Birthplaces of Well-Known People I Quiz

Answer: Pittsburgh, USA

The American pop art star was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into a family of European immigrants. His parents had moved to the USA from the village Mikova (in Slovakia). Some internet sources claim that Andy Warhol was of Slovak or even Czech origin. In fact, Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola - Varhola) was of Ruthenian origin. (Ruthenia was annexed to the Ukraine by the USSR in 1945).

The village of Mikova lies 17km away from Medzilaborce where the oldest museum of Andy Warhol (established in 1991) can be found.

Answer: Fürth, Germany

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Bavaria in 1923. He had to escape Germany during the Nazi dictatorship because of his Jewish origin.

Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is among the most successful US immigrants and wrote himself, so to speak, into US politics and the history of second half of the twentieth century remarkably successfully.

Answer: Bonn, Germany

Ludwig van Beethoven is linked to Austria and many people believe that he was an Austrian. In fact, Ludwig van Beethoven is a German composer and virtuoso pianists, student of Joseph Haydn in Vienna. Beethoven is famous especially because of 'Ode to Joy', which is official anthem of the European Union.

Answer: Braunau am Inn, Austria

The German president, Paul von Hindenburg referred to Hitler as 'the Bohemian corporal'. Hindenburg apparently confused Hitler's birthplace, Braunau am Inn with the small Czech town of Broumov in northern Bohemia, which is also called Braunau in German! (Oh, what a name!) Hitler was Austrian by birth, and didn't manage to acquire German citizenship till February 1932, less than twelve months before his appointment as Chancellor.

Hitler is responsible for the most evil atrocities in German history. His Reich cost around 50 million lives, many of them killed deliberately.

He poisoned and shot himself dead in Berlin on 30 April 1945 just one day after his wedding with Eva Braun.

Hitler is a focus for all kinds of irritating, wholly unsupported, urban legends, ranging from alleged part Jewish origin to homosexuality, incest, escaping from Berlin - and you just name it! Hitler's main work - "Mein Kampf" is banned in many European countries, including Germany and Austria.

Answer: Pribor, Moravia, Czech Republic

Freud had been born into a Jewish family in Moravian city of Pribor (in German Freiberg - not to be confused with various other places called Freiberg and Freiburg). He moved with family to Vienna at the age of three and stayed there for almost his entire life.

He had to spend the rest few months of his life in exile in London; Nazism forced him to leave Austria because of his Jewish origins. Freud's sisters were among the victims of Holocaust.

Answer: Cologne, Germany

Jacques Offenbach and Paris, Jacques Offenbach and operetta, Jacques Offenbach and cancan... This is what we know. But Jacques Offenbach a German composer? Come on... !

Offenbach had been born into a Jewish family as Jacob Eberst. Offenbach am Main is the birthplace of Jacob's father.

Offenbach is one of operetta fathers and, for many people, his gallop from "Orpheus in the Underworld" epitomizes the cancan.

Answer: Osnabrück, Germany

German writer Erich Paul Remark created his work under a pseudonym Erich Maria Remarque. The surname "Remarque" had been used by his great grandfather and was changed by his grandfather during 19th century. The author's work was banned during the Nazi era in Germany because of its content (especially pacificism). The Nazis claimed that he was of French-Jewish origin, but there is no evidence supporting this claim. Remarque died in Switzerland aged 72.

Answer: Kaliste, Czech Republic

Gustav Mahler, a most ingenious composer and conductor, was born into a Jewish family living in Kaliste, Bohemia. Mahler converted to Catholicism in order to be allowed to take up the directorship of Vienna Opera, one of the most prestigious positions achievable in Central Europe. Mahler's talents shone in Central Europe and were soon recognized worldwide. He had one season in Metropolitan Opera.

His own work is great favourite in CD shops around the world.

Answer: Málaga, Spain

"Only someone as ingenious as Picasso can paint something as strange as cubism..."

Pablo Picasso is widely accepted as father of cubism, but he went through multiple artistic periods. There is interesting story about one of his most well-know paintings - Guernica.
Pablo Picasso had been shocked by the first instance of area bombing - of the Basque town of Guernica by the Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War (April 1937). Picasso decided to create his Guernica painting depicting this Nazi atrocity.

A few years later, when one half of France was occupied by the Nazis and the other half was collaborating, a Wehrmacht officer asked Picasso, on seeing his painting, "Did you create it?" "No, I suppose you did so", answered the famous painter.

Answer: Liozna, Belarus

Belarusian-Jewish painter Moishe Shagal (Marc Chagall) belongs to generation that spent the majority of its time in France and is accepted as French. Marc Chagall was born in the Russian Empire (nowadays in Belarus) twenty years before the October Revolution changed the world. He died, aged 97, in France.