August 17, 2014

2014Børre Knudsen, Norwegian minister and activist (born 1937)^[†]

Børre Arnold Knudsen (1937–2014) was a Norwegian Lutheran priest noted for his anti-abortion activism. Together with Ludvig Nessa, he staged protests at abortion clinics starting in the late 1980s, and he spent time in jail for refusing to pay fines received for his protests.

2014Wolfgang Leonhard, German historian and author (born 1921)^[†]

Wolfgang Leonhard was a German political author and historian of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and Communism. A German Communist whose family had fled Hitler's Germany and who was educated in the Soviet Union, after World War II Leonhard became one of the founders and leaders of the German Democratic Republic until he became disillusioned and fled in 1949, first defecting to Yugoslavia and then moving to West Germany in 1950 and later to the United Kingdom. In 1956 he moved to the United States, where he was a popular and influential professor at Yale University from 1966 to 1987, teaching the history of communism and the Soviet Union, topics about which he wrote several books. After the Cold War ended, he returned to Germany.

2014Sophie Masloff, American civil servant and politician, 56th Mayor of Pittsburgh (born 1917)^[†]

Sophie Masloff was an American politician. A long-time member of the Democratic Party and civil servant, she was elected to the Pittsburgh City Council and later served as the mayor of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 1994. She was the first and to date only woman and the first Jew to hold that office.

2014Miodrag Pavlović, Serbian poet and critic (born 1928)^[†]

Miodrag Pavlović was a Serbian poet, physician writer, critic and academic. Pavlović was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.