History.

In 1863 a group of fourteen students decided to leave the Imperial Academy of Arts. The students found the rules of the Academy constraining; the teachers were conservative and there was a strict separation between high and low art. In an effort to bring art to the people, the students formed an independent artistic society; The Petersburg Cooperative of Artists (Artel). In 1870, this organization was largely succeeded by the Association of Travelling Art Exhibits (Peredvizhniki) to give people from the provinces a chance to follow the achievements of Russian Art, and to teach people to appreciate art. The society maintained independence from state support and brought the art, which illustrated the contemporary life of the people from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, to the provinces.  From 1871 to 1923, the society arranged 48 mobile exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Moscow, after which they were shown in Kyiv, Kharkov, Kazan, Oryol, Riga, Odessa and other cities.

Influence of literary critics.

Peredvizhniki were influenced by the public views of the literary critics Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, both of whom espoused liberal ideas. Belinsky thought that literature and art should attribute a social and moral responsibility. Like most Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky ardently supported the emancipation of serfs, which was finally realized in the reform of 1861. He viewed press censorship, serfdom, and capital punishment as Western influences. Because of his political activism, officials prohibited publication of any of his writing, including his dissertation; but it eventually found its way to the artworld of nineteenth-century Russia. In 1863, almost immediately after the emancipation of serfs, Chernyshevsky’s goals were realized with the help of Peredvizhniki, who took the pervasive Slavophile-populist idea that Russia had a distinguishable, modest, inner beauty of its own and worked out how to display it on canvas.

Subjects of the paintings.

Peredvizhniki portrayed the many-sided aspects of social life, often critical of inequities and injustices. But their art showed not only poverty but also the beauty of the folk way of life; not only suffering but also fortitude and strength of characters. Peredvizhniki condemned the Russian aristocratic orders and autocratic government in their humanistic art. They portrayed the emancipation movement of Russian people with empathy ("The Arrest of Propagandist"; "Refuse from Confession"; "Not Expected" by Ilya Yefimovich Repin). They portrayed social-urban life, and later used historic art to depict the common people ("The Morning of the Execution of Streltsy" by Vasily Surikov).  During their blossoming (1870–1890), the Peredvizhniki society developed an increasingly wider scope, with more natural and free images. In contrast to the traditional dark palette of the time, they chose a lighter palette, with a freer manner in their technique. They worked for naturalness in their images, and the depiction of people's relationship with their surroundings. The society united most of the highly talented artists of the country. Among Peredvizhniki there were artists of Ukraine, Latvia, and Armenia. The society also showed the work of Mark Antokolski, Vasili Vereshchagin, and Andrei Ryabushkin. The work of the critic and democrat Vladimir Stasov was important for the development of Peredvizhniki's art. Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov showed the work of these artists in his gallery and gave them important material and moral support.

Landscape as the most popular genre of Peredvizhniki.

Landscape painting flourished in the 1870s and 1880s. Peredvizhniki painted mainly landscapes; some, like Polenov, used plein air technique. Two painters, Ivan Shishkin and Isaak Levitan, painted only landscapes of Russia. Shishkin is still considered to be the Russian "Singer of forest", while Levitan's landscapes are famous for their intense moods. The Russian landscape gained importance as a national icon after Peredvizhniki.  Peredvizhniki painted landscapes to explore the beauty of their own country and encourage ordinary people to love and preserve it. Levitan once said, "I imagine such a gracefulness in our Russian land – overflowing rivers bringing everything back to life. There is no country more beautiful than Russia! There can be a true landscapist only in Russia". Peredvizhniki gave a national character to landscapes, so people of other nations could recognize Russian landscape. The landscapes of Peredvizhniki are the symbolic embodiments of Russian nationality.

Reproduction of works.

Even though the number of travelling exhibition visitors from the provinces was increasing during the years, the main audience was the urban elite. Local photographers created the first reproductions of Peredvizhniki's paintings, which helped popularize the works and could be bought at exhibitions. "Niva" magazine also published illustrated articles about the exhibitions. Since 1898 the landscapes of the society have been used in the postcard industry. Various books of poems were published with the illustrations of landscapes. Ordinary Russian people at that time could not afford to go to Moscow or Saint Petersburg, so popularization of Russian art made them familiar with a number of Russian art masterpieces. Even now publishers use the reproductions in textbooks as a visual icon of national identity.

Decline of creativity.

As the authority and public influence of the society steadily grew, government officials had to stop their efforts to repress the members. Attempts were made to subordinate their activity, and raise the falling value of Academy of Arts-sanctioned works. By the 1890s, the Academy of Arts structure was including Peredvizhniki art in its classes and history, and the influence of the artists showed in national art schools.  In 1898, their influence began to be superseded by Mir iskusstva, which advanced modern trends in Russian art. Some of the members of Peredvizhniki became more conservative, but some remained as radical as their predecessors. Some of the artists began showing socialist ideas, which reflected the development of a working-class movement. Many of the Peredvizhniki entered the Soviet art culture bringing the realistic traditions of the 19th century to socialist realism.  The 48th exhibition of Peredvizhniki in 1923 was the last one. Most members joined the Association of Artists in Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR). Its members built on the traditions of Peredvizhniki and aspired to create works of art accessible to the common people and faithfully reflecting the righteousness of Soviet society.

Members.

"Peredvizhniki" artists included:

Peredvizhniki (), often called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, were a group of Russian realist artists who formed an artists' cooperative in protest of academic restrictions; it evolved into the "Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions" in 1870.


Culture.

Louveciennes was frequented by impressionist painters in the 19th century; according to the official site, there are over 120 paintings by Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, and Monet depicting Louveciennes.  The composer Camille Saint-Saëns lived in Louveciennes from 1865 to 1870.  Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, the most famous female painter of the 18th century, died in Louveciennes on 30 March 1842.  Anaïs Nin was a popular Cuban novelist born in Neuilly, an area in Paris and lived in Louveciennes from 1930 to 1936 at 2 bis, rue Montbuisson. The start of her career as an author started in this town.  Louis, 7th duc de Broglie, physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, died in Louveciennes 19 March 1987.  Orchestra conductor Charles Munch resided in Louveciennes at Place Emile Dreux, in the village of Voisins during the last decade of his life (1958–68). A plaque to that effect has been placed on the residence.

History.

Until 1964, Louveciennes belonged to the former Seine-et-Oise "département".  NATO had barracks for SHAPE here from 1959–1967, and the American School of Paris was located nearby from 1959 to 1967.

Transport.

Louveciennes is accessible by two Paris metro lines: LINE 17 Saint Nom la Bretèche - Le Chesnay - Versailles Rive Droite and LINE 17S: Maule - Le Chesnay - Versailles Rive Droite. Two bus routes to and from Paris which operate a night service are easily accessible. Lines 55-1 and LINE 55 -2 are used to go to Le Celle Saint Cloud, Bougival, and other western suburbs of Paris.

Economy.

After SHAPE left France, the French government allocated the property to CII, which soon thereafter became part of CII Honeywell Bull. Groupe Bull still has offices in Louveciennes.

Twin towns.

Louveciennes is twinned with:

Louveciennes is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi.


Life.

Maximilian was born on 29 September 1902, and baptized in Vienna two days later with Archduke Charles Stephen of Austria as sponsor. From birth he had the lesser princely title and the nobiliary particle "von Hohenberg" accorded his mother as a predicate at the time of her marriage, and in 1905 shared with his siblings her receipt of the style "Serene Highness". Although Sophie had been raised from Princess ("Fürstin") to Duchess ("Herzogin") in 1909 by Emperor Franz Joseph, because that title was accorded "ad personam", Maximilian did not inherit it upon her death in 1914. On 31 August 1917, however, Emperor Charles I granted him the dukedom on a hereditary basis, simultaneously raising his treatment from "Serene Highness" ("Durchlaucht") to "Highness" ("Hoheit").  In 1911, it was rumored among French circles that Germany planned to install Maximilian as Imperial Governor of Alsace-Lorraine.  Following the assassination of his parents in Sarajevo in 1914, which resulted in the outbreak of World War I, Maximilian, his sister, Princess Sophie and their brother, Prince Ernst, were initially taken in by their maternal aunt and uncle Marie and Jaroslav, Prince and Princess von Thun und Hohenstein, subsequently being raised in the care of their step-grandmother, Archduchess Maria-Theresa of Austria.  In 1919, following the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, the new republic of Czechoslovakia expropriated Konopiště Castle, Maximilian's chief residence, and other family properties in the former Kingdom of Bohemia, and expelled the brothers to Austria. Subsequently, they lived in Vienna and at Artstetten Castle in Lower Austria. Maximilian obtained a law degree from the University of Graz in 1926. He managed the family properties and worked as a lawyer.  Because he had never been a dynast of the Austrian Imperial Family, he was neither banished nor his properties expropriated under Austria's law of exile of 3 April 1919. Remaining in Vienna, by the 1930s the Duke became the leader within Austria of a significant movement for restoration of the monarchy and of his kinsman Otto von Habsburg to the former Imperial throne.  In March 1938, Austria became part of the German Reich as a result of the "Anschluss". Having spoken out for the independence of Austria and against the "Anschluss", Maximilian and his brother were arrested by the "Reich" authorities and interned in Dachau concentration camp, where they were chiefly employed in cleaning the latrines. According to Leopold Figl (who served as Chancellor of Austria after World War II), they did so cheerfully and maintained comradely relations with fellow prisoners. Maximilian was released after six months (Ernst was transferred to other concentration camps and released only in 1943) and was then compelled to stay at Artstetten Castle; the "Reich" authorities also expropriated the family's other properties in Austria.  After the liberation of Austria in 1945, the residents of Artstetten elected Maximilian as mayor, with the concurrence of the Soviet occupation authorities. He served two five-year terms as mayor.  Maximilian died on 8 January 1962 at the age of 59. He is buried in the crypt of the Hohenberg family's Artstetten Castle. His wife's remains are in a sarcophagus to his left. His eldest son, Franz, took the ducal title.

Marriage and issue.

Maximilian married on 16 November 1926 in Wolfegg, Countess Maria Elisabeth Bona von Waldburg zu Wolfegg und Waldsee (10 August 1904 in Bad Waldsee – 13 March 1993 in Salzburg). They had six sons:

Maximilian, Duke von Hohenberg ("Maximilian Karl Franz Michael Hubert Anton Ignatius Joseph Maria"; 29 September 1902 – 8 January 1962), was the elder son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife Countess Sophie Chotek von Chotkowa und Wognin, Duchess von Hohenberg. Because his parents' marriage was morganatic, he was excluded from succession to the Austro-Hungarian throne, to which his father was heir presumptive, and to inheritance of any of his father's dynastic titles, income and properties, although not from the archduke's personal estate nor from his mother's property.


Design and development.

The designation Me 209 was used for two separate projects during World War II. The first was a record-setting, single-engined race aircraft, for which little or no consideration was given to adaptation for combat. The second Me 209 was a proposal for a follow-up to the highly successful Messerschmitt Bf 109 which served as the Luftwaffe's primary fighter throughout World War II.  Designed in 1937, the Me 209 was a completely separate aircraft from the Bf 109, solely designed to break speed records. It shared only its Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine with the Bf 109, which in the Me 209 was equipped with steam cooling. Willy Messerschmitt designed the small aircraft with a cockpit placed far back along the fuselage just in front of its unique cross-shaped tail section. Unlike the Bf 109, the Me 209 featured a wide track, inwardly-retracting undercarriage mounted in the wing section.

Testing.

The aircraft achieved its purpose when test pilot Fritz Wendel flew it to a new world speed record of almost 756 km/h (469 mph) on 26 April 1939, bearing the German civil registration D-INJR. This record was not officially broken by another piston-engined aircraft until 16 August 1969 by Darryl Greenamyer's highly modified Conquest I F8F Bearcat, now at the Smithsonian's NASM. The Me 209 V1's speed record was itself shattered in terms of absolute speed, eighteen months later by Heini Dittmar, flying another Messerschmitt aircraft design, the Me 163A V4 rocket fighter prototype to a 1,004 km/h (624 mph) record in October 1941.  The idea of adapting the Me 209 racer to the fighter role gained momentum when, during the Battle of Britain, the Bf 109 failed to gain superiority over the RAF Supermarine Spitfire. The little record-setter, however, was not up to the task of air combat. Its wings were almost completely occupied by the engine's liquid cooling system and therefore prohibited conventional installation of armament. The aircraft also proved difficult to fly and extremely hard to control on the ground. Nevertheless, the Messerschmitt team made several attempts to improve the aircraft's performance by giving it longer wings, a taller vertical stabilizer, and installing two synchronized 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine guns in the engine cowling. Its various modifications, however, added so much weight that the Me 209 ended up slower than the contemporary Bf 109E. This first Me 209 project was soon cancelled.

Propaganda use.

The Me 209's designation was used by Messerschmitt as a propaganda tool. Although the aircraft was a "single purpose" high-speed experimental prototype, it was hoped that its name would associate it and its world-beating performance with the Bf 109 already in combat service.  In 1939, the speed record achievement of the Me-209 was used for a propaganda disinformation campaign, wherein the aircraft (possibly from its post-July 1938 first flight date) was given the designation Me 109R, with the later prefix, never used for wartime Bf 109 fighters. This disinformation was naturally designed to give an aura of invincibility to the Bf 109, an aura not dispelled until the conclusion of the Battle of Britain.

Surviving aircraft.

The fuselage of the Me 209 V1 is currently on display, at the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków, Poland and was once a part of Hermann Göring's personal collection.

References.

Notes Bibliography

The first Messerschmitt Me 209 was a single-engine racing aircraft which was designed for and succeeded at breaking speed records. This Me 209 was a completely new aircraft whose designation was used by Messerschmitt as a propaganda tool. Although the aircraft was designed only to break speed records, it was hoped that its name would associate it with the Bf 109 already in combat service.


Life.

Shklovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was Lithuanian Jewish (with ancestors from Shklov) and his mother was of German/Russian origin. He attended St. Petersburg University.  During the First World War, he volunteered for the Russian Army and eventually became a driving trainer in an armoured car unit in St. Petersburg. There, in 1916, he founded OPOYAZ (Obshchestvo izucheniya POeticheskogo YAZyka—Society for the Study of Poetic Language), one of the two groups (with the Moscow Linguistic Circle) that developed the critical theories and techniques of Russian Formalism.  Shklovsky participated in the February Revolution of 1917. Subsequently, the Russian Provisional Government sent him as an assistant Commissar to the Southwestern Front where he was wounded and got an award for bravery. After that he was an assistant Commissar of the Russian Expeditionary Corps in Persia (see Persian Campaign).  Shklovsky returned to St. Petersburg in early 1918, after the October Revolution. He opposed bolshevism and took part in an anti-bolshevik plot organised by members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. After the conspiracy was discovered by the Cheka, Shklovsky went into hiding, traveling in Russia and the Ukraine, but was eventually pardoned in 1919 due to his connections with Maxim Gorky, and decided to abstain from political activity. His two brothers were executed by the Soviet regime (one in 1918, the other in 1937) and his sister died from hunger in St. Petersburg in 1919.  Shklovsky integrated into Soviet society and even took part in the Russian Civil War, serving in the Red Army. However, in 1922, he had to go into hiding once again, as he was threatened with arrest and possible execution for his former political activities, and he fled via Finland to Germany. In Berlin, in 1923, he published his memoirs about the period 1917–22 under the title "Сентиментальное путешествие, воспоминания" ("Sentimental'noe puteshestvie, vospominaniia", "A Sentimental Journey"), alluding to "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" by Laurence Sterne, an author he much admired and whose digressive style had a powerful influence on Shklovsky's writing. In the same year he was allowed to return to the Soviet Union, not least because of an appeal to Soviet authorities that he included in the last pages of his epistolary novel "Zoo, or Letters Not About Love".  The Yugoslav scholar Mihajlo Mihajlov visited Shklovsky in 1963 and wrote: "I was much impressed by Shklovsky's liveliness of spirit, his varied interests and his enormous culture. When we said goodbye to Viktor Borisovich and started for Moscow, I felt that I had met one of the most cultured, most intelligent and best-educated men of our century."  He died in Moscow in 1984.

Writer and theorist.

In addition to literary criticism and biographies about such authors as Laurence Sterne, Maxim Gorky, Leo Tolstoy, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, he wrote a number of semi-autobiographical works disguised as fiction, which also served as experiments in his developing theories of literature.  Shklovsky is perhaps best known for developing the concept of "ostranenie" or defamiliarization (also translated as "estrangement") in literature. He explained the concept in 1917 in the important essay "Art as Technique" (also translated as "Art as Device") which comprised the first chapter of his seminal "Theory of Prose", first published in 1925. He argued for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a cliché in the literary canon, into something revitalized:  Among other things, Shklovsky also contributed the plot/story distinction (syuzhet/fabula), which separates out the sequence of events the work relates (the story) from the sequence in which those events are presented in the work (the plot).  Shklovsky's work pushes Russian Formalism towards understanding literary activity as integral parts of social practice, an idea that becomes important in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Russian and Prague School scholars of semiotics. Shklovsky's thought also influenced western thinkers, partly due to Tzvetan Todorov's translations of the works of Russian formalists in the 1960s and 1970s, including Tzvetan Todorov himself, Gerard Genette and Hans Robert Jauss.

Film.

Shklovsky was one of the very early serious writers on film. A collection of his essays and articles on film was published in 1923 ("Literature and Cinematography", first English edition 2008). He was a close friend of director Sergei Eisenstein and published an extensive critical assessment of his life and works (Moscow 1976, no English translation).  Beginning in the 1920s and well into the 1970s Shklovsky worked as a screenwriter on numerous Soviet films (see "Select Filmography" below), a part of his life and work that, thus far, has seen very limited attention. In his book "Third Factory" Shklovsky reflects on his work in film, writing: "First of all, I have a job at the third factory of Goskino. Second of all, the name isn't hard to explain. The first factory was my family and school. The second was Opoyaz. And the third – is processing me at this very moment."

External links.

"Victor Shklovsky and Roman Jacobson. Life as a Novel" documentary film by Vladimir Nepevny

Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures associated with Russian formalism.


Description.

The leaves are deeply lobed with three to seven toothed, pointed lobes in a palmate shape. The main flowering stem is erect, and varies greatly in size between the species, from 10 centimetres in some alpine species, up to 2 m tall in the larger meadowland species.  In June and July (Northern Hemisphere), the plant is topped with a raceme of many flowers, varying in colour from purple and blue, to red, yellow, or white. In most species each flower consists of five petal-like sepals which grow together to form a hollow pocket with a spur at the end, which gives the plant its name, usually more or less dark blue. Within the sepals are four true petals, small, inconspicuous, and commonly coloured similarly to the sepals. The eponymous long spur of the upper sepal encloses the nectar-containing spurs of the two upper petals.  The seeds are small and often shiny black. The plants flower from late spring to late summer, and are pollinated by butterflies and bumble bees. Despite the toxicity, "Delphinium" species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including the dot moth and small angle shades.

Taxonomy.

Delineation of "Delphinium".

Genetic analysis suggests that "Delphinium" "sensu lato", as it was delineated before the 21st century, is polyphyletic. Nested within "Delphinium" "s.l." are "Aconitella", "Consolida", and "Aconitum". To make "Delphinium" monophyletic, several interventions were made. The new genus "Staphisagria" was erected containing "Staphisagria macrosperma" ("D. staphisagria"), "S. requienii" ("D. requini") and "S. picta" ("D. pictum"), representing the sister group to all other Delphinieae. Further genetic analysis has shown that the two large subgenera "Aconitum (Aconitum)" and "Aconitum (Lycoctonum)" are the sister group to "Aconitum gymnandrum", "Delphinium (Delphinium)", "Delphinium (Delphinastrum)", "Consolida" and "Aconitella". To make "Aconitum" monophyletic, "A. gymnandrum" has now been reassigned to a new monotypic genus, "Gymnaconitum". Finally, "Consolida" and "Aconitella" are synonymized with "Delphinium".

Subgenera.

"D. arthriscifolium" is sister to all other species of "Delphinium" "sensu stricto" (so excluding "Staphisagria"). It should be placed in its own subgenus, but no proposal naming this subgenus has been made yet. The subgenera "Delphinium (Delphinium)" and "Delphinium (Delphinastrum)" are sister to the group consisting of the species of "Consolida" and "Aconitella", which together make up the subgenus "Delphinium (Consolida)". "Aconitella" cannot be retained as a subgenus because "A. barbata" does not cluster with the remaining species previously assigned to that genus, without creating five further subgenera.

Selected species.

Species include:

Reassigned species.

Several species of "Delphinium" have been reassigned:

Ecology.

Delphiniums can attract butterflies and other pollinators.

Cultivation.

Various delphiniums are cultivated as ornamental plants, for traditional and native plant gardens. The numerous hybrids and cultivars are primarily used as garden plants, providing height at the back of the summer border, in association with roses, lilies, and geraniums.  Most delphinium hybrids and cultivars are derived from "D. elatum". Hybridisation was developed in the 19th century, led by Victor Lemoine in France. Other hybrid crosses have included "D. bruninianum", "D. cardinale", "D. cheilanthum", and "D. formosum".  Numerous cultivars have been selected as garden plants, and for cut flowers and floristry. They are available in shades of white, pink, purple, and blue. The blooming plant is also used in displays and specialist competitions at flower and garden shows, such as the Chelsea Flower Show.  The 'Pacific Giant' hybrids are a group with individual single-colour cultivar names, developed by Reinelt in the United States. They typically grow to tall on long stems, by wide. They reportedly can tolerate deer. Millennium delphinium hybrids, bred by Dowdeswell's in New Zealand, are reportedly better in warmer climates than the Pacific hybrids. Flower colours in shades of red, orange, and pink have been hybridized from "D. cardinale" by Americans Reinelt and Samuelson.

Award of garden merit.

The following delphinium cultivars have received the Award of Garden Merit from the British Royal Horticultural Society:

Toxicity.

All parts of these plants are considered toxic to humans, especially the younger parts, causing severe digestive discomfort if ingested, and skin irritation. Larkspur, especially tall larkspur, is a significant cause of cattle poisoning on rangelands in the western United States. Larkspur is more common in high-elevation areas, and many ranchers delay moving cattle onto such ranges until late summer when the toxicity of the plants is reduced. Death is through cardiotoxic and neuromuscular blocking effects, and can occur within a few hours of ingestion. All parts of the plant contain various diterpenoid alkaloids, typified by methyllycaconitine, and are very poisonous.

Uses.

The juice of the flowers, particularly "D. consolida", mixed with alum, gives a blue ink.  All plant parts are poisonous in large doses, especially the seeds, that contain up to 1.4% of alkaloids.

Delphinium is a genus of about 300 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae, native throughout the Northern Hemisphere and also on the high mountains of tropical Africa. The genus was erected by Carl Linnaeus.


Early life and family.

Of English, Chinese, Czech, and Austrian ancestry, Alexandra Manley was born in Hong Kong, as the eldest of three daughters of Richard Nigel Manley (born in Shanghai, China on 11 August 1924 to a father of English and Chinese ancestry, died 12 January 2010, buried 10 February 2010 in Liesing Cemetery, Vienna) and Christa Maria Manley of Czech and Austrian descent (born Christa Maria Nowotny in Austria in 1933). Her father was an insurance company executive and her mother was the manager of a communications company. She was christened at the Cathedral of Saint John, Hong Kong. She attended Quarry Bay Junior School (1969–1971), Glenealy School (1971–1974) and Island School (1974–1982), all in Hong Kong.  Manley studied international business at Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria. She also went to Japan and England for studies. It is not known whether she obtained a university degree. From 1990 to 1995, she was employed by GT Management (Asia) Ltd., Hong Kong, where from 1990–1993 she worked in Sales and Marketing and from 1993 as a deputy chief executive of that department.

First marriage and children.

Alexandra met Prince Joachim at a party in Hong Kong, where he was working for a Danish shipping company. After a whirlwind courtship, thought to have begun in late 1994, Prince Joachim, on bended knee, presented Alexandra with a diamond and ruby engagement ring while the couple vacationed together in the Philippines. Their engagement, which took both Alexandra's family and Danish royal Watchers by surprise, was officially revealed in May 1995.  They were married on 18 November 1995, by Queen Margrethe's Chaplain-in-Ordinary, in the Chapel of Frederiksborg Castle at Hillerød. The wedding festivities were held at Fredensborg Palace. The bride's gown was designed by Jørgen Bender; she wore the Alexandrine Drop Tiara, originally the property of Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, which was a wedding gift from Queen Margrethe.  When she married Prince Joachim, she gave up her career in marketing. It is believed that she had renounced her British citizenship prior to become a Danish subject upon her marriage.  Prince Joachim and Princess Alexandra have two children from their former marriage:

Life as a princess.

Alexandra became popular with the Danish people. Known for her fashion sense and charity work, she was dubbed the Diana of the North. She is a native English and German speaker (through her father and mother, respectively), and her fluency in German helped her pick up the Danish language quickly. Within a few months she spoke it nearly without accent, which further endeared her to the Danes. As she said in an interview, "I don't find the grammar especially difficult, but the pronunciation can be hard, since we swallow some of our words. It reminds me a little of Chinese, with the glottal stop... Saying something with an upswing or a downswing can give a word an entirely different meaning," she explained. "It was my decision to learn the language immediately. It would have been terrible to have to stand up and speak English at an engagement, or thank someone for something. It would have been utterly wrong. This is my home, and so there was no other option".  Both during and after her marriage, she was involved in numerous philanthropic pursuits, including the Children's Red Cross, the Danish Society for the Blind, UNICEF, and single mothers' advocacy group Mother Help. She also served as a UNICEF ambassador when she travelled to Thailand to visit HIV/AIDS patients.

End of marriage.

By mid-2004, rumours were circulating throughout Denmark and neighbouring Sweden and Norway that her marriage to Prince Joachim had gone sour. On 16 September 2004, Alexandra and Joachim announced their separation and eventual intention to divorce. It would be the first in the Royal Family since 1846. Newspaper reports speculating on the reasons for the marital rupture soon followed. The Folketing decided to put Alexandra on the civil list for life, independent of her possible future remarriage. Alexandra's payments of her new yearly allowance of 2.1m kroner (US$330,000) started retroactively from 1 October 2004. The couple divorced on 8 April 2005.  On 23 June 2017, she announced that she would renounce her entitlement to the Danish civil list in July 2020, coinciding with the 18th birthday of Prince Felix.

Second marriage and current life.

In mid-2005 there were reports and pictures of Alexandra together with Martin Jørgensen (b. 2 March 1978 in Valby), the son of Jacob Jørgensen. Jacob Jørgensen is well known in Denmark for his film production company JJ Film, which produced numerous documentaries in which members of the royal family co-operated and participated.  She married Martin Jørgensen on 3 March 2007 in a private ceremony at Øster Egede Church near Fakse. In September 2015, it was announced that Jørgensen and the Countess were divorcing after eight and a half years of marriage. The Countess had cited differences in values as the reason for the divorce. According to "Royal Central", the divorce was finalized in 2015.  In 2007 the Countess of Frederiksborg joined the Danish board of directors of Ferring Pharmaceuticals.  In 2017, it was announced that she would take up the position of Poling Chair of Business and Government at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. In August 2017 she attended the 18th birthday party of her son Prince Nikolai along with many members of the royal family, including Queen Margrethe II.

Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, ("née" Alexandra Christina Manley; born 30 June 1964) is the former first wife of Prince Joachim of Denmark, the younger son of Margrethe II of Denmark.


Chassis design.

The familiar range of PSA powertrains drove the front wheels of a seemingly conventionally designed chassis. At the front was a standard MacPherson strut layout with anti-roll bar, while the rear used the PSA Peugeot-Citroën fully independent trailing arm/torsion bar set up, which was first introduced on the estate of the Peugeot 305.  However, PSA's chassis engineers employed some unusual features, including passive rear wheel steering, though less than on the ZX, (by means of specially designed compliance bushes in the rear suspension), and inhouse developed and constructed shock absorbers.  At high mileages, this is prone to wear of the axle mounting bushes which is easily fixed. It is also prone to wear in the rear axle trailing arm bearings, which then wear the trailing arm axle tubes, requiring an expensive rebuild or a replacement axle assembly.  The diesel and larger capacity petrol engines are canted as far back as possible in the engine bay, in an effort to put as much weight as possible behind the front axle line, also reducing the centre of gravity, while improving weight distribution and minimising understeer.

Overview.

Pre-facelift.

The original Xsara was launched in September 1997, and was available with different engine choices:

Facelift.

In September 2000, the Xsara was facelifted. The car was now stiffer (safety and handling improved), had a new front design and some interior modifications (i.e.: new steering wheel). The facelift also saw the introduction of multiplex wiring.  However, the wiring used was too thin, resulting in multiple wires breaking with frequent use, especially in the driver's door, thereby rendering the driver's door window, central locking and interior lights unusable. Citroën do not acknowledge this as a problem, and do not issue door wiring harnesses as a spare.  New 1.6i and 2.0i 16 valve engines were being introduced and 1.8L were removed. Now Xsara is offered with following engine choices:  The model of 2002 had slight interior modifications (e.g. a different way of controlling the sound system from the steering wheel). In February 2003, there were also some exterior modifications (e.g. new front bumper).  The Xsara hatchback was discontinued, and replaced by the C4 in November 2004. The Xsara continues to be produced for the Chinese market by Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën Automobile, a joint venture with the PSA Group. The Xsara Picasso small MPV was continued, concurrently with its successor that was based on the C4. 'Picasso' becoming the name for MPV derivatives of any Citroën model.

The Citroën Xsara was a small family car (C-segment in Europe) produced by the French automaker Citroën from 1997 to 2006. The Xsara was a development of the Citroën ZX and Peugeot 306, which shared a platform and running gear.


Plot.

The Jarretts are an upper-middle-class family in suburban Chicago trying to return to normal life after the accidental death of their older teenage son, Buck, and the attempted suicide of their younger and surviving son, Conrad. Conrad, who has recently returned home from a four-month stay in a psychiatric hospital, feels alienated from his friends and family and begins seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger. Berger learns that Conrad was involved in the sailing accident that took the life of Buck, whom everyone idolized. Conrad now deals with post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor's guilt.  Conrad's father, Calvin, tries to connect with his surviving son and understand his wife. Conrad's mother, Beth, denies her loss, hoping to maintain her composure and restore her family to what it once was. She appears to have loved her older son more, and because of the suicide attempt, has grown cold toward Conrad. She is determined to maintain the appearance of perfection and normalcy. Conrad works with Dr. Berger and learns to try to deal with, rather than control, his emotions. He starts dating a fellow student, Jeannine, who helps him to begin to regain a sense of optimism. Conrad, however, still struggles to communicate and re-establish a normal relationship with his parents and schoolmates, including Stillman, with whom he gets into a fist fight. He cannot seem to allow anyone, especially Beth, to get close. Beth makes several guarded attempts to appeal to Conrad for some semblance of normality, but she ends up being cold towards him.  Mother and son often argue while Calvin tries to referee, generally taking Conrad's side for fear of pushing him over the edge again. Things come to a climax near Christmas, when Conrad becomes furious at Beth for not wanting to take a photo with him, swearing at her in front of his grandparents. Afterward, Beth discovers Conrad has been lying about his after-school whereabouts. This leads to a heated argument between Conrad and Beth in which Conrad points out that Beth never visited him in the hospital, saying that she "would have come if Buck was in the hospital." Beth replies, "Buck never would have "been" in the hospital!" Beth and Calvin take a trip to see Beth's brother in Houston, where Calvin confronts Beth, calling her out on her attitude.  Conrad suffers a setback when he learns that Karen, a friend of his from the psychiatric hospital, has committed suicide. A cathartic breakthrough session with Dr. Berger allows Conrad to stop blaming himself for Buck's death and accept his mother's frailties. Calvin, however, emotionally confronts Beth one last time. He questions their love and asks whether she is capable of truly loving anyone. Stunned, Beth decides to leave her family rather than deal with her own, or their, emotions. Calvin and Conrad are left to come to terms with their new family situation.

Reception.

"Ordinary People" garnered four Oscars for 1980, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. The picture, Robert Redford's debut at directing, won him the Academy Award for Best Director. Alvin Sargent won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Timothy Hutton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in his first film role (he had previously appeared on television).  The film marked Mary Tyler Moore's career breakout from the personality of her other two famous roles as Laura Petrie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show". Moore's complex performance as the mother to Hutton's character was well-received and obtained a nomination for Best Actress. Donald Sutherland's performance as the father was also well received, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. He was not nominated for an Academy Award along with his co-stars, however, which "Entertainment Weekly" has described as one of the worst acting snubs in the history of the Academy Awards.  Judd Hirsch's portrayal of Dr. Berger was a departure from his work on the sitcom "Taxi", and drew praise from many in the psychiatric community as one of the rare times their profession is shown in a positive light in film. Hirsch was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor, losing out to co-star Hutton. Additionally, "Ordinary People" launched the career of Elizabeth McGovern who played Hutton's character's love interest, and who received special permission to film while attending Juilliard.  "Ordinary People" received critical acclaim. Roger Ebert gave it a full four stars and praised how the film's setting "is seen with an understated matter-of-factness. There are no cheap shots against suburban lifestyles or affluence or mannerisms: The problems of the people in this movie aren't caused by their milieu, but grow out of themselves. [...] That's what sets the film apart from the sophisticated suburban soap opera it could easily have become." He later named it the fifth best film of the year 1980; while colleague Gene Siskel ranked it the second best film of 1980. Vincent Canby writing for "The New York Times" called it "a moving, intelligent and funny film about disasters that are commonplace to everyone except the people who experience them." On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88%, based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 7.93/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though shot through with bitterness and sorrow, Robert Redford's directorial debut is absorbing and well-acted."  The film was a box office success, grossing $54 million in the United States and Canada and approximately $36 million overseas for a worldwide gross of $90 million.  The film's prominent usage of Pachelbel's Canon, which had been relatively obscure for centuries, helped to usher the song into mainstream popular culture.

Ordinary People is a 1980 American drama film that marked the directorial debut of actor Robert Redford. The film stars Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch, and Timothy Hutton.


Early life.

According to "History of Northern Dynasties" and "Zizhi Tongjian", in 545 Tumen's tribe started to rise and frequently invaded the western frontier of Wei. The chancellor of Western Wei, Yuwen Tai, sent An Nuopanto (Nanai-Banda, a Sogdian from Bukhara,) as an emissary to the Göktürk chieftain Tumen, in an attempt to establish a commercial relationship. In 546, Tumen paid tribute to the Western Wei state. In that same year, Tumen put down a revolt of the Tiele tribes against the Rouran Khaganate, their overlords. Following this, Tumen felt entitled to request of the Rouran a princess as his wife. The Rouran khagan, Anagui, sent a message refusing this request and adding: "You are my blacksmith slave. How dare you utter these words?" Bumin got angry, killed Anagui's emissary, and severed relations with the Rouran Khaganate. Anagui's "blacksmith" (鍛奴 / 锻奴, Pinyin: duàn nú, Wade–Giles: tuan-nu) insult was recorded in Chinese chronicles. Some sources state that members of the Tujue did serve blacksmiths for the Rouran elite, and that "blacksmith slavery" may refer to a kind of vassalage that prevailed in Rouran society. Nevertheless, after this incident Bumin emerged as the leader of the revolt against Rouran.  In 551, Bumin requested a Western Wei princess in marriage. Yuwen Tai permitted it and sent Princess Changle of Western Wei to Bumin.In the same year when Emperor Wen of Western Wei died, Bumin sent mission and gave two hundred horses.  The beginning of formal diplomatic relations with China propped up Bumin's authority among the Turks. He eventually united the local Turkic tribes and threw off the yoke of the Rouran domination. In 552 Bumin's army defeated Anagui's forces at the north of Huaihuang and then Anagui committed suicide. With their defeat Bumin proclaimed himself "Illig Qaghan" and made his wife qaghatun. "Illig" means "owning a state" in Old Turkic. According to the Bilge Qaghan's memorial complex and the Kul Tigin's memorial complex, Bumin and Istemi ruled people by Turkic laws and they developed them.

Death and family.

Bumin died within several months after proclaiming himself Illig Qaghan. He was married to Princess Changle of Western Wei.  Issue:

Legacy.

He was succeeded by his younger brother Istemi in the western part and by his son Issik Qaghan in the eastern part. In less than one century, his khaganate expanded to comprise most of Central Asia.

References.

Bumin Qaghan (), Bumın Kagan or Illig Qaghan (Chinese: 伊利可汗, Pinyin: Yīlì Kèhán, Wade–Giles: i-li k'o-han, died 552 AD) was the founder of the Turkic Khaganate. He was the eldest son of Ashina Tuwu (吐務 / 吐务). He was the chieftain of the Turks under the sovereignty of Rouran Khaganate. He is also mentioned as "Tumen" (,, commander of ten thousand) of the Rouran Khaganate.


History.

Yekaterinburg, formerly called Sverdlovsk, was always known as the informal capital of the Urals, a natural divide between Europe and Asia, between European Russia and Siberia. The city grew very rapidly because it was an important industrial centre and a transport hub. Plans for a rapid-transit system began in the late 1970s, and in 1980 construction began.  The city's uneven landscape, as well as its layout with a very dense city centre, prompted to combine deep and shallow stations. On 26 April 1991, the sixth Metro of Russia and the thirteenth and last Metro of the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist only a few months later, was finally opened to the public. The economic crisis of the early 1990s rocked the Metro very hard and the first stage comprised only three stations. However, then-president Boris Yeltsin diverted state funds to complete its construction and by 1995 the Metro was doubled in length. Since then, only two extensions have been built.

Operation.

The Metro is a typical Soviet design, which when completed will form a triangle from three lines intersecting in the city centre. The eight stations comprise of length and are split between deep and shallow. Of the latter, four are pillar-trispans and one is a single vault (built to Kharkov technology). The deep-level stations include one pylon, one column and two Leningrad-technology single vaults, although one was built to a design making it appear as a single deck. Like all ex-Soviet Metros, the stations are elaborately decorated, although economic hardships prevented the full original designs from being implemented.  The Metro is served by one depot, Kalinovskoye, and 62 cars are assigned to it.  Ridership has improved in recent years. In 2011, the average daily ridership on the Metro was 105,000. By 2012, the average daily ridership had increased to 130,000. This corresponds to an annual ridership in 2012 of approximately 47.45 million people.

Plans.

The construction of the Bazhovskaya station which should be between the "Geologicheskaya" and "Chkalovskaya" has been postponed indefinitely.  The first section of the second line with length of 4.5 km should have four stations: "Metallurgicheskaya", "Tatishchyevskaya", "Ploshchad Kommunarov" and "Ploshchad 1905 Goda". Station "Tatishchyevskaya" and "Ploshchad Kommunarov" will be near Central Stadium, which hosted the FIFA World Cup 2018 matches. The opening was originally planned for 2018. However, only pre-development was finished in 2013 and the design competition had not been declared, the construction was delayed, and the 2018 opening was not feasible.

The Yekaterinburg Metro () is a rapid transit system that serves the city of Yekaterinburg, Russia. The Metro opened on 26 April 1991, and is long and serves 9 stations. The Yekaterinburg Metro is the 13th and last metro to open in the USSR.


Life.

She was the daughter of Count Georg Detlev von Flemming () and Princess Antonina Czartoryska.  On 18 November 1761, in Wołczyn, she married Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, thus becoming a princess.  She was rumored to have had an affair with the Russian ambassador to Poland, Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin, who was alleged to have fathered her son Adam George Czartoryski.  She had also an affair with the Duke de Lauzun, who says himself in his "Mémoires" he fathered her second son Konstanty Adam.  In Paris in 1772 she met Benjamin Franklin, subsequently a leader of the American Revolution, and the French philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, who were bringing new ideas to the old order.  In 1775, together with her husband, Czartoryska completely transformed the Czartoryski Palace at Puławy into an intellectual and political meeting place. Her court was one of the most liberal and progressive in the Commonwealth, although some aspects of her behavior also caused scandals.  Izabela discovered the talent of the young painter Aleksander Orłowski and financed him.  While in Prussia with her daughter Maria Wirtemberska for the latter's marriage, she told Frederick II of her fears that her husband would be poisoned, which was what had caused a split between him and Stanisław August Poniatowski politically. Frederick laughed and told her that only monarchs were poisoned, and spread the conversation around his court to Izabela's detriment, according to Wirydianna Fiszerowa.  In 1784 she joined the Patriotic Party.  After the suppression of the Kościuszko Uprising, her sons Adam George and Konstanty Adam were taken as political hostages by Russia's Empress Catherine II.  In 1796 Izabela ordered the rebuilding of the ruined palace at Puławy and began a museum. Among the first objects to be included were Turkish trophies that had been seized by Polish King Jan III Sobieski's forces at the 1683 Battle of Vienna. Also included were Polish royal treasures and historic Polish family heirlooms. In 1801 Izabela opened the Temple of the Sibyl, also called "The Temple of Memory". It contained objects of sentimental importance pertaining to the glories and miseries of human life. During the November Uprising in 1830, the museum was closed. Izabela's son Adam George Czartoryski, going into exile in Paris, evacuated the museum's surviving objects to the Hôtel Lambert. His son Władysław Czartoryski would reopen the museum in 1878 in Kraków, where it exists today.

Elżbieta "Izabela" Dorota Czartoryska ("née" Flemming; 3 March 1746 – 15 July 1835) was a Polish princess, writer, art collector, and prominent figure in the Polish Enlightenment.


Background.

Between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries medieval Europe was in a state of intermittent warfare between the Christian kingdoms of southern Europe and the Muslim polities of North Africa, Southern France, Sicily and portions of Spain. According to James W. Brodman, the threat of capture, whether by pirates or coastal raiders, or during one of the region's intermittent wars, was a continuous threat to residents of Catalonia, Languedoc, and the other coastal provinces of medieval Christian Europe. Raids by militias, bands, and armies from both sides was an almost annual occurrence.  The redemption of captives is listed among the corporal works of mercy. The period of the Crusades, when so many Christians were in danger of falling into the hands of Muslims, witnessed the rise of religious orders vowed exclusively to this pious work.

History.

The Order of the Trinitarians (Order of the Holy Trinity and Captives) was founded by St. John de Matha after his vision of Christ with two captives around 1193. Pope Innocent III granted the order and its rule approval with his letter "Operante divine dispositionis clementia," issued on 17 December 1198. Soon after papal approbation, the Trinitarian ministry to Christian captives was incorporated into the Order's title: "Order of the Holy Trinity and of Captives". In addition to the Order's purpose of ransoming Christian captives, each local community of Trinitarians served the people of its area. And so, their ministry included hospitality, care of the sick and poor, churches, education, etc. Eventually, the Trinitarians also assumed the work of evangelization.  Brother John's founding intention expanded quickly beyond the three initial foundations (Cerfroid, Planels, Bourg-la-Reine) into a considerable network of houses committed to the ransom of Christian captives and the works of mercy conducted in their locales. Trinitarian tradition considers St. Felix of Valois co-founder of the Order and companion of John of Matha at Cerfroid, near Paris. In Cerfroid the first Trinitarian community was established and it is considered the mother house of the whole Order.  The first generation of Trinitarians could count some fifty foundations. In northern France, the Trinitarians were known as “Mathurins” because they were based in the church of Saint-Mathurin in Paris from 1228 onwards. Ransoming captives required economic resources. Fundraising and economic expertise constituted important aspects of the Order's life. The Rule's requirement of "the tertia pars", or setting aside one-third of all income for the ransom of Christian captives, became a noted characteristic of the Order.  Louis IX installed a house of their order in his château of Fontainebleau. He chose Trinitarians as his chaplains, and was accompanied by them on his crusades. The Master of the Trinity was taken captive together with Saint Louis after the Battle of Al Mansurah.  Throughout the centuries, the Trinitarian Rule underwent several revisions, notably in 1267 and in 1631. It has been complemented by statutes and constitutions. The thirteenth century was a time of vitality, whereas the following centuries brought periods of difficulty and even decline in some areas. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) was a major turning-point in the life of the Church. Its twenty-fifth session dealt with regulars and nuns and the reform of religious orders. Reforming interests and energies manifested themselves among Trinitarians in France with the foundation at Pontoise, north of Paris, during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Reform-minded Trinitarians in Spain first established the movement known as the Recollection and then, under the leadership of St. John Baptist of the Conception, a movement at Valdepeñas (Ciudad Real) known as the Spanish Discalced Trinitarians at the very end of the sixteenth century. Far-reaching periods of growth and development followed this rebirth. In succeeding centuries, European events such as revolution, government suppression and civil war had very serious consequences for the Trinitarian Order and it declined significantly. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Trinitarians began to grow slowly in Italy and Spain. Its members dedicated themselves to fostering and promoting devotion to the Holy Trinity, evangelising non-Christians, assisting immigrants, educating the young, and to parish work.

The Trinitarian Family.

Today the Trinitarian family is composed of priests, brothers, women (cloistered nuns and active sisters) as well as committed laity. Members of the Trinitarian family include the Trinitarian religious; the Trinitarian contemplative nuns; the Trinitarian Sisters of Valence; the Trinitarian Sisters of Rome, Valencia, Madrid, Mallorca, and Seville; the Oblates of the Most Holy Trinity; the Third Order Secular (tertiaries) and other Trinitarian laity. All are distinguished by the cross of red and blue which dates from the origins of the Order. Trinitarians are found throughout Europe and in the Americas as well as in Africa, India, Korea and the Philippines.  In 2000 the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life approved “The Trinitarian Way” rule of life which would guide all the lay groups associated with the Trinitarians: the Third Order Secular, the Trinitarian Movement, Confraternities, etc.  Like the Jesuits, Trinitarians also pledge not to seek promotion within the Church hierarchy. If promotion is offered, however, it is accepted.

Charism.

The Glory of the Most Holy Trinity and the ransom of Christian Captives. Along with the Order’s mission of ransoming Christian captives, each Trinitarian Community served the people of its area by performing works of mercy; redemption and mercy are at the center of the Trinitarian charism.

Our Lady of Good Remedy.

Our Lady of Good Remedy is the patroness of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity. Devotion to Mary under this ancient title is widely known in Europe and Latin America. Her feast day is celebrated on 8 October.

Scapular of the Most Blessed Trinity.

The Scapular of the Holy Trinity is a devotional scapular associated with the Confraternity of The Holy Trinity and the Third Order Secular of the Most Holy Trinity. It is a white scapular with a cross of which the transverse shaft is blue and the longitudinal shaft red. It is worn by Tertiaries as well as members of the Confraternity of the Blessed Trinity (or other Trinitarian associations that make use of the scapular) after investment with this scapular. It is a sign of consecration to the Holy Trinity and of fraternity.

The Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives (), also known as the Trinitarian Order or the Trinitarians, is a Catholic religious order founded in Cerfroid, outside Paris, in late 12th century. From the very outset, a special dedication to the mystery of the Holy Trinity has been a constitutive element of the order's life.


History.

The city of Samara (known during Soviet times as Kuybyshev) is situated at the confluence of the Samara and Volga Rivers. Being an important junction of several waterways and railways, the city grew rapidly during the 20th century simultaneously becoming an important industrial centre. In the late 1970s its population exceeded a million passing the legal Soviet requirement to begin developing a rapid-transit system.  The design plan for Kuybyshev was based on the standard Soviet triangle arrangement, but with provisions to suit the dynamics of Kuybyshev, whose business, commercial and historical centre is situated on the edge, on the bank of the Volga River. Whilst the edges of the city were located with industrial zones and Soviet bedroom regions. Most of the central regions (the geographical centre) between the areas were flats built primarily for the workers. It was also the central area which experienced the most concentrated congestion.  In the finalised plan, the first stage was to pass under this central artery and then expand westwards towards following the bank of the Volga around the commercial zone and eventually terminating at the city's central railway terminal. Construction began in 1980, on the first four station stretch totaling 4.5 km. On 25 December 1987 the system was triumphantly opened to the public becoming the fifth such in Russia and the twelfth of the former Soviet Union.  Immediately after the opening of the first stage, which despite its modest size (compared to other Soviet systems) the Metro was overladen with passengers. Construction of the second stage began shortly; however, this was slowed with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the chaotic economic hardships that followed. Originally scheduled to open in 1991, the next three station 4.5 km segment opened slowly, one station at a time from December 1992 to December 1993.  Despite the economic stagnation, the system managed to grow to length that allowed it to carry out its major transport role, unlike the ill-fated Nizhny Novgorod and Yerevan Metros throughout the 1990s.  Construction on the third planned stage, originally destined for the second half of the 1990s began in 1991, was extremely slow because of constant offsets. The first station opened in December 2002, the second following five years later in 2007.  The next station, Alabinskaya, was due to follow in 2010, however it has been delayed to 2015. Because Samara Metro builders helped to finish off Kazan Metro in 2005, the latter system donated its newer tunnel boring machine to bore the tunnels up to Alabinskaya from Rossiyskaya.

Timeline.

The Samara Metro has opened in stages, with the dates and lengths of each stage listed below:

Operation.

The system is operated by a municipal company "Samarsky Metropoliten" that was privatised from the Russian Ministry of Rail services back in the early 1990s. The company is responsible for all management of the system, including management and repairs of tunnel and track, rolling stock, stations and even planning coordination of construction works.

Stations.

The Samara Metro serves ten stations along its single line,.

Rolling stock.

The rolling stock is provided by a sole Depot "Kirovskoye" which is responsible for management of all cars. Presentely there are 11 four-carriage trains assigned to the system. All of them are model 81-717/714 although some are.5 standard.

Future.

The completion of the first line was originally planned for 2015. However, most of the development was stalled, due to political, financial, or bureaucratic reasons.  The work on 2 of the stations that were initially meant to lengthen the first line has been stopped because it posed danger to buildings of historical and cultural value.  The second line is expected to be 9 kilometres (5.6 miles) in length and have 6 stations. Its construction will take place as part of the program for development of the transportation system of Samara, planned for the time period between 2014 and 2025.

Samara Metro (), formerly known as the Kuybyshev Metro (), is a rapid transit system which serves the city of Samara, Russia. Opened in 1987, it consists of one line with ten stations and approximately of bi-directional track.


History.

Archaeological findings reveal that the area was already inhabited in Paleolithic and Neolithic times. During the Iron Age the region was settled by Veneti and Celts. Due to the location's strategic position on the northeastern frontier of Roman Italy, in 50 BC, the Romans founded there a "castrum", which afterwards was transformed by Julius Caesar into a "forum" and its name changed into Forum Iulii ("Julius' marketplace"; Fréjus had the same Roman name). Not long afterward, the "forum" became a "municipium" and its citizens were inscribed in the Roman tribe "Scaptia".  After the destruction of Aquileia and Iulium Carnicum (Zuglio) in 452 AD, Forum Iulii became the chief town of the district of Friuli and gave its name to it.  In 568 the city was the first major centre occupied by Alboin's Lombard invasion of Italy, then part of the Byzantine Empire. The city was chosen as first capital of the newly formed Lombard Kingdom, then granted by Alboin to his nephew Gisulf as the capital of a Lombard Duchy of Friuli. After the Lombards were defeated by the Franks, (774), following the last Lombard resistance under Hrodgaud of Friuli (776) Forum Julii changed its name to "Civitas Austriae", Charlemagne's Italian "City of the East".  Under the Carolingian settlement with the Papacy, the patriarchs of Aquileia resided here from 773 to 1031, when they returned to Aquileia, and finally in 1238 removed to Udine. This last change of residence was the origin of the antagonism between Cividale and Udine, which was only terminated by their surrender to Venice in 1419 and 1420 respectively. When the Patriarchal State of Friuli was founded in 1077, Cividale was chosen as the capital.  According to James Burke, a 1331 siege of Cividale was one of the first deployments of what we would now call cannons, in the early form known as a bombard.  Between July and September 1409, a church council was held at Cividale by Pope Gregory XII (Roman Obedience). It was poorly attended and achieved nothing.  In 1420 Cividale was annexed to the Republic of Venice.  After the Napoleonic Wars Cividale became part of the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom. It was ceded to Kingdom of Italy in 1866.

Main sights.

The historical center of the town is dominated by Piazza del Duomo, which is where the National Archaeological Museum of Cividale del Friuli is located. Close by is the "Palazzo dei Provveditori Veneti", constructed in 1565 and designed by Andrea Palladio. The town is split in two by the Natisone River, which is spanned by the Devil's Bridge (15th century, rebuilt in 1918). The Celtic Hypogeum is a subterranean series of halls carved in the rock in ancient times, whose destination remains unclear: uses as either Celtic funerary monument or a Roman (Lombard) jail has been proposed.  The Cathedral ("Duomo") was built in the 15th century over a pre-existing construction built in the 8th century. It is a Venetian Gothic building, finished in the 16th century by architect Pietro Lombardo, featuring interventions from the 18th century also. The interior houses an altar dedicated to the Madonna, in the right aisle, and the altarpiece of patriarch Pellegrino II (1195−1204), a silver retable which had been inscribed in Latin by the means of individual letter punches, 250 years before the invention of modern movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg.  The Christian Museum annexed to the Duomo houses outstanding examples of Lombard sculpture. It contains some interesting relics of the art of the 8th century. The cathedral contains an octagonal marble canopy with sculptures in relief, with a font below it belonging to the 8th century, but altered later. The high altar has a fine silver altar front of 1185. The museum contains various Roman and Lombard antiquities, and works of art in gold, silver and ivory formerly belonging to the cathedral chapter. The fine 15th-century Ponte del Diavolo leads to the church of S. Martino, which contains an altar of the 8th century with reliefs executed by order of the Lombard king Ratchis.  The small church of "Oratorio di Santa Maria in Valle" (also known as Lombard Temple), next to the Natisone river, is a notable example of High Middle Ages art sometimes attributed to the 8th century, but probably later. Included in the old Lombard quarter, it was probably used as Palatine Chapel by the Lombard dukes and king's functionaries. The fine decorations, statues and stuccoes (11th or 12th century) housed in the interior, show a strong Byzantine influence.  In the collegiata, the altarpiece of Pellegrinus II (1195−1204) is a silver retable which had been inscribed in Latin by the means of individual letter punches, 250 years before the invention of modern movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg.  On 25 June 2011 a part of the historical centre of Cividale (the one belonging to the Lombards era) entered the UNESCO heritage list.

Other attractions.

The town has a number of small osterias which serve distinctive local wines. Of particular note are "Tocai friulano", "Verduzzo" and "Refosco dal peduncolo rosso".

Transport.

The town is easily accessible by rail and bus from Udine and by bus from Gorizia.

Famous residents.

At Cividale were born

Cividale del Friuli ( (locally ); ; ) is a town and "comune" in the Province of Udine, part of the North-Italian Friuli-Venezia Giulia "regione". The town lies above sea-level in the foothills of the eastern Alps, by rail from the city of Udine and close to the Slovenian border. It is situated on the river Natisone, which forms a picturesque ravine here. Formerly an important regional power, it is today a quiet, small town that attracts tourists thanks to its medieval center.


Early life and SS career.

Ziereis was born on 13 August 1904 in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire (now in Bavaria, Germany), where he spent 8 years in elementary school and then began as an apprentice and messenger boy in a department store. In the evenings he studied commerce. In 1922 he went to work as a labourer in a carpentry shop.  Ziereis joined Germany's Reichswehr (army) on 1 April 1924, for a period of 12 years. He was discharged with the rank of sergeant in 1936 and joined the SS on September 30 of the same year. He attained the rank of SS-Obersturmführer and was assigned as a training instructor to the SS-Totenkopfverbände. In 1937 he was given command of a Totenkopfverbände unit and later became a training instructor.

Concentration camp commandant.

Zeireis replaced Albert Sauer as commandant of Mauthausen on 9 February 1939 by order of Theodor Eicke, Inspector of Concentration Camps. On 25 August 1939, Ziereis received a promotion to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer and, on 20 April 1944 he received his final promotion to SS-Standartenführer.

Post-war flight and death.

Ziereis fled with his wife on 3 May 1945. He attempted to hide out in his hunting lodge on the Pyhrn mountain in Upper Austria. He was discovered and arrested on 23 May 1945, by an American army unit. He was shot three times in the stomach while trying to escape and brought to a U.S. military hospital set up at the former Gusen concentration camp I where he died shortly after interrogation by a former inmate of Mauthausen, Hans Marsalek. His corpse was later hung on the fence of Gusen I by former prisoners of Gusen.

Franz Xaver Ziereis (13 August 1905 – 24 May 1945) was the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp from 1939 until the camp was liberated by the American forces in 1945.


Early life.

He was the son of Anaxandrides II (of the Agiad royal house) and his second wife (apparently a daughter of Prinetades), and was the half-brother of Dorieus, Leonidas I, and Cleombrotus. Although the three younger half-brothers were the sons of Anaxandrides' first wife and therefore had a better claim to the throne according to tradition, Cleomenes was the oldest son and succeeded his father around 519 BC. He allowed his half-brother Dorieus to mount expeditions outside the Peloponnese, perhaps as a way of expanding Spartan influence and territories, and perhaps to rid himself of a potential rival. His interest in the world outside the Peloponnese may have accounted for some of his reputation for insanity among fellow Spartans who tended to be highly insular, conservative, and suspicious of all things foreign, especially that, according to Herodotus, Cleomenes acquired a taste for wine drunk "Scythian fashion" (unwatered).  An early anecdote demonstrating Cleomenes' integrity is that when Maeandrius, the exiled but still wealthy tyrant of Samos, visited Sparta, he several times invited Cleomenes to his house and showed him some valuable goblets; when Cleomenes politely admired them, Maeandrius offered them to him as a gift. Cleomenes rejected this thinly disguised bribe and arranged for Maeandrius to be expelled from Sparta.

War against Athens.

Around 510 BC the Alcmaeonidae family, who had been exiled from Athens, requested that Sparta help them overthrow Hippias, the son of Pisistratus and tyrant of Athens. The Alcmaeonidae, led by Cleisthenes, bribed the oracle at Delphi to tell the Spartans to assist them, and Cleomenes came to their aid. The first attack on Athens was a failure, but Cleomenes personally led the second attack and besieged Hippias and his supporters on the Acropolis. He was unable to force Hippias to surrender, but the Spartans captured some of Hippias' relatives and took them hostage until he agreed to give up the city.  Cleisthenes and the Athenian aristocrat Isagoras then fought each other for control of Athens. Cleomenes came with an armed force to support Isagoras, and they forced Cleisthenes and the Alcmaeonidae family to go into exile for a second time. Cleomenes also abolished the Boule, a council set up by Cleisthenes, and occupied the Acropolis. The citizens of Athens objected to this and forced him out of the city. Cleomenes was ashamed about what happened in the Acropolis, so he gathered an army the following year with the aim of setting up Isagoras as tyrant of Athens. This army invaded Attica. The Corinthians in his force refused to proceed once the army got to Eleusis, so he was forced to withdraw. According to Pausanias, Cleomenes managed to get as far as Aegina. Pausanias claimed that Cleomenes arrested people who he thought had shown Persian sympathies while he was in Aegina.  Sparta then proposed to her allies to mount an expedition to restore Hippias as tyrant of Athens. Given that Sparta had been instrumental in the overthrow of Hippias this change in policy was justified because Sparta had discovered that they had been tricked by the Alcmaeonidae into overthrowing Hippias because the Delphic oracle had been bribed into asking them to do so. According to W G Forrest, it was Cleomenes who argued for this change of position with Sparta's allies. However, the allies, led by Corinth, rejected the proposal in the first act of the Peloponnesian League.

The Ionian Revolt and its aftermath.

In 499 BC, Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, came to Sparta to request help from King Cleomenes with the Ionian Revolt against Persia. Aristagoras nearly persuaded Cleomenes to help, promising an easy conquest of Persia and its riches, but Cleomenes sent him away when he learned about the long distance to the heart of Persia. Aristagoras attempted to bribe him by offering silver. Cleomenes declined, so Aristagoras began offering him more and more. According to Herodotus, once Aristagoras offered Cleomenes 50 talents of silver, Cleomenes's young daughter Gorgo warned him not to trust a man who threatened to corrupt him.  Around 494 BC, Cleomenes invaded and defeated Argos at the Battle of Sepeia. During the battle, when the Spartan herald announced anything to the Lacedemonians, the Argives did that thing. Cleomenes assumed that the Argives were doing whatever the herald of the Lacedemonians proclaimed, so he took advantage of this by telling the Lacedemonians to attack the Argives once the herald proclaimed that they would get breakfast. Cleomenes was correct that the Argives would get breakfast based on the herald's announcement, so his army massacred the unarmed enemy forces while they were eating. He killed the retreating force, Herodotus says 6000 (probably an exaggeration), by burning them to death in a sacred grove of Argus.  Cleomenes sent the majority of his army back to Sparta and took a thousand men to the temple of Hera to make a sacrifice. The priest forbade him, saying that strangers were not allowed to make sacrifices. Cleomenes ordered the Helots to scourge the priest and made the sacrifice anyway.  Argos would remain a bitter enemy of Sparta for decades after this attack. It is not clear why the attack on Argos took place. It may have been the result of Sparta's concerns over Argos and the city's pro-Persian tendencies, or due to proximity of Argos to the Spartans and thus being a growing threat to the security of the Spartan state.  When the Persians invaded Greece after putting down the Ionian revolt in 493 BC, many city-states quickly submitted to them fearing a loss of trade. Among these states was Aegina, so in 491 BC, Cleomenes attempted to arrest the major collaborators there. The citizens of Aegina would not cooperate with him and the Eurypontid Spartan king, Demaratus attempted to undermine his efforts. Cleomenes overthrew Demaratus, after first bribing the oracle at Delphi to announce that this was the divine will, and replaced him with Leotychides. The two kings successfully captured the Persian collaborators in Aegina.

Exile and death.

Around 490 BC Cleomenes was forced to flee Sparta when his plot against his co-king Demaratus was discovered, but the Spartans allowed him to return when he began gathering an army in the surrounding territories. However, according to Herodotus he was by this time considered to be insane. The Spartans put him in prison. By the command of his half-brothers, Leonidas I and Cleombrotus, Cleomenes was placed in chains.  While in prison, Cleomenes was found dead with his death being ruled as suicide by self-mutilation. He was succeeded by the elder of his surviving half-brothers Leonidas I, who then married Cleomenes' daughter Gorgo.  The veracity of accounts of Cleomenes' insanity and suicide, which the geographer Pausanias alleged was the result of his desecration of the Hiera Orgas, have been the subject of some speculation among modern historians.

Historical significance.

"Cleomenes," remarks historian J. B. Bury, "if he had not been a Spartan, might have been one of the greater figures in Grecian history." As it was, he stands as a shrewd policy maker whose policies were consistently rendered ineffective by the opposition of his co-King and the Spartan Ephorate. Nevertheless, he was the dominant figure in Spartan history throughout his adult lifetime.

Cleomenes (, though some older reference works give the pronunciation with the accent on the next to last syllable, which is closer to the Greek; Greek Κλεομένης "Kleomenes"; died c. 489 BC) was an Agiad King of Sparta in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. During his reign, which started around 519 BC, he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta's influence both inside and outside the Peloponnese. He was a brilliant tactician. It was during his reign that the Peloponnesian League came formally into existence. During his reign, he intervened twice successfully in Athenian affairs but kept Sparta out of the Ionian Revolt. He died in prison in mysterious circumstances, with the Spartan authorities claiming his death was suicide due to insanity.


Club career.

Czech First League.

Born in Třinec, Svěrkoš started his career at VP Frýdek-Místek. At the age of fourteen he switched to Baník Ostrava, playing on U15 international for the Czech Republic already. Still eligible to feature for Baník's U19, Svěrkoš enjoyed his breakthrough in the Gambrinus liga, the best Czech division, for the Silesian city outfit after the departure of Milan Baroš. His record of 14 goals in just 26 first-team appearances for Ostrava and similar performances in the Czech Republic national under-21 football team got German club Borussia Mönchengladbach interested. Mönchengladbach had been unable to extend the half-a-season loan of Chelsea's Mikael Forssell, the team's top scorer in 2002–2003, in those times and regarded Svěrkoš a potential long-term replacement for the Finland international.

Bundesliga.

A stuttering start to life in Bundesliga under Ewald Lienen, Svěrkoš took advantage of a change of manager at the club and he was able to end up the team's top scorer in 2003–2004 with nine goals in 31 Bundesliga matches. His most notable contribution came halfway through that campaign when he netted a hat-trick in Mönchengladbach's win over Champions League participant VfB Stuttgart (4–2) in the last 16 of the German Cup competition.  A year later, Mönchengladbach only just avoided relegation in a season in which Svěrkoš netted seven goals for them, his ongoing presence in the youth ranks for the Czech Republic awarded him the captaincy of the Czech U21 team. However, his third season under contract in German football turned out to be extremely problematic. Problems in his private life, followed by poor form, took the ground from under his feet and made him long for a change. Initially planning to go on loan to MSV Duisburg, UEFA Cup participants Hertha BSC became his interim club for the remainder of the season in December 2005.  Even this change of environment did not work for Svěrkoš and though he was facing uncertain times with Hertha BSC unwilling to buy him and Mönchengladbach, to whom he had to return to at the end of the season, seemingly willing to finally sell him to another club. Mönchengladbach's decision to part with manager Horst Köppel at the same time proved to be fortunate as one of the first decisions of Köppel's successor Jupp Heynckes was allowing him to stay on and make a fresh start at the club.

Returns to Ostrava.

In the summer of 2007 Svěrkoš returned to Baník Ostrava. He found his form again after the winter break, scoring eleven goals in thirteen matches during the spring part of the league. He became the top scorer of the 2007–08 Czech First League, with 15 goals. This caused several clubs to be interested in signing him after UEFA Euro 2008, but Svěrkoš spent the rest of the year in Ostrava, in December 2008 he agreed to transfer to French Ligue 1 side FC Sochaux.  In August 2011 Svěrkoš returned to Baník Ostrava for the second time. On 16 March 2012 in a match against Sparta Prague he picked up a knee injury that sidelined him for several months. He returned to the team on 19 November 2012 in a match against 1. FC Slovácko, only to suffer the same injury again in the first half, which effectively ended his season.

International career.

Svěrkoš was called up to the Czech Republic national football team and made his debut in the friendly match against Lithuania on 27 May 2008. On 14 May 2008, it was announced that he would be part of the Czech squad for Euro 2008.

Euro 2008.

At Euro 2008 in Basel, Svěrkoš scored his first goal for his national side against Switzerland in the 71st minute of the opening match of the tournament on 7 June 2008. It also turned out to be the first goal of the tournament as the Czech Republic won the match 1–0. Despite this contribution, he did not play any part in the Czechs' two remaining matches in the tournament.

International goals.

"Scores and results list the Czech Republic's goal tally first"

Honours.

Club.

Austria Wien

Václav Svěrkoš (; born 1 November 1983) is a Czech former professional football striker. He was the opening scorer in the Euro 2008 tournament.


Biography.

Ágota Kristóf was born in Csikvánd, Hungary on October 30, 1935. At the age of 21 she had to leave her country when the Hungarian anti-communist revolution was suppressed by the Soviet military. She, her husband (who used to be her history teacher at school) and their 4-month-old daughter escaped to Neuchâtel in Switzerland. After 5 years of loneliness and exile, she quit her work in a factory and left her husband. She started studying French and began to write novels in that language.

Works.

Kristóf's first steps as a writer were in the realm of poetry and theater ("John et Joe, Un rat qui passe"), aspects of her writing that did not have as great an impact as her trilogy. In 1986 Kristóf's first novel, "The Notebook" appeared. It was the beginning of a trilogy. The sequel titled "The Proof" came 2 years later. The third part was published in 1991 under the title "The Third Lie". The most important themes of this trilogy are war and destruction, love and loneliness, promiscuous, desperate, and attention-seeking sexual encounters, desire and loss, truth and fiction.  She received the European prize for French literature for "The Notebook". This novel was translated in more than 40 languages. In 1995 she published a new novel, "Yesterday". Kristóf also wrote a book called "L'analphabète" (in English "The Illiterate") and published in 2004. This is an autobiographical text. It explores her love of reading as a young child, and we travel with her to boarding school, over the border to Austria and then to Switzerland. Forced to leave her country due to the failure of the anti-communist rebellion, she hopes for a better life in Zürich.  The majority of her works were published by Editions du Seuil in Paris. Recently two new short stories published at Mini Zoe collection entitled "Où es-tu Mathias?" (2006) and "Line, le temps". The names Mathias and Line are from her previous novels.  She died on 27 July 2011 in her Neuchâtel home. Her estate is archived in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.

Influence.

The video game "Mother 3" was influenced by "The Notebook"'s major themes. Main characters Lucas and Claus are named after the book's narrators. The game's designer, Shigesato Itoi, a published author in his own right, compared the novel favorably to an RPG. North American novelist Stephen Beachy has named her as an influence on his novel "boneyard".  "Brucio nel vento" ("I burn in the Wind", 2002) is a film based on the novel "Hier" ("Yesterday"), directed by Silvio Soldini. "Le Continent K." (1998) and "Agota Kristof, 9 ans plus tard... " (2006) are two short documentaries about Ágota Kristóf directed by Eric Bergkraut.  "The Notebook" was adapted into a film in 2013.  In 2014, the novel was adapted for the stage by British contemporary theatre company, Forced Entertainment.

Bibliography.

English translations

Ágota Kristóf (; October 30, 1935 – July 27, 2011) was a Hungarian writer who lived in Switzerland and wrote in French. Kristof received the European prize for French literature for "The Notebook" (1986). She won the 2001 Gottfried Keller Award in Switzerland and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2008.


Biography.

Sophie Charlotte was born at the Possenhofen Castle, the residence of her paternal family, Dukes in Bavaria. She was a daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria (1808–1888) and Princess Ludovika of Bavaria. The ninth of ten children born to her parents, she was known as "Sopherl" within the family.  She was also a sister of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Queen Maria Sophie of the Two Sicilies. After the 1861 marriage of her older sister, Duchess Mathilde Ludovika in Bavaria, to the Neapolitan Prince Luis of the Two Sicilies, her parents then looked for a suitable husband for Sophie Charlotte.  She was engaged to her cousin King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Their engagement was publicised on 22 January 1867, but after having repeatedly postponed the wedding date, Ludwig finally cancelled it in October, as it seemed Sophie had fallen in love with the court photographer, Edgar Hanfstaengl.  Other proposed husbands included the renowned homosexual Archduke Ludwig Viktor of Austria, brother of both Franz Joseph I of Austria and Maximilian I of Mexico, as well as the future Luís I of Portugal. Another candidate was Duke Philipp of Württemberg, the first cousin of her eventual husband.  She refused all the candidates. She was sent to stay with her aunt, Amalie Auguste, then the Queen of Saxony as wife of King John of Saxony. It was in Saxony Sophie Charlotte met Prince Ferdinand of Orléans (12 July 1844 – 29 June 1910), "Duke of Alençon", the son of Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours and grandson of the late King Louis Philippe (died 1850). Soon after, on 28 September 1868, she married him at Possenhofen Castle, near Starnberg.  She had a good relationship with her husband as well as with her sister-in-law Princess Marguerite Adélaïde of Orléans, wife of Prince Władysław Czartoryski. Her mother in law, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, cousin of Queen Victoria, had died in 1857. Sophie Charlotte did not have an overly good relationship with her father-in-law, the widowed Duke of Nemours.  The year after their marriage, the ducal couple moved into Bushy House in the Teddington area of Southwest London, where Sophie Charlotte gave birth to her first child, Princess Louise of Orléans.  Prophetically, Sophie Charlotte wrote our her last will and testament on 4 October 1896, seven months before her death. She died in a fire at the Bazar de la Charité in Paris on 4 May 1897, where she had been helping to raise funds for charity. She refused to be rescued, insisting that the girls, visitors and nuns working alongside her at the bazaar be saved first. A Dominican nun who had managed to escape from the inferno explained that she saw the Duchess get down on her knees and start praying.  Identifying Sophie Charlotte's remains was not easy; her personal maid was unable to recognise the body, as it had been severely disfigured by the fire, so the Duchess's dentist, M. Lavanport, was called in. After two hours examining various bodies, he identified Sophie Charlotte on the basis of her gold fillings. Thus she became one of the first people whose remains were identified by forensic dentistry. Her sister, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, was assassinated the following year.

Duchess Sophie Charlotte Augustine in Bavaria (23 February 1847 – 4 May 1897) was a granddaughter-in-law of King Louis Philippe of France, the favourite sister of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and fiancée of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.


History.

Carrara marble has been used since the time of Ancient Rome and it was called the "Luni marble". In the 17th and 18th centuries, the marble quarries were monitored by the Cybo and Malaspina families who ruled over Massa and Carrara. The family created the "Office of Marble" in 1564 to regulate the marble mining industry. The city of Massa, in particular, saw much of its plan redesigned (new roads, plazas, intersections, pavings) in order to make it worthy of an Italian country's capital. Following the extinction of the Cybo-Malaspina family, the state was ruled by the House of Austria and management of the mines rested with them. The Basilica of Massa is built entirely of Carrara marble and the old Ducal Palace of Massa was used to showcase the precious stone.  By the end of the 19th century, Carrara had become a cradle of anarchism in Italy, in particular among the quarry workers. According to a "New York Times" article of 1894, workers in the marble quarries were among the most neglected labourers in Italy. Many of them were ex-convicts or fugitives from justice. The work at the quarries was so tough and arduous that almost any aspirant worker with sufficient muscle and endurance was employed, regardless of their background.  The quarry workers and stone carvers had radical beliefs that set them apart from others. Anarchism and general radicalism became part of the heritage of the stone carvers. Many violent revolutionists who had been expelled from Belgium and Switzerland went to Carrara in 1885 and founded the first anarchist group in Italy. In Carrara, the anarchist Galileo Palla remarked, “even the stones are anarchists.” The quarry workers were the main actors of the Lunigiana revolt in January 1894.

Notable monuments and buildings.

The marble from Carrara was used for some of the most remarkable buildings in Ancient Rome: It was also used in many sculptures of the Renaissance including Michelangelo's "David" (1501–04) whilst the statue to Robert Burns, which commands a central position in Dumfries, was carved in Carrara by Italian craftsmen working to Amelia Paton Hill's model. It was unveiled by future UK Prime Minister Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery on 6 April 1882. Other notable occurrences include:  Carrara marble has been designated by the International Union of Geological Sciences as a Global Heritage Stone Resource.

Quarries.

The Apuan Alps above Carrara show evidence of at least 650 quarry sites, with about half of them currently abandoned or worked out. The Carrara quarries have produced more marble than any other place on earth.  Working the quarries has been dangerous and continues so to this day. In September 1911, a collapsing cliff face at the Bettogli Quarry crushed 10 workers who were on lunch break under a precipice. A 2014 video made at a Carrara quarry shows workers with missing fingers, and workers performing hazardous, painfully noisy work who are not wearing protective gear of any kind.  The prize yield from Carrara quarries through millennia has been S"tatuario", a pure white marble (coloring in other marbles arises from intermixture with other minerals present in the limestone as it is converted to marble by heat or pressure). However, by the end of the 20th century, the known deposits of Statuario near Carrara are played out. The quarries continue to remove and ship up to a million tons/year of less-esteemed marble, mostly for export.  Bianco Carrara classified in C and CD variations as well as Bianco Venatino and Statuarietto are by far the most common types with more expensive exotic variations such as Calacatta Gold, Calacatta Borghini, Arabescato Cervaiole and Arabescato Vagli quarried throughout the Carrara area.

Use in isotopic standard.

Calcite, obtained from an 80 kg sample of Carrara marble, is used as the IAEA-603 isotopic standard in mass spectrometry for the calibration of δO and δC.

Degradation.

The black yeast "Micrococcus halobius" can colonize Carrara marble by forming a biofilm and producing gluconic, lactic, pyruvic and succinic acids from glucose, as seen in the Dionysos Theater of the Acropolis in Athens.

Carrara marble is a type of white or blue-grey marble popular for use in sculpture and building decor. It is quarried in the city of Carrara in the province of Massa and Carrara in the Lunigiana, the northernmost tip of modern-day Tuscany, Italy.


History.

Written by Swiss pastor Johann David Wyss, edited by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss and illustrated by another son, Johann Emmanuel Wyss, the novel was intended to teach his four sons about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world and self-reliance. Wyss' attitude towards its education is in line with the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many chapters involve Christian-oriented moral lessons such as frugality, husbandry, acceptance, and cooperation.  Wyss presents adventures as lessons in natural history and physical science. This resembles other educational books for young ones published about the same time. These include Charlotte Turner Smith's "Rural Walks: in Dialogues intended for the use of Young Persons" (1795), "Rambles Farther: A continuation of Rural Walks" (1796), "A Natural History of Birds, intended chiefly for young persons" (1807). But Wyss' novel is also modeled after Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", an adventure story about a shipwrecked sailor first published in 1719 and the source of the "Robinson" in the title "Swiss Family Robinson".  The book presents a geographically impossible array of large mammals and plants that probably could never have existed together on a single island, for the children's education, nourishment, clothing and convenience.  Over the years there have been many versions of the story with episodes added, changed, or deleted. Perhaps the best-known English version is by William H. G. Kingston, first published in 1879. It is based on Isabelle de Montolieu's 1813 French adaptation and 1824 continuation (from chapter 37) "Le Robinson suisse, ou, Journal d'un père de famille, naufragé avec ses enfants" in which were added further adventures of Fritz, Franz, Ernest, and Jack. Other English editions that claim to include the whole of the Wyss-Montolieu narrative are by W. H. Davenport Adams (1869–1910) and Mrs H. B. Paull (1879). As Carpenter and Prichard write in "The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature" (Oxford, 1995), "with all the expansions and contractions over the past two centuries (this includes a long history of abridgments, condensations, Christianizing, and Disney products), Wyss's original narrative has long since been obscured." The closest English translation to the original is William Godwin's 1816 translation, reprinted by Penguin Classics.  Although movie and television adaptations typically name the family "Robinson", it is not a Swiss name. The German title translates as "The Swiss Robinson" which identifies the novel as part of the Robinsonade genre, rather than a story about a family named Robinson.

Plot.

The novel opens with the family in the hold of a sailing ship, weathering a great storm. The ship's crew evacuate without them, and William and Elizabeth and their four children (Fritz, Ernest, Jack and Franz) are left to survive alone. As the ship tosses about, the father – William – prays that God will spare them.  The ship survives the night and the family finds themselves within sight of a tropical desert island. The next morning, they decide to get to the island they can see beyond the reef. With much effort, they construct a vessel out of tubs. After they fill the tubs with food and ammunition and all other articles of value they can safely carry, they row toward the island. Two dogs from the ship named Turk and Juno swim beside them. The ship's cargo of livestock (including a cow, a donkey, two goats, six sheep, a ram, a pig, chickens, ducks, geese, and pigeons), guns and powder, carpentry tools, books, a disassembled pinnace, and provisions have survived.  Upon reaching the island, the family set up a makeshift camp. William knows that they must prepare for a long time on the island and his thoughts are as much on provisions for the future as for their immediate wants. William and his oldest son Fritz spend the next day exploring the island.  The family spends the next few days securing themselves against hunger. William and Fritz make several trips to the ship in their efforts to bring ashore everything useful from the vessel. The domesticated animals on the ship are towed back to the island. There is also a great store of firearms and ammunition, hammocks for sleeping, carpenter's tools, lumber, cooking utensils, silverware, and dishes. Initially they construct a treehouse, but as time passes (and after Elizabeth is injured climbing the stairs down from it), they settle in a more permanent dwelling in part of a cave. Fritz rescues a young Englishwoman (Jenny Montrose) shipwrecked elsewhere on their island.  The book covers more than ten years. William and older boys explore various environments and develop homes and gardens in various sites about the island. In the end, the father wonders if they will ever again see the rest of humanity. Eventually a British ship that is in search of Jenny Montrose anchors near the island and is discovered by the family. The captain is given the journal containing the story of their life on the island which is eventually published. Several members of the family choose to continue to live tranquilly on their island while several of them return to Europe with the British.

Characters.

The principal characters of the book (including Isabelle de Montolieu's adaptations and continuation) are:  In the novel the family is not called "Robinson" as their surname is not mentioned. However, in 1900, Jules Verne published "The Castaways of the Flag" (alternatively known as "Second Fatherland"), where he revisits the original shipwreck. In this sequel, of the family’s final years on the original island, the family is called Zermatt.

Other adaptations.

The novels in one form or another have also been adapted numerous times, sometimes changing location and/or time period:

Audio adaptations.

In 1963, the novel was dramatized by the "Tale Spinners for Children" series (United Artists Records UAC 11059) performed by the Famous Theatre Company.

The Swiss Family Robinson (German: "Der Schweizerische Robinson") is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family of immigrants whose ship en route to Port Jackson, Australia, goes off course and is shipwrecked in the East Indies.