1939 deaths

Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll (Louisa Caroline Alberta; 18 March 1848 – 3 December 1939), was the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
In her public life, she was a strong proponent of the arts and higher education and of the feminist cause. She was an influential supporter of the Edinburgh College of Domestic Science, the forerunner to Queen Margaret University, becoming the institution’s first Patron in 1891 until 1939. Her early life was spent moving among the various royal residences in the company of her family. When her father died in December 1861, the court went into a long period of mourning, to which with time Louise became unsympathetic. She was an able sculptor and artist, and several of her sculptures remain today. She was also a supporter of the feminist movement, corresponding with Josephine Butler, and visiting Elizabeth Garrett.
Before her marriage, Louise served as an unofficial secretary to the Queen from 1866 to 1871. The question of Louise's marriage was discussed in the late 1860s. Suitors from the royal houses of Prussia and Denmark were suggested, but Victoria did not want her to marry a foreign prince, and therefore suggested a high-ranking member of the British aristocracy. Despite opposition from members of the royal family, Louise fell in love with John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne, the heir of the Duke of Argyll. Victoria consented to the marriage, which took place on 21 March 1871. After a happy beginning, the two drifted apart, possibly because of their childlessness and the Queen's constraints on their activities.In 1878, Lorne was appointed Governor General of Canada, a post he held 1878–1884. Louise was viceregal consort, starting a lasting interest in Canada. Her names were used to name many features in Canada, including Lake Louise and the province of Alberta. Following her mother's death in 1901, she entered the social circle established by her elder brother, the new king, Edward VII. Louise's marriage with Lorne survived thanks to long periods of separation; they reconciled in 1911, and Louise was devastated by Lorne's death in 1914. After the First World War she began to retire from public life, undertaking few public duties outside Kensington Palace, where she died at the age of 91.

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.

Robert Antral (Châlons-en-Champagne July 13, 1895 – Paris June 7, 1939) was a French painter and printmaker, mainly of etchings. He won the Prix Blumenthal in 1926 and the Croix de Guerre for his bravery in World War I.

Carl Joseph Schröter (19 December 1855 – 7 February 1939) was a Swiss botanist born in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany.
From 1874 he studied natural sciences at Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (ETH Zurich), where one of his early influences was geologist Albert Heim (1849–1937). Following his habilitation in 1878, he worked as an assistant to Carl Eduard Cramer (1831–1901). In 1883 he succeeded Oswald Heer (1809–1883) as professor of botany at ETH Zurich, a position he kept until 1926.Schröter was a pioneer in the fields of phytogeography and phytosociology. He introduced the concept of "autecology" to explain the relationship of an individual plant with its external environment, and "synecology" to express relationships between plant communities and external influences.In 1910 with Charles Flahault (1852–1935), he released Rapport sur la nomenclature phytogéographique (Reports on phytogeographical nomenclature), and with Friedrich Gottlieb Stebler (1852-1935), he was co-author of Die besten Futterpflanzen, etc. (1883–1884), a work involving forage crop cultivation and economics. It was later translated into English, and published with the title, "The best forage plants: fully described and figured with a complete account of their cultivation, economic value, impurities and adulterants, &c" (1889). With geographer Johann Jakob Früh, he was co-author of a book on Swiss moorlands, titled Die Moore der Schweiz : mit Berücksichtigung der gesamten Moorfrage (1904).

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.

Ernst Blass (17 October 17, 1890, (Berlin) – 23 January 23, 1939 (Berlin), (pseudonyms: Daniel Stabler and Erich Sternow) was an important expressionist poet, critic and writer.Blass was a close friend of Kurt Hiller and joined him at Der Neue Club, alongside other writers of early Expressionism, Georg Heym and Jakob van Hoddis. From 1911, he collaborated with the magazine Die Aktion, before distancing himself from Franz Pfemfert in 1914.In Das Wesen der neuen Tanzkunst (The essence of the new dance art) Blass set out to identify abstract categories whereby "a new dance art" could be outlined. He described how the anthroposophical breathing methods taught at Loheland could transform the "marionette" into an animal form which could then leap in an ecstatic manner. In this he was responding to previous theories of dance, such as produced by Heinrich von Kleist who had written in 1807 a short text "Über dem Marionette Theater" according to which the dancer became a marionnette without either will or consciousness.In 1980 Thomas B. Schumann published a three volume collection of Blass' poetry (Volume 1), short stories (Volume 2) and various essays (Volume 3).

Ernst August Ferdinand Gennat (1 January 1880 – 20 August 1939) was director of the Berlin criminal police. He worked under three political systems in his 30-year career as one of the most gifted and successful criminologists in the German Reich. His caseload included those of Fritz Haarmann and Peter Kürten.

Robert Lachmann (28 November 1892 – 8 May 1939) was a German ethnomusicologist, polyglot (German, English, French, Arabic), orientalist and librarian. He was an expert in the musical traditions of the Middle East, a member of the Berlin School of Comparative Musicology and one of its founding fathers. After having been forced to leave Germany under the Nazis in 1935 because of his Jewish background, he emigrated to Palestine and established a rich archive of ethnomusicological recordings for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Max Naumann (12 January 1875 – 18 May 1939) was the founder of Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (League of National German Jews), which called for the elimination of Jewish ethnic identity through Jewish assimilation. The league was outlawed by the Nazi government on 18 November 1935.
Naumann was a captain in the Bavarian Army during World War I and a Berlin lawyer.

Hans Horst Meyer (17 March 1853 – 6 October 1939) was a German pharmacologist. He studied medicine and did research in pharmacology. The Meyer-Overton hypothesis on the mode of action on general anaesthetics is partially named after him. He also discovered the importance of glucuronic acid as a reaction partner for drugs, and the mode of action of tetanus toxin on the body.