The  Goldmark (help·info) (officially just Mark, sign: ℳ) was the currency used in the German Empire from 1873 to 1914. The Papiermark refers to the German currency from 4 August 1914 when the link between the Mark and gold was abandoned.

Before unification, the different German states issued a variety of different currencies, though most were linked to the Vereinsthaler, a silver coin containing 16⅔ grams of pure silver. Although the Mark was based on gold rather than silver, a fixed exchange rate between the Vereinsthaler and the Mark of 3 Mark = 1 Vereinsthaler was used for the conversion. Southern Germany had used the Gulden as the standard unit of account, which was worth 4⁄7 of a Vereinsthaler and, hence, became worth 1.71 (1 5⁄7) Mark in the new currency. Bremen had used a gold based Thaler which was converted directly to the Mark at a rate of 1 gold Thaler = 3.32 (39⁄28) Mark. Hamburg had used its own Mark prior to 1873. This was replaced by the Goldmark at a rate of 1 Hamburg Mark = 1.2 Goldmark.

Thomas Gold (May 22, 1920 – June 22, 2004) was an Austrian-born astrophysicist, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (London). Gold was one of three young Cambridge scientists who in the 1950s proposed the now mostly abandoned 'steady state' hypothesis of the universe. Gold's work crossed academic and scientific boundaries, into biophysics, astronomy, aerospace engineering, and geophysics.

Gold was born on May 22, 1920 in Vienna, Austria to Max Gold, a wealthy Jewish industrialist (pre-war) who ran one of Austria's largest mining and metal fabrication companies, and German former actress Josefine Martin. Following the economic downfall of the European mining industry in the late 1920s, Max Gold moved his family to Berlin, where he had taken a job as director of a metal trading company. Following the start of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's anti-Jewish campaigns in 1933, Gold and his family left Germany because of his father's heritage. The family traveled through Europe for the next few years. Gold attended boarding school at the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz in Zuoz, Switzerland, where he quickly proved to be a clever, competitive and physically and mentally aggressive individual. Gold finished his schooling at Zuoz in 1938, and fled with his family to England after the German invasion of Austria in early 1938. Gold entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1939 and began studying mechanical sciences. In May 1940, just as Hitler was commencing his advance in Belgium and France, Gold was sent into internment as an enemy alien by the British government. It was on the first night of internment, at an army barracks in Bury St Edmunds, that he met his future collaborator and close friend, Hermann Bondi.

Leo Slezak (18 August 1873 – 1 June 1946) was a world-famous Moravian tenor. He was associated in particular with German opera as well as the title role in Verdi's Otello.

Born in Šumperk (Mährisch-Schönberg), Slezak worked as a gardener, an engineer's fitter and served in the army before taking singing lessons with the first-class baritone and pedagogue Adolf Robinson. He made his debut in 1896 in Brno (Brünn) and proceeded to sing leading roles in Bohemia and Germany, appearing at Breslau and, in 1898-99, at Berlin. From 1901 onwards he was a permanent member of the Vienna State Opera's roster of artists, achieving star status.

Slezak's international career commenced in London at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he sang Siegfried (a punishing role that he would soon drop from his repertoire) and Lohengrin in 1900. (He would return to Covent Garden in 1909 after undertaking further vocal studies in Paris the previous year with a great tenor of a previous era, Jean de Reszke.)

Slezak secured a three-year contract with the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1909. Met audiences acclaimed him in performances of works by Wagner and Verdi. Along with Italy's Giovanni Zenatello, he became the most famous Otello of his generation, famously performing the role at the Met with Arturo Toscanini conducting.

Karl Goldmark, also known originally as Károly Goldmark (Hungarian: Goldmark Károly) and later sometimes as Carl Goldmark; May 18, 1830, Keszthely – January 2, 1915, Vienna) was a Hungarian composer.

Goldmark came from a large Jewish family, one of 20 children. His father was a chazan to the Jewish congregation at Keszthely, Hungary. His early training as a violinist was at the musical academy of Sopron (1842–44). He continued his music studies there and two years later was sent by his father to Vienna, where he was able to study for some eighteen months with Leopold Jansa before his money ran out. He prepared himself for entry first to the Vienna Technische Hochschule and then to the Vienna Conservatory to study the violin with Joseph Böhm and harmony with Gottfried Preyer. The Revolution of 1848 forced the Conservatory to close down. He was largely self-taught as a composer. He supported himself in Vienna playing the violin in theatre orchestras, at the Carlstheater and the privately supported Viennese institution, the Theater in der Josefstadt, which gave him practical experience with orchestration, an art he more than mastered. He also gave lessons: Jean Sibelius studied with him briefly. Goldmark's first concert in Vienna (1858) met with hostility, and he returned to Budapest, returning to Vienna in 1860.

Antoine Konrad (born June 23, 1975), better known as DJ Antoine, is a Swiss-Lebanese house and electro DJ and producer, from Beirut, Lebanon. He has had a number of successful single and album releases in Western Europe, in particular Switzerland and France. DJ Antoine's first notable release was the 2000 album Houseworks 01, and he has since released many albums in the last years. One of his releases, Jealousy (released in 2007) was one of his best selling albums.Also, In 2010, he released the summer hits "Welcome To St. Tropez (Feat. Kalenna)" and "Sunlight (Feat. Tom Dice).^{[citation needed]}

With more than 1,5 million sold albums, 34 gold records, 5 platinum awards, 1 double-platin award and owning the record label „Houseworks“, DJ Antoine is the internationally most successful DJ of Switzerland.

His career officially took off in 1995, when he opened his club called House Café in the city of Basel. This club is the benchmark for the progress of the whole scene in Basel and the cult-parties are still in fond memories. After a short tip into the Swiss Hip Hop scene, DJ Antoine had quickly switched genre, getting hooked on the Pumping-House-Wave. In 1998, he released his first album “DJ Antoine – The Pumpin’ House Mix”. 1999 “Houseworks 1” won the first gold award. After that, things started to move very fast. Until this day, DJ Antoine has produced 51 CDs, strongly establishing his music and himself in the music and clubbing scene. Since 2003 he has been hosting his own weekly radio show, which is broadcasted by radio stations all over the world.