Notable Deaths on August 14

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a lifelong collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, Brecht wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffekt.

Sergiu Celibidache was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Radio France, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and many other European orchestras such as the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra or the London Symphony Orchestra.

Leroy "Roy" Buchanan was an American guitarist and blues rock musician. A pioneer of the "Telecaster sound", Buchanan worked as a sideman and as a solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career and two later solo albums that made it to the Billboard chart. He never achieved stardom but is considered a highly influential guitarist. Guitar Player praised him as having one of the "50 Greatest Tones of All Time". He appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits in 1977.

Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935, Odets's socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play Clash by Night in the 1941–42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood until mid-1948. He returned to New York for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and, in the early- to mid-1950s, William Inge.

Tiberius II Constantine was Eastern Roman emperor from 578 to 582. Tiberius rose to power in 574 when Justin II, during an abatement in a period of severe mental illness, proclaimed him caesar and adopted him as his own son. In 578, the dying Justin II gave him the title of augustus, thus making Tiberius co-emperor alongside him. Tiberius became sole ruler less than two weeks later, assuming the regnal name of Constantine under which he reigned until his death. Tiberius' reign was marked by warfare with the Persians, as well as Avar incursions into the empire.

Margaret Mackall Taylor was the first lady of the United States from 1849 to 1850 as the wife of President Zachary Taylor. She married Zachary in 1810 and lived as an army wife, accompanying her husband to his postings in the American frontier. She had six children, two of whom died in childhood while the remaining four were sent to boarding schools in the eastern United States. After a brief period of stable domestic life in the 1840s, her husband was elected President of the United States to her dismay in 1848. She managed the White House from the upstairs residence while she delegated her responsibilities as White House hostess to her daughter. She was highly reclusive throughout her tenure as first lady, which ended abruptly with her husband's death in 1850. She lived in obscurity until her death two years later.

Michael Newbold Castle was an American politician and lawyer who served as the U.S. representative for Delaware's at-large congressional district from 1993 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 69th governor of Delaware from 1985 to 1992, lieutenant governor from 1981 to 1985, and as a member of the Delaware General Assembly from 1967 to 1977. As of 2025, Castle is the most recent Republican to represent Delaware in the U.S. Congress and to have been elected governor of the state.

Alice Childress was an American novelist, playwright, and actress, acknowledged as "the only African-American woman to have written, produced, and published plays for four decades." Childress described her work as trying to portray the have-nots in a have society, saying: "My writing attempts to interpret the 'ordinary' because they are not ordinary. Each human is uniquely different. Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvellously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne." Childress became involved in social causes, and formed an off-Broadway union for actors.

Hugo Eckener was the manager of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin during the inter-war years, and also the commander of the famous Graf Zeppelin for most of its record-setting flights, including the first airship flight around the world, making him the most successful airship commander in history. He was also responsible for the construction of the most successful type of airships of all time. An anti-Nazi who was invited to campaign as a moderate in the German presidential elections, he was blacklisted by the Nazi regime and eventually sidelined.

Hugh Trumble was an Australian cricketer who played 32 Test matches as a bowling all-rounder between 1890 and 1904. He captained the Australian team in two Tests, winning both. Trumble took 141 wickets in Test cricket—a world record at the time of his retirement—at an average of 21.78 runs per wicket. He is one of only four bowlers to twice take a hat-trick in Test cricket. Observers in Trumble's day, including the authoritative Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, regarded him as ranking among the great Australian bowlers of the Golden Age of cricket. He was named as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1897 and the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame, established in 1996, inducted him in 2004.

Frederick Benjamin Gipson was an American writer and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the 1956 novel Old Yeller, which became a popular 1957 Walt Disney film. Gipson was born on a farm near Mason in the Texas Hill Country, the son of Beck Gipson and Emma Deishler. After working at a variety of farming and ranching jobs, he enrolled in 1933 at the University of Texas at Austin. There he wrote for the Daily Texan and The Ranger, but he left school before graduating to become a newspaper journalist.

John I, also called John of Aviz, was King of Portugal from 1385 until his death in 1433. He is recognized chiefly for his role in Portugal's victory in a succession war with Castile, preserving his country's independence and establishing the Aviz dynasty on the Portuguese throne. His long reign of 48 years, the most extensive of all Portuguese monarchs, saw the beginning of Portugal's overseas expansion. John's well-remembered reign in his country earned him the epithet of Fond Memory.

Maximilian Maria Kolbe, OFM Conv. was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar, priest, missionary, and martyr. He volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications.

Delwar Hossain Sayeedi was a Bangladeshi Islamic leader, politician and scholar who served as a Member of Parliament representing the Pirojpur-1 constituency from 1996 to 2006. Before entering politics, Sayeedi was known for delivering Islamic lectures at various Waz Mahfils across the country to large audiences. Due to his role as a mufassir, Sayeedi received praise from the Saudi Arabian Chief Imam Sheikh Sudais, the President of the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques.

Robert Hugh Fearon Anderson was a British Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and racing driver. He competed in Grand Prix motorcycle racing from 1958 to 1960 and in Formula One from 1963 to the 1967 seasons. He was also a two-time winner of the North West 200 race in Northern Ireland. Anderson was one of the last independent privateer drivers in Formula One before escalating costs made it impossible to compete without sponsorship.

William Randolph Hearst was an American newspaper publisher and politician. He laid the foundation for the Hearst family's mass media empire via his control of the Hearst Corporation. His extravagant methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human-interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 with Mitchell Trubitt after being entrusted with The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father, Senator George Hearst.

Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his wife, Irène Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. They were the second married couple, after his parents-in-law, to win the Nobel Prize, adding to the Curie family legacy of four Nobel Prizes. Joliot-Curie and his wife also founded the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, part of the Paris-Saclay University.

Philip "Fyvush" Finkel was an American actor and director known as a star of Yiddish theater and for his role as lawyer Douglas Wambaugh on the television series Picket Fences, for which he earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 1994. He is also known for his portrayal of Harvey Lipschultz, a crotchety history teacher, on the television series Boston Public.