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October
6 in German History
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October 6

German/American Day in the U.S.A. The holiday, which celebrates German American heritage, commemorates the date in 1683 when 13 German families from Krefeld near the Rhine landed in Philadelphia. These families subsequently founded Germantown, Pennsylvania, the first German settlement in the original thirteen American colonies. Originally celebrated in the nineteenth century, German-American Day died out in World War I as a result of the anti-German sentiment that prevailed at the time. The holiday was revived in 1983.
October 6, 1090
Death of St. Adalbero von Würzburg (ca.
1010 1090) St. Adalbero was born in Austria in the
palace of Lambach (near Linz). He studied in Würzburg and in
1045 became the Bishop of Würzburg. He was a supporter of
the Cluny reforms. During the investiture controversies he
supported Pope Gregory VII against Heinrich IV. In the
process he lost his bishopric. He was canonized by Pope Leo
XIII in 1883.
October 6, 1459

You can spin Martin's globe as much as you like but you will never find America
Birth of Martin Behaim in Nürnberg,
Germany. His globe of 1492 is the oldest globe in existence.
It is located at the German National Museum in Nürnberg.
October 6, 1520
Martin Luther publishes an essay on the
"Babylonian Captivity of the Church" refuting the
Church's sacramental system.
October 6, 1683

The first German immigrants land in
America. The 13 families, 35 persons, Mennonites from
Krefeld, land in Philadelphia.
October 6, 1831

Birth of Richard Dedekind in Braunschweig,
Germany. Dedekind was a mathematician who did important work in abstract algebra (particularly ring theory), algebraic number theory and the foundations of the real numbers.
October 6, 1847
Birth of Adolf von Hildebrand in Marburg,
Germany. He was the sculptor who built the Wittelsbach
Fountain at Maximilianplatz in Munich.
October 6, 1848
There is an attempted liberal revolution in
Vienna. The movement is finally crushed by the new
chancellor, Felix, Fürst zu Schwarzenberg.
October 6, 1855

Death of August Leopold Crelle in Berlin,
Germany. Crelle was a mathematician who founded the
prestigious journal, Crelle's Journal (original name: Journal
für die reine und angewandte Mathematik) in 1826.
October 6, 1866
Birth of the Swiss writer, Heinrich
Federer, in Brienz, Switzerland. A devout Catholic, Federer
was inspired by St. Francis of Assisi and brought that spirit
into his writing. Works by Federer include Der heilige
Franz von Assisi, Berge und Menschen, and Papst und
Kaiser im Dorf.
October 6, 1869
Death of Moritz Schiff in Geneva,
Switzerland. Schiff earned his M.D. at the University of
Göttingen and became a professor of comparative anatomy at
the University of Bern. Schiff's first major contribution to
medical science was to prove that the thyroid gland is
essential to life and then to discover that the thyroid gland
could be replaced by thyroid grafts or injections of thyroid
extracts. He was the first to note the influence of the
cerebral cortex on blood circulation, the role of the vagus
nerve in heart function and the return to the liver of bile
salts from the intestine (Schiff's biliary cycle).
October 6, 1908
Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina.
October 6, 1918
German chancellor Max von Baden sends a
message to President Wilson requesting an armistice on the
basis of Wilson's 14 points. By October 23 Wilson has agreed
but only on the condition that the Allies would not negotiate
with the Hindenburg/Ludendorff de facto military
dictatorship. (Ludendorff resigns on October 26 to make
negotiation possible.)
October 6, 1939
Adolf Hitler in a speech says he has no
desire for war with either France or Britain. (At that time,
he had no such desire, but it was clear that the French and
British treaty with Poland required them to intervene in case
of an attack on Poland.)
October 6, 1951

Death of Otto Meyerhof in Philadelphia, PA
(born in Hannover, Germany). Mayerhof was a biochemist who
won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for
his work on the chemical reactions of metabolism in muscles.
He examined the glycogen-lactic acid cycle. Meyerhof earned
his doctorate in medicine at the University of Heidelberg. He
taught at the University of Kiel.
October 6, 1976
President Ford of the U.S.A. states during
a debate that there will never be Soviet domination of
Eastern Europe as long as he is president. (In reality
Eastern Europe had been dominated by the Soviet Union since
1945.)
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