June 4
© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons
June 4, 1697
Birth of Jocob Israel Emden in Altona, Germany. A Talmudic scholar whose disagreements with Rabbi Jonathan Eybesch split European Jewry.
June 4, 1875
Death of Eduard Mörike in Stuttgart, Germany. Mörike was one of the greatest German lyric poets. He also wrote novels and novellas. His best known novella is Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag.
June 4, 1877
Birth of Heinrich Otto Wieland in Pforzheim, Germany. He was a chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1927 for research on bile acids.
June 4, 1889
Birth the seismologist of Beno Gutenberg in Darmstadt, Germany. Worked with Charles Richter (Richter Scale) to develop a method to describe the intensity of earthquakes.
June 4, 1916
The Austrian spring offensive against Italy in WWI brings assistance from Russia in the form of an attack on Austria by the army of Russian general, Brusilov. The battles continued through September. Russian losses of 1,000,000 soldiers flame the resentments which will led to the revolution of 1917. Equal losses on the Austrian side will have direct effects on the collapse of the Habsburg Empire.
June 4, 1920
Hungary signs a peace treaty separate from those signed by Austria and Germany. The Austria-Hungarian Empire had disintegrated with the end of the war. The Treaty of Trianon reduced Hungary's size to about 1/3. The Hungarian army was limited to 35,000 troops.
June 4, 1940
The German army enters Paris in World War II.
June 4, 1941
Death of Wilhelm II in Doorn, Netherlands (born in Potsdam, Germany). Wilhelm was the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Germany from 1888 to the end of World War I. He was the grandson of queen Victoria of England. In 1890 he removed 75 year old Otto von Bismarck from the office of chancellor. Among many factors which led to declining relations with Great Britain was the build up of the German navy under his secretary of the navy, Alfred von Tirpitz. Wilhelm's ultimate undoing was precipitated by World War I. He supported Austria-Hungary in the initial conflicts which led to the war. In 1918, the war lost, he was forced to abdicate and seek asylum in the Netherlands.
June 4, 1942
Werner Heisenberg in a meeting with War Minister Speer and nuclear scientists that atomic bombs are possible, but not in the near future.
June 4, 1942
Death of "Der Henker", Reinhard Heydrich in Halle, Germany. Heydrich joined the SS in 1931 and quickly rose to become Himmler's top aid. Eventually he was given charge of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and the Gestapo (geheime Staatspolizei). In 1941 he was instructed by Göring to carry out the execution of the Jewish people. He was shot on may 27, 1942 by Czech freedom fighters and died in a Prague hospital on June 4. Hundreds of Czechs were murdered in reprisal. The entire village of Lidice was destroyed.
June 4, 1945
Death of Georg Kaiser in Ascona, Switzerland (born in Magdeburg, Germany). Kaiser was a dramatist who began his artistic career in the period of Expressionism. Noted plays by him are Die Bürger von Calais (1914), Von Morgens bis Mitternachts (1916), Gas and Oktobertag (1928). He was banned by the Nazis because of his pacifism. At that time he fled to Switzerland and continued writing. He wrote over 60 plays.
June 4, 1970
Death of Hjalmar Schlacht in Munich, Germany. A banker, Schlacht, was a key figure in German financial matters from the beginning of the century through World War I and the Weimar Republic into the National Socialist period. Schlacht had been the director of the Dresdner Bank from 1908. In 1916 he was named the director of the German National Bank. In 1923 he was currency commissioner in the finance ministry. In that position he headed a rigorous program to stop the inflation and stabilize the mark. Also in 1923 he was appointed head of the Reichsbank. From 1934 to 1937 he was the minister of economics.