February 22

© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons

February 22, 1455

Birth of Johannes Reuchlin in Pforzheim, Germany. Reuchlin was a scholar of ancient Greek and Latin who also developed a keen interest in Hebrew language and literature. In 1509 the Cologne Dominican, Johannes Pfefferkorn, persuaded the emperor to order the destruction of Hebrew books because they were a danger to Christianity. Reuchlin's principles could not tolerate this and he actively protested the ruling. As a result he was brought before the Inquisition. Due to an outcry by a wide segment of intellectuals of the day, however, he was acquitted of heresy. This experience did not drive Reuchlin from the church. When his nephew Philip Melanchthon joined with Martin Luther in the Reformation, Reuchlin sided with the church against his nephew.

February 22, 1749

Birth of Johann Forkel in Meeder, Germany. Forkel was the first biographer of Johann Sebastian Bach Über Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke (1802). Forkel died in Göttingen on March 20, 1818.

February 22, 1756

Birth of Georg Friedrich von Martens in Hamburg, Germany. A professor of law at the University of Göttingen, he founded and edited the Recueil des traites which became and is yet today the world's largest collection of treaties. Martens died on February 21, 1821 in Frankfurt am Main.

February 22, 1788

Birth of Arthur Schopenhauer in Danzig, Germany (now in Poland). Schopenhauer was possibly the most pessimistic of all philosophers. He encountered Indian philosophy while living in the intellectual atmosphere of Weimar in 1813-14. In building his own philosophy he would draw on the Indian as well as those of Plato and which he had studied at the university. His greatest work was Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819). Shopenhauer's writings had extensive influence on the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Jacob Burckhardt, Gerhart Hauptmann and Thomas Mann.

February 22, 1797

Death of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen (Baron Münchhausen) in Bodenwerder, Germany. Münchausen had been a soldier in the Russian army fighting against the Turks. In 1760 he retired to his estates in Hannover and gained a wide-spread reputation as a story teller with his wildly exaggerated narrations of his adventures as a soldier. The first publication of his tales was in Vademecum für lustige Leute between 1781 and 1783. Rudolf Erich Raspe published a collection of stories based on the Münchhausen tales in London in 1785, Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The first German color motion picture (at roughly the same time as the American Wizard of OZ ) was the story of Baron von Münchhausen.

February 22, 1840

Birth of August Bebel in Deutz, Germany. Bebel was the co-founder of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany. He met Wilhelm Liebknecht, the other co-founder of the SPD, in Leipzig in 1865. The party was formed in 1869. There were years of struggle and, for Bebel, years in prison, before the SPD won its first majority in the Reichstag in 1912. As a writer, Bebel had his greatest success with Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1883).

February 22, 1857

Birth of Heinrich Hertz in Hamburg, Germany. Hertz, a physicist in Karlsruhe, discovered how to produce, send and receive radio waves. The radio frequency measurement "hertz" is named for him.

February 22, 1870

Birth of Hugo Stinnes in Mülheim, Germany. An industrialist, Stinnes, beginning with a modest operation established by his grandfather (Stinnes Konzern) in coal mining, expanded the business to include steel mills, banks, and electrical companies as well as transportation (Hugo Stinnes GmbH). During World War I he profited greatly from the supply of war materials. A member of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, he was elected to parliament in the early years of the Weimar Republic.

February 22, 1885

Birth of Julius Streicher in Fleinhausen, Germany. Streicher, who had been an elementary school teacher in Nürnberg, joined the Nazi Party and developed as one of those pushing strongly in anti-Semitic directions. He founded and edited the strongly anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturmer in 1923 and through that position, along with his party position, was instrumental in the passage of the Nürnberg Laws in 1935. He was tried for war crimes in Nürnberg and hanged in 1946.

February 22, 1902

Birth of the chemist, Fritz Strassmann in Boppard, Germany. With his partners Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, he discovered nuclear fission in 1938. Their discovery set the U.S. into a frantic search for the technology of the atomic bomb, fearing that Germany was very close to it. After the war Strassmann became a professor of inorganic and nuclear chemistry at the University of Mainz.

February 22, 1903

Death of the composer, Hugo Wolf, in Vienna, Austria. Wolf wrote approximately 300 Lieder incorporating the poetry of such writers as Goethe, Heine, Mörike, Eichendorf, etc. At times during his lifetime he was close to Mahler, Wagner and Brahms.

February 22, 1942

Suicide of Stefan Zweig in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (born in Vienna, Austria). Stefan Zweig was a writer who worked in a variety of genres. Noted works by Zweig are, Drei Meister (1920), Der Kampf mit dem Dämon (1925), Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928) and Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925). At the rise of the Nazis he went into exile in 1934. He went first to England and then to Brazil.

February 22, 1943

Execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl (White Rose).

February 22, 1965

Death of Felix Frankfurter in Washington, D.C. (born in Vienna, Austria). Frankfurter immigrated to the United States with his family at age 12. He studied law at Harvard Law School. He was active in the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Franklin Rosevelt in 1939. He retired in 1962. President Kennedy awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1963.

February 22, 1980

Death of the Expressionist painter and writer, Oskar Kokoschka, in Villeneuve, Switzerland (born in Pöchlarn, Austria). Representative paintings by Kokoschka include "Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen" (1907), "The Tempest" (1914), "Prague, Charles Bridge" (1934), "The Red Egg" (1941), and "View of Hamburg Harbor" (1951). Kokoschka spend WWII in England. His art had been declared degenerate by the Nazis.