July 29

© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons

July 29, 1605

Birth of Simon Dach in Memel, Prussia (now Lithuania). Dach was one of the outstanding German Baroque poets.

July 29, 1889

Birth of Ernst Reuter in Apenrade, Germany. Reuter was the Mayor of West Berlin during the blockade (1948-1949).

July 29, 1910

Birth of Heinz Ludwig Fraenkel-Conrat in Breslau, Germany (now Poland). A chemist whose research lead to an understanding of the structure of viruses, Fraenkel-Conrat immigrated to the U. S. in 1941 and after 1958 taught at the University of California at Berkeley.

July 29, 1914

Austria-Hungary, having declared war on Serbia on July 28, starts an artillery bombardment of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.

July 29, 1974

Erich Kästner dies in Munich. Kästner was a popular humorist and satirist. He is primarily remembered, however, for his children's books, the most durable of which is certainly Emil und die Detektive of 1929.

July 29, 1975

Gerald Ford is the first American president to visit the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

July 29, 1979

Death of the political philosopher, Herbert Marcuse, in Starnberg, Germany. Marcuse is noted for his Marxist philosophy and Freudian analyses of 20th century Western society. Marcuse was particularly influential among the protesters of the 60's and 70's. Marcuse worked in the Frankfurt "Institut fuer Sozialforschung" until the Nazis came to power in 1933. He then fled to the United States. During the war he was an intelligence analyst for the U. S. Army. Beginning in 1951 he taught at Columbia University, Harvard University, Brandeis University and the University of California at San Diego.

July 29, 1990

Death of Bruno Kreizky in Vienna, Austria. He was arrested by the Gestapo for a combination of his political affiliations and Jewish birth. After having been arrested and imprisoned he fled to Sweden in 1938. In 1970 he was elected chancellor of Austria . He remained in that office until his resignation in 1983.

July 29, 1994

The Bundestag votes to privatize the postal system. The postal service, the telephone service and the postal bank are to be privatized by January 1, 1995.