Gisbert Johann Eduard Kapp was born in Austria in 1852 and he became the first professor of electrical engineering at Birmingham University in 1905. Eric Ives explains in his book 'The First Civic University; Birmingham 1880-1980' that Kapp faced some adversity during the years of the first world war due to his German associations, along with other German speaking members of staff. Today he is remembered through the Gisbert Kapp Building, which is now the home of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering. The painter, Bernard Munns, was a Birmingham based portrait painter who lived between 1869 and 1942.