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Charlotte was born 1816, the third of the six children of Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë. After their mother's death in 1821, Charlotte and her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which Charlotte would later immortalize as the brutal Lowood school in "Jane Eyre". Conditions at the school were so bad that both Maria and Elizabeth became ill with consumption (tuberculosis) which killed them in 1825. Charlotte was very close to her surviving siblings, Anne Brontë, Branwell, and Emily Brontë. The children invented the imaginary kingdoms of Angria and Gondal, and spent much of their childhood writing poetry and stories about their make-believe realms. In 1846 the three sisters published a collected work of their poetry called, appropriately enough, "Poems", and in 1847 Charlotte published her most famous book, "Jane Eyre", under a male pseudonym, Currer Bell. Charlotte lost her remaining siblings within a brief time -- Branwell from alcoholism and Emily from consumption, both in 1848; Anne also from consumption in 1849. Charlotte was devastated, and became a lifelong hypochondriac. She resided in London, where she made the acquaintance and admiration of William Makepeace Thackeray. In 1854, she married Reverend A. B. Nicholls, curate of Haworth, against her father's wishes. Charlotte found she was pregnant not long after her marriage, and it was felt she would have a difficult pregnancy due to previous ill-health. She died on 31 March 1855.

Joseph Whitley was born on 17 October 1816 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, UK. He was married to Sarah Whitley. He died on 12 January 1891 in New York City, New York, USA.

Carit Etlar was born on 7 August 1816 in Fredericia, Denmark. He was a writer, known for Love in Exile (1923), Gøngehøvdingen (1961) and Gøngehøvdingen (1992). He was married to Olga Augusta Schultz and Hansine Erasmine Thorbjørnsen. He died on 9 May 1900 in Fredericia, Denmark.

Paolo Giacometti was born on 19 March 1816 in Novi Ligure, Kingdom of Sardinia [now Piedmont, Italy]. He was a writer, known for The Fugitive (1913), La colpa vendica la colpa (1919) and La morte civile (1919). He died on 31 August 1882 in Gazzuolo, Lombardy, Italy.

Freytag studied German in Breslau from 1835, and a year later he moved to the University of Berlin. In 1838 he received his doctorate from the classical philologist Karl Lachmann. phil. He began successful attempts at poetry while still a student. The following year, in 1839, he completed his habilitation with his work on the medieval poet Hrotsvit von Gandersheim. He then worked as a private lecturer in German language and literature in Breslau until 1844. The only twenty-three-year-old came to this position through his good relationship with his teacher, the poet and literary historian A. H. Hoffmann, better known as Hoffmann von Fallersleben. He resigned from this post due to professional differences. Gustav Freytag became a professional journalist and writer. Together with the literary historian Julian Schmidt, Freytag edited the national liberal magazine "Die Grenzboten" from 1848 onwards. In addition to political education, the literary program of the realistic representation principle was also pursued. He carried out this journalistic activity until 1870.

The liberal-minded Gustav Freytag often addressed the social problems of his time. Among other things, he was a co-founder of a charitable association for needy weavers. In 1854 he was appointed court councilor by Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In the period from 1867 to 1870 he was a member of the Reichstag of the North German Confederation for the National Liberals. He experienced the war of 1870/1871 as a journalist. In 1881 he moved to Wiesbaden. Freytag's view of poetry was linked to the quality of the popular, which is evident, for example, in the volume of poems "In Breslau" (1845) and in his close association with Berthold Auerbach, a writer of village stories. As a playwright, Gustav Freytag celebrated his first success in 1844 with the comedy "The Bride's Journey, or Kunz von der Rosen", which received an award from the Royal Theater in Berlin. Other comedies followed, such as "The Journalists", which premiered in 1852 and gave him his greatest theatrical success. The piece refers to contemporary politics and tells of the connection between private and public conflict situations.

Freytag was appointed to the Schiller Prize Commission in Berlin. In the tragedy "The Fabians" (1959) he realized his own dramatic technique, which he later, in 1863, wrote down in the work "Technology of Drama". The author's conception of drama is based on the ancient and classical movement. In his novels he romanticized the bourgeois society of his time. The title "Debit and Credit" is his best-known narrative work, which is about the world of merchants, but in a deeper sense contains a social snapshot of the Wilhelminian era. The action of the scholarly novel "The Lost Handwriting" takes place in the educated middle class. Based on a family history in the six-volume novel series "The Ancestors", the chronological sequence of the German people from the Teutons to Freytag's present is traced. The work was published after the second German empire, which Freytag welcomed. To do this, he used his own five-volume cultural-historical work "Images from the German Past" (1859-1867) as a template.

Above all, Freytag made a name for himself as a popular author of contemporary German civil society with the successful novels "Debit and Credit", "The Lost Handwriting" and "The Ancestors", in which he carried out a literary transfiguration in a realistic style. His other works include "De initiis scenicae poesis apud Germanos" (1838), "Die Valentine" (1847), "Karl Mathy. Story of his life" (1869) and "Collected Works" (1886-1888).

Gustav Freytag died on April 30, 1895 in Wiesbaden.

Eugène Pottier was born on 4 October 1816 in Paris, France. He was a writer, known for Air Force One (1997), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Seven Years in Tibet (1997). He died on 6 November 1887 in Paris, France.

Mokuami Kawatake was born on 1 March 1816 in Edo, Japan. He was a writer, known for Priest of Darkness (1936), Magic Serpent (1966) and The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan (1970). He died on 22 January 1893 in Tokyo, Japan.

Friedrich Gerstäcker was born on 10 May 1816 in Hamburg [now Germany]. He was a writer, known for A vadorzó (1918), Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi (1963) and Die Goldsucher von Arkansas (1964). He was married to Marie Louise Visscher van Gaasbeek and Anna Sauer. He died on 31 May 1872 in Brunswick [now Lower Saxony], Germany.

Philippe Rousseau was born on 22 February 1816 in Paris, France. Philippe died on 5 December 1887 in Acquigny, Eure, France.

Ernst Werner Siemens' family moved to Lübeck in 1823 for economic reasons. Siemens received private lessons and later attended high school in Lübeck. He stopped attending school early. In 1834 he left Lübeck and moved to Berlin. There he became an officer candidate in the artillery of the Prussian army. Siemens was given the opportunity to study mathematics, chemistry, physics and ballistics for three years at the Berlin Engineering and Artillery School. In 1838 he became a lieutenant. The following year, 1839, his mother died and a year later his father died. He remained in the military until 1849. The final move to Berlin took place in 1842. Werner Siemens worked there in the field of telegraphy and earned his money to support his younger siblings. In 1846, Siemens invented the pointer telegraph.

The following year he and the university mechanic J.G. Halske founded the company "Telegraphen-Bauanstalt Siemens & Halske". This company formed the foundation for the later global corporation Siemens. In the revolutionary year of 1848, Siemens received the public contract to equip the Berlin-Frankfurt telegraph line with its pointer telegraph. In 1853 he worked on behalf of the Russian government, for which he renewed the telegraph line in the Tsarist Empire. In 1855 he founded a branch in St. Petersburg. The order situation there developed very positively, so that Siemens was able to successfully survive the domestic economic crisis with these business profits. During this time he invented measuring instruments, relays and other technical achievements. Siemens developed a process for laying deep-sea cables, which he tested in 1857 on behalf of the British government.

The following year, 1858, he founded another branch in London, which was run by his brother Wilhelm Siemens. He also opened a factory in Wollwich to manufacture cables. Between 1862 and 1866, Siemens was a member of the Prussian state parliament for the Progress Party. In this role he opened up the foreign market for products from Germany. In 1866 he discovered the dynamoelectric principle, which turned out to be a significant discovery both technically and economically. Ernst Werner Siemens then built the first dynamo machine and began production in 1879. This marked the beginning of the age of high-voltage technology. In 1868, work began on the approximately 11,000 kilometer long telegraph line between London, Tehran and Calcutta. After around twelve years of construction, the work was completed.

From 1867 onwards, Siemens continued to run the company alone; his partner Halske had left. Siemens' awards include an honorary doctorate, which he received from the University of Berlin in 1860. In 1873 he was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1888, Emperor Wilhelm I elevated him to the nobility, which is why he now called himself Werner von Siemens. In 1874, von Siemens connected Ireland to America with an Atlantic submarine cable. His suggestions led to the adoption of the first German patent law in 1877. The following year he invented electric street lighting. In 1879, von Siemens developed the world's first electric railway and presented it to the public at the Berlin trade fair in the same year. Two years later he built the world's first electric railway in Berlin, which was put into operation.

In 1880, von Siemens was a co-founder of the "Electrical Engineering Association", today known as VDE - Association of German Electrical Engineers. In 1887 he contributed to the founding of the Physical-Technical Reichsanstalt. Werner von Siemens dedicated his extensive life's work to the scientific foundation of electrical engineering. By 1890, the Siemens Group had 6,000 employees. In addition, he was committed to the technical development of everyday life and to promoting the economy. As an entrepreneur, he also had social responsibility. For example, he founded the "Siemens Pension Fund" to provide for the retirement of his employees. Particularly in the social area, Siemens introduced social policy measures such as the nine-hour day, which were groundbreaking. He wanted to bind his employees to the company.

Fredrik August Dahlgren was born on 20 September 1816 in Tabergs bruk, Värmland, Sweden. He was a writer, known for Värmlänningarna (1957), Vaermlaenningarna (1932) and Värmlänningarna (1921). He died on 16 February 1895.