text:
The German-Jewish Epoch of 1743-1933:Tragedy or Success Story?
Solveig Eggerz
THE PITY OF IT ALL: A PORTRAIT OF THE
GERMAN-JEWISH EPOCH 1743-1933,
by Amos Elon,
Henry Holt and Co.,
$30.00.
The relationship between Germans and Jews was not a relentless progression towards the Holocaust. Rather the Holocaust ended a pattern of gradual Jewish integration into German society, a pattern often interrupted by official scapegoating of the "foreigners," the Jewish minority in response to German economic or military failure.
Amos Elon, in his book, The Pity of it All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933, offers a view of German-Jewish relations that stresses not only anti-Semitism but also the success story of Jews living in Germany and contributing to German culture.
The relationship began peaceably with Jews entering the Rhineland and the Danube Valley right behind the Roman legions. Emperor Constantine's decree of 321 AD, the earliest record of German-Jewish interaction, instructs the Roman magistrate of Cologne regarding relations with the local rabbi. Elon describes this Jewish community as "an early urban middle class of traders, surgeons, apothecaries, and craftsmen in gold, silver, and precious stones." Jews in Roman times owned property, practiced all trades and professions, and did not live separately, even in Frankfurt, where they later lived in the most miserable ghetto in Europe.
The intolerance of the church, however, ended this period of peaceable integration. By the 15th and 16th centuries Jews were reduced to living at subsistence levels as rag dealers, peddlers, vagrants, or even highwaymen, thus integrating on the lowest level with German criminal elements, as depicted in Johann Schiller's play, The Robbers.
Economic Gap
Thanks to the backward nature of finances in the German principalities in the 18th century, a handful of Jews rose to privileged positions as "court Jews." Clad in colorful Spanish and French coats of the nobility, accessorized by white stockings, silk scarves, and white wigs, court Jews oversaw the transportation of sacks of gold coins, secured loans, and procured luxury goods for their rulers. Because it lacked Italy's banking system and France's centralized bureaucracy for streamlining financial transactions, Germany had more court Jews than any other European country.
But the remaining 80% of Jews wore traditional dark Jewish robes and barely eked out a living. Excluded from "guilds and crafts, subject to rigorous restrictions, refused residence permits in many towns," Elon notes, they were "reduced to peddling trinkets, charms, discarded household goods, and used clothes or to begging."
Moses Mendelssohn, "The German Socrates"
The beginning of real integration of Jews into German Christian society came with a brilliant young scholar, Moses Mendelssohn, who entered Berlin in 1743 through the Rosenthaler Gate, the entrance reserved for cattle and Jews. He enrolled in the seminary of the chief rabbi of Berlin, David Frankel, where religious scholars recited sacred religious texts in Hebrew and spoke not German but a dialect, Judendeutsch. After teaching himself German, Latin, French, and English, Mendelssohn read Enlightenment writings such as John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and texts by Spinoza, Euclid, Aristotle, Plato, Newton, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire.
Even after becoming a prominent Enlightenment scholar, Mendelssohn retained his Jewish roots. He promoted a "Hebrew Enlightenment," encouraging Jews to speak both high German and classical Hebrew, smoothing their way with a translation of the Pentateuch and the Psalms into German. A Jew could practice Judaism and be an Enlightenment German, he felt, because Judaism, unlike Christianity, was a religion of reason. But his ideas were not welcomed by Jewish zealots who viewed reading anything but Hebrew and Judendeutsch as heresy.
Mendelssohn became known as "the German Socrates." His Letters on Sentiment (1755), according to Elon, virtually founded German philosophic-aesthetic criticism. Along with two Germans, the playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and the bookseller and publisher, Friedrich Nicolai, Mendelssohn founded the Berlin Literary School. The three met almost daily to discuss philosophy and religion in rationalist terms, always favoring cosmopolitanism and rejecting patriotism. Germans admired Mendelssohn, but the gap yawned between such "exceptional Jews" and the disdained majority of Jews. But by the 19th century Jews had come to consider Mendelssohn their patron saint.
Bildung and Kultur
Gradually Jews transformed their thinking from what Elon calls a "hermetically closed system centered on divine sacraments to an emancipated agnostic culture centered on man." Once German Jews began to speak German, they embraced the concept of Bildung — the refinement of the individual self and character in keeping with the ideals of the Enlightenment, as exemplified by the main character in Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister.
While Jews were replacing their religion with Bildung and voluntarily adopting German ways, the reactionary German leaders only hardened their stance against the "foreign nation" that lived in their Christian society. Hence legal emancipation came slowly to German Jews. Yet the shared culture drew Jews and Germans together. As a consequence of Bildung and Kultur, Elon notes, within two or three decades many Jews became 100% German.
In the late 1780s and 1790s, the literary salon, modeled on the French court, became a primary means for promoting Bildung and Kultur. Largely apolitical gatherings, the salons made up for the lack of German intellectual court life, but they reflected less Mendelssohn's cult of reason and more the romantics' cult of "feeling and friendship."
The most influential of the salons was launched in 1791 and run by a prominent woman of letters, Rahel Levin. Unlike Mendelssohn, Levin disliked her Jewish identity and preferred total Jewish assimilation to German culture. "Her religiosity was of the heart and, like that of other romantics, couched in the mystical imagery of Christianity: Christ's Passion and the Mother of God," Elon notes.
After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1806, the literary salons were replaced by secret, patriotic societies, held in the homes of Christian aristocratic nationalists. Jews converted at the highest rate since 15th century Spain when about 60% of Jews obtained what the poet Heinrich Heine called "the entrance ticket to European culture." But Elon notes the lack of sincerity in such conversions:
"The act was undertaken, more or less casually, to conform, escape stigma, gain professional rights, bolster social status, win a government or academic post, marry. Before conversion most converts were non-practicing Jews; after conversion, they were non-practicing Christians."
French Civil Code
Napoleon's defeat of Prussia in October 1806 had positive consequences for Jews living in German lands — or so it seemed at first. The French imposed the French civil code on German leaders, thus emancipating the Jews, an action resented as French meddling and therefore rescinded at the first opportunity. Unfortunately German leaders developed an antipathy towards civil liberties simply because they were French and therefore disliked as much as cosmopolitanism. The post-war backlash hit Jews on two counts: they were cosmopolites and they favored French equalities. Ernst Moritz Arndt, a leading patriotic poet, known for being anti-French, summed up this antipathy for all ideas French: "Cursed be their vaunted humanism and cosmopolitanism."
While Jews were emancipated in many German cities under the French legal code, hard-nosed Frankfurt maintained its oppressive attitude towards Jews until 1811 when French pressure finally forced Jewish emancipation. The resistance was strongest in Prussia where most German Jews lived. Finally in 1812, after rejecting many drafts of legislation, King Frederick William III approved an edict of emancipation, but paragraphs 8 and 9 enabled exclusion of Jews from government positions and teaching posts. Three years later, when the French were defeated, the king suspended the edict.
The problem with the 1812 edict, Elon notes, is that it coincided with the new nationalism rising from below. Thus it proved fatal to both Germany and its Jews, a plague on Europe for more than a century. "It would condemn German Jews to continue living in a twilight of favor and misfortune, forever straining to be (and not to be) themselves, Germans, Jews, equals, free," he concludes.
Irony of Jewish Patriotism
Under French rule, Jews were liberated under the French civil code. Yet Jews — intent on expressing their patriotism — volunteered for Prussian army service in the German war of liberation against Napoleon. Jews sought to demonstrate that they were no longer a Jewish "nation" but citizens of a fatherland. In 1813 Rahel Levin volunteered to tend wounded Prussian soldiers.
The new romantic movement was enflamed by a hatred of the French and fortified by a reawakened mediaeval tribalism. Followers called for a sacred union of church, people and state. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the leading philosopher of the day, defined nations in organic terms, as born of a common "mystical experience of the soul." Ignoring Jewish willingness to fight for the fatherland, the patriotic elite, such as the founders of the Christian German Eating Club, lumped Jews together with the French and other cosmopolitans, excluding them all from the club, along with the female gender.
Odd outbursts of anti-Semitism occurred during the 19th century. Particularly troubling were the "Hep Hep" riots that suddenly erupted in 1819 in Wurzburg. These seemingly spontaneous riots spread across Bavaria, to central and southwest Germany,. to cities along the Rhine, then north to Bremen, Luebeck, and Hamburg. Because of the Latin term, hep, an acronym for Hierosolyma estperdita, Jerusalem is lost, Jews were troubled by the suspicion that the riots were stimulated by intellectuals.
Rahel Levin, Rahel Varnhagen following her marriage to Prussian diplomat August Varnhagen, exemplifies the confused sense of identity among German Jews. Responding to the bizarre hep hep riots, she expressed a cool sadness "on account of the Jews" and chastised her fellow Germans: "Their newfound hypocritical love for Christianity (may God forgive my sin) and the Middle Ages, with its poetry, art, and atrocities, incites the people to commit the only atrocity they may still be provoked to: attacking the Jews!"
It seems that most Jews, unlike Rahel Vamhagen, wanted to retain their Jewish identity. Responding to intolerance and desiring integration into German society, they converted in order to gain full civil liberties that guaranteed freedom of employment and education. They wished, however, to retain their Jewish identity. The majority of Jews who converted did so during times of social anxiety.
In the early part of the 19th century the feeling among Jews was that despite assimilation — language, dress, custom — they had not achieved emancipation. Some Jewish intellectuals — Eduard Gans, Leopold Zunz, Moses Moser — sought to reconcile Jews to Germans and also to help Jews remain Jews. But their attempts proved futile. When Gans applied for a position on the law faculty at the University of Berlin, citing the 1812 edict of emancipation, the government issued a new royal decree known as "Lex Gans," explicitly outlawing employment of Jews in universities.
German Patriotism Allied with the Christian State
By the 19th century, German Jews were no longer a nation within a nation that isolated itself by customs and language. In fact Jews were highly patriotic. They revered German culture and identified with the German fatherland whenever Germans would let them. Unfortunately, this surge of Jewish patriotism coincided with a post-Napoleonic German patriotism that emphasized the centrality of Christianity to the German state. The new German patriotism was "strangely double-edged," Elon notes. "It manifested itself both as a liberal campaign against the absolutism of the German monarchies and as a regressive rejection of the 'anemic' rationalism of the Enlightenment, an appeal to tribal instincts, ethnic purity, and 'blood.' It spread xenophobic fears that Jewish emancipation might threaten the national integrity of the Christian state."
This was not the inclusive, liberal patriotism, the blend of allegiance to Germany and religious freedom that Jews advocated. The works of the first German Jewish painter, Moritz Oppenheim, reflected that blend as in his depiction of Jewish soldiers returning from the Franco-Prussian war, "The return of the Jewish volunteers."
Other Jews, such as the social critic, Ludwig Borne, feared patriotism, the "nationalist monster," that in its excessive form was "a deceitful virtue that in its fervor surpassed all other known vices." Instead Jews should adhere to their traditional roles as cosmopolites. From that position they should "civilize German patriotism." Raised in the cruel restrictions of the Frankfurt ghetto, Borne associated Jewish emancipation with the expansion of liberty for all humans. The whole world was a school for the Jews, and they were also "teachers of liberty."
Heine — The Innermost German Voice
Perhaps the most ironic example of Jewish integration into German culture is the case of poet Heinrich Heine. Because his Jewishness prevented his attaining a legal or academic position, he converted, an action he contemptuously described as "crawling to the cross." However, Heine "had been only marginally Jewish before his baptism," Elon states and as a convert, "he identified more with his fellow Jews than ever before."
Heine's attitude was always ambivalent, his expression always ironic. He worshipped Napoleon as Europe's liberator, yet he viewed the German language as his true fatherland and the German Kultur of Kant, Goethe, and Schiller, including the concept of Bildung, as the tradition worth upholding. And, through his poetry he became the innermost voice of the German soul, the best loved German poet after Goethe. His Book of Songs, published 1827, described German sentiments. His poetry written from his exile in Paris captured the authentic feeling of homesickness for Germany.
Irony was Heine's means for dealing with disappointment and anger. He spared neither the Jews nor the Germans, calling the Jews "an ethical people, just like the Germans." But his poem "To Edom" (Edom is a name Jews gave to their enemies), written just prior to his reluctant conversion, indicates the complexity of his feelings:
You endure the fact I breathe,
While your rages I must suffer.
Day by day our friendship deepens,
Day by day I'm more like you
Now we've grown so close together,
That I've started raging too.
Like most German Jews, Heine was repelled by the ragtag, Yiddish-speaking Jews who poured into Germany from the East each time eastern governments launched a pogrom. But Heine grew disheartened with the eager assimilation of German Jews. "I prefer the Polish Jew," he stated, "with his grimy fur, his flea-bitten beard, his odor of garlic, and his wheeling and dealing to many others in all their savings-bond splendor."
The Failed Revolution of 1848
Jews came to believe that German unification, under a constitutional monarchy rather than emancipation edicts, would serve as Shakespeare's "rising tide" that would raise all boats including that of the Jews. But the despots who ruled the 36 German principalities proved to be obstacles. When King Louis-Philippe was deposed in 1848, riots spread to towns throughout Germany. Rebels demanded universal suffrage, freedom of the press, and the formation of an all-German democratic parliament. Among the Jewish leaders for social reform was Ludwig Bamberger, who had grown up in the Jewish community of Mainz, the city where French influence had continued long after Napoleonic rule.
Jews took an active role in the rebellions that spread to Mainz, Konstanz, Breslau, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Hamburg, Dresden, Duesseldorf, Munich. To meet the rebels' demands in Vienna the emperor dismissed his unpopular chancellor, Metternich, and despots appointed prominent liberals as ministers in governments of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Wuerttemberg, Hesse, Hannover.
On April 1, 1848, a "pre-parliament" met in Frankfurt to plan general elections to an all-German national assembly. The delegates included five prominent Jews. "The prospect of equality under the law, separation of church and state, universal suffrage, and freedom from arbitrary rule generated unbridled enthusiasm and support among young men only a generation or two out of the ghetto," Elon states. Traditionally Jews had observed and supported social actions from the sidelines. Now "for the first time in German history, the traditional passivity of Jews was giving way to active political involvement and street action."
Despots promised liberal constitutions. "No sign of change was more dramatic than the shift of the situation of Jews," Elon notes, citing the tiny principality of Hesse-Homburg as the first to grant full equality. Other principalities and cities followed.
The case was different in Prussia where most of the German Jews lived. Frederick William IV resisted granting a liberal constitution, giving in only after 10,000 Berliners surrounded his palace and mounted the barricades. Finally, in March 1848 he acceded to all the demands. Unfortunately, the rebels were too quick to dismantle the barricades.
Failure of 1848
The revolution of 1848 turned out to be as disappointing as the temporary edicts of emancipation that occurred in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war. Yet 1848 marked a sea change in thought. Brave political thinking occurred within a German state that did not really exist. During the period May 1848-June 1849 the elected National Assembly met continuously in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt and included some of the brightest minds in Germany, among them many Jews.
"Not since the federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had so many learned and idealistic minds come together in an elected national parliament," Elon notes. Among them were seven German and two Austrian Jews, including Gabriel Riesser, a Hamburg lawyer who founded the magazine Der Jude, and Johann Jacoby, a doctor from Konigsberg.
During the debates, Jews asserted a new self-awareness. When it was suggested that Jews' civil rights be debated separately because of Jews' national character, Riesser verbalized what many Jews felt: "We are not immigrants — we were born here — and so we cannot claim any other home: either we are Germans or we have no homeland. Whoever disputes my claim to this my German fatherland disputes my right to my own thoughts, my feelings, my language — the very air I breathe. Therefore, I must defend myself against him as I would against a murderer."
France as a Model
The Frankfurt deputies looked to France as model. But Germany was not the centralized state France had been before the 1789 revolution, but a collection of 36 absolute sovereigns. Riesser pushed for unification into a federated reich, feeling that Jewish emancipation would follow unification. Finally the notion that Jews were a nation within a nation was receding. "Like most other German Jews, he hoped that within a federation united by law and a common language and culture, Jews would no longer stand out; they would simply be one among many ethnic groups and warring historical tribes — Saxons, Bavarians, Prussians, Hessians, Silesians, and others."
But King Frederick William IV of Prussia would not share his power with a representative body made up of "butchers and bakers," as he put it. When a delegation of deputies offered him the imperial crown, thus making him part of a constitutional monarchy, the king simply turned his back on the delegates and walked out. He followed up on June 18, 1849 when Prussian troops shut down the parliament, thus depriving Germany of a draft constitution that Elon calls "the most liberal and progressive of all legal instruments of its kind in mid-century Europe."
A resurgence of nationalism, expansionist goals, and militarism followed 1848. In 1850 the king allowed a new constitution that reinstated the doctrine of a "Christian state." Jews were still barred from high positions in government, the judiciary, universities, and state schools.
Despite the failure of the revolution of 1848, the year 1848-49 was a year of progress for Jews. Suddenly they had become Germans who entered the new liberal parties and formed bonds with other liberals that lasted for 3-4 decades.
"Never before had their representatives been so outspoken, insistent, and conscious of their rights," Elon notes. "Liberals of all faiths drew closer to one another than ever before. Three or four decades after almost the entire Jewish intellectual elite had disappeared in the first wave of conversions, a new generation of vocal leaders had emerged. Hardly a single overt anti-Semitic remark either from the rostrum of the National Assembly or in the endless debates in the revolutionary state parliaments was reported."
The Wrong Kind of Unification
In August 1870 Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck provoked a war with France and defeated Napoleon III at Sedan. Oddly enough Jews responded with patriotic fervor. Calling the war a "national necessity," the writer Berthold Auerbach said his patriotism made him feel more German. But Leopold Sonnemann, the Jewish publisher of Frankfurter Zeitung, the leading liberal newspaper of Germany, "detested Prussian militarism and authoritarianism and predicted that the new unity achieved through war would come at the expense of freedom."
Indeed, when unification finally came in 1870 as a consequence of war, it did not lead to the democratic federation envisioned by the Frankfurt national assembly. Proclaimed at Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, the new Reich was, in Sonnemann's words, "the worst possible solution to the so-called problem of German disunity: a federation of absolute rulers presided over by the Prussian king now addressed as Germany's 'Kaiser.'"
Part of the problem was the changing nature of German nationalism. "Before the establishment of the new Reich, it had centered on unification and had been the cornerstone of a liberal ideology opposed to social and religious prejudice; with the establishment of the Reich, it became conservative, xenophobic, conformist, and worshipful of the militarists who had brought it about."
Peaceful Years
The first three years after unification were peaceful ones for Jews. In 1871 the new Reichstag passed a new emancipation law recognizing Jews as equals, outlawing all restrictions on civil and political rights that are derived from religious differences. Jews quickly made economic progress. By 1870 over 60% of all Prussian Jews were of secure middle class status. "Jews had become," Elon notes, "the most upwardly mobile social group in Germany."
But in October 1873 the stockmarket crashed and the anti-Semitic scapegoat syndrome was activated. "One is struck," Elon notes, "by the sharp contrast between the optimism of the relatively easygoing years before 1873 and the gloom that prevailed afterward; an abyss opened between Germans and Jews." And the flare-up of Judeophobia, reminiscent of the anti-Semitism of the Crusades or the Black Death, lasted until the end of the new empire in 1918.
Tens of thousands of middle class and aristocratic families lost everything. And the Jews were blamed. They were said to be "inferior" and "immoral," Elon writes. "It was not an accident that so many stockbrokers happened to be Jews. At whose expense had they been enriching themselves?"
Typical of the Jewish experience was the frequent alternation between cordiality and anti-Semitism. In October 1879 the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, the leading Jewish family magazine, noted that the hostility seemed to have "passed its zenith and was on the decline." That same month Prussia's leading historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, published a "Jews are our misfortune" essay in the Preussische Jahrbucher, describing the "dominance" of Jews in German life, in fact accusing them of corrupting Germanic and Christian ideals. His angry tone is tinged with his fear of Jewish success:
"Year after year, the inexhaustible Polish cradle spawns hordes of ambitious young men who come pushing across our border to peddle their trousers and whose children and grandchildren are supposed to one day dominate the German stock market and German newspapers.. ..In thousands of German villages there is a Jew practicing usury and driving his neighbors to ruin and buying them up... .But the most dangerous of all is the unfair dominance that the Jews exert in the daily press."
Jews responded to this prominent intellectual's attack by converting over the next 12 months at a rate that was double the average during the preceding 5 years. Yet von Treitschke's anxious tone reflects the degree of Jewish integration into German society.
Bourgeois Security
Yet Elon describes the years from 1888 until the beginning of World War I in 1914 as characterized by a growing sense of bourgeois security, noting that, "What discrimination remained was deemed marginal and, in any case, unconstitutional — hence, a curable disease, bound to be short-lived." Intermarriage became common, increasing from 8.4% in 1901 to 29.86% in 1915.
Transformation also occurred within Judaism. The emphasis on Bildung, i.e., Goethe's idea of self improvement and refinement through literature, philosophy, and the arts, helped lay the groundwork for Reform Judaism. During the 19th century, Jews began to abandon Orthodox Judaism, and by 1870 Reform Judaism had become dominant in most urban centers. The differences between Jewish and Christian ritual decreased, including celebrating the Jewish Sabbath on Sunday.
Elon cites memoirs in which Jews describe shifts from ritual and custom not as rejections of Judaism but rather as attempts to retain Jewish faith. "Far from proving, as some claimed, that reform Jews were indifferent to their faith, this shift demonstrated a continuing effort to retain it even as they amalgamated with the majority by sharing its day of rest."
Jewish Self-Hatred
German Jews aspired to a dual identity. Yet the sense of being a so-called "Christmas Jew," a Jew who celebrates both Jewish and Christian holidays and refuses to convert, caused enormous stress in many Jews, as exemplified in Ludwig Jacobowski's novel, Wenher the Jew, about a man who dies of unrequited love for Germany.
An example of an assimilated Jew beset by clashing emotions was Walther Rathenau, who played an active role in politics, serving as foreign minister in the Weimar Republic until he was assassinated in 1924 by right wing fanatics. Uneasy about his own identity, he was embarrassed by the tens of thousands of Russian, Romanian, and Galician Jews who poured into Germany over several decades to escape the Russian pogroms of 1881. "The repulsion felt by native-born Jews at the sight of the easterners — the Ostjuden — reflected a lingering fear of being identified with them," Elon explains. Rathenau urged quick assimilation, intermarriage, and the imitation of Prussian manners, as a means of survival. While this was considered practical advice, his article, "Hear, O Israel," which appeared in Die Zukunfi, a Berlin political magazine, seems tinged with self-hatred:
"There in the midst of Germanic life is an isolated race of men. Loud and self- conscious in their dress, hot-blooded and restless in their manner.. .an Asiatic horde on the sandy plains of Prussia.. .not a living limb of the people but an alien organism in its body."
Politics — A Means for Integration
Yet even this "Asiatic horde" of eastern Jews integrated into the larger society, often with encouragement and financial help from native-born Jews. Gradually Jews began to fight for their civil rights instead of relying on Gentiles to represent their interests. By 1890 more than 60% of Jews had chosen the Social Democratic Party, abandoning the National Liberal Party as too conservative and chauvinist.
In March 1893 the founding of the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, the Centralverein, confirmed this new political activism. Yet because a combination of the monarch, the army, and the bureaucracy ruled in place of the Reichstag the Verein could exert minimal influence. It urged Jews to consider themselves a religious, not an ethnic minority, not German Jews but German citizens of the Jewish faith, and decried baptism as a dishonorable act that did not contribute to patriotism.
Success Story or Tragedy?
Often Jewish historians describe the relationship between Jews and Germans as one inexorably leading to the horror of the Holocaust. Yet given the pattern of Jewish integration, the drastic outcome was by no means predictable, as evidenced by the large numbers of Jews who did not flee the Third Reich because they thought anti-Semitism would blow over as it had in the past.
"With all its shortcomings, Germany stood out as a country where acculturation, social integration, and day-to-day tolerance seemed to have as good a chance as anywhere else in Western Europe," Elon states, pointing to strict limitations placed on Jewish immigration in England in 1900. And in Italy Jews were so few as to be nearly invisible.
By 1900, of the 200 wealthiest Prussian families, 40 were Jewish. Although they comprised only 5% of the population of Berlin, Jews paid 30% of the taxes. While the richest man in Berlin was still the Kaiser, the second richest man was Fritz von Friedlander-Fuld, the converted son of a Silesian family of coal magnates. Grandiose synagogues, modeled on the mosques of 13th century Moslem southern Spain, symbolized Jewish success.
Humanist Ideal
Elon muses that these synagogues were "far too large for the needs of their increasingly secular middle- and upper-middle class congregations, whose true house of worship was the opera house or the concert hall." The German humanist ideal of Bildung was the only religion for many Jews, he suggests, one that "continued to evoke a promise that kept their love affair with Germany alive."
That love affair appeared destined to flourish. Germany offered an expanding economy and an excellent education system where scientific research was conducted on a far higher level than in other countries. Germans, like Jews, were readers. By 1913, more books were published in Germany annually — 31,051 new titles — than in any other country in the world.
As writers, artists, musicians, publishers, Jews engaged in every aspect of Germany's vibrant culture. A young Jewish journalist, Moritz Goldstein, observed in an article in the conservative magazine, Der Kunstwart, that Jews now largely controlled German culture. Despite the unfortunate wording, Goldstein's comment implies Jewish success. Nevertheless, German voters in the early 20th century rejected racist parties. The 1912 general elections brought defeat to the anti-Semitic splinter parties and a doubling of the strength of the Social Democratic parties to 35%, making it the largest single party in the Reichstag. The number of Jewish deputies rose from 8 to 19.
Striking evidence that German Jews felt at home in Germany was their rejection of Zionism, a rejection that exceeded that expressed in other European countries. The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums criticized Theodor Herzl's plan for a Jewish state in the Middle East and for assuming that the Arabs of Palestine would welcome an influx of Jews. Walther Rathenau rejected Zionism as "atavistic," explaining that Jews were no longer a nation but a German tribe like the Saxonians and Bavarians.
World War I and Its Enduring Influence
World War I began with what Elon calls a "patriotic hysteria" and a "contagious psychosis." But it temporarily united the country. When a Bosnian gunman shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne during the archduke's visit in Sarajevo in 1912, the Austrians viewed it as a call to war. Unfortunately the German Kaiser encouraged the Austrians. Thomas Mann's protagonist in Dr. Faustus embodied war fever: "We marched off enthusiastically — filled with the certainty that the hour of Germany's era had come, that history was holding its hand over us, that after Spain, France, and England it was now our turn to put our stamp upon the world and lead it."
Jews lost their cosmopolitanism overnight. They saw the war as a means for expressing their full integration into German society. Leo Baeck, leading German Reform rabbi, said the war "allows us to sense how the life of the fatherland is ours and how its conscience resonates in our own." Jews followed the Centralverein's counsel to "serve the fatherland beyond the call of duty."
But an example illuminates how the two world wars were connected and how that connection was profoundly lethal for Jews. A young Jewish volunteer, Julius Holz, wrote in a letter Dec. 7, 1914, on his 20th birthday, to his father, vowing to "fight like a man, as a good German of true Jewish faith and for the greater honor of my family." But Julius fell in battle in 1918. And 24 years later, his 81 year old mother, on the eve of her deportation under the Nazis, asked to be spared in view of her son's death in action. "Your application to be released from 'labor service' is refused," was the reply.
Jewish Representation High
Jewish representation among the intellectual war zealots was disproportionately high. "Jewish intellectuals, for once, were as conformist as others. It was perhaps their worst hour since the unification of Germany in 1870," Elon writes. They abandoned their humanist predilections, he felt, "in the hope, no doubt, of finally completing integration with the majority."
Martin Buber, prophet of the Jewish cultural renaissance, suddenly celebrated the concept of Volk and the war-inspired feeling "of solemn exaltation." He welcomed a war that would unite Germans and Jews in a joint "world historical mission" to civilize the Near East. One of the few Jews to reject the pro-war jingoism was Albert Einstein. Another was the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus who attributed the war to a disastrous "failure of the imagination" and cited a refusal to envisage the inevitable consequences of words and acts.
Indeed by 1916, after half a million German casualties at the battle of the Somme, disillusion set in. As the war turned into a quagmire, officials targeted the standard scapegoat — the Jewish population — thus exploiting the downside of unhealthy patriotism, xenophobia. Twelve thousand Jews gave their lives for the fatherland in World War I, far out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Yet Jews were accused of sitting on the sidelines. In October 1916 when three thousand Jews had already died, War Minister Wild von Hohenborn ordered a "Jew census" to determine the actual number of Jews on the front lines. The census revealed that 80% of Jews who served were on the front line, thus refuting the rumor of non-participation. Jewish soldiers suffered a moral crisis when the government withheld the results of the census.
Criticism of Jews
"The war was said to drag on only because Jews like Rathenau and Ballin [Albert Ballin, as head of the Hamburg-America line a leading entrepreneur] had not yet amassed enough money. The War Ministry was flooded with complaints about Jewish draft dodgers," Elon writes. Thus the blame for defeat was shifted from General Erich Ludendorff's shoulders to the backs of the Jews. The myth of"the stab in the back," perpetrated by Jews, was created, a myth that helped lay the groundwork for World War II.
Scapegoating continued after the war as a tool of the Weimar Republic when the hyperinflation of 1922 wiped out savings and when the U.S. stock market crashed in 1929 bringing economic disaster once again. Ironically, the Jewish position in Germany continued to advance during the years between World War I and World War II, the Weimar Republic years. German universities finally opened all faculties to Jews. The arts and the world of journalism and publishing were enriched by Jewish participation. And Jews played an increasingly active role in the Social Democratic party.
Berlin as a Cultural Center
During these years Berlin competed with Paris as a cultural center. "In a fit of bad conscience," Elon notes, "perhaps over their jingoism during the first months of the Great War, Jewish intellectuals worked overtime for the causes of cosmopolitanism, republicanism, democracy, peace, and the multicultural society. They were patriots in the best sense of the word; love of country never blinded them to its failings."
Before Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933, the Weimar Republic had been labeled by anti-Semites as a Judenrepublik. While the term bore negative connotations for anti-Semites, the term also symbolized the level of Jewish integration into the Weimar Republic.
As the purposes of the Third Reich became horrifyingly evident, Jews emigrated. Yet those who didn't told themselves the Third Reich was just one more progrom. The Jews who survived in exile not only saved their lives, but they carried with them a yearning for a culture that they not only admired but had helped create. It was perhaps the ultimate irony that Heinrich Heine' s poetry of homesickness reinforced that yearning, a yearning similar to the one that had inspired Heine to write the poetry when in exile.


As the largest animals in the ocean, blue whales have not evolved defensive behaviors. New research by Stanford biologist Jeremy Goldbogen suggests this might explain why the whales are so prone to ship collisions.
GPS data from a blue whale shows the animal (blue dots) rising to the surface and then slowly dipping and narrowly missing a cargo ship (red dots) before diving deep once again.


Schools In Zambia Face the Same Issues.
Kenya Society for the Deaf has called on the government to increase the number of teachers posted to special needs schools.
Mr Francis Ng'ang'a, the society's national chairman said the ratio of teacher to child in schools for the deaf is 1 to 24 against the recommended fraction of 1 to 12. This, he said, has affected the quality of education in the schools.
Zambia daily mail "how we met"


It's really natural for us to base our identity and self-worth on our performance (see Identity in Sport – you are more than your performance), so how can we avoid this trap? How then can you get your identity in sport sorted?
So go ahead, write them down. What admirable qualities do you have, apart from being good at sport? If you're struggling here, ask one of your 'true friends' (see point 3). They will be able to think of a few.
No one is going to get it all right all of the time, so why are you so hard on yourself when you make a mistake or fail? You are not a loser, you are a human. Give up trying to be perfect. Remember, mistakes are good, because that's how we learn.
Your true friends are those who want to be with you even when you lose, when you are injured, when you don't make the team, and when you make that mistake that costs you the championship. Many of your true friends are the people who loved you before you became so good at sport. They can help you get your identity in sport sorted. Make sure you invest time in these relationships.
Here's what we do: we compare all the stuff we know about ourselves (quite a lot), with the public face of others (a small part of who they really are). And of course they are wanting to portray the best parts of themselves, so that's usually what you see. It's just not a fair comparison. It's like feeling bad because all your friends on Facebook are so happy and doing amazing things. But that's only on Facebook. So don't do it. I promise you, they are better than you at some stuff, and you are better than them at some stuff. You just can't always see it.
Pressure? Pressure is millions of people in the world, parents, no money to buy food for their children. Not in football.
There's worse things in life than losing an election. You haven't been struck down by cancer or a heart attack, so let's put this in perspective: it's no more than you lost an election. But actually you've got your health, you've got your dignity, you've got other things to look forward to.
They are right you know.
Many people find that reading ancient texts such as the Bible, praying, meditating, and attending a place of worship, provides them a strong sense of identity and purpose beyond sport.
Make sure sport isn't all you are about. By having more balance in your life, you will be a healthier person. How about trying something completely different?
One of the best ways to get balance and perspective in your life is to reach out and help someone else. There are plenty of opportunities, which can help you get your identity in sport sorted. Maybe you could coach younger players in your sport, or maybe you could do something outside sport, like volunteering in a food bank. You will gain much from the experience. This is one of the reasons a lot of professional sports teams get their players to volunteer in the community. Check out http://www.volunteeringnz.org.nz to find ways you can serve others.
The idea of taking one day a week for rest is thousands of years old. These days the trend is towards being able to work, shop and party 24/7, but being turned to 'on' all the time just isn't healthy. Research is clear: taking time off reduces stress, restores you physically, mentally and emotionally, and makes you more productive overall.
How about taking one day a week where you don't do anything related to your sport? I think you will find that you become a more balanced, healthier person, with a better perspective on your identity in sport.
Sports psychologist Dr Rob Bell studied Super Bowl winning teams, and found that many players and coaches actually experienced a significant feeling of let-down almost immediately after their win, in what should have been their greatest moment. He believes that it is actually the process of getting to the top, which is more satisfying than the achievement itself. What we really find satisfying is the journey we go on, the obstacles we overcome, and the relationships we form. Too often we undervalue these things in our pursuit of being number one, only to find that being number one isn't really all that we had hoped for. So think about what you've got that's good right now. Enjoy the process and appreciate the people you have around you. If and when success does come, it will be the icing on the cake.
There's my ten tips to help you get your identity in sport sorted, and be happier and more successful in your sport and beyond.
Your turn. What will you do to get your identity in sport sorted? Which of these do you want to begin practising in your life? Or do you have another suggestion to share?
Please share your thoughts below or contact us in confidence.


text:
Essays, Recipes, and Advice for the Lone Star Way of Life
Editors of Texas Monthly
The editors of Texas Monthly explore what it means to be a Texan in this anthology packed with essays, reportage, recipes, and recommendations from their renowned list of contributors.
Big hats, big trucks, big oil fortunes—Texas clichés all. And while those elements do flourish throughout Texas, they alone hardly define the place. The Lone Star State is and has always been a great melting pot, home to sprawling cities, trailblazing innovators, and treasured traditions from all over, many of which become ingrained in popular culture and intertwined with the American ideal.
In this collection, the editors of Texas Monthly take stock of their multifaceted, larger-than-life state, including the people, customs, land, culture, and cuisine that have collided and comingled here. Featuring essays, reportage, recipes, and recommendations from the magazine's legendary roster of contributors, and accompanied by original drawings, Being Texan explores the landscapes that are home to more than 29 million people; the joys and idiosyncrasies of Texan life; underappreciated episodes of Texas history; and distinctive strains of Texan arts and culture.
Illuminating, surprising, and entertaining, Being Texan reveals the Lone Star State in all its beauty, vastness, and complexity.
Editors of Texas Monthly:
TexasMonthly is one of the most respected publications in the nation and has won fourteen National Magazine Awards. Since 1973, its legendary roster of contributors has chronicled life in contemporary Texas, publishing long-form literary storytelling alongside in-depth analysis on vital issues and indispensable advice on Texas living.
Publisher Name Harper Wave
Imprint Harper Wave
Publication Date Nov 09, 2021
Crafts & Leisure » Local & family history, nostalgia » Local history
Crafts & Leisure » Cooking, Food & Drink » National & regional cuisine
History & Archaeology » History » History of the Americas

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Ina is a village in Jefferson County, Illinois, United States. The population was 2,338 as of the 2010 census. It is part of the Mount Vernon Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Geography
Ina is located along Illinois Route 37 which is the village's Main Street, and Interstate 57 runs through the west side of town, with access from Exit 83. Mount Vernon, the Jefferson county seat, is  to the north, and Benton is the same distance to the south.

According to the 2010 census, Ina has a total area of , all land.

Ina is located on high ground between Casey Creek and Gun Creek, both tributaries of the Big Muddy River. The Big Muddy has been dammed to form Rend Lake, with arms of the lake extending up the two tributaries.

Ina is the home of the Big Muddy River Correctional Center. Rend Lake College, with an Ina mailing address, is outside the village limits to the southwest.

History
Many Cherokee families settled in Ina around 1840. They were apparently refugees from the Trail of Tears. In the 1800s, Ina was jokingly referred to as "the Cherokee Reservation".

The main settlement in this area was Spring Garden, about  northeast of Ina. Spring Garden prospered from 1848 until the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad was built in 1905. After that, the population and business shifted over to the depots at Ina and Bonnie.

Crimes
A famous murder case occurred in Ina in 1924, when Rev. Lawrence Hight and his lover Elsie Sweeten poisoned Sweeten's husband in July and Hight's wife in September. Autopsies revealed arsenic. Hight and Sweeten were both sent to prison. Elsie Sweeten was granted another trial and was later acquitted of murder and released from jail.

Over six decades later a quadruple homicide occurred outside of town. The victims were the Dardeen family, who lived in a mobile home on Illinois Route 37 just north of the Franklin County line. One evening in November 1987, the police came to the house since Keith Dardeen had not shown up for his job at the Rend Lake Water Conservancy District treatment plant that morning and did not answer phone calls.

Elaine had not been raped, valuable items remained in the house, and police found no reason why anyone might want to have killed the family. Serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells confessed to the crime after he was arrested in Texas in 2000; however, police and the other members of the Dardeen family did not completely believe his accounts, which he changed three times, and he did not seem to know any nonpublic information about the crime. He was never charged before his 2014 execution, and officially the Dardeens' killings remain unsolved.

Demographics

The following population figures for Ina were greatly influenced by the approximately 1,850 male inmates who were included from the Big Muddy River Correctional Center, which had been annexed to the original village.  (The population of the village outside of the Correctional Center was approximately 600 people.)  As of the census of 2000, there were officially 2,455 people, 199 households, and 140 families residing in the village.  The population density was .  There were 233 housing units at an average density of .  The racial makeup of the village was 55.15% White, 41.79% African American, 0.45% Native American, 0.24% Asian, 2.12% from other races, and 0.24% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.48% of the population.

There were 199 households, out of which 26.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.8% were married couples living together, 10.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.6% were non-families. 25.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.  The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 2.95.

In the village, the population was spread out, with 5.1% under the age of 18, 18.7% from 18 to 24, 54.9% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 4.5% who were 65 years of age or older.  The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 874.2 males.  For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 1,082.2 males.  These last two statistics were heavily influenced by the approximately 1850 male inmates in the Big Muddy River Correctional Center.

The median income for a household in the village was $24,453 and the median income for a family was $32,500.  Males had a median income of $33,950 versus $20,625 for females.  The per capita income for the village was $8,596.  About 10.4% of families and 19.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 26.4% of those under age 18 and 21.0% of those age 65 or over.

Education
Spring Garden School District 178 operates area schools, including Spring Garden Elementary School (with a Mount Vernon postal address but outside of the city) and Spring Garden Middle School in Ina.

References

Villages in Jefferson County, Illinois
Villages in Illinois
Mount Vernon, Illinois micropolitan area
19th century Cherokee history
Populated places established in 1840

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Ukraine 'on brink of civil war,' ex-leader warns as protester amnesty debated.
Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) — Ukraine is on the brink of civil war, the Eastern European country's first post-independence President warned Wednesday as parliament met again to debate a possible amnesty for protesters arrested during two months of demonstrations.
Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine's President from 1991 to 1994, addressed a special parliamentary session to seek a way out of a deepening political crisis following weeks of mass protests that have crippled the capital, Kiev.
"Let's be honest, the situation is dramatic. Both Ukraine and the world recognize the country is on the brink of civil war," Kravchuk said.
Wednesday's session comes after a day of political upheaval when Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and his Cabinet resigned and draconian anti-protest laws were annulled.
Opposition politicians and activists welcomed the concessions made but said they were only a small step toward the change needed.
They want to see wide-ranging constitutional reform and a shake-up of the Ukrainian political system to shift the balance of power back toward parliament.
Kiev's snow-covered streets remained calm Wednesday, namely around the demonstrators' makeshift barricades in the central Independence Square and a road leading up to parliament — the scene of violent confrontations last week.
Ukraine's parliament, or Verkhovna Rada, is considering legislation that might provide amnesty for more than 200 people arrested since the demonstrations began in late November, centered on Independence Square.
Debate began Tuesday but continued into Wednesday. "The amnesty issue is not simple and difficult negotiations continue," state news agency Ukrinform quoted parliament's chairman, Volodymyr Rybak, as saying Tuesday.
Nationalist opposition party Svoboda, or Freedom, led by Oleg Tiahnybok, said the main bone of contention is that the government insists protesters must leave Independence Square before any amnesty law can take effect.
"The opposition, of course, cannot accept this condition," said a statement on the party's website.
Klitschko told journalists he was opposed to any bloodshed, but that demands in the government's proposed amnesty bill remained unacceptable.
"People took to the streets because they want to change the situation. A statement 'We will free people, if they go home' is unacceptable. It cannot be understood," he is quoted as saying on the UDAR website.
Parliament's vote Tuesday in favor of repealing the controversial anti-protest laws, rammed through January 16 in a show of hands by members of Yanukovych's Party of Regions, was overwhelming.
The repeal legislation has still to be signed off by Yanukovych.
Anger about the controversial anti-protest laws escalated the long-running protests into violent confrontations in the capital, with police and protesters fighting pitched battles among burning tires and barricades.
The legislation also prompted concern in the European Union and United States, where leaders condemned what appeared to be an attempt to limit freedom of speech and the right to protest.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton traveled to Kiev and met Yanukovych on Wednesday.
"It's important to stop the senseless violence. … The dialogue that happens from time to time needs to become a real dialogue," Ashton later told a news conference.
Under Ukrainian law, Azarov's resignation as prime minister triggered the resignation of his government with him.
But he and his Cabinet will continue in a caretaker function until a new government is formed, the presidential website said.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who heads the opposition Fatherland party, refused an offer from Yanukovych over the weekend to be prime minister.
Klitschko also turned down an offer to be vice prime minister of humanitarian affairs.
According to the law, a new government should be formed within 60 days.
Yanukovych's representative in parliament, Party of Regions lawmaker Yuriy Miroshnychenko, told parliament Wednesday that discussions on the makeup of a new Cabinet could begin next week, Ukrinform reported.
"We cannot talk about the political color of the government, because there is no response from the opposition regarding seats on the Cabinet of Ministers, and it will be clear only after the talks whether this is a technical government or a political government," he said, according to the news agency.
The next presidential election is due in March next year.
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, is home to 45 million people. The recent clashes are an escalation of weeks of largely peaceful public protests prompted by Yanukovych's decision in November to spurn a planned trade deal with the European Union and turn toward Russia.
He and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on a $15 billion deal for Russia to buy Ukrainian debt and slash the price of natural gas.
Putin has denied that Moscow is exerting undue influence in Ukraine.
"Russia has always respected, is respecting and will respect the sovereign rights of all the international entities including new states that emerged after breakdown of the Soviet Union," Putin said, speaking after a summit Tuesday with senior EU figures in Belgium.
Putin also said Russia would stick to the loan and energy commitments to Ukraine — agreed in December — even if the opposition comes to power.
CNN's Laura Smith-Spark wrote and reported in London and Diana Magnay reported from Kiev. CNN's Khushbu Shah, Karen Smith, Marie-Louise Gumuchian and journalist Victoria Butenko contributed to this report.


text:
Who's not waiting for official results? Joe Biden transition team
Updated: November 7th, 2020, 19:08 IST
in International
Joe Biden during a campaign PTI Photo
New York: It's Saturday and we're still waiting but Joe Biden isn't.
"Biden on the brink of presidency" is a chyron that's become frozen on US networks but Joe Biden's transition team isn't waiting around for the networks to call the race. The Biden transition website is up and running.
It's a single landing page but it's there. In fact, it's been there pretty much since the day after America voted – more signs of the steady sense of optimism among the Biden team.
Titled Build Back Better, there's a single thick paragraph on the homepage: "The American people will determine who will serve as the next President of the United States. Votes are still being counted in several states around the country. The crises facing the country are severe — from a pandemic to an economic recession, climate change to racial injustice — and the transition team will continue preparing at full speed so that the Biden-Harris Administration can hit the ground running on Day One."
Long-time Biden ally Ted Kaufman is leading the transition team effort. Kaufman is a former Delaware senator who filled Biden's Senate seat when he was elected vice president. Kaufman also worked on Barack Obama's transition team in 2008.
President Donald Trump continues to claim without evidence that the election is being stolen from him. In the process, he has cranked up the pressure on television networks to get the final call right in ways that cannot be questioned.
Given the way Fox and Associated Press rushed in with a call on Arizona (they called it for Biden) and got a ton of backlash, the opposite process has been set in motion now: Overcorrection.
Tags: Donald TrumpElection resultsJoe BidenpollsUS elections
Swedish police reach out to thousands in connection with alleged Covid test scam
Covid-19 is nowhere near over, warns WHO
France to ease Covid restrictions in Feb
29 people killed in Liberia stampede
Japan, France mull deepening security ties to counter China's rise


text:
Victim of Scots hairdresser who deliberately infected gay partners with HIV says he seemed 'a genuine person'
Daryll Rowe lost an appeal against his life sentence earlier this month after the judge thought he was dangerous.
Margaret Davis
Darryl Rowe became the first man in the country to be found guilty of intentionally setting out to spread the virus (Image: PA)
A student deliberately infected with HIV by serial attacker Daryll Rowe has described how the hairdresser seemed "such a genuine person" despite his secret campaign to spread the disease.
The 28-year-old victim, originally from Brighton, was so shocked when he discovered Rowe's vendetta that he initially thought it was an accident.
He said: "I'll never, ever be able to understand or comprehend why Daryll did this to people and it has shattered my trust in people. I've never been able to get my head around it and I don't think I ever will.
Daryll Rowe was convicted of 10 charges - five of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and five of attempting to do so (Image: Daily Mirror)
Scottish hairdresser who tried to give gay partners HIV loses appeal against life sentence
"The crazy thing when I look back is that he seemed such a genuine person. He seemed to be the one more committed. I liked him but he seemed more into the relationship and the more affectionate and jealous.
"He'd often say I didn't show him enough affection, so his feelings for me seemed very real, and I was certainly of the opinion that we were exclusively seeing each other. Despite this there was obviously nothing real at all, as all the time he was with me to infect me."
He had a two-month relationship with Rowe, and another two months after the pair split up was contacted by a sexual health clinic asking him to have an HIV test, which came back positive.
Top news stories today
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"I couldn't believe that he would have done it to me deliberately. I thought at the time it must have been an accident on me, as I felt our relationship had been real," the game design student said.
"Finding out he had been arrested and then charged with this stuff was just completely mind-blowing. I was being told I had HIV, but not only did I have that to contend with mentally, but also how it had happened and why.
"I just felt like my life had been ruined, and that nobody would want to know me. There is still a huge stigma to HIV and I thought that no men would want to come near me, I felt like I had been left with a poison inside me."
The victim, who wishes to remain anonymous, has received a £22,000 payout from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) after losing his job, flat and place at university when he fell into depression after the devastating news.
Daryll Rowe was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 12 years by a judge at Brighton Crown Court in April (Image: PA)
Rowe was the first man in the UK to be convicted of deliberately spreading HIV when he was found guilty of infecting five men and trying to infect five more in 2017, and was jailed for life with a minimum term of 12 years.
Diagnosed with the virus in his home city of Edinburgh in April 2015, he then started a campaign to infect other men by lying to sexual partners that he was HIV negative, or by tampering with condoms.
He moved to Brighton and began to meet men online, having sexual relationships with eight of them.
Once he knew he was under investigation by police, he moved to Berwick-upon-Tweed, apparently to comply with bail conditions, and had unprotected sex with another two men, using a false name so they did not discover his true identity.
Daryll Rowe was sentenced to life in prison at Brighton Crown Court earlier today (Image: Google Maps)
Edinburgh hairdresser gets life sentence for trying to infect 10 men with HIV
Rowe, now 28, would taunt his victims after he had slept with them, sending one a text message that read: "I have HIV. Lol. Whoops!"
He attempted to appeal against his conviction and life sentence, but was rejected earlier this month, with High Court judges agreeing that he is "dangerous".
In separate proceedings in Scotland in May, Rowe was sentenced to eight years after admitting four incidents where he had unprotected sex with men, one of whom contracted HIV.
The Brighton victim, who is now back in work and has a place on a university course studying game design, says he is managing his HIV successfully and it will have no impact on his life expectancy.
His lawyer, Victoria Neale, from Hudgell Solicitors, said: "There can be no doubt that our client has suffered significantly, both physically and psychologically, as a result of the actions of Daryll Rowe.
"Although no amount of money can lessen the impact of what happened to our client in this case, it will go some way to helping him rebuild his life, having found himself running into financial difficulties in the aftermath of what had happened to him.
"It is entirely understandable that, having been a victim of such a horrific offence, our client found it difficult to face things such as work and university. It has only been through counselling, support and now this damages claim that he has been able to start rebuilding his life."
TheScottishDailyRecord
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Lewis CapaldiPrince Harry 'incredibly grateful' to Lewis Capaldi in his first speech since losing HRH titleHarry thanked the Scots chart-topper for taking time out of his busy schedule to perform at a charity event in London last night.
Armed forcesFar-right activist sent to Scotland to infiltrate army as veterans targeted by race hate groupsA Daily Record investigation has discovered For Britain – headed by Islamophobe Anne Marie Waters – has targeted the Forces in Scotland.
Burns NightScots reject Haggis as majority is now sold in England and WalesScots butcher Simone Howie recorded booming sales down south, with 60 per cent sold in England and Wales.
South Lanarkshire CouncilRoadworks begin as traffic signals in Hamilton are replacedThe signals will be replaced on Burnbank Road at the junction with High Blantyre Road/Glasgow Road.
BlantyreBlantyre Leisure Centre pool reopens after 'floater' forced it to closeSouth Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture apologised for any inconvenience.
PaisleyFailed soldier who battered Paisley shopkeeper in botched robbery bid jailedFailed soldier Christopher Holland, 31, punched Zeeshan Saeed, threatened him and dragged him behind the counter during the terrifying ordeal at his Best One shop in Paisley's St James' Street.
DealsYou can now buy Apple AirPods for less than £125 at Laptops DirectThere are discounts of up to 50% in the January sale including laptops, monitors, smart tech and mobile phones
Fatal FiresBoy,3, dead and four-year-old sibling fighting for his life after caravan fireA father and his two children are believed to have been inside the caravan when the fire broke out.
Police ScotlandClackmannanshire Bridge closed as emergency services rush to 'ongoing incident'As a result of the incident the A976 road is currently closed in both directions.


Check out your baby's growth every day-why wait for a monthly checkup? Remember, all your input is completely anonymous and confidential, so please answer honestly to get the best results.
Here at StackMeUp we take baby measurements seriously, because nothing is more important than your baby's health. On this page you can compare your baby measurements by weight, by length, and by head circumference. We recommend that you take a new set of baby measurements every month or to see how your baby compares to age appropriate growth patterns.
Why Compare Your Baby Measurements?
There are many reasons you may want to compare your baby measurements. Maybe you may want to see if your baby is growing at a normal rate. Or if your baby really does have that unusually large head your friends talk about! There is no limit when it comes to reasons as to why you should compare your baby measurements.
Now that we've went over how we do baby measurements at StackMeUp and some of the reasons you might want to compare your baby measurements, we should go over the most important part: measuring your baby! Usually doctors are the ones to measure your baby, but a concerned parent will can too.
Step 1, Weigh Your Baby.
The best way to take your baby's weight and get an accurate reading for your list of baby measurements is to use a baby scale. If you don't have a baby scale or you broke it trying to weigh yourself you can use this simple method. First, weigh yourself on an adult scale and write down your weight (don't worry we can't see you.) Next, weigh yourself with your baby and record that weight. Then subtract your weight from the weight of you and your baby. You should be left with a fairly accurate number. Only two more to go until you finish your baby measurements list!
Step 2, Measure Your Baby's Height.
This can be done laying your baby down on a table and measuring him from his head to the bottom of his foot while gently stretching out his leg and record the number. Only one more to go until you finish your baby measurements list!
What is a healthy weight for a new born?


Welcome to the Killer Nashville blog, an online community of readers and writers of mysteries, thrillers, suspense, and true crime.
If the thing to remember when purchasing property is location, location, location, then the thing to remember when writing is…well…not writing at all. It's rewriting.
Citing examples from Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, Lisa Scottoline, Charlie Chaplin and others, author Daco Auffenorde examines the process of rewriting, the strong case for getting the idea down and then molding it, and how absolutely critical rewriting is to achieving artistic (if not financial) success.
Happy Reading! And may you never run out of extra paper.
According to a 2010 CNN report, famed actor-director Charlie Chaplin demanded 342 takes just to get actress Virginia Cherrill to mouth the words "flower sir" in the silent film City Lights. Iconic director Stanley Kubrick reputedly reshot one or more scenes in The Shining over a hundred times.
Great film directors like Kubrick and Chaplin are often revered for their willingness to reshoot scenes. So why do writers believe their first draft is a perfect, one-take scene, or if they do recognize the need to rewrite, become paralyzed by the thought? I think it's because rewriting is not only a blow to the ego, it's also hard and time-consuming. Unlike a movie director, an author can't call "Cut" and reshoot the scene immediately. Yet, rewriting is as critical to a good book as the retake is to a successful movie.
Stephen King told The Paris Review (Fall 2006), "Every book is different each time you revise it. Because when you finish the book, you say to yourself, 'This isn't what I meant to write at all.'" In 1958, also speaking to The Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway revealed that he rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms thirty-seven times and the last page thirty-nine times. According to a mid-2012 article in the New York Times, Seán Hemingway discovered after studying the collected works of his grandfather that there were actually forty-seven endings to the novel. The Telegraph added that not only was the story rewritten multiple times, but that Hemingway also compiled a list of alternative titles before he decided on the final.
What this means is that the key time in the writing process—the time when the book takes shape—is in the rewriting. So, how does the reluctant rewriter make sure her book gets the rewrite it deserves?
Take 3 … and action.
Done. The end. I'd finished writing The Scorpio Affair, the sequel to my debut suspense novel, The Libra Affair. I'd proofed it over and over, corrected typos, tinkered with sentences, cut verbiage. It had to be ready to send out to the publisher. But books are meant to be read, so before submitting my manuscript, I shared it with a trusted beta reader, and he suggested that I yell, "Cut!" and reshoot some scenes. I didn't take his word for it right away. Instead, I put the manuscript away for a while, and then later read it on my own. He was right.
I knew how I wanted The Scorpio Affair to begin and end, and those parts of the book were fine. In between, I'd taken my heroine Jordan Jakes, a CIA covert operative, on a wild ride with lots of action and intrigue. But much of Scorpio was too episodic. Many chapters told exciting, self-contained stories, but didn't move the plot forward quickly enough. There was only one thing to do—retake. And though at first I found myself frustrated at the daunting task of an entire rewrite, I remembered that most successful authors embrace the rewrite as a fundamental step in crafting a good story. For encouragement, I recalled the King and Hemingway examples, and also this wonderful quote from best-selling author Lisa Scottoline: "They say that great books aren't written, they're rewritten, and whoever said that was probably drinking Dunkin' Donuts coffee, because they're right." I bought a dozen doughnuts, brewed some coffee, and started to revise The Scorpio Affair.
But here are the first two lessons about rewriting. If the process doesn't come naturally to you, first put the manuscript away for awhile. As Neil Gaiman said, "Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before." It's advice that you hear all the time, but it's difficult to put your baby to bed even for a few weeks. And second, try to find that trusted beta reader, someone who'll tell you candidly if there's rewriting to be done.
There are other ways to foster the rewriting process. Writing groups can help immensely, both because you get feedback from an audience—that's who we write for—and often because you can read your work aloud. I can't tell you how many times words looked good on the page but have sounded slow and extraneous when read aloud. If you're not in a writing group, you should still read aloud even if only to yourself. Your ears will tell you if your story has the right rhythm.
A final alternative—there are many good private editors/writing coaches out there. They can be expensive, so not everyone can afford them. But if you're lucky enough to have some spare change lying around, they can be very helpful, especially in today's publishing world, where the editorial staff expects ready-to-go manuscripts.
Take 4 … and quiet on the set.
To conclude, I'm going to advise something that might seem inconsistent with the above. In considering how much to rewrite, trust your gut. Don't rewrite just because someone tells you it should be done. As the artist, only you can decide when your story is ready. The gaffer, grip, production designer, and cinematographer might all have good input, but you're the director, and the final cut belongs to you.
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A new mountain biking centre has been launched with the help of SIS investment: Laggan Wolftrax in Strathmashie near Laggan.
The centre has been set up as a social enterprise by Laggan Forest Trust, a charity with a trading arm, at Forestry Commission Scotland's popular Laggan Wolftrax mountain bike trails.
The new centre includes a bike shop offering hire, retail and repair services, a café and able to offer conference space and courses in orienteering, bike maintenance and first aid to local schools, colleges, community groups and the public. The facility has already created five new local jobs and it is hoped that it will help to attract many more visitors to the area to help raise the profile of mountain biking amongst young people.
Laggan Wolftrax MTB Trails were constructed by Forestry Commission Scotland in 2004 and is regarded as one of the top trail destinations in the UK with 30km of mountain biking trails from gentle green runs to extreme black grade runs for the adventurous mountain biker. Use of the trails is free and attracts more than 14,000 visitors per year.
The new centre was made possible thanks to investment from the Cairngorm National Park Authority (CNPA), who helped to fund the centre, and Social Investment Scotland (SIS) who provided investment for the café development. Clad in wood and situated adjacent at the foot of the mountain biking trails, the facility boasts wonderful views of the surrounding mountains.


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Breaking News Only
Mike Leach, Football Coach With an 'Air Raid' Offense, Dies at 61
Texas Tech hired Leach in late 1999, and his teams there went on to compile an 84-43 record.
In 2020, shortly after he left Washington State for Mississippi State, Leach shared on Twitter a Coronavirus-related meme, which he later deleted, that presented an image of an older white woman with knitting needles. Its caption read, "After 2 weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf."
But it wasn't a scarf; it was a noose, which evoked the Deep South's history of lynching Black people. Leach apologized and was ordered by the university to undergo sensitivity training.
A defensive lineman, Fabien Lovett, who is Black, transferred to Florida State, saying he felt that Leach's apology was insincere and that the university's response insufficient.
Leach is survived by his wife, Sharon (Smith) Leach; his daughters, Janeen Clark, Kimberly Betty and Kiersten Leach; his son, Cody; his father; his sisters, Lindsey Andrus, Mary Quackenbush and Cara Williams; his brother, Tim; and six grandchildren.
Leach was also known for his off-the-field football interests. He taught a course at Mississippi State on the connection between football and insurgent warfare. In addition to his autobiography, he wrote "Geronimo: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior" (2015, with Buddy Levy).
And, fascinated by pirates, he kept a talking life-size model of one in his office and carried the buccaneer theme into lectures to his players. Following an overtime loss, he talked to his team about pirates for three hours. When he was interviewed on "60 Minutes" in 2008, he recounted another lecture he had given.
"I brought his sword in, this pirate sword replica, and I talked about how are you gonna swing this sword?" Leach said as he wielded the weapon. He asked his players if they were going to wield it "out of control," blindly, or with precision. He noted how "even the most derelict pirates" sharpen and polish their swords, then compared that to the way players work out in weight rooms.
"Your body," he said, "is your sword."
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IF EVERYTHING JOHN LE CARRÉ WROTE SINCE 1961 ON BRITISH SPYING AGAINST MOSCOW WAS TRUE – IT WAS — WHY READ THE NEW LE CARRÉ BOOK NOW?
"Breathtaking", claimed an Irish novelist with no government experience, in a London newspaper review. "Gripping", chimed a BBC journalist whose only official secret was an affair with another journalist he tried to stop other journalists reporting. "An unexpected treat", blurbed one of Rupert Murdoch's newspaper employees. "A nostalgic comparison between espionage then and now", blurbed another. The Los Angeles Times was religious about le Carré's theme — "the toll exacted on the individual's [spy] soul by serving institutions that fail to live up to their professed values will resonate as [readers] consider past and present covert actions of British and US governments." This is a bite-back for the virulent hatred for the US and its intelligence services le Carré has written into his story, including disclosure of the MI6 document handling code, GUARD, which is so secret the British Government doesn't mention it in its classification guidelines. It means keep secret from Americans.
Since the majority of le Carré's readers are Americans, le Carré is asking them to pay money and wear themselves out seeing both sides of everything. Only le Carré's intelligence officers never see the Russian side of anything. What they do see – le Carré makes the point repeatedly in A Legacy of Spies, now in its fifth printing – is the pointlessness of the intelligence they target, and the worthlessness of their methods for going about it.
Jonathan Haslam, a British historian of the Anglo-American side of Russian espionage, isn't sure which is stupider in spy stories – the derring-do of undercover agents or "the grubby reality immortalised by the former MI5/MI6 officer David Cornwall (John le Carré)." So Haslam recommends his own published inquiries into "the back rooms where the pencil has proven infinitely mightier than the sword." Haslam can't spell David Cornwell's name correctly; he also can't spell the Russian word, dacha. These are childish mistakes; the adult ones are documented here.
Haslam, like Ignatius (right) and the other blurb writers, doesn't believe le Carré's point about pointlessness and worthlessness. They see no irony in recommending the believability of their own propaganda over le Carré's fiction. They refuse to concede what British and Russian professionals have been warning in parallel with le Carré's MI6 stories.
Left to right: Kim Philby (in Moscow after he defected in 1963); John Keegan; Victor Cherkashin.
The lawyers are trying to assemble the government's defence against a wrongful death compensation lawsuit by the surviving children of two agents. One of them, the Smiley agent Alec Leamas, had been shot by East German border guards at the Berlin Wall; the other, an East German woman code-named Tulip, was murdered by a Stasi agent inside the compound of an MI6 safe house near Salisbury (yes, it's Skripal country where enemy assassins still roam free).
Both of them had been betrayed by one of Smiley's British colleagues. The details were covered up, and the files removed from the MI6 archive, in order to protect the Stasi assassin. In return, he betrayed his German and Russian agents until the KGB tumbled to him, and he got his deserts.
"What follows is a truthful account , as best I am able to provide it," Guillam and le Carré open the book, "of my role in the British deception operation, codenamed Windfall." Truthfulness is Guillam's French side; deception is British. Possibly the only leg up which the British services still think they have over their partners against their common adversary.
To make sure readers know that Smiley isn't running a deception operation for Brexit (or is it Remain?), le Carré starts the book himself with an epigraph from one of the foggiest Germans of them all. "Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one – Heidegger (attrib)." By (attrib) le Carré is admitting he doesn't know for certain. Le Carré readers appear to need the reassurance of doubt repeated over and over again.


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One love, two homes: How some couples find happiness in living separately
Zosia Bielski
Published September 21, 2018 Updated September 24, 2018
This article was published more than 1 year ago. Some information in it may no longer be current.
Open this photo in gallery
Ottawans Kira-Lynn Ferderber, shown with her dog, and her partner Jesse McDonald, shown with his banjo, have been a couple for more than nine years, but they decided to move out and live separately. "If you're living with another person to please other people who aren't there, it doesn't make sense," Ferderber says.
Blair Gable/The Globe and Mail
On the eve of their 20th anniversary, Sharon Hyman and her partner David Demetre decided on a change. He would move closer to her – five minutes instead of 15 minutes away by car from her apartment in Montreal.
"People were like, 'You're going to finally move in together,'" Hyman said. "I'm like, 'No.'"
Over two decades together, the pair has never shared a home. Instead, they live solo and see each other a few times a week, mostly at her place.
There was never any plan to live this way for 20 years, Hyman explained, but with polar-opposite work schedules and a strong urge for solitude, full-time cohabitation never really appealed. They've gone to open houses, treating them like a passing curiosity. This "apartnership" felt more logical to them.
"We're committed, we care for and take care of each other but we've maintained our individuality. That keeps a relationship alive," said Hyman, a 56-year-old filmmaker whose forthcoming documentary Apartners: Living Happily Ever Apart delves into the unique world of long-term committed couples who choose not to reside together.
Sharon Hyman and David Demetre have been together for 20 years, but do not live together.
It's a cohort that's long fascinated sociologists, so much so that it has its own acronym: LAT, or living apart together. LAT partners can be married or unmarried, living apart because they want to or for practical reasons, such as work. Many speak of their residential separation as long-term, if not permanent.
One in 13 people are in a LAT relationship in this country, according to Statistics Canada. Some 1.9 million unmarried adults were in an intimate relationship with someone living elsewhere according to 2011 data, the most recent available from the agency. That's on top of 240,000 married people who live apart from their spouse in "commuter marriages," thanks to far-flung workplaces.
Today, sociologists say it is older, heterosexual, divorced or widowed women who are most enthusiastically taking up the trend. They are dating again monogamously but not interested in moving in with their new boyfriends. Financially self-reliant and living in empty nests, these women are ready to focus on themselves. They want companionship but not the domestic drudgery of their previous unions: more dates, less dirty socks.
What most LATers share in common is this drive for autonomy and self-fulfillment. That, and a deep urge to avoid the daily grind of traditional marriage – the fights over house chores and finances, the ways familiarity can breed contempt when people live on top of each other for too long.
Even so, LAT arrangements remain unconventional, eliciting mixed reaction from family and friends. Some are fascinated and envious, others concerned and judgmental. The most conservative critics don't view such relationships as legitimate. Commitment means living in a shared nest, they tell LATers: You've got to live together and compromise for it to be meaningful.
Hyman and other long-term LATers don't buy it. They argue that they are quite deeply committed. With no practical ties that bind – no mortgage, joint finances or shared children, often – they are only in it because they choose to be. As Canada's divorce rate hovers around 41 per cent, LATers see living apart as a hopeful alternative to marriage under one roof.
Calgarians Marlo Neilsen, shown with her Goldendoodle Asha, and Todd Hager, shown with his guitar, live five minutes apart.
Jeff McIntosh/The Globe and Mail
Five years in, Calgary's Marlo Nielsen, 47, and Todd Hager, 52, don't plan on moving in together any time soon. Nielsen, a recruiting manager, has done live-in relationships before and wasn't keen on replicating the experience. Today, she and Hager, who don't have children, live a five-minute drive away. They see each other on weekends, eating at restaurants, visiting farmers' markets and casinos and playing music together.
Some of their married friends have questioned their living arrangement, wondering whether the two are "in each other's corner." To that, Nielsen is defiant: They are dedicated but also respect each other's independence, giving each other breathing room during the week. "I discovered how much I enjoy having my own space and my own time to do things," Nielsen said.
Vicki Larson, co-author of the 2014 book The New "I Do": Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels advocates that marriage counsellors raise LAT with their clients as a viable option to "rearrange" their relationships, when all else is failing. "It's not that this is better or worse," Larson said. "It's different."
Even so, Larson also acknowledges it isn't for everyone. "This is attractive to people who enjoy their own company and don't need to be around people all the time. It's probably not going to work well for people who have attachment or trust issues, or who just don't like being alone." (Being financially secure and childless also helps.)
LAT also holds appeal for some who are previously separated and blending families with new partners. Michele Allinotte, a lawyer in Cornwall, Ont., lives seven minutes by foot from her partner of more than two years. Both are recently divorced and have four children, ages 7 to 14, between them. Her partner shares his family home, where he grew up, with his kids and his mother. To accommodate everyone in one home would involve finding a place with six bedrooms and an office – not feasible. Not wanting to put their kids through more upheaval, the two have no plans to move in together until their nests are empty.
Today, they meet for meals a few times a week at hers and try to ensure all of their children meet weekly and eat a meal together at least twice a month. Although Allinotte, 43, loves the pockets of solo time that LAT affords her, describing her situation is a challenge. "It is weird to explain. He's someone I love but don't live with. Is he my partner? Is he my boyfriend?"
The together-but-apart setup increasingly interests women in middle age and beyond, women who've suffered decades-long droughts of "me time," according to sociologists. Interviewing partners in heterosexual LAT relationships separately, Karen Kobayashi, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Victoria, and Laura Funk, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba found some telling gender discrepancies.
"Men perceived the LAT as a stage," Kobayashi said. "They talked about the eventuality of moving in together and didn't see this as unlikely at all."
The women, meanwhile, stressed they had no intention of living with these men. "They said they were very tired of having to care for everyone," Kobayashi said. "They talked about not being so readily available, how that was very freeing for them."
Wives who lived apart from their husbands because of work in "commuter marriages" discovered they had less housework to do and more leisure time at their disposal, a point not echoed by their husbands, said Danielle Lindemann, an assistant professor of sociology at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. Lindemann, whose book Commuter Spouses: New Families in a Changing World will be published next March, says commuter marriages are an "extreme example" of culturally shifting priorities in relationships.
"It sits at the crux of major changes in how we think about families and marriage," Lindemann said. "There's a shift in marriage from being focused on the unit, toward being focused on the individuals in it. Here, you have two people who are pursuing career fulfillment and self-development."
Such commuter marriages didn't come without criticism, most of it from family members and aimed at women. "It's women who disproportionately feel that stigma because they're valuing their careers at the level that their husbands do, and that hasn't historically been the case," Lindemann said.
Jesse McDonald, 38, says he and his partner stopped living in the same home after five years because "It felt like we weren't doing a relationship well."
Younger people are also experimenting with LAT partnerships. Kira-Lynn Ferderber, 34, and Jesse McDonald, 38, have been together for more than nine years. To everyone's surprise, the two Ottawa rappers mutually decided to move out and live separately 2½ years ago.
"It felt like we weren't doing a relationship well," McDonald said of the five years they lived together in Ferderber's west end home.
There were the daily irritants: his video games, her Chihuahua, the eternal question of who does more dishes. After a bad day at work, they'd come home grouchy and dump everything onto each other.
When the opportunity came up for McDonald to move in with friends a 20-minute bus ride away from Ferderber's place, they both seized it. "It was a huge relief pretty quickly," he said.
Today, they still do the little things that irk the other, only apart. If there's an argument, they have room to step back and think things through. Dishes are no longer an issue: Each feels like playing host when the other visits. Time together now feels more intentional.
Even as the move apart energized their relationship, it raised alarm bells among friends, who assumed they were breaking up. McDonald joked that they should have printed up cards explaining their rationale and sent them out to family and friends – a perverse inverse of the wedding invitation.
While LATers understand the scrutiny around their atypical relationships, they question the push that we all love in the same way.
"If you're living with another person to please other people who aren't there," Ferderber said, "it doesn't make sense."
A Montreal duplex proves to be a thoroughly adaptable home for a modern couple
Match: An unconventional romance that began with a banana bouquet
Is it possible for a couple to keep sharing love but not real estate?
Follow Zosia Bielski on Twitter @ZosiaBielski


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Bandora
According to Edmund Howes' 1631 revision of John Stow's Annales, originally published in 1580: "In the fourth yere of Queen Elizabeth, John Rose, dwelling in Bridewell, devised and made an Instrument with wyer strings, commonly called the Bandora, and left a son, far excelling himself in making Bandoras, Vyoll de Gamboes, and other instruments." Since Elizabeth succeeded in November 1558, this dates the bandora to 1561 or 1562.
The bandora – sometimes pandora – is highly unusual: large, strung with wire (brass strings for the lower pitches and iron for the upper pitches) in courses (pairs), and with a deep sound which would make a statue sigh. The bandora may originally have had 5 courses, but by the time of William Barley's A nevv Booke of Tabliture for the Bandora in 1596, it had 7. It is tuned in relative pitch like a modern guitar, except the 6th course would be tuned up to relative G rather than E, and the 7th course would be down to relative D. For actual bandora pitch, now drop the whole guitar down a 5th, giving a top course of a. Being a deep-sounding instrument, the bandora played a vital role at the lower end of the broken consort (also called the mixed or English consort), for which much renaissance and early baroque music was written. The mixed consort was a mixture of blown, plucked and bowed instruments, typically lute, cittern, bandora, treble viol or violin, bass viol, and recorder or transverse flute. The bandora also has a small surviving solo repertoire. Hear it and swoon: it is breathtakingly beautiful.
When William Barley published his bandora tablature in 1596, the instrument had straight frets, as you can see from the front cover reproduced on this page. In 1588 the orpharion had been created, modelled on the shape of the bandora and the tuning of the lute; but the orpharion had a sloping bridge, a sloping nut and fanned frets. Soon after Barley's publication, the bandora would follow suit.
The bandora was very popular specifically in England. The lute was the most important of all European renaissance instruments, judging by volume of music, esteem and iconography; but in 32 surviving examples of English household inventories between 1565 and 1648, in which musical instruments of any kind are mentioned, bandoras and orpharions are listed as often as lutes.
The wide pitch range of the bandora, and the fact that it used wire strings, was both its origin and its downfall. In mid-16th century Germany, Jobst Meuler had invented a process for producing wire which would take much higher tension than the then-standard brass, which meant wire could now be produced with more reliability and a much wider pitch range, thus paving the way for the bandora and then the orpharion. His wire was so superior, in such demand, and his fame so widespread, that the top musicians craved it for their bandoras, orpharions and citterns. Meuler died in 1622 during the Thirty Years' War. Like all string makers of the day, he kept his methods secret so no one else could copy his product. Since no one else's wire matched his quality and he had died, neither bandora nor orpharion could be effectively re-strung. The instruments continued for another three decades or so, probably while players still had string stock or otherwise were able to put up with inferior strings. Then, alas, they faded from use.
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Bandora playing A Preludium by Anthony Holborne, c. 1590-95


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Bösarp är kyrkbyn i Bösarps socken på Söderslätt i Trelleborgs kommun belägen cirka 10 kilometer nordost om Trelleborg.

Bösarp var tidigare ett kyrkligt centrum då Västra Virestad inte har någon kyrka och många gick till Bösarps kyrka på grund av kyrkans storlek. Den nuvarande kyrkan byggdes på 1800-talet.

Gislövs 4h-förening är belägen i Bösarp. Bösarps Bygdeförening, bildades 1985, har  ett eget bygdemuseum som invigdes 1986. I byn finns även ett stort församlingshem.

Orter i Trelleborgs kommun