1956 deaths

Paul Rostock (18 January 1892 – 17 June 1956) was a Nazi physician, official, and university professor. He was chief of the Office for Medical Science and Research (Amtschef der Dienststelle Medizinische Wissenschaft und Forschung) under Third Reich Commissioner and Nazi war criminal Karl Brandt and a full professor, medical doctorate, medical superintendent of the University of Berlin Surgical Clinic.
After the end of World War II, he was tried as a war criminal in the Doctors' Trial for his complicity in medical atrocities performed on concentration camp prisoners.

Karl Schelenz (or Carl Schelenz, born 6 February 1890 in Berlin; died 7 February 1956) was a German sports teacher. He is famous as the "father" of modern handball.

Walther Ludwig Julius Kossel (4 January 1888 – 22 May 1956) was a German physicist known for his theory of the chemical bond (ionic bond/octet rule), Sommerfeld–Kossel displacement law of atomic spectra, the Kossel-Stranski model for crystal growth, and the Kossel effect. Walther was the son of Albrecht Kossel who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1910.

Karl M. Baer (20 May 1885 – 26 June 1956) was a German-Israeli author, social worker, reformer, suffragist and Zionist.
Born intersex and assigned female at birth, he came out as a trans man in 1904 at the age of 21. In December 1906, he became the first transgender person to undergo sex reassignment surgery, and he became one of the first transgender people to gain full legal recognition of his gender identity by having a male birth certificate issued in January 1907. However, some researchers have disputed his label as a trans man, theorizing that he was intersex, and not transgender.Baer wrote notes for sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld on his experiences growing up female while feeling inside that he was male. Together they developed these notes into the semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years) (1907) which was published under the pseudonym N.O. Body. The book "was immensely popular," being "adapted twice to film, in 1912 and 1919." Baer also gained the right to marry and did so in October 1907.
Despite him having undergone gender reaffirming surgery in 1906, exact records of the medical procedures he went through are unknown, as his medical records were burned in the 1930s Nazi book burning, that targeted Hirschfield studies specifically.

Consuelo Zavala Castillo (1874-1956) was a Mexican feminist, teacher, and founder of one of the first secular private schools in Mérida, Mexico. She is credited with establishing the first kindergarten to utilize the Froebel method in Mérida. She was the organizer of the First Feminist Congress in Mexico, authorized by state governor Salvador Alvarado.

Gerald Raphael Finzi (14 July 1901 – 27 September 1956) was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata Dies natalis for solo voice and string orchestra, and his concertos for cello and clarinet.

Hans Ludwig Hamburger (5 August 1889, Berlin – 14 August 1956, Cologne) was a German mathematician. He was a professor at universities in Berlin, Cologne and Ankara.

Karl Ludwig Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main 5 February 1891 – Basel, 10 January 1956) was a German Protestant theologian and professor of New Testament studies at the University of Basel. He taught that the accounts of the New Testament were to be regarded as fixed written versions of oral Gospel tradition.
In 1919, his book Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu ("The Framework of the Story of Jesus") showed that Mark's chronology is the invention of the evangelist.
Using form criticism, Schmidt showed that an editor had assembled the narrative out of individual scenes that did not originally have a chronological order.
This finding challenged historians' ability to discern a historical Jesus and helped bring about a decades-long collapse in interest in the topic.He was professor of New Testament Studies from 1921 to 1925 in Giessen; 1925 to 1929 in Jena; from 1929 to 1933 in Bonn. He was dismissed from his position as a professor at Bonn in September 1933 by the Nazi regime due to his resistance to the Aryan paragraph. He was involved in church administration from 1933 to 1935 in Switzerland. From 1935 to 1953 he was a professor of New Testament in Basel.
From 1922 to 1937 he was an editor of Theologische Blätter and from 1945 to 1953 he was an editor of Theologische Zeitschrift. He wrote the article on the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia (church) for the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. In 1959, Karl Barth wrote this about him after his death: "K. L. Schmidt, far superior to me in both learning and pugnacity, but always so stimulating."

Wolfgang Wegener (September 16, 1875 in Stettin – October 29, 1956 in Berlin-Zehlendorf) was an officer in the Imperial German Navy, retiring in 1926 with the rank of Vizeadmiral (vice-admiral).
He is noted as the originator of a series of influential works, published between 1915 and 1929, outlining the so-called Wegener Thesis. This thesis criticized the naval strategy adopted by Germany in the First World War, and proposed an alternative strategy based on threatening the sea lines of communication of the United Kingdom with both surface and sub-surface forces. The Wegener thesis is often regarded as a significant contribution to German naval strategy in the Second World War, although the extent to which this was actually the case is disputed.

Lonnie R. Moore (13 July 1920 – 10 January 1956) was a United States military aviator who flew 54 combat missions in Martin B-26 Marauders during World War II, and whom became a double jet ace during the Korean War, downing ten MiG-15s and one probable while flying North American F-86 Sabres. He was killed in the crash of a new fighter type at Eglin AFB, Florida, at age 35.