1878 births

Mirra Alfassa (21 February 1878 – 17 November 1973), known to her followers as The Mother or La Mère, was a French-Indian spiritual guru, occultist and yoga teacher, and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, who considered her to be of equal yogic stature to him and called her by the name "The Mother". She founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and established the town of Auroville; she was influential on the subject of Integral Yoga.
Mirra Alfassa (Mother) was born in Paris in 1878 to a Sephardi Jewish bourgeois family. In her youth, she traveled to Algeria to practice occultism along with Max Théon. After returning, while living in Paris, she guided a group of spiritual seekers. In 1914, she traveled to Pondicherry, India and met Sri Aurobindo and found in him "the dark Asiatic figure" of whom she had visions and called him Krishna. During this first visit, she helped publish a French version of the periodical Arya, which serialized most of Sri Aurobindo's post-political prose writings.
During the First World war she was obliged to leave Pondicherry. After a 4-year stay in Japan, in 1920 she returned to Pondicherry. Gradually, as more and more people joined her and Sri Aurobindo, she organised and developed Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In 1943, she started a school in the ashram and in 1968 established Auroville, an experimental township dedicated to human unity and evolution. She died on 17 November 1973 in Pondicherry.
Satprem, who was one of her followers, captured the last thirty years of Alfassa's life in the 13-volume work, Mother's Agenda.

Gustav Ernst Stresemann (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈʃtʁeːzəˌman] ; 10 May 1878 – 3 October 1929) was a German statesman who served as chancellor of Germany from August to November 1923, and as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929. His most notable achievement was the reconciliation between Germany and France, for which he and French Prime Minister Aristide Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926. During a period of political instability and fragile, short-lived governments, Stresemann was the most influential politician in most of the Weimar Republic's existence.
Stresemann attended the University of Berlin and Leipzig University, where he studied political economy, history and international law and developed his vision of liberalism and nationalism, a combination of views that would define his political career. After obtaining his doctorate, Stresemann worked in trade associations before entering politics. In 1907, he was elected to the Reichstag as a deputy for the National Liberal Party. He lost his seat in 1912 but was reelected two years later. During the First World War, he was a vocal advocate for German militarism and expansionism. Exempted from war service due to poor health, he gradually became the National Liberals' de facto leader, before formally taking over the party in 1917. Germany's defeat and the fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy came as a significant shock to Stresemann, forcing him to gradually reassess his previous positions. He founded the German People's Party (DVP) and, despite his own monarchist beliefs, came to grudgingly accept Weimar democracy and became open to working with the centre and the left.
In August 1923, Stresemann was named chancellor and foreign minister of a grand coalition government. During his brief chancellorship, he abandoned the policy of passive resistance against the French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, and introduced the Rentenmark in a (relatively successful) attempt to tame hyperinflation in the country. In November, Stresemann's reshuffled government collapsed after the Social Democratics withdrew from the coalition. He resigned as chancellor following a vote of no confidence, but remained as foreign minister in the new government led by Wilhelm Marx. His first major diplomatic success was the 1924 Dawes Plan, which reduced Germany's overall reparations commitment. It was followed by the Locarno Treaties in 1925, which confirmed Germany's postwar western borders, guaranteed peace with France, and provided for Germany's admission to the League of Nations a year later. Stresemann also moved to improve relations with the Soviet Union through the 1926 Treaty of Berlin. In 1928, he oversaw Germany's participation in the Kellogg–Briand Pact, in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve international conflicts.
Amid failing health, Stresemann successfully negotiated the Young Plan which sought to further reduce German reparations payments. He died in October 1929 after a series of strokes at the age of 51.

Hubert Jean Daniel Lefèbvre (28 November 1878 in Paris – 26 September 1937 in Labaroche) was a French rugby union player who competed in the 1900 Summer Olympics. He was a member of the French rugby union team, which won the gold medal. Lefèbvre played forward.Lefèbvre played club rugby with Racing Club de France from 1895 to 1902 and was a member of the 1900 and 1902 French championship teams. In the 1902 final, a 6–0 victory, he scored the final try just before the half.Lefèbvre was educated at the Lycée Charlemagne and Centrale Graduate School in engineering. He served in World War I, rising to the rank of captain.

Léon Binoche (16 August 1878 – 28 August 1962) was a French rugby union player who competed in the 1900 Summer Olympics. He was a member of the French rugby union team, which won the gold medal. His great-niece is the actress Juliette Binoche.

Suzanne Blanche Gros Noël (1878–1954), also known as Madame Noël, was one of the world’s first plastic surgeons and the first female plastic surgeon in the world. She was known for her efficient face lift technique, the “petite operation.” Noël was also a very active feminist, a philosophy which was considered radical for a practicing cosmetic surgeon. She is the founder of Soroptimist International of Europe (SIE) and had a career spanning from 1916 to 1950.
At the outbreak of the war in 1914, without having been able to defend her doctoral thesis, like all the interns, Suzanne Gros was allowed to practise medicine in the city. She then joined Professor Morestin at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. In 1916, she trained in the techniques of reparative and corrective surgery. From there, under extremely precarious conditions, she participates in the war effort by operating on the “broken mouths”, the wounded in the face.

Albert Weisgerber (21 April 1878 – 10 May 1915) was a German painter whose work forms a bridge between Impressionism and early Expressionism.

Robert de Besange, SJ (15 March 1878 – 10 September 1946), also known as Jacquinot de Besange and in China as Rao Jia-ju (Chinese: 饶家驹), was a French Jesuit who set up a successful model of safety zones that saved over half-a-million Chinese people during the Second Sino-Japanese War.Jacquinot de Besange's family originates from aristocratic lineages in Lorraine, in northeastern France. He arrived in China in 1913 as a missionary and served the Portuguese congregation at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Hongkou. He also served as a chaplain to the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. He had lost his right arm in an explosion while conducting chemistry experiments in his youth, and was known as the "one-armed priest."
De Besange acted as president of the China International Famine Relief Commission during the 1932 Battle of Shanghai, where his relief work for refugees, including negotiating a four-hour truce between the Chinese and the Japanese armies to allow the evacuation of civilians and casualties from the war zone, made him a household name in Shanghai.
The "de Besange model" began with the Shanghai Safety Zone (南市难民区, "Nanshi Refugee Zone"), or "Jacquinot de Besange Safe Zone", in 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was a demilitarised zone for Chinese civilians located in a part of the Old City of Shanghai that was adjacent to the Shanghai French Concession. The demilitarised zone was respected by both sides of the war and by the concession authorities. It was administered by an international committee composed of representatives of the American, British, and French communities and policed by the Chinese police. The zone was credited with saving the lives of thousands of Chinese residents between 1937 and 1940, when it was abolished after de Besange left Shanghai. Aside from setting up the Safety Zone, de Besange was also responsible for arranging for refugee camps to be set up in the Tu-seh-weh Orphanage and the Fuh Tan College to shelter refugees fleeing the war zone.Following the example of de Besange in Shanghai, the foreigners in Nanjing created the Nanking Safety Zone (南京安全区), managed by the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone and led by the German businessman John Rabe. The same model also inspired the Hankou Safety Zone, the Zhangzhou Safety Zone, and the Shenzhen Safety Zone.
His work is acknowledged in the Protocols and Commentaries to the 1949 Geneva Convention. A film of his life and work, Jacquinot: A Forgotten Hero directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, was featured in the 2009 Shanghai International Film Festival.On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the events, a memorial stone was unveiled in the Shanghai City God Temple in December 2017.

Werner Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Rheinbaben (19 November 1878 – 14 January 1975) was a German diplomat and author.Rheinbaben was born in Schmiedeberg, Silesia. He was a naval attaché to Rome during 1911–1913. He later wrote of the 1914 July Crisis that it was Wilhelm von Stumm who downplayed the possibility of British intervention and strongly advised the Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg to act quickly. After the First World War, Stumm told Rheinbaben: "I erred in 1914 and advised Bethmann falsely".Rheinbaben was a member of the German delegation to the League of Nations.During the 1920s and early 1930s Rheinbaben was a politician belonging to the German People's Party. He was a close political associate of Gustav Stresemann and wrote a sympathetic biography of him in 1928.In 1942 and 1943 Rheinbaben worked in Portugal on matters relating to prisoners of war for the German Red Cross.In 1968 he argued against the views of those post-1945 German historians who claimed that Germany had sought world domination, writing: "Poor Germany! You honestly did not reach for 'world hegemony'!"

Alfred Sittard (4 November 1878 –– 31 March 1942) was a German cantor, composer of church music and one of the most important organists of his time.

Karl Gustav Vollmöller (or Vollmoeller; 7 May 1878 – 18 October 1948) was a German philologist, archaeologist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and aircraft designer. He is most famous for the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime The Miracle and the screenplay for the celebrated 1930 film The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel), which made a star of Marlene Dietrich.