1868 births

Louis Albert Auguste-Dormeuil (25 August 1868 in Croissy-sur-Seine – 8 October 1951 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye) was a French sailor who represented his country at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Meulan, France.

Cuno Amiet (28 March 1868 – 6 July 1961) was a Swiss painter, illustrator, graphic artist and sculptor. As the first Swiss painter to give precedence to colour in composition, he was a pioneer of modern art in Switzerland.

Émile Léon Fisseux (born 15 February 1868 in Paris, date of death unknown) was a French competitor in the sport of archery. Fisseux competed in one event in Archery at the 1900 Summer Olympics, taking third place in the 50 metre Au Cordon Doré competition. His score of 28 points was one point behind the second-place archer, Hubert Van Innis, and three points behind the winner, Henri Hérouin. While Fisseux received no medal at the time, he is currently considered to be a bronze medallist by the International Olympic Committee.Fisseux also competed in Archery at the 1908 Summer Olympics, taking 13th place in the Continental style event with 185 points.

Georges de Feure (real name Georges Joseph van Sluijters, 6 September 1868 – 26 November 1943) was a French painter, theatrical designer, and industrial art designer in the symbolism and Art Nouveau styles.
De Feure was born in Paris. His father was an affluent Dutch architect, and his mother was Belgian. De Feure had two sons, Jean Corneille and Pierre Louis, in the early 1890s with his mistress Pauline Domec and a daughter with his first wife Marguerite Guibert (married 7 July 1897).
In 1886, de Feure was one of the eleven students admitted at the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, which he did however leave very quickly for Paris since he felt that formal academic training had nothing to offer him. Being of very independent nature, de Feure never again took up formal artistic studies, and forged his own independent path. He was however influenced by Jules Chéret in his posters for the café concert but most likely was never his pupil and became the key designer of Siegfried Bing for L'Art Nouveau.
He showed work in the Exposition Universelle de Paris exhibition in 1900. He designed furniture, worked for newspapers, created theater designs for Le Chat Noir cabaret and posters. In August 1901, de Feure was nominated Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for his contribution to the decorative arts. He died in poverty at the age of 75 years in Paris.

Karl Konrad Friedrich Bauer (1868–1942) was a German artist, print-maker and poet. Bauer's traditional skills in draftsmanship made him a popular illustrator and portrait artist in the early 20th century. In his later life he made a number of portraits of Nazi leaders. His poetry was admired and promoted by Stefan George.

Hans Paul Klimsch (15 June 1868 in Frankfurt – 4 June 1917) was a German Impressionist painter and illustrator, best known for his landscapes and animals. He was one of the foremost representatives in Germany of the plein air style.

Hégésippe Jean Légitimus was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe on 8 April 1868 and died before the end of World War II in Angles-sur-l'Anglin, France, on 29 November 1944. He was a socialist politician from Guadeloupe who served in the French National Assembly from 1898–1902 and 1906-1914.In 1793, Jean-Baptiste Belley was the first black man elected to the French Parliament. It would be 105 years later before another black man, Hégésippe Légitimus, was elected. Up until 1898 the colonies and territoires d'Outre-Mer had only been represented by white, mixed-race or "béké" deputies.Légitimus was followed shortly afterwards by other black deputies: Gratien Candace, Blaise Diagne, Ngalandou Diouf, Achille René-Boisneuf and Maurice Satineau. He sat in the parliamentary assembly alongside Guesde, Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum, becoming good friends with them.
Légitimus was one of the founders of the Parti Ouvrier, the socialist party of Guadaloupe. It was politically aligned with that of mainland France.Légitimus, councillor and mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre, founder of the socialist movement in Guadeloupe, Member of Parliament in Paris, made an indelible mark on French political life at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The price of sugar went through the roof during the US Civil War (1861-1865). But it began to fall again in 1870, creating a crisis that had the effect of rationalising capital, wealth and production on one hand against the abolition of slave labour, unreliable production and social upheaval and war on the other hand. The crisis, and consequent world-wide disruption, continued until 1914, whereupon many families had migrated from Guadeloupe to live in mainland France.
Socialism rose up in the thoughts and actions of workers, including the black slaves and workers on the sugar plantations, and amongst the intelligentsia. In 1914, the war to end all world wars began. Socialist parties quickly grew in number, strength and influence throughout recognised world diaspora. Hégésippe Légitimus was the founder and driving force of the Socialist Party in Guadeloupe.
Légitimus also founded the Republican Youth Committee and the Workers Party of Guadeloupe. He established a newspaper called "The People" in 1891. The Workers Party was politically aligned to the socialist-left and quickly became popular amongst the Guadeloupeans. It became very popular because it was the first Party to defend workers' rights and give a united voice to the black population. Légitimus entered the House of Deputies as the member for Guadeloupe in 1898. He became President of the Council in 1899 and was elected Mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre in 1904.
The new order of politics, aligned with that of mainland France, exemplified by Legitimus's socialist credo, attacked the virtual monopoly held by mulattoes in Guadeloupean business and politics. Mulattoes were accused by many people of acting against the interests of the black population. But, Légitimus also earned his share of critics because he was accused of collaborating with "the big end of town" over bank start-up finances needed by small businesses and support capital needed by on-going, large projects. Economic necessities in the circumstances, as always, might have required a cautious, rather than radical, approach.
For a quarter of a century Légitimus was considered the voice of the black movement. Some called him the black Jaurès. Jean Jaurès was the famous French socialist, pacifist and intellectual assassinated by a young fascist war-monger in Montmartre at the beginning of WW1. Légitimus helped open the doors of tertiary education to everyone. He supported the political careers of Gaston Monnerville, the grandson of a slave who had a brilliant legal and political career in France, and Felix Eboue, who was appointed governor of Guadeloupe in 1936.
Hégésippe Jean Légitimus was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1937. He was obliged to stay in France because of the declaration of war and died in Angles-sur-l'Anglin on 29 November 1944. Following a proposal by General de Gaulle, his remains were returned to Guadeloupe where he was given a state funeral. Several boulevards in Guadeloupe are named after Hégésippe and the main one has his bust displayed, perpetuating the memory of this great black leader and politician. During the commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the abolition of slavery in May 1988 several plaques were unveiled in his memory in front of more than fifty of his descendants. The commemoration was chaired by Gésip Légitimus, a grandson of this exceptional man.
Hégésippe's son, Victor-Étienne Légitimus, journalist and husband of the actress Darling Légitimus, created La Solidarité Antillaise (The Caribbean Solidarity) to defend the interests of his compatriots. He actively participated in the creation of The Movement Against Racism and For Friendship Amongst Peoples (MRAP) and The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA).
Légitimus wrote in an article in The People, 4 February 1894:—
"The free man is made for speaking, as is the bird for singing.
Woe be he if, intelligent, able to be useful to his people, to humanity thanks to his moral and intellectual faculties, he satisfies himself with vegetating miserably between fear and lazy pleasures!
We are made for the struggle
And whichever way we choose to direct our faculties,
It as an imperious law that impels us to implement them.(...)
I want mankind happy and smiling, I want a proclaimed and recognized equality between all and by all.
I want the light to be diffused in torrents, profusely; no more ignorant people and no more proletarians!

All men reunited as one huge family sharing the air, the sun, the water and the bread, with a kiss."

John (Johann) Grün, also known as Herkul Grün (1868–1912), a Luxembourger from Mondorf-les-Bains was believed to be the strongest man in the world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

Paul Marie Alfred Lebeau (19 December 1868 – 18 November 1959) was a French chemist. He studied at the elite École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI). Together with his doctoral advisor Henri Moissan he was working on fluorine chemistry discovering several new compounds, like bromine trifluoride, oxygen difluoride, selenium tetrafluoride and sulfur hexafluoride.
In 1899 he was able to obtain pure beryllium by electrolysis sodium fluoroberyllate (Na2[BeF2]).
In World War I he improved the gas mask design used by the French army.

Camille Delezenne (10 June 1868 – 7 July 1932) was a French physician and biologist born in Genech, a town in the department of Nord.
He studied medicine in Lille, obtaining his hospital internship in 1890. In 1892 he supported his doctorate with a dissertation on parapneumonic pleurisy. Afterwards he undertook experiments on blood circulation at the Wertheimer laboratory in Lille. During this time period, he also served as mayor of Genech (1893–95).
In 1896 he was appointed associate professor of physiology at the University of Montpellier. At Edouard Hédon's laboratory he conducted systematic investigations of blood coagulation in vertebrates, demonstrating the hepatic origin of antithrombin and describing the blood coagulation system of birds.
In 1900 he relocated to Paris, where he worked as a lecturer in the laboratory of physiological chemistry at the École des hautes etudes. With assistance from Emile Duclaux (1840–1904) and Elie Metchnikoff (1845–1916), he was appointed head of the physiology laboratory at the Pasteur Institute, where his primary focus was research of enzymes, venoms and toxins. In 1902 he demonstrated a link between the action of enterokinase in mobilizing pancreatic digestive enzymes and the phenomena of hemolysis. He also showed that certain microbial cultures, snake venoms, and some plants and poisonous mushrooms have diastases that act on the pancreatic juice in the same way as does enterokinase.
In 1902 Delezenne became a member of the Société de biologie, in 1903 he was co-founder of the Bulletin de l'Institut Pasteur with Amédée Borrel (1867–1936), Félix Mesnil (1868–1938), Gabriel Bertrand (1867–1962), Alexandre Besredka (1870–1940) and Auguste-Charles Marie (1864–1935), and in 1910 became a professor at the Pasteur Institute. In 1912 he was elected as a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine, and in 1929 became a member of the Assemblée de l'Institut Pasteur.