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April 1 in German History
--------------------------------- April 1, 1730
Birth 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.
April 1, 1815
Birth of Otto von Bismark in Schönhausen,
Germany. Bismarck was the Prussian Chancellor who in 1871,
after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war,
organized the German states into a new empire. (That empire
would last until the end of World War I.) Bismarck still
holds the record for the longest serving German chancellor.
He served for 19 years. The current Chancellor, Helmut Kohl,
who has been chancellor now since 1982, will pass Bismarck's
record if he is reelected this fall.
April 1, 1863
Death of Jakob Steiner in Bern Switzerland.
Steiner discovered inversive geometry and is considered one
of the greatest geometers of modern times. He discovered the
"Steiner surface", and developed the "Steiner
theorem" and the "Poncelet-Steiner theorem".
His most noted work is Systematische Entwickelung der
Abhängigkeit geometrischer Gestalten von Einander (1832).
The chair of geometry was established for him at the
University of Berlin and he occupied that chair from 1834
until his death in 1863.
April 1, 1865
Birth of Richard Zsigmondy in Vienna,
Austria. Zsigmondy was a chemist who won the Nobel Prize for
Chemistry in 1925 for his work on colloids. He earned his
doctorate at the University of Munich and taught at the
University of Graz and the University of Göttingen.
April 1, 1872
Death of Hugo von Mohl in Stuttgart,
Germany. Von Mohl was a botanist who did work with the
anatomy and physiology of plant cells. He was the first to
realize that new cells are formed by cell division. Von Mohl
was a professor at the University of Tübingen.
April 1, 1878
Birth of Carl Sternheim in Leipzig,
Germany. Sternheim was a satiric dramatist. He is generally
categorized as an Expressionist, but he insisted that he was
a Realist. Among Sternheim's dramas are Die Hose (1911),
Der Snob (1914) and Das Fossil (1925).
April 1, 1896
Death of Joseph Reinkens in Bonn, Germany.
Reinkens, a Roman Catholic priest, was excommunicated from
the church in debates concerning the matter of the
infallibility of the Pope. He became a leader in the
"Old Catholic" movement in Germany and became its
first bishop.
April 1, 1922
Death by pneumonia of Karl I in Quinta do
Monte, Madeira in exile. Karl was the last ruler of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. He ruled from 1916 to 1918.
April 1, 1930
Death of Cosima Wagner (born, Liszt) in
Bayreuth, Germany. She was the extra-marital daughter of the
composer, Franz Liszt and Countess Marie d'Agoult. In 1857
she married the conductor, Hans von Bülow. During visits
with Richard Wagner, whose new music von Bülow conducted,
Cosima and Richard fell in love. The first of their children
were born while Cosima was still married to von Bülow. In
1870 Cosima and Richard married. Friedrich Nietzsche, who was
also a frequent visitor at the Wagner household, felt at one
time that he was in love with Cosima. After Richard's death,
Cosima managed the Bayreuth Festivals until 1908.
April 1, 1933
The Nazi party initiates a boycott of
Jewish business.
April 1, 1991
The president of the Berlin Treuhandanstalt
(the organization responsible for the privatization of East
German property), Detlev Karsten Rohwedder is murdered by
terrorists.
April 1, 1997
The German steel companies Krupp and
Thyssen merge.
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