June 25
© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons
June 25, 1530
The 28 articles of the Lutheran churches are presented to the Emperor Charles V. (The Augsburg Confession).
June 25, 1708
Johann Sebastian Bach resigns his position at the Church of St. Blasius in Mühlhausen.
June 25, 1767
Death of the musician Georg Philipp Telemann in Hamburg, Germany. As a young man he was discouraged by his family from looking to music as a career. He studied at the University of Leipzig in the field of law. His musical talents, however, were to great to be overlooked. He was asked to assist in composing at the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig and began directing the Leipzig opera. In 1708 he became concert master in Eisenach, in 1712 Frankfurt and 1721 Hamburg. He remained in Hamburg until his death in 1767. In 1722, though, he was offered the opportunity to become the organist at the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig. He declined. (The position was later offered to and accepted by Johann Sebastian Bach.)
June 25, 1822
Death of E. T. A. Hoffmann in Königsberg, Germany (now in Russia). Hoffmann was the "Edgar Allen Poe" of his age, known for his tales of the supernatural and mysterious. Hoffmann became the central character in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann. Hoffmann's tales also gained a part in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Hindemith's Cardillac and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.
June 25, 1870
Richard Wagner's opera, Die Walküre, is premiered in Munich.
June 25, 1864
Birth of Walther Nernst in Briesen, Prussia. His development of the third law of thermodynamics led to the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1920.
June 25, 1894
Birth of Hermann Oberth in Ngyszeben, Austria-Hungary (now Romania). He is considered to be one of the founders of astronautics.
June 25, 1898
Death of Ferdinand Cohn in Breslau, Germany (now in Poland). One of the founders of bacteriology, Cohn earned his doctorate from the University of Berlin at age 19. Thereafter he taught at the University of Breslau. His early work involved the life cycles of algae. He started his work with bacteria in 1868. He discovered the production of endospores among bacteria. He was the first to recognize the abilities of young Robert Koch and gave him the opportunity to publish in his journal, Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen.
June 25, 1907
Birth of Hans D. Jensen in Hamburg, Germany. Jensen won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963 for the shell theory.
June 25, 1917
Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) undertakes his first trip to Berlin as the ambassador of the Vatican, attempting to introduce a peace plan to end World War I.
June 25, 1926
Birth of poet, Ingeborg Bachmann, in Klagenfurt, Austria.
June 25, 1947
England and the U.S.A. combine their German occupation zones economically.
June 25, 1987
Pope John Paul II receives Austrian President, Kurt Waldheim although he has been accused of Nazi war crimes and bared from entering the U. S.