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- Writer
- Actor
British novelist James Hilton was born in Leigh, Lancashire, England, in 1900. His father was a schoolmaster. Hilton graduated from Cambridge University in 1921, having already written his first novel, "Catherine Herself" (written in 1918, it wasn't published until 1920). After graduation he wrote a twice-weekly column for "The Dublin Irish Independent", which he continued to do for several years. In 1931 he wrote the novel "And Now Good-Bye", which was quite successful and brought him, as he once said, "a good return". In 1933 he was approached by the editor of "The British Weekly" magazine and asked to write a short-story for the magazine's Christmas issue, for which he had a deadline of just two weeks. As the deadline approached he still hadn't a clue as to what kind of story to write, so one night he decided to take a bicycle ride to clear his head. When he came back he had the inspiration to write what eventually became the international best-seller "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (a story based on the career of his father). He finished the story in four days. His editor at the magazine was so impressed with it that he recommended the magazine's parent company, a major publishing house, publish the story in the American market, which was much more profitable than the British market. The company arranged for the story to be published in the American magazine "The Atlantic Monthly" in its April 1934 issue. It garnered such attention from both readers and reviewers--noted critic Alexander Woollcott effusively praised it in his "New Yorker" column and on his radio show--that just two months later it was published in book form and became a huge international hit, and was later made into a movie now regarded as one of the classics of modern cinema, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).
Hilton turned out a string of highly regarded novels that were turned into highly regarded films--Knight Without Armor (1937), Lost Horizon (1937), Random Harvest (1942)--and eventually moved to the US. He died in Long Beach, CA, in 1954 of liver cancer.- Actor
Bernie Breakston was born on 29 December 1896 in New York, New York, USA. He was an actor. He died on 20 December 1954 in Limuru, Kenya.- After completing secondary school in Berlin, he completed training in the textile industry. During this time he married Antonie Ewald (1884-1918). The first son Helmuth (1908-1927) was born in 1908. From 1909, Quandt was already running several cloth factories in his hometown and in Wittstock. After the outbreak of the First World War, he was promoted to head of Reichswolle AG in 1915. In 1918 his wife died of the Spanish flu. Until 1922, Quandt worked as a consultant in the Reich Ministry of Economics in the first German democracy. In the Weimar Republic he also worked for the "Reichsstelle für Textilwirtschaft". On January 4, 1921, Quandt married 19-year-old Magda Ritschel (1901-1945). Ten months later, on November 1, 1921, their son Harald was born. In 1922, Quandt switched to the potash industry to work for the Wintershall potash works and for the "Akkumulatoren-Fabrik AG" in Berlin and Hagen, initially called "AFA AG", then "Varta AG" from 1962. He was also now involved in the reorganization of the "German Weapons and Ammunition Factory".
Quandt rose to become one of the most active and influential entrepreneurs and economic officials in Germany during the Weimar Republic and after Adolf Hitler's rise to power: Quandt was the husband of Magda until 1929, who married the National Socialist propaganda minister Josef Goebbels two years later. A year earlier, in 1928, Quandt gained control of Berlin-Karlsruher Industrie-Werke AG. From 1931 he was part of the group of industrialists loyal to Hitler. In the same year he became a member of the Society for the Study of Fascism, which acted as a link between conservative circles and the NSDAP. On May 1, 1933 he joined the NSDAP. He now generously supports the party financially. While his companies became suppliers to the armaments industry, he himself became a model industrialist. His business activities included companies in the textile, potash and metallurgical industries as well as in the insurance industry. In 1937, Quandt took over the role of military economic leader within the National Socialist dictatorship.
The industrialist also had close personal ties to the Hitler regime. Among other things, he also became a member of the supervisory board of Daimler-Benz, Deutsche Bank and AEG. Meanwhile, the AFA main plant in Hagen became the lead production site for other AFA plants in Hanover, Vienna and Poznan. Here, in addition to battery systems for submarines, the company primarily produced special batteries for torpedoes and rockets, such as the "V2". Batteries for armored vehicles, radio and radar devices as well as for combat aircraft were also manufactured. To do this, he employs thousands of prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates. In the immediate post-war period, Quandt was declared a "follower" (1948) through a denazification process. Nevertheless, he managed to regain a recognized position as an entrepreneur in the wake of the upswing and economic miracle in the Federal Republic. The business activities of the Quandt empire were coordinated from Stuttgart by the family company "AG für Industrie Beteiligungen".
Günther Quandt died on December 20, 1954 while on vacation in Cairo.
The sons Harald Quandt (1921-1967), who subsequently took over the management of the metal division with the "Industriewerke Karlsruhe AG" group of companies, and Herbert Quandt had recently taken over the management of his company.