1939 deaths

Émile Paul Aimable Guépratte (30 August 1856 – 21 November 1939) was a French admiral.

Émilie Marie Bouchaud (14 May 1874 – 14 October 1939), better known by her stage name Polaire, was a French singer and actress, who became internationally known. She performed also in the United States and London, and in films.
She was notable for her wasp waist which, achieved through corsetry, reportedly measured less than 16 inches (41 cm). She was also known for her eccentric stage presence, which generated mixed receptions.

Charles-François-Prosper Guérin (1875 in Sens – 1939) was a French post-impressionist painter.
Guérin studied with Gustave Moreau in the l'École des Beaux Arts à Paris, and had one exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in 1910; in a review Huntly Carter wrote of his "daring extravagance" and that he "show[ed] how the strongest primary colours can be used without crudity, and whose work has a decorative value which the average muddy and colourless work of our day does not possess".Guérin attained some historic notoriety for sitting on the jury of the Salon d'Automne of 1908, which rejected almost all of the paintings of Georges Braque. The other jury members were Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and Albert Marquet, all of whom had also been students of Moreau.: 254 p.  The jury's action caused Braque—who had been a great success the year before—to withdraw completely from the Salon. Braque subsequently entered into an exclusive contract with the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler requiring him (and Picasso) to avoid salons, during which time Braque and Picasso developed cubism.
Guérin was teaching at the Académie de La Palette in 1907 when Henri Hayden studied there and at the Académie Moderne in 1913 when Blanche Lazzell enrolled there, as well as at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

Alexander Kanoldt (29 September 1881 – 24 January 1939) was a German magic realist painter and one of the artists of the New Objectivity.

Buell Halvor Quain (May 31, 1912 – August 2, 1939) was an American ethnologist who, after graduating from University of Wisconsin–Madison and studying as a graduate student at Columbia University, worked with native peoples in Fiji and Brazil. He published a total of four books, three of them posthumously.
In 1938, Quain travelled to Brazil to work with the Kraho people of the Brazilian rainforest, where he also spent time in the Trumai village.

Walter Gempp (13 September 1878 – 2 May 1939) was a German engineer. From 1922 to 1933 he was the sixth head of the Berlin Fire Brigade.
After studying mechanical engineering, Gempp joined the Berlin Fire Department in 1908. He was given the project of developing a motorized fire extinguishing service, and in 1908 he produced the first engine-powered hose truck. In 1923 he became chief fire commissioner in Berlin.Gempp was head of the Berlin fire department at the time of the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, personally directing the operations at the incident. On 25 March he was dismissed for presenting evidence that suggested Nazi involvement in the fire. Gempp asserted that there had been a delay in notifying the fire brigade and that he had been forbidden from making full use of the resources at his disposal.
In 1937, he was arrested for abuse of office. Despite his appeal, he was imprisoned. On 2 May 1939, Gempp was found dead in his cell. Some literature suggests that he was murdered by the National Socialists. Other authors state that Gempp took his own life in order to secure his family's pension entitlements, which would have been lost if the judgment against him had become final.

Max Skladanowsky (30 April 1863 – 30 November 1939) was a German inventor and early filmmaker. Along with his brother Emil, he invented the Bioscop, an early movie projector the Skladanowsky brothers used to display a moving picture show to a paying audience on 1 November 1895, shortly before the public debut of the Lumière Brothers' Cinématographe in Paris on 28 December 1895.

Benjamin Rabier (1864–1939) was a French illustrator, comic book artist and animator. He became famous for creating the logo for Laughing Cow Cheese (La vache qui rit), and is one of the precursors of animal comics. His work has inspired many other artists, notably Hergé and Edmond-François Calvo.
A native of La Roche-sur-Yon, Vendée, Rabier started to work as an illustrator for various newspapers after meeting political cartoonist Caran d'Ache. His first album for children was the story of Tintin-Lutin, published in 1898, which told of a young lutin or "imp"; here his main characters are human and not animals, as they came to be in later albums. His most famous creations are Gideon the duck and the characters he drew for Le roman de Renart.
He died at Faverolles, Indre, in 1939.

Eugen Weidmann (5 February 1908 – 17 June 1939) was a German criminal and serial killer who was executed by guillotine in France in June 1939, the last public execution in France.