1881 births

Roger Martin du Gard (French: [dy gaʁ]; 23 March 1881 – 22 August 1958) was a French novelist, winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Carlo Carrà (Italian: [ˈkarlo karˈra]; February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number of books concerning art. He taught for many years in the city of Milan.

Guido da Verona (the pseudonym of Guido Verona; 7 May 1881 – 5 April 1939) was an Italian poet and novelist.
Born in Saliceto Panaro to a Jewish family, Verona started his career as a poet in 1901 with the poetry collection Commemorazione del fatto d'arme di Brichetto, followed by I frammenti d'un poema (1902) and Bianco amore (1907).He gained a larger popularity as a novelist, starting from 1911 when he published his first novel Colei che non si deve amare, considered among the most representative examples of the Italian Feuilleton. He later was the most commercially successful Italian writer between 1914 and 1939: particularly his novel Mimì Bluette, fiore del mio giardino, which reached 300,000 copies in 1922, an impressive run in Italy where illiteracy characterized the majority of the population.He was a signatory to the Manifesto of Fascist intellectuals in 1925; in 1929 he published a parody novel of Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, that actually was an implicit satire against fascism.He became an intellectual unpopular with the Fascist regime and marginalized after the approval of racial laws. Da Verona committed suicide in Milan at age 57.

Irma Avegno (20 December 1881 – June 1913) was a Uruguayan woman of Montevidean high society who devoted herself to financial affairs.

Siegfried Jacobsohn (28 January 1881 – 3 December 1926) was a German writer and influential theatre critic.

Henri Albert Fernand Laurent (1 April 1881 in Beaulieu-sur-Loire – 14 February 1954 in La Rochelle) was a French fencer who competed in the early 20th century.
He participated in fencing at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris and won the bronze medal in the masters épée. He was defeated by fellow French fencer Emile Bougnol in the semi-final.

Eugène Louis Bastien (26 October 1881 in Paris– 13 August 1963) was a French racing cyclist and fencer who competed in the late 19th century and early 20th century. He participated in Cycling at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris and won the gold medal in the men's 25 kilometre race. He also competed in the individual épée event at the same games.

Pierre Paulus (1881–1959), later Baron Pierre Paulus de Châtelet, was a Belgian expressionist painter. He is best known as the designer of the "bold rooster" (French: coq hardi) adopted on 3 July 1913 as the symbol of the Walloon Movement and today the flag of Wallonia.Paulus gained notability during the Walloon Art Exposition of Charleroi in 1911 and, in the interwar period, he held several exhibitions in Europe and in the United States.

For the former Mayor of Cape Town, see Richard Friedlander (mayor)

Richard Friedländer (15 February 1881 in Berlin – 18 February 1939 at Buchenwald concentration camp) was a German Jewish merchant and Holocaust victim.

Otto Christian Ludwig Lagerfeld (20 September 1881 – 4 July 1967) was a German businessman, who in 1919 founded the German company Lagerfeld & Co, which imported evaporated milk.
He was the son of a wine merchant from Hamburg, Tönnies Johann Otto Lagerfeld (1845–1931) and his wife Maria Wilhelmine Franziska Lagerfeld (née Wiegels) (1848–1936). He was married to Theresia Feigl (1896–1922) in 1922; they had a daughter Theodora Dorothea "Thea" Lagerfeld (1922- circa 2007). His first wife died the same year of their marriage. In 1930 he remarried to Elisabeth Josefa Emilie Bahlmann (1897–1978), daughter of the Catholic Centre Party local politician Heinrich Maria Karl Bahlmann, and they were the parents of Martha Christiane "Christel" Lagerfeld (1931–2015) and of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019).Otto Lagerfeld and his family belonged to the Old Catholic Church.
His family was mainly shielded from the deprivations of World War II due to his membership in the Nazi party and his business interests in Germany through the firm Glücksklee-Milch GmbH. Otto Lagerfeld had been in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake.