On October 20, 1401, Klaus Störtebeker, representative of a companionship of privateers known as the Victual Brothers, was executed by order of the senate of Hamburg. His life has become legend and he often is compared to other historic freedom fighters such as Che Guevara or Robin Hood, because he fought the rich in the name of the poor.
On October 16, 1906, German shoemaker Wilhelm Voight, just released from prison for forgery, purchased parts of used captain's uniforms. In this masquerade of a Prussian military officer he arrested the mayor and the treasurer of Köpenick for suspicion of crooked bookkeeping and confiscated the municipal funds
On October 3, 1889, German pacifist and Nobel Laureate Carl von Ossietzky was born. He received the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in exposing the clandestine German re-armament.
On September 26, 1889, German philosopher Martin Heidegger was born. He is best known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being". His best known book, Being and Time, is considered one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century.
On August 14, 1880, after more than 600 years the construction of the Cologne Cathedral, the most famous landmark in Cologne, Germany, is completed. The World Heritage Site is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day. The cathedral is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires and largest facade of any church in the world.
On May 31, 1811, Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger, also known as the Tailor of Ulm, failed to give the proof that his machine was able to fly and fell into the Danube river during the demonstration. He is famous for having constructed a working flying machine, presumably a hang glider.
On 26 May 1828, a teenage boy appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. The boy, who answered to the name Kaspar Hauser, claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell. Hauser's claims, and his subsequent death by stabbing, sparked much debate and controversy. Some theories about him at the time linked him with the grand ducal House of Baden to be the hereditary "Prince of Baden". Nevertheless, these have long since been rejected by professional historians. On the other hand, Kaspar Hauser fits into the contemporary European image of the "wolf child", despite the fact that he almost certainly was not one. As a result, his story inspired numerous works.
On May 21, 1471, German painter, engraver, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist Albrecht Dürer was born. He was considered as one of the greatest artists of the Northern Renaissance.
On May 9, 1876, German inventor Nikolaus Otto working with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach started the world's first internal-combustion engine that efficiently burned fuel directly in a piston chamber. However, German courts did not hold his patent to cover all in-cylinder compression engines or even the four-stroke cycle, and after this decision, in-cylinder compression became universal and the principle of Otto's engine still is the general principle for engines today.
Today 199 years ago, the first (modern) optical telegraph line following the mechanical telegraphy system of the French inventor Claude Chappe was established between Metz and Mainz was established. No, this wasn't the first of its kind, but it was the first to connect the former already in France established telegraphy system with a (now) German city.