1969 deaths

Carl Blumenreuter (16 November 1881 – 11 July 1969) was a German chemist and politician during the Nazi era. He served as SS Chief Pharmacist for the Nazi Party (NSDAP).Blumenreuter studied the Nahrungsmittelchemie. He received special training in World War I for gas warfare at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for physical chemistry and electrochemistry in Berlin. In 1935 he joined the paramilitary combat organization of the Nazi party, the SA, and in 1937 the Nazi party.
In 1936, he was in the Sanitätsabteilung of the SS death's head associations and built up the Sanitätsversorgung. In 1937, he was head of the chemical pharmacological service of the SS Sanitätsamtes. Most recently, he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer. In August 1943, the department was placed under the Reich physician SS and he received the title of Sanitätszeugmeister. This agency supplied the concentration camps with poisons. After the second world war he was interned; He was released but already in 1946 from the Neuengamme camp again. He then lived in Grömitz in Holstein and afterwards led a hospital pharmacy.

Richard Ollie Crane (June 6, 1918 – March 9, 1969) was a character actor whose career spanned three decades in films and television. His early career included many uncredited performances in feature films made in the 1940s.

Rudolf Pannwitz (27 May 1881 in Crossen/Oder, Province of Brandenburg, Prussia – 23 March 1969 in Astano, Ticino, Switzerland) was a German writer, poet and philosopher. His thought combined nature philosophy, Nietzsche, an opposition to nihilism and pan-European internationalism: Pannwitz's elusive, difficult goal may be seen as the complete re-evaluation of man, art, science and culture envisaged as the expression of an evolving cosmos obeying the laws of eternal recurrence, with Nietzsche-Zarathustra as the supreme prophet.

Ottmar Gerster (29 June 1897 in Braunfels, Germany – 31 August 1969 in Borsdorf) was a German viola player, conductor and composer who in 1948 became rector of the Liszt Music Academy in Weimar.

Fritz Reiche (July 4, 1883 – January 14, 1969) was a German physicist, a student of Max Planck and a colleague of Albert Einstein, who was active in, and made important contributions to the early development of quantum mechanics including co-authoring the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn sum rule.Fritz Reiche was born in 1883 in Berlin, Germany. In 1901 and 1902, he attended the University of Munich and he attended the University of Berlin from 1902 to 1907, where he received his PhD. From 1913 to 1920 as privatdozent he worked and taught under Planck in Berlin. Reiche published more than 55 scientific papers and books including The Quantum Theory.He became a professor in 1921 at the University of Breslau and then was dismissed as a Jew from his academic position in 1933. Eventually, with the help of Ladenburg, Einstein, and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, Reiche emigrated with his family to the United States in 1941 and went on to work with NASA and the United States Navy on projects related to supersonic flow.

Reinhard Mecke (born 14 July 1895 in Stettin; died 30 December 1969) was a German physicist, who focused on chemical physics. He was one of the pioneers of infrared spectroscopy.
Reinhard Mecke studied from 1913 mathematics and physics at the universities of Freiburg, Bern and Marburg and did his doctorate at Franz Richarz in Marburg in 1920 on halos in homogeneous nebulas. He then worked for Heinrich Konen at the university of Bonn, where he habilitated in 1923 on spectral bands of jod and where he became a privatdozent. 1927 he married one of his PhD students M. Guillery and had with her nine children including Dieter Mecke.
1932 he became extraordinary professor for chemical physics at the University of Heidelberg, as proposed by Max Trautz. He investigated spectral bands of evaporated water and infrared and Raman spectroscopy of small organic molecules. He proved the existence of the spin onto rotary oscillation spectra of molecules. 1937 he became professor for theoretical physics at the university of Freiburg and investigated there hydrogen bonds by infrared spectroscopy. 1942 he became ordinary professor and director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry. Additionally, he was in 1958 the founder and until 1968 the director of the Institute for electric materials (Institut für Elektrowerkstoffe) of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the head of the Institute for Physical Chemistry. 1963 he retired in Freiburg.
1964 he became member of the Leopoldina. 1965 he received the Bunsen medal.
He was co-author of the Handbuch der Physik by Geiger and Scheel. His article Vorlesungstechnik with Anton Lambertz of the first volume was also published as a book. He was one of the organisers of the Conferences of nobel laureates in Lindau.

Manuel Jesús Plaza Reyes (17 March 1900 – 9 February 1969) was a long-distance runner from Chile. He competed in the marathon at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and won a silver medal in 1928, becoming the first Olympic medalist from Chile. He placed sixth in 1924, and served as the flag bearer for Chile at both Olympics.

Cristina Montt (May 10, 1895 – April 22, 1969) was a Chilean film star of silent and early sound films.

Édouard Charles Octave Mignan (17 March 1884 - 17 September 1969) was a French organist and composer.
He was born in Orléans and 14 years old he became the organist of église Saint Paterne. He studied organ in Paris with Alexandre Guilmant and Louis Vierne and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1912. He was organist at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin from 1917 to 1935. He succeeded Henri Dallier as organist of la Madeleine in 1935 and held that post until 1962.He died in Paris at the age of 85.

Hugo Spatz (2 September 1888 – 27 January 1969) was a German neuropathologist. In 1937, he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research. He was a member of the Nazi Party, and admitted to knowingly performing much of his controversial research on the brains of executed prisoners. Along with Julius Hallervorden, he is credited with the discovery of Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome (now referred to as Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration). Hugo Spatz's Oberarzt (senior resident or attending physician), 1937–1939, Richard Lindenberg, became chief neuropathologist of the State of Maryland.