February 14

© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons

February 14, 1515

Birth of Friedrich III in Simmern, Germany. Friedrich was also called "Friedrich der Fromme". He was the elector of the Palatine of the Rhine. He became a Protestant in 1546. He assisted the development of Protestantism in Germany, France and Holland.

February 14, 1722

Birth of Georg Christian Füchsel in Ilmenau, Germany. Füchsel originated the concept of stratigraphic formations in geology.

February 14, 1830

Birth of Richard Adelbert Lipsius in Gera, Germany. Lipsius was a Protestant theologian who identified the authorship of early Christian literature. He also worked with the history of the early papacy.

February 14, 1846

Birth of Ernst Hasse in Leulitz, Germany. A professor of statistics at the University of Leipzig, Hasse was an extreme nationalist, anti-Semitic activist. For a time he was a member of the Reichstag. Under his leadership the Allgemeiner Deutscher Verband was converted into the nationalistic, Anti-Semitic Alldeutscher Verband (referred to as the Pan-German League in English language histories.) Hasse died in Leipzig on January 12, 1908.

February 14, 1943

Death of David Hilbert in Göttingen, Germany. A mathematician, Hilbert completed his doctorate at the University of Königsberg. He later taught at the University of Königsberg and the University of Göttingen. Hilbert proved that all invariants can be expressed in terms of a finite number. He established a definitive set of axioms for Euclidean geometry. His work in integral equations led to the study of functional analysis. He also set the groundwork for "Hilbert space".

February 14, 1988

Death of Frederick Loewe in Palm Springs. Born in Vienna, he moved to the U.S.A. in 1924 and joined efforts with Alan Lerner. Among his works are My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Gigi and Camelot.

 

February 14, 1990

The foreign ministers of the four Allied Powers of World War II and the foreign ministers of the two Germanys (the two plus four discussions) agree in Ottawa, Canada on questions of sovereignty for a united Germany.