1878 births

Miguel_Llobet

Miguel Llobet Solés (18 October 1878 – 22 February 1938) was a classical guitarist, born in Barcelona, Spain. Llobet was a renowned virtuoso who toured Europe and America extensively. He made well known arrangements of Catalan folk songs for the solo guitar, made famous arrangements for the guitar of the piano compositions of Isaac Albéniz, arrangements immortalized by Andrés Segovia, and was also the composer of original works.

Albert_Thomas_(minister)

Albert Thomas (16 June 1878 – 7 May 1932) was a prominent French Socialist and the first Minister of Armament for the French Third Republic during World War I. Following the Treaty of Versailles, he was nominated as the first Director General of the International Labour Office, a position he held until his death in 1932. As Director-General, he was succeeded by Harold Butler.

Louis_Esson

Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson (10 August 1878 – 27 November 1943) was an Australian poet, journalist, critic and playwright. He was a co-founder of the Pioneer Players. His second wife, Hilda Esson (nee Bull), had a career in theatre besides working as a doctor in the field of public health.

Walter_Gempp

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.

Richard_Goldschmidt

Richard Benedict Goldschmidt (April 12, 1878 – April 24, 1958) was a German geneticist. He is considered the first to attempt to integrate genetics, development, and evolution. He pioneered understanding of reaction norms, genetic assimilation, dynamical genetics, sex determination, and heterochrony. Controversially, Goldschmidt advanced a model of macroevolution through macromutations popularly known as the "Hopeful Monster" hypothesis.Goldschmidt also described the nervous system of the nematode, a piece of work that influenced Sydney Brenner to study the "wiring diagram" of Caenorhabditis elegans, winning Brenner and his colleagues the Nobel Prize in 2002.

Carl_Sternheim

Carl Sternheim (born William Adolph Carl Francke; 1 April 1878 – 3 November 1942) was a German playwright and short story writer. One of the major exponents of German Expressionism, he especially satirized the moral sensibilities of the emerging German middle class during the Wilhelmine period.

Paul_Faure_(politician)

Paul Faure (3 February 1878 in Périgueux, Dordogne – 16 November 1960) was a French politician and one of the leaders of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) between the two world wars. He was a minister of state under Camille Chautemps's third Ministry from June 1937 to January 1938, during the period of the Popular Front.
Faure first became a member of Jules Guesde's Parti ouvrier français (POF) in 1901 and was editor-in-chief of the Populaire du Centre. Starting from 1915, he rallied to the centrist and pacifist minority of Jean Longuet in the SFIO, and during the Tours Congress in 1920 he opposed adhesion to the Third International. The Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci underscored how, when Faure visited Imola in 1919, after the Bologna Congress, he had seemed to be in perfect agreement with the representatives of Italian "unitarism". Even after the Tours Congress Faure continued using Marxist rhetoric, but he became a moderate and, along with Léon Blum, directed the SFIO. He was elected to the National Assembly several times.
After Édouard Daladier negotiated the Munich Agreement in 1938 Paul Faure supported the appeasement policy. After the Battle of France in 1940 he rallied to Vichy. In January 1941, he was made a member of the National Council of Vichy France. This led to his being expelled from the SFIO in 1944. He then founded the Democratic Socialist Party (PSD) which participated to the Rassemblement des gauches républicaines. The PSD attracted only deputies accused of collaborationism and dedicated part of its efforts to attempts at rehabilitation of Philippe Pétain's reactionary regime. It had almost no influence in postwar France.