Birthdays
1781: Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) was a German (Prussian) architect, master builder, painter, and city planner. His works are some of the most prolific of German classicism. His designs include Schloss Rosenau (Coburg, 1806), Kreuzkirche (Joachimsthal, 1817), Neue Wache (Berlin, 1818), Jagdschloss Antonin (Posen, 1824), Schloss Babelsberg (Potsdam, 1834), and Schloss Kamenz (Silesia, 1838) to name a few.
1810: Claus Gottlieb Carl Hagenbeck
Claus Gottlieb Carl Hagenbeck (1810-1887) was a fishmonger in Hamburg and started a side business buying, exhibiting, and selling exotic animals. His son Carl Hagenbeck continued the business and opened the first zoo where the enclosures resembled more like the animals’ natural habitats.
1935: Hilmar Kopper
Hilmar Kopper (1935-2021) was a German bank manager and from 1989-1997 Spokesman of the Management Board of the Deutsche Bank. Kopper began his apprenticeship in 1954 at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Bank (from 1957 Deutsche Bank) and stayed with the bank his entire career. In 1994, the real estate developer Jürgen Schneider went bankrupt. The Deutsche Bank had granted Schneider excessive credit because of personal relationships. During a press conference in 1994, Kopper called the 50 million DM amount of loss that the bank had to pay to Schneider’s credits “Peanuts”. He used this term in relation to the amount that was demanded, which was 5 billion DM. The expression was not well received by the public and was voted “Unwort des Jahres 1994” (Non-Word or Un-Word of the Year).
1947: Beat Richner
Beat Richner (1947-2018) was a Swiss pediatrician who founded the Children’s Hospital Kantha Bopha in Cambodia and was involved in opening four other hospitals, also in Cambodia. About 85-90% of children in the country are being treated in one of those five hospitals. Richner also published children’s books, performed with his cello as clown Beatocello, received an honorary doctorate in medicine from the university in Zurich, and was named “Schweizer des Jahres 2002” (Swiss Person of the Year 2002).
Death Anniversaries
1719: Johann Friedrich Böttger
Johann Friedrich Böttger (-1719) was a German alchemist and inventor of the European porcelain.
1895: Louise Otto-Peters
Louise Otto-Peters (1819-1895) was a German journalist and women’s rights activtist. Read more about her here.
1987: Bernhard Grzimek
Bernhard Grzimek (1909-1987) was a German veterinarian, zoologist, and animal rights activist. He was the director of the Frankfurt Zoo, and wrote several books on animals. The 1959 documentary “Seregenti darf nicht sterben” (Seregenti Shall Not Die) by Grzimek and his son Michael Grzimek won an Oscar for best documentary.
1990: Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990) was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst and child psychologist. In 1938, he was interned for eleven months in the concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald for being Jewish. He was allowed to emigrate to the U.S. in 1939. One of his most famous books is “Uses of Enchantment” (Kinder brauchen Märchen) which was published in 1976. Bettelheim died by suicide. After his death, many of his works came under scrutiny, especially the theory that autism was caused by cold behavior of the mother in the early years of a child’s life.
Seasonal Events and Holidays
Historical and Cultural Events
1848: Austrian State Chancellor Fürst von Metternich resigned and fled to London escaping the turmoil of the March Revolution 48/49. Von Metternich was a reactionary conservative and played a leading role during the Wiener Kongress (1814-15). The (literary) movement Vormärz in the 1830s and 40s is called Age of Metternich in English.
1917: The Deutsches Ledermuseum (German Leather Museum) opened in Offenbach, Hesse. It was founded by architect Hugo Eberhardt and originally housed leather works as models for young craftspeople. Today, over 30,000 objects from different cultures and eras are exhibited. It includes everyday leather objects as well as luxury design items. The building itself is a Kulturdenkmal (cultural monument). www.ledermuseum.de.
1920: The Kapp-Putsch was a failed coup d’etat of counter-revolutionaries who wanted to bring down the Weimar Republic. The putschists were led by general Walther von Lüttwitz and Erich Ludendorff (who was a key player in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923) and appointed the civil servant Wolfgang Kapp as Chancellor. The putsch was over after 100 hours, on March 17.
1933: The Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) was founded and Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was announced its Minister. The department monitored and surveilled all media; the press, radio, TV, theater, literature, art, and music.
1938: Austria officially became part of the German Empire. It is typically referred to as the “Anschluss” or “Anschluss Österreichs” (annexation).
Action Days and Invented Holidays
National Open an Umbrella Indoors Day
- It is a common superstition that opening an umbrella indoors brings bad luck. It comes from a time when umbrellas were heavier contraption with metal spokes. Opening them in tight quarters might have hurt people.
- Read more about umbrellas in Germany here.
Weltnierentag (World Kidney Day)
- Started in 2006
- Takes place on the second Thursday in March
- One in ten adults in Germany has limited kidney function and often doesn’t know about it.
- The motto in 2025 is “Sind Ihren Nieren in Ordnung?” (Are your kidneys OK?).
Popcorn Day
- In Germany, most popcorn is sweet, while in the U.S. popcorn is usually salty. Kettlecorn is closer to the sweet German popcorn.
- In Old English ‘corn’ wasn’t limited to corn but actually meant grain 🌾. So, when the Europeans were introduced to corn (or maize) 🌽, the most grown grain in the Americas, they applied their word ‘corn’ to this grain.
- In German, the word das Korn 🌾 also means grain, and Mais 🌽 is the German word for the English ‘corn’, closer to the indigenous word ‘maize’.
- Curiously, there is another meaning to the German word Korn. For one, it is der Korn (not das). And der Korn (short for Kornbranntwein) refers to the alcohol made from grain: corn schnapps or also korn.
