July 3
© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons
July 3, 1709
Birth of Wilhelmine Friederike Sophie, Margravine of Bayreuth in Berlin. She made Bayreuth a cultural center, constructing an opera house and attracted intellectuals and artists to Bayreuth.
July 3, 1789
Birth of the painter, Johann Friedrich Overbeck in Lübeck. A leader in the German artists association known as the Lukasbund.
July 3, 1792
Death of Ferdinand in Vechelde, Germany. Ferdinand, was the brother-in-law of the Prussian king, Fredrich II. As a general he was a dominant military force in Prussia's Seven Years' War against Austria. In the war of the American Revolution, he was offered a post by England at the head of British troops in America but he declined.
July 3, 1839
A Swiss immigrant, Johann Sutter, arrives in Monterey, California. In 1848 he would discover gold which would start the California gold rush.
July 3, 1844
Birth of architect, Dankmar Adler, in Stadtlengsfeld, Germany. Adler immigrated to the United States and worked with Louis Sullivan. They pioneered a new style of building which led to modern building philosophy.
July 3, 1848
The constitutional committee of the Frankfurt parliament presents a draft of basic rights.
July 3, 1866
Austria loses the Battle of Königsrätz to Prussia and Prussia becomes the dominant power in central Europe.
July 3, 1883
Birth of the existentialist writer, Franz Kafka, in Prague, (Austria-Hungary). Noted works by Kafka include, Der Prozess, Das Schloss and Die Verwandlung.
July 3, 1904
Death of Theodor Herzl in Edlach, Austria (born in Budapest, Austrian Empire (now in Hungary)). Herzl's family moved to Vienna in 1878. He studied at the University of Vienna. He was a journalist for the newspaper, Neue Freie Presse in Vienna. In 1891 he was assigned as a correspondent in Paris for his paper. The fact that he encountered the same anti-Semitism in France that he had in Austria brought him to the realization that this was a very wide-spread syndrome and began to influence his thinking. He came to conclude that the only relief from discrimination for Jews would be the founding of a Jewish state. This led to his publication of Judenstaat in Vienna in 1896. He organized the international Zionist congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. He undertook extensive efforts to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The British government offered to cooperate if the location were Uganda, Africa. Upon his death in 1904 he was buried in Vienna, but when Israel was established, his remains were moved to Jerusalem in 1949 and reentombed on a hill named Mt. Herzl.
July 3, 1944
In an attempt to hold back the Allies in the west, Hitler replaces General von Rundstedt with General Kluge.
July 3, 1979
The German government voted to remove the statute of limitations for murder, thus making possible the continued prosecution of Nazi war criminals.