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27 in German History
January 27, 1701
Birth of Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (pseudonym: Justinus Febronius)
in Trier, Germany. Hontheim, a Roman Catholic priest, was a historian
and theologian. He was a professor at the University of Trier and in 1748
became an auxiliary bishop of Trier. In 1763 under the pseudonym, Justinus
Febronius, he published a book, De Statu Ecclesiae et Legitima Potestate
Romani Pontificis (Concerning the state of the Church and the Legitimate
Power of the Roman Pope) in which he proposed the limitation of the power
of the Pope in the Church. His intention was to draw Protestants back
to the Church through the limitation of one of the factors which kept
the division in Christianity. His book was condemned and placed on the
Index of Forbidden Books.
January 27, 1756
Birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) in Salzburg, Austria. He was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. In his youth Mozart
toured and gave spectacular concerts in the major music centers of Europe.
After early work at the court of Salzburg he achieved his apex of composition
in Vienna. Mozart composed 14 masses, 2 oratorios, 15 operas, 56 symphonies,
71 pieces for piano, 88 pieces of chamber music, 54 concertos and over
250 ensembles as well as 131 vocal pieces. The circumstances of his early death at the age of 35 have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.
January 27, 1775
Birth of Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) in Leonberg, Germany. Schelling was a philosopher.
In his formative years he was highly impressed with the ideas of Kant,
Fichte and Spinoza. In 1798 he was appointed to a professorship at the
University of Jena. Not long after his marriage to one of the leading
intellectual women of the age, Caroline Schlegel, he accepted a professorship
at the University of Würzburg. It was at about this time that his
relationship with Friedrich Hegel, which had been close, began to deteriorate
and grow into antagonism. In 1841 he was appointed to a professorship
at the University of Berlin. While at Berlin he had contact with and began
to influence the thinking of Friedrich Engels, Soren Kierkegaard and Jakob
Burckhardt. Among Schelling's important books are Über die Möglichkeit
einer Form der Philosophie (1795), System des transzendentalen
Idealismus (1800), and Philosophische Untersuchungen über
das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809).
January 27, 1808
Birth of David Friedrich Strauss in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Strauss was
a highly controversial Protestant theologian, influenced in his thinking
by the philosophy of Friedrich Hegel. His first major work Das Leben
Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (1836) sought to prove the gospels to be
simply "historical myth". His last publication, Der alte
und der neue Glaube (1872) was no less controversial, as he sought
to replace Christianity with a form of Darwinism.
January 27, 1814
Death of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Berlin.
January 27, 1859
Birth of Wilhelm II 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 buildup 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.
January 27, 1864
Death of Leo von Klenze in Munich, Germany. The architect, Klenze, worked
primarily in Munich for Maximilian I and Ludwig I. He built the Glyptothek
and the Propylaeon in Munich.
January 27, 1883
Birth of Gottfied Feder in Würzburg, Germany. Feder was the developer
and leader of National Socialist economic ideology in the early days of
the party. Hitler referred to his book Der deutsche Staat auf nationaler
und sozialer Grundlage (1923) as "the catechism of the movement".
Feder was the chairman of the Nazi Party's economic council and the state
secretary of the German Ministry of Economics in the early years of the
rule of the Nazi Party. By 1936, however, he ceased to play any significant
January 27, 1888
Birth of Victor Goldschmidt (1888-1947) in Zürich, Switzerland. Goldschmidt
is considered the founder of modern geochemistry. Goldschmidt became a
professor at the University of Göttingen in 1929, but after the rise
of the Nazi Party fled to Norway. When Norway was occupied he was arrested
and confined to a concentration camp. He escaped and fled to Great Britain.
After the war he returned to spend the remainder of his life in Oslo.
January 27, 1970
Death of Erich Heckel in Döbeln, Germany. Heckel was an artist who
was one of the founders of the Expressionist artists' group, Die Brücke.
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