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October
2 in German History
--------------------------------- October 2, 1616
Birth of Andreas Gryphius in Glogau,
Germany (now Poland). Gryphius was one of the greatest of the
German Baroque writers. Gryphius is noted for his poetry and
his dramas. He is the author of Leo Armenius, Catharina
von Georgien, Cardenio und Celinde and Herr Peter
Squentz. Gryphius died in 1664.
October 2, 1800
Birth of Felix Fürst zu Schwarzenberg in
Krummau, Austria-Hungary (now in the Czech Republic). In the
revolutionary period of 1848 he became the chancellor and
foreign minister and successfully resisted the liberal
movement restoring the Austrio-Hungarian Empire to a strong
and absolutist state.
October 2, 1847
Birth of Paul von Hindenburg in Posen,
Germany (now in Poland). Von Hindenburg had been a general
and became the president of the Weimar Republic (Germany from
the end of WWI to the rise of Hitler). Hindenburg became
president in 1925 upon the death of the first president of
the Republic, Friedrich Ebert. In 1933 he appointed Hitler
chancellor, thinking that the man and his party could be
controlled and thus be useful. Hindenburg died in office in
1934.
October 2, 1872
Death of Franz (changed to Francis) Lieber
in New York City (born in Berlin, Germany). Lieber was a
political philosopher who studied at the University of Jena.
He encountered political difficulties in Germany and
emigrated to the United States in 1827. In America he
undertook the first edition of Encyclopedia Americana. He
was a professor at the University of South Carolina and
Columbia College. Seeing a need for a code for the conduct of
soldiers for the protection of civilians he wrote Code for
the Government of Armies in the Field (1863) for the
Union Army. Many of his ideas were later adapted to
international agreements regulating conduct in war.
October 2, 1886
Birth of Robert Julius Trumpler in Zürich,
Switzerland. Educated in Switzerland and Germany, Trumpler
came to the United States in 1915 where he ultimately became
a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. During
a solar eclipse in Australia he confirmed Einstein's
prediction that gravitation could bend light. He developed an
elaborate classifications system for galactic clusters.
October 2, 1935
Italy invades Ethiopia.
October 2, 1990
On this day Radio Berlin International
transmits its final broadcast and then is merged with
Deutsche Welle. The final music played is "The End"
by a group called The Doors.
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