February 11

© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons

February 11, 1813

Birth of Otto Ludwig in Eisfeld, Germany. Ludwig was a novelist and playwright of the period of Poetic Realism, a term which he coined. Among his works are Die Erbförster (1850), and Zwischen Himmel und Erde (1855). Ludwig died in Dresden, Germany on February 25, 1865.

February 11, 1869

Birth of Else Lasker-Schüler in Elberfeld, Germany. Laske-Schüler was a writer in Berlin until the rise of the Nazis. In 1933 she fled to Switzerland. In 1940 she moved to Jerusalem. Among her works are Styx (1902), Meine Wunder (1911), Hebräische Balladen (1913), and Der Wunderrabbiner von Barcelona (1921).

February 11, 1900

Birth of Hans-Georg Gadamer in Marburg, Germany. Gadamer, a philosopher, is considered one of the leading figures of the 20th century in philosophical hermeneutical theory. He was a professor at the universities of Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg.

February 11, 1919

Friedrich Ebert elected President of the Weimar Republic.

February 11, 1924

Death of the biologist Jacques Loeb in Hamilton, Bermuda (born in Mayen, Germany). Loeb completed his M.D. at the university of Strasburg. He taught at the Universities of Würzburg and Strassburg. He moved to the United States in 1891 where he taught at Bryn Mawr College, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley. Loeb is most noted for his studies of reproduction without fertilization (parthenogenesis). He was able to cause the development of sea urchin larvae from unfertilized eggs through environmental manipulation and later repeated the process with frogs.

February 11, 1973

Death of the physicist Hans D. Jensen. Jensen won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963 for his shell theory.

February 11, 1976

Death of Alexander Lippisch in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (born in Munich, Germany). Lippisch designed delta-winged aircraft in the 20's and 30's. His ideas became important in the later design of jet and rocket aircraft. He designed the world's first rocket airplane which used solid fuel and first flew in 1928. He also worked on the first liquid-fuel rocket airplane, the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, which began to be used by the Luftwaffe in 1944. He immigrated to the United States in 1965 and founded the Lippisch Research Corporation in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.