Lives in Brief

He left school as soon as possible and in time combined his passion with work, learning to sculpt with chocolate. He took the manipulation and production of his chosen material to new heights, and his skills as a master chef were recognised by the European parliament in Strasbourg and by the Pope, who was delighted by Escribá’s chocolate scale-model of the Vatican.

His Easter eggs became an integral part of Holy Week celebrations in Barcelona and farther afield. Every year he painted thousands of them by hand. His other “signature” sweet was a chocolate monkey.

A purist when it came to chocolate matters, Escribá fought a life-long battle against inferior products masquerading as the real thing. “I am a Che Guevara of chocolate,” he declared last year.

In May he was awarded the gold medal by Barcelona for his contribution to the city’s cultural patrimony. “People have always painted me as an artist, but I’m not, I’m a merchant, a businessman,” he said last year.

General Líber Seregni, Uruguayan soldier and politician, was born on December 13, 1916. He died on July 31, 2004, aged 87.

Líber Seregni was the founder of the left-wing party that, if the opinion polls are to be believed, will supply Uruguay with its next president: the Broad Front (Frente Amplio, or FA). He retired from active politics only a few months ago, after serving as president of the FA for a quarter of a century.

Seregni came to socialist politics by an unusual route: via Uruguay’s military academy and a career in the Army. He was always something of a nonconformist, but he nevertheless was made a general in 1963, and served briefly as army commander five years later. But he fell out with the President of the day, Jorge Pacheco Areco, over his handling of a left-wing insurgency, and applied for early retirement.

Once in civilian life, Seregni threw himself into building a democratic alternative to the guerrillas, known as the Tupamaros, and in 1971 he stood as presidential candidate for the newly formed Broad Front. He did not make much impact, however, on the prevailing two-party system, and within two years he was in prison: the military finally lost patience with civilian politicians, took control of government and arrested Seregni after he had taken part in street protests against the coup. His former colleagues regarded him as a traitor to the armed forces, and he was punished with a 14-year sentence.

He was released in 1984, returned to FA politics and stood again for president in 1989. He took a back seat thereafter, but the FA continued to grow, and to challenge the domination of Uruguayan politics by the traditional Colorado and Blanco (Red and White) parties.

Tiny Doll, actress, was born on July 23, 1914. She died on September 6, 2004, aged 90.

Elly Schneider was only 3ft 3in tall, but she exploited her lack of height to great effect, changing her name to Tiny Doll and pursuing a successful career as an actress and circus performer, along with three midget siblings. She appeared in several Hollywood films and was one of the last surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Born in Stolpen, Germany, in 1914, Elly was the youngest in a large family. Her elder brother Kurt and sister Frieda had enjoyed success as a song and dance act in Europe and were beginning to make a name for themselves in the US while Elly was still an infant. They appeared in Buffalo Bill’s show as Hans and Gretel, “the Smallest Dancing Couple in the World”.

A second sister followed them to America, and Elly completed the family troupe in the late Twenties. They adopted English names — Harry, Gracie, Daisy and Tiny, borrowing the surname Earles from an employer, which they later changed to Doll for obvious reasons. They were regulars in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus and promoted their film careers under the name the Moving Picture Midgets,.

Tiny Doll’s films included Special Delivery (1927), with Eddie Cantor, Three-Ring Marriage (1928), with Mary Astor, and Be Big (1931), with Laurel and Hardy. Harry and Daisy played lovers torn apart by the evil trapeze artist in Tod Browning’s classic Freaks (1932), in which Tiny had a supporting role. The “freaks” were sympathetically portrayed, and the message was that beauty was only skin-deep, but the film was banned in Britain for 30 years.

The leading family of midgets in American showbiz then wound up following the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz. More than 100 performers were hired from the US and Europe and paid $50 a week to play the little people who greet Dorothy on arrival in Munchkinland. Judy Garland complained that she had to fight off their advances, but stories of drunken orgies and fights seem to have been exaggerated.

The Doll Family continued working in circuses until the late Fifties, when they retired to live together in a large house in Sarasota, Florida. Tiny was the last of the troupe. She is survived by only nine of her fellow Munchkins.

Daouda Malam Wanke, soldier and former President of Niger, was born in 1946. He died of cardiovascular disease on September 15, 2004, aged 58.

Daouda Malam Wanke was a military commander who ruled the landlocked West African country of Niger for a short period at the turn of the century. As a bodyguard to the country’s President, Ibrahim Mainassara, Wanke led the assassination squad which in April 1999 shot dead the head of state. He then proclaimed himself head of an eight-man military Government. Wanke said he had carried out what was described as this “unfortunate act” because Mainassara had imprisoned opposition leaders and failed to pay his soldiers. However, the brutal action alienated Niger’s former colonial master, France, which threatened to withhold vital aid unless there was a prompt return to democracy.

Wanke, accordingly, set about organising democratic elections which, in October and November 1999 saw Niger’s current President, Tandja Mamadou, come to power with nearly 60 per cent of the vote. Elections to the legislative assembly enabled Mamadou to forge a coalition Government with the backing of supporters of former President Ousmane.

After eight months in power, Wanke formally handed over to Mamadou in February 2000. This ended a brief and undistinguished period during which Wanke had made little impact on the country’s economic problems and fragile social state, marked as it was by student and worker unrest and rebellions by the indigenous Tuareg movement.

Wanke was born in 1946 in Yellou, 125 miles south of the capital, Niamey. A career soldier, he had been ill for some time and died at his home in Niamey of unspecified heart trouble. He had recently received medical treatment in Libya, Morocco and Switzerland.

Wanke is survived by a wife and three children. The Niger authorities have, so far, announced no plans to commemorate officially an assassin who paved the way for a return to democracy.