannover and gained a wide-spread reputation as a story teller with his wildly exaggerated narrations of his adventures as a soldier. The first publication of his tales was in Vademecum für lustige Leute between 1781 and 1783. Rudolf Erich Raspe published a collection of stories based on the Münchhausen tales London in 1785, Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The first German color motion picture (at roughly the same time as the American Wizard of OZ ) was the story of Baron von Münchhausen.
1752
Birth of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in Gotha, Germany. Blumenbach, a comparative anatomist, is the “father of physical anthropology”. He was a professor at the University of Göttingen. It was he who created the classification of “Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American.” He is the author of Collectionis suae Craniorum Diversarum Gentium Illustrateae Decades (1790-1828).
1849
Death of Otto Nicolai in Berlin, the composer of Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor).
1854
Birth of Ottmar Mergenthaler in Hachtel, Germany. Mergenthaler immigrated to the United States in 1872. In 1886 he invented the linotype machine.
1878
Max Hödel attempts to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm I.
1916
Death of Max Reger in Leipzig, Germany. Reger ,an organist and composer, composed and played in Munich from 1901-1907. In 1907 he became a professor of composition in Leipzig. He became the conductor of the orchestra of Meiningen in 1911. Noted compositions by Reger are Böcklin Suite, Variations and Fuge on a Theme by Mozart, Phantasie und Fuge über B-A-C-H, and Wachet auf! ruft uns die Stimme.
1960
Adolf Eichmann is arrested by Israeli secret service agents near Buenos Aires. Eichmann had been born in Solingen, Germany. Eichmann joined the Nazi Party in 1932. He became a member of the SS (Schutzstaffel) in 1932. During the Nazi years he was in charge of eliminating Jews in Vienna, Prague and Berlin. He was present at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in 1942 when the “final solution” was concretized. He was to coordinate arrangements. At the end of the war Eichmann escaped Germany and lived in Argentina. He was discovered by the Israeli secrete service in 1960. He was then transported out of Argentina and taken to Israel, tried for crimes against humanity, found guilty, and hanged on May 31, 1962 in Tel Aviv.
1962
Death of Hans Luther in Düsseldorf, Germany. A politician, Luther was the mayor of Essen before moving to national politics in the Weimar Republic. He was finance minister in the cabinet of Gustav Stresemann and was successful in stabilizing the currency after the great inflation. In 1925 and again in 1926 he was named chancellor. In 1930 he became the president of the Reichsbank (Germany’s central bank). From 1933 to 1937 he was the ambassador to the United States. In 1937 he retired from politics.
1988
The reform of the West German postal system begins with a law passed on this day in the Bundestag which will divide the postal system into the telephone system (Deutsche Telekom), the post office (Deutsche Post), and the postal bank. Private competition will be allowed in telephone long distance service. Until this time all of the services mentioned above had been incorporated into one entity, Die Deutsche Post.
THIS DAY... MAY 4TH
Feast Day of St. Florian. St. Florian was a Roman militar ry officer stationed in Lorch, Austria (at that time Lauriacum in the Roman Empire). Florian adopted the new Christian religion. He refused to give up his faith when arrested during the persecution of Diocletian. He was tortured and finally killed. A stone was tied around his neck and he was thrown into the river Enns where he drowned. The martyr, Florian, was regarded as a saint long prior to the practice of formal canonization by a pope. His feast day is May 4. A millstone, said to be the stone which was tied around Florian’s neck at his drowning, is kept in the crypt of the Church of St. Florian near Linz.
1038
Death of St. Gotthard. St. Gotthard was born in Reichersdorf, Bavaria, Germany in 960. He was educated in school of the Benedictine monastery in Niederaltaich ( Bavaria). He continued his studies in Salzburg, Austria. He joined the Benedictine order at the monastery in Niederaltaich and became the Abbot in 996. He was a strong defender of the Cluny reforms and in that spirit took on the reform of the monastery in Hersfeld. He continued thereafter to reform several additional monasteries. He became the Bishop of Hildesheim in 1022. During his lifetime he built 30 churches. Legends tell that he awoke persons from the dead in order to hear their confessions and save their soles. He was canonized in 1131 by Pope Innocent II. He was the first Bavarian to be canonized. His feast day is May 4. His relics are preserved in the Benedictine monastery in Hildesheim. St. Gotthard died on 1038. The St. Gotthard pass in the Alps is named for him.
1772
Birth of Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus in Dortmund, Germany. Brockhaus bought a bankrupt lexicon in 1808 and expanded it into a full encyclopedia, Der große Brockhaus. In 1818 Brockhaus moved his operations to Leipzig where he published, in addition to his encyclopedia, a variety of other reference works, criticism, histories and biographies. After World War II the publishing company, which is still in family hands, was moved to Wiesbaden.
1776
Birth of the philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart in Oldenburg, Germany. Herbart is one of the founders of the modern science of pedagogy. He studied under Fichte at the University of Jena and while working in Interlaken, Switzerland became a friend of Pestalozzi. In 1808 he was appointed to a chair of philosophy at the University of Königsberg as Kant’s successor. In philosophy he was interested in the philosophy of the mind. He developed a perception of the mind as a collection of a series of sensory units he called “Vorstellungen”. His two primary works on education are Pestalozzis Idee eines A B C der Anschauung (1802) and Allgemeine Puadogogik (1806). In the latter he developed a 5 step approach to learning.
1875
Birth of Ferdinand Sommer in Trier, Germany. Sommer was an historical linguist who did significant work with the Hittite and classical languages. Sommer was sequentially a professor at the universities of Basel, Rostock, Jena, Bonn and Munich.
1899
Birth of Fritz von Opel (1899-1971) in Rüsselsheim, Germany. Opel was of the automotive Opel family – the only child of Wilhelm von Opel, and a grandson of Adam Opel, founder of the Opel Company. With Max Valier and Friedrich Sander he did early experiments with rocket propulsion for automobiles and aircraft. He is remembered mostly for his spectacular demonstrations of rocket propulsion that earned him the nickname “Rocket Fritz”.
THIS DAY... APRIL 27TH
Feast day of St. Peter Canisius. Peter de Hondt (St. Peter Canisius) was born in Nimwegen (Germany at that time, now the Netherlands). In 1536 he began his studies at the University of Cologne. In 1543 he became the first German to enter the order of Jesuits. He founded the first Jesuit house in Germany in Cologne. During his lifetime he founded many other Jesuit centers in Germany including Ingolstadt and Prague. He taught at a number of universities and for a time was the rector (president) of the University of Ingolstadt. He was a prolific writer and preacher. He was active in several pivotal assemblies in the early struggles between Protestantism and Catholicism. He was an advisor to the Bishop of Augsburg at the Council of Trent. At that Council he met and was personally instructed by the founder of his order, Ignatius. He became a leader in the “counterreformation” in Germany. His most noted work of this period was his “German Catechism”. Canisius died in Fribourg (Switzerland) in 1597. Canisius was canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI and named a Doctor of the Church. He is sometimes called the “Second Apostle of Germany” (Boniface being the first).
1733
Birth of Josef Gottlieb Kölreuter (1733-1806) in Sulz, Germany. Kölreuter war a botanist who pioneered the study of plant hybrids. Kölreuter completed his doctorate in medicine at the University of Tübingen. He became a professor of natural history in Karlsruhe. In his work with plants he was the first to use artificial fertilization. He was also the first to cross plants of different species.
1764
Birth of Johann Friedrich Cotta in Tübingen, Germany. Cotta was a publisher who founded the journal Die Horen with the classic writer Friedrich von Schiller in 1794. Cotta also published many of the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Christoph Martin Wieland, A. W. Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Jean Paul, Heinrich von Kleist, Wilhelm and Alexander Humboldt, Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Hegel.
1848
Birth of the younger brother of “Mad” King Ludwig of Bavaria (Neuschwanstein Castle), Otto (1848-1916), in Munich. Otto had been insane since 1872. When his brother, the king, Ludwig II died in 1886, Otto became the king, despite his insanity, under the regency of his uncle, Luitpold. He remained king until his cousin Ludwig III declared himself king on November 5, 1913.
1938
Death of Edmund Husserl in Freiburg, Germany. Husserl was the philosopher who founded phenomenology. Husserl studied at the Universities of Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna. Having earned his doctorate at the University of Vienna he studied further with the philosopher Franz Brentano. Husserl taught at the Universities of Halle and Göttingen. At Göttingen he worked with Max Scheler and Wilhelm Dilthey. In 1916 he accepted a position at the University of Freiburg. Among Husserl’s books are Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (1913), and Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie (1936).
1987
The U. S. Justice Department bars the President of Austria Kurt Waldheim from entering the United States, because of his suspicious actions as a soldier in WWII.
THIS DAY... APRIL 20TH
1494
Birth of Johann Agricola (1494-1566) (original name: Johann Schneider) in Eisleben, Germany (He was a friend and supporter of Martin Luther). Agricola became a strong proponent of the concept that Christian grace replaces the Ten Commandments, which would no longer, then, have force. These views led to a cooling of relations with Luther. In 1584 Agricola was called upon to draft the Augsburg agreement, which for a time settled difficulties between Protestants and Catholics.
1707
Death of Johann Christoph Denner (1655-1707) in Leipzig, Germany. Denner was a musical instrument maker who invented the clarinet.
1805
Birth of Franz Xaver Winterhalter in Menzenschwand, Germany. Winterhalter was a portrait painter who did many portraits of royalty. He was active in France and England as well as Germany.
1869
Death of Carl Loewe in Kiel, Germany. Loewe is remembered primarily for his Lieder (artistic songs). Noted among his Lieder are, “Erlkönig”, “Edward”, “Herr Oluf” and “Archibald Douglas”.
1913
Birth of Willi Hennig (1913-1976) in Dürrhennersdorf, Germany. He was a leader of the cladistic school of phylogenetic systematics (a system of biological classification). Hennig worked at the German entomological Institute in East Berlin. He resigned in 1961 in protest at the construction of the Berlin Wall. He then moved immediately to West Germany and later found a research position at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart.
1980
Death of Helmut Käutner in Castellina, Italy (born in Düsseldorf, Germany). Käutner was a film director who started his directing career in film during World War II. His first film Romanze in Moll (1943) had the distinction of being designated by Joseph Goebbels as “decadent and defeatist”. Subsequent films include In jenen Tagen (1947), Des Teufels General (1955), and two films he made in Hollywood The Wonderful Years (1957) and A Stranger in My Arms (1957).
THIS DAY... APRIL 13TH
1111
Heinrich V is crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by the Pope in Rome. He ruled starting from 1111 till 1125 and was the fourth and last ruler of the Salian dynasty. Henry’s reign coincided with the final phase of the great Investiture Controversy, which had pitted pope against emperor. By the settlement of the Concordat of Worms, he surrendered to the demands of the second generation of Gregorian reformers.
1742
Händel‘s Messiah is performed for the first time (in Dublin). Messiah (HWV 56) is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Händel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible, and from the Psalms included with the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.
1881
Birth of Ludwig Binswanger (1881-1966) in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. Binswanger was a psychiatrist who brought the principles of existentialist phenomenology into psychotherapy. He based his diagnoses on self-image. Works by Kreuzlingen include Erinnerung an Sigmund Freud (1956) and Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (1962).
THIS DAY... APRIL 6TH
912
Death of Bl. Notker Babulus (der Stammler)(ca. 840 – 912). Blessed Notker was born near St. Gallen, Switzerland in about 840. He studied at the school of the Monastery of St. Gallen and became a monk there. He wrote a large number of works during his lifetime as a teacher at the monastery school. He was beatified in 1512 by Pope Julius II. The word “Babulus” in his name translates to “stutterer”, a , malady which was so pronounced as to become a part of his name. Notker’s remains lie in the basilica in St. Gallen, Switzerland. His feast day is May 7. (In the Lutheran tradition his day of remembrance is set as April 6.)
1528
Death of Albrecht Dürer in Nürnberg, Germany. He was a friend of Philipp Melanchthon, Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus. He was appointed court painter to the Holy Roman Emperors, Maximilian I and Charles V. Dürer is noted principally for his woodcuts and wood engravings. Some of his best known works are “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, “The Passion of Christ”, “Adam and Eve”, and “St. Jerome in his Study”. He was also a painter. His “Self Portrait” is well known as is his “Adoration of the Magi” Dürer is also noted for his water-color studies of natural history.
1660
Birth of Johann Kuhnau in Geising, Germany. Kuhnau was a composer and the cantor at the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig from 1701 to 1722. He was succeeded in his position by Johann Sebastian Bach.
1806
Birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl in Grossvargula, Germany. Ritschl was a classicist specializing in the works of Plautus. He served as a professor at the universities of Halle, Breslau, Bonn and Leipzig. It was at Bonn that he worked with a promising freshman, Friedrich Nietzsche. When Ritschl moved to the University of Leipzig in 1865, Nietzsche followed him and ultimately received his doctorate from Leipzig under the tutelage of Ritschl. It was Ritschl who recommended Nietzsche for his position at the University of Basel. Later after the attacks on Nietzsche’s first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie, Ritschl distanced himself from his student.
1904
Birth of Kurt Georg Kiesinger in Ebingen, Germany. Kiesinger (CDU) was the chancellor of West Germany from 1966-1969. His period of office was shared with foreign minister Willy Brand (SPD) during the “Grand Coalition”. In the next term Willy Brand was elected chancellor and the coalition with the CDU was ended.
1911
Birth of Feodor Lynen (1911-1979) in Munich, Germany. Lynen was a chemist at the University of Munich who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964 for his research on the metabolism of cholesterol and fatty acids.
1917
The U. S. Congress approves a resolution of war against Germany. (The resolution of war on Austria-Hungary will not follow until December 7.)
1927
Death of Hugo Gressmann in Chicago (born in Mölln, Germany). Gressmann was an old testament scholar who was educated at the University of Kiel and was a professor at the University of Berlin. He is noted for his religio-historic approach to old testament studies. Noted books by Gressmann include Der Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie (1905), Der Messias (1929) and Die älteste Geschichtsschreibung und Prophetie Israels (1910).
1929
Birth of Andre Previn (original name: Andreas Ludwig Priwin) in Berlin, Germany. Previn was a pianist, composer and conductor. He won four Academy Awards for his music. He arranged music for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and MGM. He was the director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Previn immigrated to the United States in 1939.
1972
`Death of Heinrich Lübke. Lübke was born on October 14, 1894 in Sundern, Germany. He would grow up to be the president of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany at that time). He studied economics and law at the universities in Berlin and Münster. He entered politics in 1931. In 1933 he was removed from all offices and sent to prison by the Nazis. In 1945 he reentered politics within the CDU party. He was very interested in agricultural policy and served in several posts with responsibility for that area. From 1959-1969 he served as President of the Federal Republic of Germany. (Remember that the President of Germany is a different office than that of the Chancellor. It is the Chancellor who is the head of government. During the time that Lübke was President, the chancellors were Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard and Kurt Georg Kiesinger.)
THIS DAY... MARCH 30TH
1858
Birth of Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim in Windecken, Germany. Oppenheim, a jurist, immigrated to London in 1895 to teach at the London School of Economics. In 1908 he became a professor at Cambridge University. He specialized in international law. He based his concept of international law on adherence to specific agreements and customs between nations. His most significant book is International Law: A Treatise (2 vols. 1905-1906).
1879
Birth of Bernhard Voldemar Schmidt (1879-1935) who was a German optician. In 1930 he invented the Schmidt telescope which corrected the optical errors of spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism, making possible for the first time the construction of very large, wide-angled reflective cameras of short exposure time for astronomical research.
1882
Birth of Melanie Klein in Vienna, Austria. Klein specialized in the psychoanalysis of children using free play with toys as a method of analysis. She held a position at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute before immigrating to England in 1926. Klein wrote, The Psychoanalysis of Children (1932), Envy and Gratitude (1957) and Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961).
1892
Birth of Erwin Panofsky in Hannover, Germany. Panofsky was an art historian, who made significant contributions to iconography. He was educated at the University of Freiburg and taught at the University of Hamburg. He immigrated to the United states in 1931. In America he taught at New York University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Among his works are, Studies in Iconology (1939), The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (1955), and Tomb Sculpture (1964). Panofsky died on March 14, 1968 in Princeton, NJ.
1912
Death of Karl May in Radebeul, Germany. Since the turn of the century German youth have encountered the American frontier through the wild west novels of Karl May. The novels of Karl May are among the all time best-sellers as ever new generations read of Winnetou and the other adventurous May characters. Some of the best known of the novels are Der Schatz im Silbersee (1894), Durch die Wüste (1892) and Winnetou (1893).
1949
Death of Friedrich Bergius (1884-1949) in Buenos Aires (born in Goldschmieden, Germany). Bergius was a German chemist who discovered how to convert coal dust and hydrogen into gasoline. For this work he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1931. He also did some work on the conversion of wood into sugar.
1954
Death of Fritz Wolfgang London in Durham, North Carolina (born in Breslau, Germany (now in Poland). The physicist, London gained his education at the universities of Bonn, Frankfurt, Göttingen, Munich and Paris. He immigrated to the United States in 1939 and was a professor of theoretical chemistry at Duke University. He introduced the quantum mechanical treatment of the hydrogen molecule. He developed the phenomenological theory of superconductivity and published two books on superfluids in 1950 and 1954.
1966
Death of Erwin Piscator (1893-1966) in Starnberg, Germany. Piscator was a theater producer/director in Berlin during the period of the Weimar Republic. He introduced a variety of technological innovations into the theater. He was socially engaged and concerned about the situation of the worker. During WWII he went into exile in the United States, where he headed the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research in New York City. He returned to Berlin after the war and continued to produce controversial works such as Rolf Hochhuth’s Der Stellvertreter and Die Ermittlung by Peter Weiss.
1970
Death of Heinrich Brüning in Norwich, Vermont, U. S. A. (born in Münster, Germany). Brüning, a member of the Catholic Centre Party, became chancellor of the Weimar Republic in 1930. Although he was considered an economics expert, the world depression along with the reparation payments of the Versailles Treaty made economic stability in Germany impossible. Unemployment increased dramatically and there was a drastic fall in the standard of living. As the situation grew more and more chaotic, he made use of Article 48 in the constitution and governed by presidential emergency decree. Hoping to bring about a more workable situation, he dissolved parliament (Reichstag) and called for new elections in September, 1930. The plan was a disaster, for it was in that election that the Nazi party gained considerably in the new parliament. In 1932 Brüning resigned. He left Germany in 1934 and found his way to the United States where he taught political science at Harvard University from 1937 to 1952.
1984
Death of Karl Rahner in Innsbruck, Austria (born in Freiburg, Germany). Rahner, a Jesuit priest, introduced existentialist elements into Thomistic philosophy. He was a professor of theology at the universities of Innsbruck, Munich and Münster. Noted books by Rahner include, Geist in Welt (1937), Sendung der Gnade (1966), Grundkurs des Glaubens (1976) and Über die Sakramente der Kirche (1974).
THIS DAY... MARCH 16TH
1021
Death of St. Heribert von Köln. Heribert von Köln was born in Worms in ca. 970 and educated at the cathedral school in Worms. He was ordained a priest in 994. In 999 he was named Archbishop of Cologne by the emperor Otto III, and confirmed by the Pope Sylvester II. In 1003 he founded a monastery in Deutz, having a vision to do so. During his lifetime miracles were attributed to him. Heribert died on 1021, and buried in Deutz near the monastery he founded. His golden shrine is located today in the church of St. Heribert in Deutz (today a part of Cologne.) He was canonized in 1147 by Pope Gregory VII. His feast day is March 16. During his lifetime he was a close advisor to emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and made a number of trips to Rome. He had been honored as a saint before his formal canonization.
1750
Birth of Caroline Lucretia Herschel in Hannover, Germany. Herschel was the sister of the astronomer Sir William Herschel. Some years after William had emigrated to England, he sent for her. Her early assignment was to keep house and to grind and polish mirrors for her brother. She soon began, however, to do much of the mathematical calculation of her brother’s work. After she had begun to do her own telescopic observations she discovered three nebulae and eight comets. In 1798 she completed a catalog of 560 stars missing in the British Catalogue. By 1822 she had completed a catalog of 2,500 nebulae and star clusters. She was given a gold medal by the British Astronomical Society. After her brother’s death she returned to Germany and continued her work there.
1789
Birth of Georg Ohm (1789-1854) in Erlangen, Germany. Ohm was a physicist at the Jesuits’ College in Cologne and the Polytechnic School of Nürnberg. He discovered Ohm’s Law, the flow of an electric current through a conductor is directly proportional to the voltage and inversely proportional to the resistance. In electricity, the unit of resistance is named for him.
1849
Birth of Karl Brugmann in Wiesbaden, Germany. Brugmann, a Neogrammarian, was a professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Leipzig. His Outline of the comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages (Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen) (1893, and 1916) remains the authoritarian grammar of Indo-European.
1853
Birth of Heinrich Kayser (1853-1940) in Bingen, Germany. Kayser was a physicist, who, through spectral analysis, discovered helium in the atmosphere of the earth (1895). Prior to that scientists had detected helium only in the sun and in some minerals.
1878
Birth of Clemens Graf von Galen in Dinklage, Germany. Galen was the Bishop of Münster during the period of Nazi domination. From the beginning he publicly criticized the party and on occasion complained directly to Hitler. In the early years he had some successes with his protests. On one occasion he even ignited a public demonstration. Documents found after the war indicate that the party was about to have him done away with, but wanted to wait until their victory in the war. Of course, the Nazi victory was never achieved and at the end of the war, in 1946, Galen was made a cardinal. Cardinal Galen died on March 22, 1946.
1925
Death of August von Wassermann in Bamberg, Germany. Wassermann was the bacteriologist who discovered the blood-serum test for syphilis, the Wassermann test. He worked at the Robert Koch Institute of Infectious Diseases in Berlin.
1950
Winston Churchill suggests that Germany rearm and contribute to its own defense.
THIS DAY... MARCH 9TH
1009
Death of St. Bruno von Querfurt (970 – 1009) Bruno was educated at the cathedral school in Magdeburg. He later entered a monastery and took his vows in 999. He was sent as a missionary to Poland. In 1008 he sought to found a mission among the Prussians. He and his companions were killed by the resentful pagans there. He was soon revered as a martyr.
1697
Birth of Caroline Neuber (1697-1760) (born Friederike Caroline Weissenborn) in Reichenbach, Germany. “Die Neuberin” as her close associate, the critic Johann Gottsched, called her, was largely responsible as an actress and a theater director of moving German theater from loose slapstick productions to serious performance of quality plays. She and her husband, Johann Neuber, formed their first theater company in 1727 in Leipzig. The early collaboration with Gottsched turned to a bitter feud in later years. At one point she referred to him from the stage as a “bat-eared censor”. She is the model of the character Nelly in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister.
1758
Birth of Franz Joseph Gall in Tiefenbronn, Germany. Gall concluded from his research that mental functions are located in given areas of the brain. This was considered contrary to religion at the time and laws were passed against his findings and he was forced to leave Austria, where he was working. History proved that he was correct in his conclusions. However he also concluded that one could determine personality and intelligence from examining the skull (phrenology). In the latter matter he was incorrect.
1831
Death of Friedrich Klinger in Dorpat, Estonia (born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany). A dramatist (and later in life a general) Klinger gave the name to the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature with his play Der Wirrwarr, oder Sturm und Drang (1776). His play Die Zwillinge (1776) is also of historic significance as is his novel of 1791 Fausts Leben, Taten und Höllenfahrt.
1845
Birth of Wilhelm Pfeffer in Grebenstein, Germany. Pfeffer was a pioneer in the study of osmotic pressure in plants and in the general physiology of plants. He was a professor of biology at the universities of Bonn, Basel, Tübingen and Leipzig. He died in Leipzig on January 31, 1920.
1849
Birth of Josef Kohler in Offenburg, Germany. Kohler, a judge and, later, a professor of law at the University of Berlin, examined the purpose of law within the framework of the thought of Hegel. His most significant book was Lehrbuch der Rechtsphilosophie (1908). He also wrote a novel and poetry.
1888
Death of Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig in Berlin. Wilhelm had become the first Emperor of the German Empire in 1871. Wilhelm became the king of Prussia on January 2, 1861. He appointed Otto von Bismarck chancellor in 1862. He led the victorious Seven Week’s War against Austria in 1866 and the war against France in 1870-71. Following the Franco-Prussian War on January 18, 1871 he became emperor of the new German Empire.
1918
Death of Frank Wedekind in Munich, Germany. Wedekind was a dramatist in the transition period between Realism and Expressionism with a foretaste of the Theater of the Absurd. Noted dramas by Wedekind include Frühlings Erwachen, Erdgeist, and Die Büchse der Pandora. His Lulu dramas inspired Alban Berg’s opera, Lulu.
1988
Death of Kurt Georg Kiesinger in Tübingen, Germany. Kiesinger (CDU) was the chancellor of West Germany from 1966-1969. His period of office was shared with foreign minister Willy Brand (SPD) during the “Grand Coalition”. In the next term Willy Brand was elected chancellor and the coalition with the CDU was ended.
THIS DAY... MARCH 2ND
1481
Birth of Franz von Sickingen in Ebernburg, Germany. A character in Goethe’s play, Götz von Berlichingen, the historic Sickingen was a defender of the Protestant cause in Germany. His end came when he declared war on Richard of Greiffenclau, the archbishop of Trier and was defeated. After that defeat he gradually lost support and gradually all of his holdings.
1714
Johann Sebastian Bach becomes Concertmaster in Weimar.
1788
Death of Salomon Gessner in Zürich, Switzerland. Gessner was a writer known for his rococo style. His most noted works are Idyllen (1756-1772) and Der Tod Abels (1758). Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron expressed admiration for Gessner’s pastoral themes.
1829
Birth of Carl Schurz in Liblar, Germany. Schurz, a liberal political thinker in his youth, took part in the revolution of 1848. He was imprisoned for that activity but escaped and immigrated to the United States. A resident of Wisconsin, he soon became strongly involved in the antislavery movement. He served as a general in the Civil War. After the war he worked for the dignity and rights of the former slaves. He was elected to the Senate from the state of Missouri in 1869. Under President Hayes he was secretary of the interior. After his retirement from government he edited the New York Evening Post and The Nation.
1836
Birth of Theodor Nöldeke in Harburg, Germany. Nöldeke was a scholar who gained a reputation for his extensive Islamic studies. His most noted book is History of the Persians and Arabs during the Sasanian period r Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden (1879).
1840
Death of Wilhelm Olbers in Bremen, Germany. Olbers, a physician and astronomer, identified the asteroids Pallas and Vesta and five comets. He created a method of determining the orbits of comets. It was he who developed the theory that the tail of a comet is directed away from the sun due to solar radiation.
1875
Birth of Hans Lietzmann in Düsseldorf, Germany. Lietzmann, a church historian, was a professor of classical languages and church history at the universities of Jena and Berlin. He is noted for his insightful work on Christian origins.
1879
Death of Eberhard Faber in New York (born in Stein, Germany). The brothers, Lothar and Eberhard Faber, built a small family pencil business into worldwide firms producing writing instruments and art supplies. The younger brother, Eberhard immigrated to the United States in 1849 to build a factory to supply the American market. The European branch of the company is no longer owned by the Faber family, but the American branch is.
1887
Death of August Wilhelm Eichler in Berlin, Germany. Eichler was a botanist who developed one of the first systems of plant classification. He was a professor of botany at the Technical University of Graz and the University of Kiel. In 1878 he became the director of the herbarium at the University of Berlin.
1900
Birth of the composer, Kurt Weill (1900-1950) in Dessau, Germany. Weill studied composition with Albert Bing, Engelbert Humperdinck and Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin. His first major successes were operas in collaboration with the writer Bertold Brecht. Brecht and Weill wrote Die Dreigrosschenoper (1928), Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930), Der Jasager (1930) and Der Lindburghflug (1928) for which Brecht and Weill were joined by Paul Hindemith. When the Nazis came to power Weill joined the illustrious group of artists which were termed degenerate and banned. Weill immigrated to America where he wrote the music for Johnny Johnson (1936), Eternal Road (1937), Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), One Touch of Venus (1943) and Down in the Valley (1948)
1948
Ludwig Erhard becomes the director of the Economic Management Administration for the combined American/British occupation zones. The Administration is located in Frankfurt am Main.
THIS DAY... FEBRUARY 24TH
1622
Birth of Johann Clauberg in Solingen, Germany. Clauberg was a philosopher who became the leading German follower of Rene Descartes. He was a professor at the University of Duisburg. Noted works by Clauberg include Defending Cartesianism (Defensio Cartesiana) (1652) and Etymological Teutonic Art from Philosophy (Ars Etymologica Teutonum e Philosophiae) (1663).
1697
Birth of Siegfried Bernard Albinus (1697-1770) in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany. An anatomist, Albinus was the first to understand the relationship of the circulatory systems of a mother and unborn child. Albinus is best known for his monumental Tables of the skeleton and muscles of the human body (Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani), first published in Leiden in 1747.
1771
Birth of Johann Baptist Cramer in Mannheim, Germany. His family took him to England as an infant. Cramer became one of the leading pianists of his day. He founded the London music publishing company, Cramer and Company. Cramer died on April 16, 1858 in London.
1784
Birth of Leo von Klenze (1784-1864) in Bockenem, Germany. The architect, Klenze worked primarily in Munich for Maximilian I and Ludwig I. He built the Glyptothek, the Propylaeon in Munich.
1786
Birth of Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859) in Hanau, Germany. Along with his brother, Jakob he is known most for the Grimms’ fairy tales, published as Kinder- und Hausmärchen. (1812-1822). But the brothers did a huge amount of work which is equally important but less known. Between 1816-18 they published Deutsche Sagen, a collection of German legends. The most extensive work undertaken by the brothers was the complete German dictionary, Deutsches Wörterbuch. The work was so extensive that neither lived to see it completed. Scholars continued the work after the Grimms’ deaths and finally finished it about a century after they had started it. Wilhelm Grimm also published a collection of the stories of the heroic ancients from the 6th to the 16th centuries, Die deutsche Heldensage.
1809
Der 24. Februar is the title of a very popular novel by Zacharias Werner in which murder and fate center around a single knife. The novel was published in 1809.
1809
Birth of Edwin Freiherr von Manteufel in Dresden, Germany. Manteufel was a general in the Prussian army. He served as aide-de-camp to Friedrich Wilhelm during the uprisings of 1848. In 1861 he was made chief of the Prussian military cabinet. He served with noted success in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. From 1871-1873 he commanded the Prussian occupation forces in France. In addition to his military duties, he undertook a number of diplomatic missions.
1841
Birth of Carl Gräbe in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. A chemist, Gräbe synthesized the dye, alizarin, from coal tar in 1868. His dye immediately replaced the natural orange-red dye in textiles. Gräbe was a professor at the Universities of Königsberg and Geneva. He introduced the prefixes ortho- meta- and para- to designate isomers. Graebe died on January 19, 1927 in Frankfurt am Main.
1926
Death of Johann Jakob Bausch in New York (born in Groß Suessin, Germany). Bausch Moved to Bern, Switzerland in 1848 and found work in an optical shop. In 1849 he immigrated to the United States. In 1853 he opened an optical shop in Rochester, New York. Most of the products he sold, he imported from Germany. In 1855 another immigrant from Germany, Henry Lomb joined the business. Together they built one of America’s leading optical companies, Bausch and Lomb.
THIS DAY... FEBRUARY 17TH
1665
Birth of Rudolph Jacob Camerarius (1665-1721) in Tübingen, Germany. Camerarius was the botanist who proved the existence of sexes in plants, identified the reproductive parts, and demonstrated the role of pollen. He was a professor of medicine and director of the botanical gardens at Tübingen.
1717
Birth of Adam Friedrich Oeser in Hungary. A painter, Oeser was educated in Vienna and spent his adult life working in Germany. He joined the art historian Johann Winckelmann in urging that art be based on Greek masterpieces. Oeser worked primarily in Dresden and Leipzig painting in oil and creating frescos in public buildings. Oeser died in Leipzig on March 18, 1799.
1723
Birth of Johann Tobias Mayer (1752-1830) in Marbach, Germany. Mayer was the astronomer who worked out lunar tables sufficiently accurate to determine longitude at sea within a half a degree. He had developed a system of calculating longitude by measuring angular separation between the moon and fixed stars as well as a system of correcting for atmospheric refraction. Mayer published his first calculations while a cartographer in Nürnberg. He was later appointed professor at the University of Göttingen. Mayer died on February 20, 1762 in Göttingen.
1752
Birth of Friedrich Klinger in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. A dramatist (and later in life a general), Klinger gave the name to the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature with his play Der Wirrwarr, oder Sturm und Drang (1776). His play Die Zwillinge (1776) is also of historic significance as is his novel of 1791, Fausts Leben, Taten und Höllenfahrt.
1798
Birth of Friedrich Eduard Beneke in Berlin, Germany. An anti-Hegelian philosopher at the University of Berlin, Beneke argued that inductive psychology is the starting point of all philosophy.
1827
Death of Johann Pestalozzi in Brugg, Switzerland. Pestalozzi was a philosopher of educational reform, whose ideas comprise much of the way we think of early education today. Such matters as his notion that the poor should also be educated, consideration of individual differences, group work, and formal training of teachers were revolutionary in his day. He was deeply influenced by the romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Books by Pestalozzi include, Die Abendstunde eines Linsiedlers (1780), Meine Nachforschung über den Gang der Natur in der Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (1797) and Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt (1801).
1855
Birth of Otto Liman von Sanders in Stolp, Germany. In 1913 Liman, a German general, was appointed head of the German military mission in Turkey with the purpose of reorganizing and building the Turkish army. His major victory was at the head of the Turkish 5th Army which forced the British and Australian troops out of the Dardanelles in World War I.
1856
Death of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) in Paris (born in Düsseldorf, Germany). Heine studied at the University of Göttingen where he earned a degree in law. Although he converted from his Jewish roots to Christianity in 1825 with the specific purpose of opening the possibility of a career in law he never did practice. His true talents and interests lay in poetry. Although he was in many respects overshadowed by his contemporary, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he was one of the greatest poets of the century. Inspired with the ideals of French democracy he left Germany for a life in Paris in 1831. Among Heine’s works are Buch der Lieder (1827), Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand (1827), Neue Gedichte (1844) and Romanzero (1851). The last years of Heine’s life were tormented with a decay of his nervous system.
1865
Birth of Ernst Troeltsch in Haunstetten, Germany. Troeltsch was a theologian and philosopher who did extensive work in ethics, the sociology of religion and comparative religious studies. His primary academic appointments were at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. Often criticized for his relativism he insisted that the church rethink its claim to absolute truth. Troeltsch died on February 1, 1923 in Berlin.
1904
Birth of Hans J. Morgenthau in Coburg, Germany. Morgenthau was educated in law in Germany. He became the chief of the German Labor Law Court in Frankfurt before accepting a temporary teaching position in Geneva. Hitler came to power while Morgenthau was in Switzerland. Not wishing to return to Hitler Germany, he immigrated to the United States. He taught at a number of American universities during the following 40 years. During that academic career he wrote several books on international politics.
1912
Death of Graf Lexa von Aehrenthal in Vienna. He was the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister at the time of the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1908).
1937
Birth of Rita Süssmuth in Wuppertal, Germany. Dr. Süssmuth studied Romance languages and history at the Universities of Münster, Tübingen and Paris. She was in turn a professor at the Ruhr University of Bochum. A member of the CDU party, she has been a member of the Bundestag since 1987. She has held several ministerial positions in the German government and was elected President of the Bundestag in 1988 and reelected in 1994.
1962
Death of Bruno Walter in Beverly Hills, U.S.A. Walter was a leading orchestral conductor of his day. After establishing a reputation in Cologne, Berlin, Vienna and Leipzig he moved to the United States (1939) where he conducted in New York.
1966
Death of Hans Hofmann in New York City (born in Weissenberg, Germany). Hofmann studied painting in Munich and Paris. He opened an art school in Munich in 1915. He developed Expressionist use of colors in his work. In 1930 he immigrated to the United States where he opened the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art in New York. That school became one of the leaders in the U.S. His thinking and work tended more and more to total abstraction in painting. He was one of the developers of the paint-dripping technique.
1998
Death of the writer Ernst Jünger in Riedlingen, Germany.
THIS DAY... FEBRUARY 10TH
1543
Birth of Johann Eck (birth name Johann Maier) in Egg, Germany. Eck was ordained a Catholic priest in 1508 and attained the degree, Doctor of Theology in 1510. He then was appointed as professor of theology at the University of Ingolstadt. Eck was outraged at Luther’s 95 theses which he denounced as heresy in 1518. He debated directly with Luther in 1519. In 1520 he assisted in the writing of the papal bull condemning Luther’s theses and threatening excommunication. He continued, with papal authority, to struggle against the Reformation for the remainder of his life.
1745
Birth of Leonty Leontyevich Graf von Bennigsen in Grunswick, Germany (original name Levin August Gottlieb von Benninsen). Bennigsen joined the Russian army in 1773 and fought the Turks in 1774 and 1778. He was a Russian officer crushing the Polish uprising in 1793. He participated in the Russian invasion of Persia in 1796. He became the Governor of Lithuania in 1801. He fought Napoleon in 1806, 1807, and 1812. He led a Russian force against Napoleon again at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. In 1818 he retired to his estate near Hildesheim, Germany.
1835
Birth of Victor Hensen (1835-1924) in Schleswig, Germany. Hensen was a physiologist who created the term “plankton” for the tiny organisms in the sea. He was a professor at the University of Kiel. Hensen died in Kiel in 1924.
1853
Birth of Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt in Mainz, Germany. Goldschmidt was a mineralogist specializing in crystallography. He indexed and cataloged all known crystals and established tables of crystal angles. From the number series in crystal symbols he developed a theory of number and harmony which subsequently was applied in several fields of study.
1898
Birth of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) in Augsburg, Germany. Brecht was among the best of the German Marxist playwrights. His plays include Baal (1923), and Trommeln in der Nacht (1922). With musician, Kurt Weill, he wrote Die Dreigroschenoper (1928) and Aufstieg und fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930). He fled the Nazis, living in Scandinavia and then the United States where he lived and worked in California. During the war he wrote Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1941), Leben des Galilei (1943), and Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1943). In 1947 he was required to appear before Joseph McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities to answer questions about his alleged communist affiliations. He left the United States immediately thereafter. He lived for a short time in Switzerland and then emigrated into East Germany where he founded his own theater, Der Berliner Ensemble. He wrote Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis (1948) and Der Aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1957). In addition to his plays, Brecht was a preeminent theoretician, developing the concepts of alienation effects and epic theater.
1901
Birth of Richard Brauer in Berlin, Germany. Brauer was a mathematician who followed up on Georg Frobenius’ work on group characters. Brauer developed a theory of modular characters, which was a step forward in algebra. In Germany he taught at the University of Königsberg. In 1935 he was appointed to a position at the University of Toronto and in 1948 a position at the University of Michigan.
1923
Death of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923) in Munich. Röntgen was the discoverer of X-rays. He was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery in 1901. Röntgen was professor of physics at the Universities of Strassburg, Giessen, Würzburg and Munich. The first X-ray picture he took of a human being was of his wife’s hand.
THIS DAY... FEBRUARY 3RD
865
Death of St. Ansgar. St. Ansgar. In 823 he became a teacher in the newly founded monastery in Corvey, Westphalia (modern Germany). In 829 he founded the first Christian church in Sweden. He returned to Germany in 831 and became the first bishop of Hamburg. He continued his work of christianization in Denmark and Sweden, but after attacks by the Vikings not only was Christianity halted in those lands, but Hamburg itself was destroyed (845). He was then made the first bishop of Bremen. From there he continued his efforts to bring Christianity to the Scandinavian countries. He died in 865 in Bremen. Through his efforts he is known as the Apostle of the North. He was canonized by Pope Nicholas I. He is the patron saint of Denmark. February 3 is the feast day of St. Ansgar.
1468
Death of Johannes Gutenberg (1395-1468) in Mainz. He was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.
1721
Birth of Friedrich Freiherr von Seydlitz (1721-1773) in Kalkar, Germany. Von Seydlitz was the commander who built the Prussian cavalry of Friedrich II into the best in Europe.
1736
Birth of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger in Klosterneuburg, Austria. An organist and composer, Albrechtsberger was appointed court organist in Vienna in 1792 and music director at St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna in 1793. His most noted student was Ludwig van Beethoven.
1786
Birth of Wilhelm Gesenius in Nordhausen, Germany. Gesenius was a professor of theology at the University of Halle. As a theologian he was not remarkable, but he made major contribution to the study of Semitic languages, publishing several grammars and dictionaries.
1809
Birth of Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), known generally as Felix Mendelssohn, in Hamburg, Germany. The composer, Mendelssohn, is one of the outstanding figures in the history of music. Mendelssohn was born to a Jewish family in Hamburg, but was baptized a Lutheran. The name, Bartholdy, was taken from a wealthy uncle and attached to the Mendelssohn name at the time the uncle’s properties passed to the family. A child prodigy, Mendelssohn gave his first public concert at age 9 in Berlin. He wrote one of his masterpieces, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream at age 17. In 1843 Mendelssohn founded a conservatory of music in Leipzig where he and his friend Robert Schumann taught composition.
1859
Birth of Hugo Junkers (1859-1935) in Rheydt, Germany. Junkers founded an aircraft factory in Dessau in 1910. His J-1 Blechesel of 1915 was the world’s first functional all-metal airplane. The Junkers company supplied Germany in World War II with the Ju 52 troop transport and the Ju 87 Stuka (a shortened form of Sturzkampfflugzeug). Junkers died on his birthday in 1935.
1870
Birth of Annette Kolb (1870-1967) in Munich, Germany. The writer, Annette Kolb (pseudonym of Anne Mathilde Kolb), emigrated to France in 1933 and later to the United States. Among her works are Die Schaukel, Das Exemplar, and Briefe einer Deutsch-Französin. She was awarded the Literature Prize of the City of Munich on her 75th birthday.
1917
The United States breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany in reaction to German resumption of unlimited submarine warfare. (President Wilson had just been reelected with the campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war!”)
THIS DAY... JANUARY 27TH
1701
Birth of Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (pseudonym: Justinus Febronius) in Trier, Germany. Hontheim, a Roman Catholic priest, was a historian and theologian. He was a professor at the University of Trier and in 1748 became an auxiliary bishop of Trier. In 1763 under the pseudonym, Justinus Febronius, he published a book, De Statu Ecclesiae et Legitima Potestate Romani Pontificis (Concerning the state of the Church and the Legitimate Power of the Roman Pope) in which he proposed the limitation of the power of the Pope in the Church. His intention was to draw Protestants back to the Church through the limitation of one of the factors which kept the division in Christianity. His book was condemned and placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.
1756
Birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) in Salzburg, Austria. He was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. In his youth Mozart toured and gave spectacular concerts in the major music centers of Europe. After early work at the court of Salzburg he achieved his apex of composition in Vienna. Mozart composed 14 masses, 2 oratorios, 15 operas, 56 symphonies, 71 pieces for piano, 88 pieces of chamber music, 54 concertos and over 250 ensembles as well as 131 vocal pieces. The circumstances of his early death at the age of 35 have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.
1775
Birth of Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) in Leonberg, Germany. Schelling was a philosopher. In his formative years he was highly impressed with the ideas of Kant, Fichte and Spinoza. In 1798 he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Jena. Not long after his marriage to one of the leading intellectual women of the age, Caroline Schlegel, he accepted a professorship at the University of Würzburg. It was at about this time that his relationship with Friedrich Hegel, which had been close, began to deteriorate and grow into antagonism. In 1841 he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Berlin. While in Berlin, he had contact with and began to influence the thinking of Friedrich Engels, Soren Kierkegaard and Jakob Burckhardt. Among Schelling’s important books are Über die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie (1795), System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800), and Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809).
1808
Birth of David Friedrich Strauss in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Strauss was a highly controversial Protestant theologian, influenced in his thinking by the philosophy of Friedrich Hegel. His first major work Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (1836) sought to prove the gospels to be simply “historical myth”. His last publication, Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872) was no less controversial, as he sought to replace Christianity with a form of Darwinism.
1814
Death of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Berlin.
1859
Birth of Wilhelm II in Potsdam, Germany. Wilhelm was the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Germany from 1888 to the end of World War I. He was the grandson of Queen Victoria of England. In 1890 he removed 75-year-old Otto von Bismarck from the office of chancellor. Among many factors which led to declining relations with Great Britain was the buildup of the German navy under his secretary of the navy, Alfred von Tirpitz. Wilhelm’s ultimate undoing was precipitated by World War I. He supported Austria-Hungary in the initial conflicts which led to the war. In 1918, the war lost, he was forced to abdicate and seek asylum in the Netherlands.
1864
Death of Leo von Klenze in Munich, Germany. The architect, Klenze, worked primarily in Munich for Maximilian I and Ludwig I. He built the Glyptothek and the Propylaeon in Munich.
1883
Birth of Gottfied Feder in Würzburg, Germany. Feder was the developer and leader of National Socialist economic ideology in the early days of the party. Hitler referred to his book Der deutsche Staat auf nationaler und sozialer Grundlage (1923) as “the catechism of the movement”. Feder was the chairman of the Nazi Party’s economic council and the state secretary of the German Ministry of Economics in the early years of the rule of the Nazi Party. By 1936, however, he ceased to play any significant role.
1888
Birth of Victor Goldschmidt (1888-1947) in Zürich, Switzerland. Goldschmidt is considered the founder of modern geochemistry. Goldschmidt became a professor at the University of Göttingen in 1929, but after the rise of the Nazi Party fled to Norway. When Norway was occupied he was arrested and confined to a concentration camp. He escaped and fled to Great Britain. After the war he returned to spend the remainder of his life in Oslo.
1970
Death of Erich Heckel in Döbeln, Germany. Heckel was an artist who was one of the founders of the Expressionist artists’ group, Die Brücke.
2016
Artur Fischer, a German inventor, dies in Waldachtal, Germany. He registered his first patent in 1949 for a Photo Flash Light, with synchronised trigger. From 1957 he concentrated more on fixing elements. He invented flash light photography as he saw an issue with the previously used magnesium flash. Stories say that he wanted to have pictures taken and the photographer refused as the magnesium could have burned the wooden roof.
Fischer’s most famous invention is the grey “S Plug” (Split-)Wallplug made from plastic materials (Polyamide) and is available in various shapes and sizes since 1958. He held over 1100 patents and overtook Thomas Alva Edison, who held 1093 patents. Fischer also held 5867 trade rights and invented fischertechnik.
Further inventions are (bone-)plugs for fixing bone fractures and – his latest idea – biodegradable and edible children’s toys from potato starch/corn starch.
THIS DAY... JANUARY 20TH
1488
Birth of Sebastian Münster (1488-1582) in Ingelheim, Germany. Münster was professor of Hebrew at the University of Basel after 1527. His major contribution to scholarship was his Cosmographia, published in 1544. That book, proceeding from the geography of Ptolemy, represented a revival of the science of geography in Germany, and was the earliest German description of the world.
1586
Birth of Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630) in Grünhain, Germany. As a composer of sacred and secular music, he was one of the musicians of the period to introduce Italian Baroque style into German music. He became the cantor at the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig in 1616 (a position which Johann Sebastian Bach would hold after starting in 1723).
1813
Death of Christoph Martin Wieland in Wiemar, Germany. His Geschichte des Agathon is considered the first of the genre of “Bildungsroman”. He was one of the luminaries at the court of Weimar.
1859
Death of Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859) in Berlin. Born Elisabeth Brentano, she married the poet Achim von Arnim in 1811 and took his name. She bore seven children and was a devoted mother. She was, however, not satisfied with the purely domestic life. She is the author of the books, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835), Die Günderode (1840), Dies Buch gehört dem König (1843), Clemens Brentanos Frühlingskranz (1844) and Gespräche mit Dämonen (1852). She was also a talented sculptor and musician. Her mother had been close friends with Goethe, and Bettina too became a good friend of his until 1811 when Goethe’s wife Christiane found the friendship inappropriate.
1943
Death of Max Freiherr von Beck in Vienna, Austria. He became chancellor of Austria in 1906 and in that role established universal male suffrage in 1907.
THIS DAY... JANUARY 13TH
1505
Birth of Joachim II Hektor (1505-1571) in Cologne, Germany. Joachim II Hektor was the Elector of Brandenburg at the time of the Reformation. He remained true to the Catholic Church and to the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, but he tolerated Protestantism in the areas under his governance. On several occasions he served as a mediator between Catholic and Protestant factions in the empire. He played a significant role in the processes leading to the Peace of Augsburg (1555).
1635
Birth of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), who founded German pietism.
1683
Birth of Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) in Kirchberg, Germany. Graupner was one of the most highly regarded composers of his day. The position of cantor at the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig was offered to him before it was offered to Bach. It was only after Graupner had declined the position that it was offered to Johann Sebastian Bach. Graupner himself had studied at the Thomas school in Leipzig.
1737
Birth of Joseph Hilarius Eckhel in Enzersfeld, Austria. Eckhel developed the system of classification of coins for numismatics which became the standard. He became a professor of numismatics at the University of Vienna and the curator of the Austrian imperial collection of coins. The published work in which he developed his system was Doctrina numorum veterum (1792-1798).
1749
Birth of Friedrich Müller in Kreuznach, Germany. Müller was a painter, poet and dramatist. Titles of his Sturm und Drang plays include, Fausts Leben dramatisiert (1778), and Das Nusskernen (1811).
1802
Birth of Eduard von Bauernfeld in Vienna, Austria. Bauernfeld was a very popular dramatist in Vienna for all of his adult life. He was a friend of Franz Schubert and Franz Grillparzer. Titles by Bauernfeld include, Bürgerlich und romantisch and Aus der Gesellschaft.
1809
Birth of Friedrich Graf von Beust in Dresden, Germany. As the foreign minister of the Austrian Empire from 1867-1871, it was he who negotiated the agreements leading to the creation of the dual monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian empire.
1864
Birth of Wilhelm Wien (1864-1928) in Gaffken, Germany. Wien was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien’s displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature. He also formulated an expression for the black-body radiation which is correct in the photon-gas limit. His arguments were based on the notion of adiabatic invariance, and were instrumental for the formulation of quantum mechanics. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation.
1935
The Saarland votes to be a part of the German Reich.
1942
German submarines harass shipping near the U.S. east coast.
1994
Erich Honecker leaves Germany for Chile. Honecker had been the leader of East Germany. After the reunification there was the possibility of trying him for crimes against humanity, but due to his cancer he was allowed to leave Germany.
THIS DAY... JANUARY 6TH
Three Kings Day (Dreikönigentag)
1486
Birth of Martin Agricola (pseudonym of Martin Sore) in Schwiebus (now in Poland). He was a German music scholar and composer in Magdeburg. He was the first to give attention to the musical needs of the Reformation.
1821
Birth of Jakob Frohschammer in Illkofen, Germany. Frohschammer was a Catholic priest, writer and philosopher. He was excommunicated in 1871 for his insistence that philosophy is independent of Church authority. He taught at the University of Munich. In 1889 he wrote a book, Philosophie des Thomas von Aquino kritisch gewurdigt, in which he disputed Thomas’ view that philosophy is subordinate to theology.
1822
Heinrich Schliemann is born in Neubukow, Germany. He was a German businessman and a pioneer of field archaeology. He was an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. Along with Arthur Evans, Schliemann was a pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the Bronze Age.
1827
Death of Charlotte von Stein in Weimar. Von Stein was a very close friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. She inspired the characters Iphigenie in Iphigenie auf Tauris and Natalie in Wilhelm Meister. After 1788 when Goethe met and later married Christiane Vulpius, the “Seelenbund” with Frau von Stein weakened and dissolved.
1838
Birth of Max Bruch in Cologne, Germany. Bruch was a violin virtuoso and composer. Among his works are the opera, Scherz, List und Rache (1858) and a concert for choir and orchestra, Odysseus (1872).
1870
Birth of Gustav Bauer in Darkehmen, Germany (now in Russia). Bauer became German chancellor when Scheidemann resigned in protest against the terms demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. It was thus his responsibility to accept and implement the treaty.
1884
Death of Gregor Mendel, Augustinian monk and the pioneer of the science of genetics. He died in Brunn, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic).
1919
Communist uprising in Berlin (Spartacist Week).
1926
The German airlines “Aero Lloyd and “Junkers Luftverkehr” unite to become “Deutssche Luft-Hansa AG”. In 1933 the name “Lufthansa” was applied to the company. After World War II the company was refounded with the same name.
1939
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin announce the discovery of uranium fission. They had been working on this together with Lise Meitner. Hahn, Meitner, and Strassmann were not engaged in nuclear weapons research during World War II. At the end of the war Hahn was astonished to hear that he had won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1944 and that nuclear bombs had been developed from his basic discovery. Later, as director of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (the postwar successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft), he spoke vigorously against the misuse of atomic energy. Meitner—who many thought should have received the Nobel Prize with Hahn—continued to do nuclear research in Sweden and then England. Strassmann nurtured the study of nuclear chemistry in Mainz, Germany.