June 28, 1490
Birth of Albrecht von Brandenburg, Cardinal, Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and Archbishop of Mainz, against whom Luther struggled on the matter of the sale of indulgences.
June 28, 1807
Birth of publisher Philipp Reclam in Leipzig, Germany.
June 28, 1825
Heinrich Heine is baptized in the Protestant church.
June 28, 1912
Birth of Carl Friedrich von Weizäcker in Kiel, Germany.
June 28, 1914
Death of Franz Ferdinand, Erzherzog von Österreich-Este, and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Franz Ferdinand was the next in succession to the position of Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He and his wife were on a visit in Sarajevo when the Serbian nationalist, 19-year-old Gavrilo Prinzip, assassinated them on June 28, 1914. This event touched off the First World War.
June 28, 1906
Birth of Maria Goeppert Mayer in Kattowitz, Germany. She won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963 for her work on the properties of atomic nuclei.
June 28, 1919
Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles after announcing that it is only the continuing allied naval blockade of Germany and the extreme continuing hardship on the German civilian population that force the action. (Austria signs a separate treaty on September 10. Hungary signed another separate treaty on June 4, 1920.) The United States Senate declined to ratify the Versailles Treaty and the U. S. arranged a separate treaty.
June 28, 1923
Pope Pius XI publishes a letter in “L’Osservatore Romano” condemning the harsh reparations demanded of Germany after World War I and criticizes French for the occupation of the Ruhr in January of 1923.
June 28, 1943
Birth of Klaus von Klitzing, a German physicist, in German-occupied Poland. He is known for discovery of the integer quantum Hall Effect, for which he was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics.
June 28, 1979
Death of Paul Dessau in East Berlin, Germany. Dessau was a composer and conductor. He gained his greatest fame through his collaborations with the writer, Bertolt Brecht. He wrote the music for Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1946), and Die Verurteilung des Lukullus (1949).
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