1888 births

Friedrich Olbricht (4 October 1888 – 21 July 1944) was a German general during World War II. He is known for being one of the plotters involved in the 20 July Plot, an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.
Olbricht was a senior staff officer, with the rank of lieutenant general. He was secretly in contact with most of the leaders of the resistance. They briefed him on their various plots and he placed sympathetic officers in key positions. Olbricht quietly encouraged field commanders to support the resistance. By late 1943, his office was the centre of Resistance plotting, under Claus von Stauffenberg. Had the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler been successful, Olbricht would have assumed the position of minister of war in a post-Nazi regime.

Heinrich Schlusnus (6 August 1888 – 18 June 1952) was Germany's foremost lyric baritone of the interwar period. He sang opera and lieder with equal distinction.

Jean Murat (13 July 1888 in Périgueux – 5 January 1968 in Aix-en-Provence) was a French actor. He was married to the French actress Annabella. He was one of the surviving passengers of the August 1923 Air Union Farman Goliath crash.

Hans von Benda (22 November 1888, in Strasbourg – 13 August 1972, in Berlin) was a German conductor.
A direct descendant of the eighteenth-century composer Franz Benda, he operated in the shadow of better-known German maestri of his generation, notably Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, and Hans Knappertsbusch. After serving as musical director of Berlin Radio from 1926 to 1934, Benda became (1935) artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, during Furtwängler's tenure as chief conductor. He held this post until 1939. Meanwhile, he conducted the Berlin Chamber Orchestra, which he had founded in 1932, and with which he toured Australia, South America and Asia as well as Europe. He was married to Karin Rosander, a Finnish violinist.
Unlike Furtwängler and Knappertsbusch (or Klemperer, who had fled Germany shortly after Hitler gained power), Benda joined the Nazi Party [1], possibly through fear that the regime would regard his Czech lineage as insufficiently Aryan. That his party card brought a certain amount of foreign obloquy on his head is indicated by the fact that (according to John L. Holmes' Conductors on Record) a pre-war recording Benda conducted of music by Gluck was issued in America without his name on the label. After World War II, Benda gave evidence during Furtwängler's denazification proceedings, avowing that Furtwängler had protected Jews from official persecution.[2] Having worked in Spain from 1948 to 1952, Benda was subsequently employed at Radio Free Berlin (1954–1958).
Benda had a long recording career, lasting from the 1930s until 1968. Composers in his large discography include Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn, Mozart père and fils, Schubert, Dvořák, Respighi, C. P. E. Bach, Frederick the Great, Johann Adolf Hasse, Johann Joachim Quantz, Carl Heinrich Graun, and his own collateral ancestor Georg Benda. His conducting on disc tended towards a hefty, straightforward style wholly at odds with Furtwängler's and Knappertsbusch's improvisational unpredictability.

Victor Rietti (29 February 1888 – 3 December 1963) was an Italian-born actor and director who became known through his work in television, especially through the many live television productions of the Italian play To Live in Peace during the 1950s. He was knighted by the Italian government.

Charlotte "Lotte" Pauline Sophie Lehmann (February 27, 1888 – August 26, 1976) was a German-American lyric soprano noted for her successful performances with international opera houses, on the recital stage and in teaching.: 5 She gave memorable appearances in the operas of Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Puccini, Mozart, and Massenet. The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Sieglinde in Die Walküre and the title-role in Fidelio are considered her greatest roles. During her long career, Lehmann also made almost five hundred recordings in both opera and art song.

Roberto Assagioli (27 February 1888 – 23 August 1974) was an Italian psychiatrist and pioneer in the fields of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Assagioli founded the psychological movement known as psychosynthesis, which is still being developed today by therapists and psychologists who practice the psychological methods and techniques he developed. His work, including two books and many monographs published as pamphlets, emphasized the possibility of progressive integration (that is, synthesis) of the personality.

Ernst Wolf Alexander Oskar Harnack (15 July 1888 – 5 March 1945), granted the title von Harnack in 1914, was an official of the Prussian provincial government, a German politician, and a German Resistance fighter. He was arrested, tried and executed in March 1945 at Plötzensee Prison for political opposition to the Nazi Party.

Louis Edmond Durey (French: [dyʁɛ]; 27 May 1888 – 3 July 1979) was a French composer. He was among the Les Six group of composers.

Victor Francen (born Victor Franssens; 5 August 1888 – 18 November 1977) was a Belgian-born actor with a long career in French cinema and in Hollywood.