Harold Freedman - Melbourne's artist for the people

May 22, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: Ellis Island New York - a place of welcome or of discrimination?

≪ Previous: MoMA New York art exhibition at the NGV in Melbourne

Harold Freedman (1915–99) was born in Melbourne and educated at Melbourne Technical College. Starting his long career in 1936, he worked in all public arts: portraits, war propaganda, political cartoons, graphic design, advertising, illustration, children’s books and large-scale murals.

Harold Freedman: Artist for the People was at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 2017. Freedman’s designation as a people’s artist was seen in his democratic teaching style, his well-known murals, and his service as an Official War Artist in WW2. But whereasChristopher Allen (The Australian, May 2017) and blogger Black Mark thought the work was insensitive to modern art styles, Ballarat curator Julie McLaren believed the work was accessible, democratic and full of honour for the WW2 soldiers.

In WW2, Freedman enlisted and became a war artist attached to the Royal Australian Air Force Historical War Records Section. He worked during 1944-5, in Borneo, Noemfoor and around Australia. Freedman and two other Australian artists, Eric Thake and Max Newton, were all appointed to document the RAAF because the Army had previously dominated official art assignments. The more famous artist Sidney Nolan applied to be an official war artist, but was rejected. So he operated as an Unofficial War Artist instead. As did artist Albert Tucker.

Men of Service: The Welder,

1947, 100 x 62 cm,

National Gallery Aus, Canberra

Men of Service: Signal Man,

1947, 100 x 62 cm,

National Gallery Aus, Canberra

Freedman honoured a group who felt under-valued by the public - he portrayed these men and women as noble and dignified. Each image comprised of layers and layers of colour, as in magazines. His work was well represented in galleries, including The War Memorial in Canberra where his official portraits sustained the glamour surrounding the WW2 air force (handsome men in smart uniforms etc). His portraits were sometimes moody eg Wing Commander Clive Caldwall (1944) but always showed intelligent seriousness.

And see Freedman’s portrait of Victoria Cross winner, Pilot Officer Rawdon Middleton. After his cock-pit was fired on over Italy, Middleton flew his damaged bomber over the Channel to allow his crew to safely bail out close to Britain. Middleton tragically died.

His portraits eg Alan Marshall (1943) and The Signal Man (1947) demonstrated great ability, works clearly influenced by Australian black and white illustrators Norman and Lionel Lindsay. These qualities become even more apparent in painted portraits eg a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force, which was reproduced in the Royal Australian Air Force’s wartime publications.

Men and Women of Service was a post-war propaganda programme that emphasised those who had worked in the Victorian Railways during the war. Because they had been required to remain working in essential services, these people had truly made an important contribution to the war effort! Freedman made large coloured lithographs that were displayed in Victorian railway stations.

Once again each figure was designed as socialist realist type. The stationmaster was stout and paternal, the signalman lean and anxious. The medium and scale of lithography seem to make the features coarser than they would appear in painting. But did they produce an effect that was readily recognised and much loved, OR profoundly cliched?

Post-war, Freedman taught at the Technical College/RMIT, creating bold, colour-blocked posters. In 1951 his workshop for printmaking was established at the College, but open for artists from the National Gallery School as well. Fred Williams, Charles Blackman, Kenneth Jack and Leonard French were the enthusiastic participants who began exhibiting together in 1954. By 1960, Freedman arranged after-hours classes and brought the supplies. The Melbourne Print Group formed the foundation for printmaking in the city’s art and technical colleges for many years.

Pilot Officer Rawdon Middleton,

1946, 70 x 55 cm,
Aus War Memorial, Canberra

Murals The last third of the Ballarat exhibition was devoted to Freedman’s murals, beginning in the late 60s. His first large (4.5 x 60 ms) painted mural was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial. This meticulously researched work marked the 50th anniversary of the RAAF and formed a backdrop for the war memorial’s RAAF section.

An ABC documentary focused on the immense mural (10m x 40m) documenting the history of transport in Victoria. One could see the work on the mural being completed, with the aid of a team of assistants. The painting studio was soon relocated to an old electricity sub-station where railway carpenters built a massive easel. The mural was planned for a large wall at Spencer St Station, specifically left vacant for this purpose, and was to illustrate all the modes of transport during Victoria’s boom time from 1834 – horses, trains, trams, cars etc. It was unveiled in Jan 1978 with a gala parade of historic vehicles and vintage aircraft.

A large catalogue, written by Gavin Fry, David Freedman (artist’s son) and David Jack (another artist's son), noted Freedman enjoyed the challenge and made it central to his work, rather than seeing it as an irksome task. Freedman made art to entertain & colour the lives of working people.

Harold produced a series of paintings on the History of Flight for Tullamarine’s new international terminal, opened in 1971. Freedman was the first and only person to ever serve as Victoria’s State Artist, appointed in 1972. Alas the History of Flight later ended up into storage.

Shop between 'off peak',

1950s, railway lithograph, 97 x 60 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Harold’s aim was to create a very Australian experience. See the Cavalcade of Transport mural, commissioned by the government for Spencer St railway station concourse. It showed every type of transport used during the first century of Victoria’s European settlement. This massive work was completed by a team of artists in a giant building in Brunswick, during 1973-7. The mural was later removed from Spencer St during the retail development of what is now Southern Cross Station, and only remains on display above shop-fronts in the Direct Factory Outlets. The artist’s public works had been compromised by property development.

The Regional History of Geelong was the first major mosaic mural created in the state studio. Harold created the full-size, colour painted cartoon and his assistants finished the mosaics, in total taking 2.5 years to complete. It can be seen today in the Geelong Art Gallery.

The Legend of Fire mosaic, 1982

on the wall of the Eastern Hill Fire Brigade, Melbourne
Credit: Harold Freedman Tribute

mosaic football mural
Waverley Park football ground, 1986
Credit: Harold Freedman Tribute

The Legend of Fire mosaic covers the wall of the Eastern Hill Fire Brigade’s headquarters and museum in Albert St East Melbourne. The colour cartoon was created in small and then manually enlarged to the installation size, five ambitious storeys high.

Harold next prepared vast murals for the Victorian Racing Club. The new Hill Stand at the Flemington Race-course was chosen to display the History of Australian Thoroughbred Racing. Midway into the project the newly elected conservative government made a change in arts policy and the studio suddenly became a private enterprise. At the invitation of the VCR chairman, artists collaborated on horses in Freedman's murals, completed in 1988.

Meanwhile Harold negotiated with the Victorian Football League to start a project celebrating the human form and football. His mural and the assistants’ mosaics were installed at the Waverley Park football ground in 1986. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1989.

↧

Ellis Island New York - a place of welcome or of discrimination?

May 25, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Small pox, breakthrough doctors and the anti-Vaxxers

≪ Previous: Harold Freedman - Melbourne's artist for the people

Ellis Island is a small island in New York Harbour located in the upper bay near the New Jersey coast. By the time Samuel Ellis became the island's private owner in the 1770s, Ellis Island developed into a harbour fort, ammunition and ordinance depot, and finally an immigration station. When the British occupied New York City during the Revolutionary War (1775–83), its large naval fleet sailed freely into New York Harbour. The Continental Congress voted for independence in 1776.

The Federal government eventually purchased Ellis Island from NY State in 1808. When the government realised its strategic value in defending against British invasion, they built a series of coastal fortifications in New York Harbour. This was even before they knew about the War of 1812 between the USA, the UK and their respective allies. But the fort was not needed in the 1812 War and served only as an ammunition storage. They built a parapet for 3 tiers of circular guns, plus two earthworks forts at New York Harbour’s entrance.

Ellis Island, first used for migrants in 1892.
Statue of Liberty in the background, dedicated in 1886 (above)
Britannica.com

Potential immigrants waiting in the Great Hall, c1900 (below)

Before 1890, the individual states regulated immigration into the USA. Because New York Harbour was the ultimate destination of steamship companies, most immigrants entered the USA here. Or ports like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco, Savannah, Miami and New Orleans.

Then migrants came via Castle Garden in Manhattan, America's first official immigration centre. From 1855-90 Castle Garden served c8 million immigrants, mostly from England, Ireland, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. Throughout the 1800s, European political instability, nasty religious laws and deteriorating economic conditions fuelled the largest mass human migration in world history. Thus these people constituted the first large wave of immigrants that populated the nation.

Clearly Castle Garden was too small to handle the growing numbers of immigrants. And crooked immigration officials took bribes in exchange for letting immigrants get off in Manhattan, without first going through inspection at Ellis Island. The Federal government intervened and needed a new Federally-operated station on Ellis Island.

The new structure on Ellis Island opened in Jan 1892 and over the next 6 decades, 12+ million were to follow.

In June 1897, a fire on Ellis Island burned the facilities to the ground. Although no-one died, Federal and State immigration records since 1855 were utterly destroyed. The USA Treasury quickly ordered the immigration facility be replaced and all future structures built on Ellis Island had to be fireproof. In Dec 1900, the new Main Building was opened and 2,251 immigrants rushed in.

Third class passengers being physically examined

Britannica.com

The 1st & 2nd class passengers who arrived in New York Harbour didn’t need to undergo the inspection process at Ellis Island. Instead they underwent a quick inspection aboard ship. If families could afford to purchase quality tickets, the Federal government “knew” they would not become a burden to the state. 1st & 2nd class passengers were only sent to Ellis Island for further inspection if they were sick or had legal problems.

However steerage/3rd class immigrants travelled in crowded, unsanitary conditions near the bottom of steam ships, sea sick in their bunks during rough Atlantic Ocean crossings. Upon arrival in New York City, the steerage passengers were transported from the pier by ferry to Ellis Island, to undergo medical and legal inspections.

Migration was rising at the turn of the century and in 1907 more people (c1.25 million) immigrated to the USA than any other year, including Catholics and Jews from eastern Europe. Tradesmen struggled to build new facilities to accommodate this great influx of new immigrants. Hospital buildings, dormitories, contagious disease wards and kitchens all were built as quickly as possible.

Passengers in steerage, waiting to disembark

As the USA entered WW1, immigration to the USA decreased. In 1918-9, suspected enemy aliens were investigated onboard ship; at the docks they were transferred from Ellis Island so that the USA Navy with the Army Medical Department could control the island complex.

After WW1, a Red Scare spread across America & thousands of suspected alien radicals were interned & later deported. New arrivals faced rejection if they were anarchists, had a criminal record or showed poor moral character. So Ellis Island bears a sombre history as a detention centre for thousands of suspected communists and radical immigrants. Yet the overall number of people denied entry at Ellis Island was low; from 1892-1954, only c2% were rejected.

Nasty right-wing politicians demanded greater restrictions on immigration. Yet the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labour Law and the institution of a literacy test barely stemmed the flood of new immigrants. So the Quota Laws (1921) and the National Origins Act (1924) were passed. These restrictions were based upon a percentage system according to the number of ethnic groups already living in the USA according to the 1890 & 1910 Censuses. It was an attempt to preserve the ethnic flavour of the old immigrants from North & West Europe, superior to all other races and ethnicities. The doctors who oversaw the medical examinations at Ellis Island led by example - Southern and Eastern Europeans possessed a deteriorating character which made restriction justifiable and necessary.

Ellis Island food tables for third class passengers

Britannica.com

During WW2, enemy merchant seamen and Nazi sympathisers were detained. And the USA Coast Guard also trained 60,000 servicemen there. But it all ended in Nov 1954 when the last detainee was released, and Ellis Island officially closed to immigrants. Aliens and deportees were moved out in Nov 1954 and the port was closed for good.

Starting in 1984, there was a major historic restoration of Ellis Island. The Main Building was reopened to the public in Sep 1990 as the Immigration Museum.

↧

Small pox, breakthrough doctors and the anti-Vaxxers

May 29, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: History of blood transfusions and soldiers at war

≪ Previous: Ellis Island New York - a place of welcome or of discrimination?

Giacomo Lorandi wrote of the pro-inoculation career of Theodore Tronchin in France and the anti-Tronchin response, to be followed by the anti-vaccination movement in Britain and the USA.

Swiss physician Théodore Tronchin's (1709–1781) clinic attracted patients from everywhere and his reputation, especially for ground-breaking research on the prevention of smallpox through inoculation, grew. The Duke of Orleans, Louis-Philippe I (1725-85), summoned him to Paris to treat his children. His success in saving the children sparked interest in inoculation among the Parisian aristocracy and his rise to fame meant inoculation became widespread.

Tronchin’s work involved a tiny amounts of the smallpox virus taken from the pustule of a person afflicted with the disease; it was injected into the superficial layers of the skin to induce immunity. Tronchin was a major advocate of a healthy lifestyle and physical well being. He devoted time to the sick, listening to their symptoms; he suggested an active lifestyle, good hygiene, outdoor activities and diet so that the body could react fully to diseases and to inoculation. He earned great popularity in aristocratic circles, among Paris’ intellectual-artistic salons and at the royal court.

Only court aristocracy and foreign dignitaries were normally invited to court gatherings; magistrates, academics and men of letters were infrequently invited. But Tronchin’s access allowed him to meet a constant stream of new patients whom he recommended follow a more sober lifestyle. He renewed the air in a sick room; didn’t condemn pregnant women to an often-disastrous diet; gave children a healthier education, banned the bindings that deformed their size, or encouraged an unhealthy constitution.

Dr Théodore Tronchin

Vaccination, as developed by the English physician Edward Jenner (1749–1823) in the 1790s, came later. It was an injection of a sample taken from a cow suffering from cowpox. It was considered safer than inoculation and was the most common method used to fight against smallpox, polio, measles and tetanus.

During the late 1800s, the mortality rate from small pox in non-inoculated infants approached 80% in London and 98% in Berlin. Inoculated children had up to a 2% mortality rate.

Dr Edward Jenner

Anti Vaxxers are not just a modern phenomenon. Tronchin’s success inevitably led to a campaign of hatred against him. Ammunition included his contribution towards making inoculation popular, his being a foreigner, a Calvinist and his successes. His colleagues expressed doubts about the scientific basis of his inoculations. Similar attacks came from the Church and from the University of Paris’ medical faculty.

So Paris’ medical establishment revolted against him, especially his inoculation. He was labelled a medical pirate, who practised for money alone, treated only those he believed capable of recovery and whose fame came from his rejection of both traditional remedies (opium, emetics, quinine) and common treatments (purgatives, blood lettings). His most vocal critics were eminent doctors who criticised Tronchin’s empiricism and the simplicity of his remedies. As did other opponents eg Prof Jean Astruc.

Widespread smallpox vaccination in Britain began in the early 1800s, following Edward Jenner’s cowpox experiments, in which he showed that he could protect children from smallpox if he infected them with lymph from a cowpox blister. But Jenner’s ideas were novel for Britain and were met with immediate public criticism. The rationale for criticisms of Jenner’s vaccinations included sanitary, religious, scientific and political objections.

Critics of vaccination opposed the smallpox vaccine in England in the mid to late 1800s. Anti-vaccination leagues emerged, as well as more recent vaccination controversies eg surrounding the efficacy of the diphtheria and tetanus immunisation and the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella).

The Vaccination Act of 1853 ordered mandatory vaccination for British infants up to 3 months old, and the Act of 1867 extended this age requirement to 14 years, adding penalties for vaccine refusal. The laws were met with immediate resistance from citizens who demanded the right to control their bodies and those of their children. The British Anti Vaccination Leagues formed in response to mandatory laws, and numerous anti-vaccination journals sprang up.

Mass demonstrations and general vaccine opposition across Britain led to a commission designed to study vaccination. In 1896 the commission ruled that vaccination protected against smallpox, but suggested removing penalties for failure to vaccinate. The Vaccination Act of 1898 removed penalties and included a conscientious objector clause, so that parents who feared vaccination’s safety or efficacy could be exempted.

Smallpox outbreaks in the USA led to pro-vaccine campaigns and anti-vaccine activity. The Anti Vaccination Society of America was founded in 1879, following a visit to America by leading British anti-vaccinationists. Other Anti-Vaccination Leagues followed in the 1880s.

The pustule-covered hand of a baby with a mild case of smallpox.
Centre for Disease Control and Prevention

In 1998, British doctor Andrew Wakefield recommended investigation of the relationship between bowel disease, autism and the MMR vaccine. He alleged the vaccine was not properly tested before being put into use. The General Medical Council found that Dr Wakefield had a fatal conflict of interest; he’d been paid by a law board if he could support a litigation case brought by parents who believed that the vaccine had harmed their children. Dr Wakefield was struck off from the medical register in Great Britain. Since 2011, a large number of research studies assessed the safety of the MMR vaccine, none of which found a link between the vaccine and autism.

The next blog post will examine another medical history.

↧

History of blood transfusions and soldiers at war

June 1, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Public art in rural Australia - grain silo murals

≪ Previous: Small pox, breakthrough doctors and the anti-Vaxxers

In 1628, Dr William Harvey was an English physician who published a book in which he described the circulation of blood in humans. Researchers commenced experiments involving the intravenous injection of various substances into animals, which progressed into blood transfusions between animals. Richard Lower, a member of the Oxford Experimental Group, showed that transfusion could be used in cases of severe blood loss by exsanguinating a dog and transfusing it with blood from another.

Dr Jean-Baptiste Denys (1643–1704) was personal physician to King Louis XIV and was noted for having performed the first fully documented human blood transfusion. In 1667 he administered transfusions of calf's blood to a man who died during the transfusion. Denys was charged with murder and although he was acquitted, the practice of blood transfusion was deemed a criminal act by the French parliament in 1670. The Royal Society soon began to distance itself from blood transfusion and the next year Pope Innocent XI banned it. Experimentation was certainly slowed down.

Dr James Blundell (1790-1878) was an English obstetrician who performed the first successful transfusion of human-to-human blood, to treat a haemorrhage in 1829. Shortly after Blundell introduced two instruments for the purpose of transfusion: the impellor and the gravitator. These apparatuses appeared in The Lancet of 1829.

Blood transfusion nurses, end of WW1

Postpartum haemorrhage, extreme malnutrition, puerperal fever, ruptured uterus and hydrophobia were all indications for transfusion then. A careful search of the literature revealed ten recorded transfusions performed by Dr Blundell but of these, only five were described as successful.

When the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) was raging in Europe, the possibility of using blood transfusions on the battlefield arose. Dr J Roussel of Geneva had first used his method of direct arm to arm transfusion with success in 1865 for a patient with puerperal haemorrhage. The apparatus he used was described in the Gazette des Hospitaux in 1867, though Roussel complained in 1876 that the apparatus was not used as it might have been in the Franco-Prussian war.

To overcome the hazard of coagulation and to prevent exposure of the donor's blood to air, obstetrician & gynaecologist Dr James Aveling made a simple apparatus for direct transfusion from donor to recipient's vein in 1865. In 1872 a patient had suffered a severe postpartum haemorrhage; an immediate transfusion was made and the patient made a good recovery. And when no other therapies seemed to work with severe anaemia, transfusions were an established practice from the late 1870s up to WWI.

Not only did doctors not know how to stop blood clotting in the late C19th, but when they did manage transfusion, the patient often inexplicably died. It wasn’t until the C20th that different blood groups were discovered! Identification of three major blood groups was described by Nobel Prize winner Karl Landsteiner in 1901. 6 years later, Czech neurologist Dr Jan Jansky accurately described four major blood groups (A, B, O and AB).

Yet despite new knowledge of blood groups and prevention of blood clotting, blood transfusion was not widely adopted during WW1. Note that in 1915, Capt OH Robertson of Harvard Medical School demonstrated that blood could be safely transfused to wounded soldiers. He developed the transfusion bottle and pioneered universal donor blood, but the medical profession remained very sceptical.

Dr Blundell's blood transfusion

The Lancet 1829

Having been impressed by a voluntary blood transfusion carried out in London’s King’s College Hospital, Percy Lane Oliver set up a volunteer panel of blood donors in 1921. This eventually led to the creation of the British Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service.

It was not until the Spanish Civil War that large-scale blood transfusion became possible. This was among the first conflicts to result in widespread targeting of civilians; Dr Frederic Durán-Jordà established a blood transfusion service in Barcelona in 1936, for transfusing both soldiers and civilians. He was exiled to the UK after the Civil War and worked at the Hammersmith Hospital.

Dr Norman Bethune was a surgeon who was invited by the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy to bring a surgical team to Madrid in 1936. Recognising the importance of bringing blood to wounded soldiers and civilians rather than transporting patients to hospital for transfusion, Bethune introduced the mobile blood bank to the men.

To help the war effort, the Plasma for Britain Campaign was created in the US. It was directed by Dr Charles Drew, who researched in the field of blood transfusions. He developed improved techniques for storage, and applied his expertise to developing large-scale blood banks early in WW2.

The main stimulus to develop blood and blood component therapy in the US was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Dr Edwin J Cohn of Harvard University developed a method of manufacturing albumin, a soluble protein found in blood plasma, for transfusion. Initially made as a powder and later as a liquid, it used in the treatment of shock. It was to prove particularly important in the Pacific war and saved hundreds of thousands of lives on the battlefield.

The Korean War (1950–53) saw the invention of a simple plastic bag and led to a major development in blood transfusion. The bag had many advantages over the glass bottles, in terms of weight, storage and transport. The first polyethylene blood collection bag had two tubes, one for blood collection and one to deliver blood to the recipient. War was always the major force in the organisation of blood supplies and stimulated the development of new medical technologies!

Thank you to Shaun McCann, George McLoughlin and Phil Learoyd.

↧

Public art in rural Australia - grain silo murals

June 4, 2018, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: "Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate by Baldwin

≪ Previous: History of blood transfusions and soldiers at war

Victoria Spanning 200 ks across rural Wimmera-Mallee in Victoria, the federal and state-funded Silo Art Trail was designed to stimulate social, cultural and economic benefits to the region through art and tourism.

Famous Brisbane street artist Guido van Helten’s works adorn public walls in UK and Ireland, France, Ukraine, Belarus and Estonia. He was invited to Brim (pop 260 in the Wimmera) during 2015, and was asked to come up with a design inclusive of the locals. The project organiser of a Melbourne art management business said the project would cost $10,000, made possible with grants from Yarriambiack Shire, Regional Arts Victoria and the Brim Active Community Group, plus donations.

Luckily Guido always believed that silos had perfect surfaces for painting street art. In Brim he painted a 30m x 30m scene depicting the Farmer Quartet across the four GrainCorp’s decommissioned grain silos. Created in van Helten’s famous monochromatic photo-realistic style, the Brim mural quickly became a regional landmark and provided the inspiration for The Silo Art Trail project.

“The site was no longer in use and the community had been looking at different ways to attract people to their town. Brim Active Community Group wanted the artwork to attract more visitors to the drought stricken rural town, 350km northwest of Melbourne.

In the Grampians, travel to Patchewollock (pop 250) and see the work of Brisbane-based street artist Fintan Magee, sometimes referred to as Australia’s Banksy. Painted during Oct 2016, the giant mural depicts a local sheep and grain farmer, chosen for his classic farmer looks and his strong connection to the farming community.

Another giant mural dedicated to Indigenous culture and knowledge emerged in Sheep Hills (pop 28), little more than a farming locality on the rail line between Minyip and Warracknabeal. Well known artist Adnate painted the GrainCorp silo as part of the Yarriambiack Shire Silo Art Trail, the third silo after Brim and Patchewollock. And the largest work (30m x 40m) that Adnate ever created.

Adnate is noted for working with Indigenous communities and for his renaissance-style chiaroscuro impressions, so the Sheep Hills project reflects this passion. He worked with the Barengi Gadlin Land Council to create his design, featuring two Wimmera Elders, along with a young boy and a young girl set in the night sky. The mural is about passing Aboriginal culture and knowledge from generation to generation. Appropriately there was a community event to launch the mural, given that the community was rapt with it and that it is so different from all the other silos.

Other Victorian silos have since been painted to make up a 200km silo art trail in the Wimmera and Mallee. These include silo artwork at the Lascelles silos. Melbourne street artist Rone depicted the faces of Lascelles couple whose families have lived and farmed in the area for generations and continued the family traditions of strong community involvement.

The Rupanyup grain storage was painted as a further part of the silo art trail in 2017. The artwork on the silos of two young locals was completed by Russian artist Julia Volchkova, then the Wimmera Grains Store featured the same artwork on their chick pea and lentil packaging.

In late 2017 the silos at Rosebery, south of Hopetoun, were painted with giant murals. Melbourne street artist Katie Kaff-eine painted two farmers on the final silo in the Shire’s Silo Art Trail.

Brim

Sheep Hills

Rupanyup

South Australia The Viterra manager for the Eastern region of South Australia saw the wonderful work Guido had done in Brim and other Victorian towns, and the flow-on benefits the art had had on those communities. He noted that the Coonalpyn (pop 200) silos were still used and the company was pleased to be supporting the local community. In Feb 2017 artist Guido van Helten painted five fine portraits of children at play on the town’s 30m-high grain silos. This silo complex painting is South Australia’s largest art “canvas”.

Van Helten said the design focused the circular features of the silo and encouraged visitors to move around for different viewing points. The mural is just one of six projects that are part of the council’s $100,000 Creating Coonalpyn initiative, bringing a sense of pride back to the community. This tiny rural town 160km south of Adelaide is already showing signs of rejuvenation and community pride. Motorists stop along the busy Dukes Highway to photograph the silos and two new businesses have opened in the town, with another one starting in August.

Another silo art project was officially opened in 2017 in South Australia. The silo at Kimba on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula displays 30-metre high artwork was done by Melbourne artist Cam Scale and features a colourful depiction of a Kimba sunset, wheat fields and a young girl. Cam Scale also completed a Geelong-based outdoor piece “To The Unknown Mariner”.

When the idea of commissioning the large-scale artwork on a Viterra grain storage facility in Kimba started, the community raised $60,000 to top up a $40,000 grant, thus funding the art project in the grain-growing community. The community hoped the art would attract visitors to the town 500km west of Adelaide, bringing economic benefits by getting travellers to park near the silos.

Coonalpyn

Map of Western Victoria

Silo Art Trail

Now other towns are keen to catch a ride on the coat-tails of the Wimmera towns and the rush is on to convert the nation’s mothballed wheat silos into the world’s biggest art gallery. For example two artists transformed eight silos at Northam in Western Australia, and artworks appeared on the grain silos at Weethalle NSW, and in the Queensland town of Thallon

↧

"Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate by Baldwin

June 8, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Norman Rockwell Museum - a lifetime of special art

≪ Previous: Public art in rural Australia - grain silo murals

Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate is by Neil Baldwin (published in 2002).

Baldwin reported that car manufacturer Henry Ford (1863-1947), inventor Thomas Edison and tyre magnet Harvey Firestone used to go on motor-car expeditions to the Appalachian and New England hills. Normally, when the great business tycoons of the early C20th met, most of them generally kept their views hidden behind the fences of their very private country clubs. Ford, on the other hand, advertised his anti-Semitism almost as widely and loudly as he promoted his Model T. As did aviator Charles Lindbergh.

In 1919, Ford purchased The Dearborn Independent, then a small newspaper published in the Michigan city where his factory was. For the next eight years, the weekly publication became a vehicle for his bigoted political views. One of the paper’s chief targets was the “International Jew”, a sinister figure cited as the root cause of WWI. For 91 newspaper editions, the weekly paper announced a variety of Jewish-evil-influenced major stories in its headlines.

Henry Ford, The International Jew, Nov 1920

The most popular and aggressive stories about the Jewish menace were then selected and reprinted in four volumes in 1920 called The International Jew: The World's Problem. To increase sales, Ford sent a memo to his car dealers saying that everyone who bought a Model T would have to buy a subscription to his newspaper as well. A series of articles detailed Ford's belief that a cabal of Jews, a few super-men of the despised race, was plotting to subordinate the proud Gentile race. It was translated into German, in 1922, and published in Germany where the book was a bestseller.

Note that Ford was the only American honoured enough to be mentioned by name in Hitler's Mein Kampf, published in 1925!

In 1927, a Jewish lawyer Aaron Sapiro sued Ford for defamation. In court, Ford refused to take responsibility for the articles that appeared in his newspaper. During the trial, the editor William Cameron testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline. The suit ended in a mistrial, but amongst all that bad publicity, Ford agreed to a private settlement with Sapiro. Ford issued a pissy public apology for his newspaper’s years of defamatory content and quickly sold the Independent.

We might understand how deeply embedded anti-Semitism was in the culture of Ford's youth. But why did Ford go on his anti-Jewish crusade so publicly - with prejudices that wiser businessmen kept to themselves? Because Jews didn't accept Jesus as the Messiah?

Note that Ford Motor Co. has long been under fire because its German subsidiary used slave laborers during WW2 while building military vehicles for the Nazis. Eventually the company issued a lengthy report in 2001, finding itself innocent. Yet Ford had eagerly collaborated with the Nazis, helping Hitler prepare for war and, after the 1939 invasion of Poland, conduct the war. Ford’s behaviour in France following the German occupation of June 1940 showed its collaborationist posture even more disturbingly.

In late 1941, Ford Werke's board worried that the USA would enter the war in support of Britain and the government would confiscate the Cologne plant. To prevent such an outcome, the Cologne management wrote to the Reich Commission that year to say that it questioned whether Ford must be treated as enemy property, even in the event of a USA declaration of war on Germany. Ford became a purely German company and took over all obligations so successfully that the American majority shareholder actually contributed to the development of German industry.

So Hitler's respect for Henry Ford was clearly based on his appreciation of Ford's production techniques, not on their shared anti-Semitism. “We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascist movement in America; I regard him as my inspiration”, Hitler said in an interview.

Ford's publishing arm also distributed The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a book that was to become the bible of modern anti-Semitism. A supposed master plan for Jewish world dominance, the book was actually a crude forgery, as Ford himself knew.

In 1933 Ford came under intense pressure and was sued for libel by a businessman named by Ford as a key member of the Jewish conspiracy. Ford settled out of court. “I am not a Jew hater, and I have never met Hitler”, he wrote in a statement to a Jewish publication that was widely reprinted by the Hearst newspaper chain. Yet 5 years later Ford received the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, a Nazi medal presented on his 75th birthday.

Ford receiving the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle,

presented in Michigan in July 1938

by the two German consuls Kapp and Heller.

Look at the date. Hitler was becoming militaristic in Europe, and Americans were beginning to fear another World War. Americans had little time for the paranoid fantasies of the car king, and the Ford Motor Company was distancing itself from the views of its own founder.

Henry Ford was not the only head of industry who opposed America's entry into WW2. But he may have been one of the few who declared WW2 as the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction. Furthermore he announced that the torpedoing of American merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by Jewish financiers and war-makers.
Into his final decade of life, after several strokes and mental crises, Ford's anti-Semitism became even more paranoid than earlier on. Ford’s private notebooks show that he continued to view Jews as part of an "anti-Ford Motor Co conspiracy", involving financiers, the New Deal, labour unions and his major auto competitors. He died in 1947.

↧

Norman Rockwell Museum - a lifetime of special art

June 12, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: The meaning of British surnames - Ancestry.com

≪ Previous: "Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate by Baldwin

The Chase School of Art opened to students in 1896 and two years later it became the New Yorker School of Art. New Yorker Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) enrolled in art classes at this school in 1908. Two years later, in 1910, he left high school to study art at The National Academy of Design and then The Art Students League. Thomas Fogarty and George Bridgman were excellent teachers, preparing Rockwell for professional commissions.

No Swimming, 1921

Saturday Evening Post

While still very young, Rockwell was hired as art director of Boys’ Life, the publication of the American Boy Scouts, and illustrated a range of young people’s publications.

In New Rochelle, Rockwell set up a studio with a cartoonist and produced work for such magazines as Life, Literary Digest and Country Gentleman. In 1916, 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, and for five decades, 321 Rockwell more covers appeared on the front of the Post.

The 1930s and 1940s were seen as the most creative decades of Rockwell’s career. In 1930 he married a school teacher. The couple and their three children moved to Arlington Vermont in 1939, and Rockwell’s work began to reflect small-town American life.

During WW2, Rockwell put a nationalist and supportive view on daily life in America's home front, with famous paintings that appeared on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. My favourites are those addressing the important roles that women could fulfill. See, for example, We Can Do It! 1942 and Rosie the Riveter 1943. His simple way of capturing everyday life in his art was appealing.

We can do it, 1942
Norman Rockwell Museum

Rosie the Rivetter 1943
an energetic red-headed woman, holding a riveting gun and eating a sandwich.

Norman Rockwell Museum

In 1953, the Rockwell family moved from Arlington Vermont to Stockbridge Ma. The question remained: how homey and sentimental were his small-town images, especially in an era that required massive political commitment? Inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1943 address to Congress, Rockwell created his important Four Freedoms paintings. Four Saturday Evening Posts had essays by contemporary writers, along with Rockwell’s interpretations of Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear proved to be enormously popular. The works toured the country in an exhibition that was jointly sponsored by the Evening Post and the US Treasury Department, to raise millions for the war effort.

Runaway Boy 1958

being looked after by a friendly policeman

Although the Four Freedoms series was a great success, we don’t find much serious analysis of American life until Rockwell ended his 47-year association with The Saturday Evening Post in 1963. He began to work for Look magazine, specifically to allow himself more freedom in pursuing the art of serious social issues. During his 10-year association with Look magazine, Rockwell painted pictures illustrating some of his deepest concerns, including civil rights and America’s war on poverty.

However do note that in the midst of a racial desegregation battle at an all-white New Orleans public school in Nov 1960, Rockwell painted a famous, civil-rights-inspired painting. I am very proud of The Problem We All Live With (1964).

Stockbridge Museum

Norman Rockwell created art in some 20 studios during his life, but it was the last one in Ma. that he loved the most and in which he lived the longest. This museum was founded in 1969 in Main St, Stockbridge in a building known as the Old Corner House. In 1973, Rockwell established a Trust to preserve his artistic legacy by placing his works in the custodianship of the Old Corner House Stockbridge Historical Society, later to become Norman Rockwell Museum. The Trust now forms the core of the Museum’s permanent collections. As he became elderly, Rockwell became concerned about the future of his studio. He arranged to have his studio and its contents added to the Trust.

The museum moved to its current location 24 years later, opening in April 1993. The building on a 36-acre site overlooking the Housatonic River Valley was designed by Robert AM Stern. It was dedicated to the enjoyment and study of Rockwell’s work and his contributions to society, popular culture, and social commentary.

The Museum’s location is perfect; the artist loved the town, and it loved him back. Many of Rockwell’s best images were drawn from everyday locals he knew well eg family, friends and neighbours.

The Norman Rockwell Museum,
Stockbridge Ma

Red Lion Inn
Stockbridge Ma

The lower level of the Norman Rockwell Museum has a dense exhibit dedicated to Rockwell’s 323 covers for The Saturday Evening Post over the 47 years he worked with them. Arranged chronologically, the framed covers fill the room’s walls. It is fascinating to watch how Rockwell’s style grew and changed over the years.

The New York Times says that for many years, the museum presented the studio as it was when Rockwell died in 1978. Now they’ve turned back the clock to October 1960, an active time in Rockwell’s career when he was hard at work on Golden Rule, the famous painting which later appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Working from highly detailed photos, the curators of the installation at the Norman Rockwell Museum applied great detail to their task, as Rockwell did to his. From his books to his radio, they’ve returned every aspect of the room back to 1960, to provide some greater insight into the artist and his work.

In addition to 998 original paintings and drawings by Rockwell, the museum also houses the Norman Rockwell Archives, a collection of 100,000 various items, which include fan mail and business documents. Rockwell painted from photographs rather than real-life models, so his photographs are included in the Archives.

Rockwell’s Stockbridge studio, on the Museum site, is open to the public May-Oct, and features original art materials, library and furnishings. Stockbridge’s second greatest treasure is the historic Red Lion Inn which is redolent with rustic New England charm. Plus it is within walking distance of the Museum.

↧

The meaning of British surnames - Ancestry.com

June 15, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Theosophy - or trickery?

≪ Previous: Norman Rockwell Museum - a lifetime of special art

The names Australians gave new born babies was a widely cited post, covering the most popular first names given to boys and girls in Victoria since 1900.

But I have never tackled surnames, given that everyone of my generation seemed to come from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Germany. Ancestryshows that many families actually have surnames passed down from ancestors in Britain. Last names were not widely used until after the Norman conquest in 1066, but as the country’s population grew, people found it necessary to be more specific when they were talking about somebody else. Thus arose descriptions like Thomas the Baker, Norman son of Richard, Henry the Whitehead, Elizabeth of the Field and Joan of York that ultimately led to many current surnames.

There are perhaps 45,000 different English surnames, but most had their origins as one of these types.

1. Occupational
Occupational names identified people based on their job or position in society. Calling a man Mr Carpenter indicated that he worked with wood for a living, while someone named Knight bore a sword. Other occupational names include Archer, Baker, Brewer, Butcher, Carter, Clark, Constable, Cooper, Cook, Croft, Dean, Dyer, Farmer, Faulkner, Fisher, Forester, Fuller, Gardener, Glass, Glover, Head, Hunter, Judge, Mason, Miller, Page, Parker, Parsons, Porter, Potter, Sawyer, Slater, Smith, Stone, Taylor, Thatcher, Turner, Weaver, Webb, Woodman, Wainwright.

In medieval England, before the time of professional theatre, craft guilds put on Mystery or Miracle Plays, which told Bible stories and had a call-and-response style of singing. A participant’s surname eg King, Lord, Pope, Virgin or Death, may have reflected a role which some people played for life and passed down to their eldest son.

Victorian family portrait

Photo credit: The History Press

2. A personal characteristic
Some names, often adjectives, were based on descriptive nicknames. They may have described a person’s size (Short, Long, Little), colouring (Black, White, Green, Red or Fox) or another character trait (Coy, Grey, Savage, Stark, Stern, Strong, Sweet, Swift, Peacock, Truman, Winter).

3. A place name
A surname may have pointed to where a person was born, lived, worked or owned land. It might be from the name of a house, farm, hamlet, town or county eg Bedford, Boroughs, Burton, Hamilton, Hampshire, Kipling, Lincoln, Spalding, Sutton, Thorpe, Trent, Wakefield, Warwick, Wilton.

Those descended from landowners may have taken as their surname the name of their holdings, castle, manor or estate eg Staunton. Windsor is a famous example in the British royal family.

Some surnames showed that the family came from another country eg Britten, Dane, Fleming, French, Lubbock/Lubeck.

4. A geographical feature of the landscape

Consider the surnames Atwood, Bridge, Brooks, Bush, Camp, Fields, Forest, Greenwood, Grove, Fleet, Heath, Hill, Knolles, Lake, Moore, Perry, Stone, Wold, Underwood, Waters, Wood and Woodruff.

Trees also gave names like Ashley, Elm, Hazelthwaite, Maple, Oakham, Palmer (which also had a meaning for pilgrims).

5. Patronymic, matronymic or ancestral
Patronymic surnames came from a male given name eg Benson, Davis, Dawson, Evans, Harris, Harrison, Jackson, Jones (Welsh for John), Nicholson, Richardson, Robinson, Rogers, Robertson, Simpson, Stephenson, Thompson, Watson, Wilson. Matronymic ones, surnames derived from a female given name, include Madison (from Maud).

Scottish clan names created a set of ancestral surnames. These include Armstrong, Cameron, Campbell, Crawford, Douglas, Forbes, Grant, Henderson, Hunter, MacDonald and Stewart.

Some surnames honoured a patron. Hickman was Hick’s man (Hick being a nickname for Richard). Kilpatrick was a follower of Patrick.

If readers are wondering whether their family name was English, Ancestry invites them to plug their surname into the Ancestry Last Names Meanings and Origins widget.

I have added many other surnames from Behind the Name and from the BBC.

↧

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Theosophy - or trickery?

June 19, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: two great museums in Leipzig - Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn

≪ Previous: The meaning of British surnames - Ancestry.com

The first part comes from the Blavatsky Archives; many thanks. Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born at Ekaterinoslav in Southern Russia, in 1831. She was the daughter of Colonel Peter von Hahn, and writer Helena de Fadeyev. Her maternal grandmother was Princess Helena Dolgorukov, noted botanist-writer. After her mother’s early death in 1842, Helena was brought up with the grandparents. This clever linguist was a sensitive child, and was soon aware that her psychic powers puzzled others.

At 18 she married the much older Nikifor Blavatsky, Vice-Governor of Yerivan Province. The marriage was never consummated and she soon escaped and travelled across Turkey, Egypt and Greece. Only 2 years later, in London in 1851, she met the Mahatma/Master Morya of her childhood visions, and fully accepted his guidance.

In 1852, Helena left for Canada, the USA, Mexico, South America and the West Indies, then went via the Cape to India and Tibet. Then to Britain, America again, India via Japan and the Straits. She entered Tibet through Kashmir, under-going part of her occult training with her Mahatma. She was again in France, Germany and Russia. From 1860-5, she lived in the Caucasus, experiencing a severe physical and psychic crisis. She travelled via the Balkans, Greece, Egypt, Syria and Italy. Then to India & Tibet, meeting the Mahatma Koot Hoomi. Then back to Cyprus, Greece and the Middle East.

The Extraordinary Life & Influence of Helena Blavatsky,
by Sylvia Cranston,
TarcherPerigee, 1993

Why the constant travel? In 1873, Helena was specifically instructed by her Teacher to go to New York to meet Col Henry Olcott. The Mahatmas believed Helena was the best means to offer the world the accumulated Wisdom of the ages, verified by generations of Seers; that body of Truth of which all religions were branches of one parent-tree. They co-founded the Theosophical Society of America in Nov 1875, where Olcott was made President for life.

The Theosophical Society's goals were to:
a] form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, regardless of race, creed, sex, caste or colour;
b] encourage the study of Comparative Religion, Philosophy and Science and
c] investigate the unexplained laws of Nature.

Helena’s first monumental work Isis Unveiled was published in New York in 1877, outlining the development of the Occult Sciences and of Magic. Her task was to challenge both the entrenched dogmas of Christian Theology and the dogmatic materialistic view of Science.

Arriving in Bombay in Feb 1879, Helena and colleagues established the Theosophical Headquarters. The Founders started their first journal The Theosophist in Bombay with Helena as editor, and the society experienced a rapid growth. Alfred Percy Sinnett, editor of The Pioneer of Allahabad, and Helena wrote The Occult World 1881 and Esoteric Buddhism 1883, both generating even more public interest in Theosophy. In May 1882 a large estate was bought near Madras for the Theosophical Headquarters.

Helena was busy writing her next work, The Secret Doctrine. But it didn’t save her. A vicious attack by staffers Alexis & Emma Coulomb was erupting, about Helena’s fraudulent production of psychic phenomena. She returned to Madras on Dec 1884 to sue the couple, but they'd already left. Alas Helena was overruled by the Theosophical Society committee and resigned in disgust. She left India for ever.

The "Coulomb attack" was based on partially forged letters, presumably written by Helena, with instructions to arrange fraudulent psychic phenomena. So London’s Society for Psychical Research appointed a special investigative committee. Richard Hodgson arrived in India to report on the Coulombs’ allegations, which the research committee published in Dec 1885. William Emmette Coleman, a leading spiritualist, was also involved in the Coulomb case. He left the USA for London to obtain from the Scottish missionary Patterson the "original" Blavatsky-Coulomb letters, and published scathing denunciations of Theosophy and HPB in spiritualist journals.

Blavatsky was branded as one of the most accomplished impostors in history, and probably a Russian spy. The Hodgson Report was the basis of later attacks on Helena’s and Theosophy’s honesty. Madame Blavatsky was soon called a plagiarist, con artist, trickster and a manipulator of males. Coleman focused on her plagiarism.

Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Olcott

London, 1887 (Wiki)

Blavatsky’s health was damaged, so she focused on writing. The Secret Doctrine was the peak of her literary career. Vol. I dealt with the evolution of the Universe, and the fundamental symbols of the world’s great religions. Vol. 2 described the evolution of humanity. Then Blavatsky published the devotional mystical work called The Voice of the Silence, translated from an Eastern scripture.

Helena Blavatsky aged 60 died in London in May 1891. Her ashes were divided between New York, London and Madras.

**

How important was Theosophy in modern history? Evidence suggested it significantly influenced the development of other mystical, philosophical and religious movements. And even psychological movements in the West. Supporters said Helena was among the modern world’s innovative psychologists of the visionary mind. At the same time that Freud and others were articulating their secularised theory of mind, the Theosophists were rescuing a forgotten psychology of the extra-sensory from exotic religion. Madame Blavatsky was setting the style for modern occult literature.

Theosophy also influenced the growth of Indian national consciousness, inspiring key figures in the Indian independence movement. In Nov 1889 Gandhi met Blavatsky. He did not join the Theosophical Society because, with poor knowledge of his own religion, he did not want to belong to any religious body. However in March 1891, he became an associate member of the Blavatsky Lodge. Three months later Gandhi returned to India. Nehru learned the mysterious philosophy of Theosophy with his childhood tutor Ferdinand Brooks. Young Nehru (13) was initiated into the Theosophical Society in 1902 by Annie Besant, a Theosophist who supported home-rule for Ireland and India.

Was Theosophy the most important avenue of Eastern teaching to the West? Rudolf Steiner said yes. He first began speaking publicly about spiritual experiences in his 1899 lectures to the Theosophical Society. Steiner kept Helena’s original approach, replacing her terminology with his own. Sylvia Cranston noted theosophy’s influence on important artists, writers and composers like TS Eliot, Wassily Kandinsky, Boris Pasternak, Paul Gauguin, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats and Jean Sibelius.

The Theosophist monthly journal, 1885
published in Madras

edited by H.P Blavatsky

And consider the importance of Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society in the feminist movement, as described in Theosophy, Gender and the New Woman by Siv Ellen Kraft. Theosophy downplayed the importance of marriage, insisted upon the spiritual independence of women, included women on all levels of the organisation, and gave formal religious authority to women. Blavatsky described the suppression of women as typical of all religions, but was taken to the extreme by Christianity.

↧

two great museums in Leipzig - Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn

June 22, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Ida Wells, a very special black-rights and women's-rights activist

≪ Previous: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Theosophy - or trickery?

I've long been interested in Leipzig’s musical connections. Now I'll summarise the details published in Discover Leipzig and focus on the historic Bose House-museum.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was active in Leipzig’s musical life from 1723 on. He was responsible for the services and special ceremonies at the churches of St Nicholas and St Thomas. And, as the city's Director Musices, he was also charged with the organisation of a wide range of secular events. He directed an association of professional performers and musically active students.

Many of his major compositions were written in Leipzig, including annual cycles of choral cantatas, St John and St Matthew Passions, Christmas Oratorio, Art of the Fugue and his Mass in B Minor. Since the C19th no end of effort has been put into the study and interpretation of Bach's works in Leipzig, and several institutions, societies and competitions have been established.

The Leipzig Music Trail is an easy way to explore the musicians who lived and worked in the city. The sites lie on a 5km stroll that winds through the city centre, marked by curved steel inserts in the ground. See the Bose Family HomeA C16th front home is one of the oldest buildings on the square outside St Thomas’s Church. The twin-aisled Renaissance entrance hall had impressive Tuscan columns and a portal with its porphyry Romanesque arch. The Bach family later lived across the street in St Thomas’ School, now demolished.

Bose Haus, Leipzig

now the Johann Sebastian Bach Museum

In 1710, the home was acquired by Georg Heinrich Bose, an affluent manufacturer of gold and silver products, who had it turned into a prestigious Baroque merchant’s residence. The side wings and back building were newly erected by the Bose family. The façade of the front building has a two-storey bay window. In the rear building, Bose installed a magnificent banqueting/concert hall, fitted with wall mirrors, a musicians’ gallery and a movable ceiling painting.

In 1745 Bose’s son-in-law Johann Zacharias Richter acquired the parental home, adding an extensive art collection of his own, and opening it to the public. From 1765 it was opened to connoisseurs on one afternoon each week for two hours. Among the celebrities who viewed the art treasures were Moses Mendelssohn, Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein and Jean Paul. The collection remained with the family until it was sold by auction in 1810. Some of these paintings are in Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts today.

In 1893, the instrument collector Paul de Wit opened a private museum of music history in the old Bose House. Apart from historical music instruments, the Paul de Wit's Museum of Music History gathered musical manuscripts, letters and portraits of composers and instrument makers. Until de Wit’s death in 1925, the house was a meeting place for instrument makers, artists and publishers.

In 1973 the director of the Bach Archive erected a small Bach memorial in the Bose House entrance hall. Extensive reconstruction took place in March 1985, then the Bach Archive was moved into what was now called the Johann Sebastian Bach Museum Leipzig. The first permanent exhibition was spread across four display rooms on one floor of the front building, as well as two small rooms for temporary exhibitions. More extension was added to the museum in 2000 and in 2008–2010, by including some of the neighbouring building at the back of the baroque courtyard.

Today its twelve thematically structured exhibition rooms are dedicated to the life/works of JS Bach, his family and to researching his rare original manuscripts. Displays include a double bass played in Bach’s orchestra, surviving furniture from his personal household and Bach’s organ console from Leipzig’s St John’s Church which he played in the 1740s.

Two exhibition rooms in the Johann Sebastian Bach Museum

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-47) was born in Hamburg. He was the nephew of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and was one of the finest figures ever to emerge in the 19th century music world. In Feb 1827 the première of his Symphony in C Minor at the Gewandhaus became the first public performance of his works in Leipzig. As Leipzig's important Gewandhaus Kapellmeister, Felix was responsible for reforming the musical life of the city, instigating the “Bach Renaissance” in Germany. During his years in Leipzig he worked hard to turn the orchestra into one of the best in Europe. He shared in the founding of the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843, and was very pleased that the first permanent staff included Robert Schumann.

Mendelssohn Museum, Leipzig

The late-classical building houses the Mendelssohn Museum which was first opened to visitors in 1997. The composer lived here from 1835 until his death, and his study and salon, where Wagner, Schumann and Berlioz visited, have been faithfully restored. Sunday morning concerts are still held today in the renovated music salon.

Until March 2013, the offices of the University of Leipzig’s Music Faculty were located in the building and the music branch of the University Library as well. Then the extended Mendelssohn House reopened in 2014 with a new floor. Since October 2017, the world's only permanent exhibition about Felix’s talented older sister Fanny Hensel can be found in a number of rooms.

↧

Ida Wells, a very special black-rights and women's-rights activist

June 26, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: Children and Dogs – A Bridge to Nature guest post

≪ Previous: two great museums in Leipzig - Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn

Ida Wells (1862-1931) was the first child of James and Lizzie Wells who had been slaves of the Confederate states. The parents were freed by the Union, thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation in Dec 1862. However living in Mississippi, these African Americans still faced racial prejudices and discriminatory practices.

As a member of the progressive Republican Party during Reconstruction, Ida’s father was involved with the Freedman’s Aid Society - a group that sent a supply of teachers from the North and provided housing for them in the South. And James also served on the first board of trustees at Shaw University-Rust College, a school that opened in Holly Springs MS for newly freed slaves in 1866.

Southern Horrors,

one of the many books and booklets written by Ida Wells

But Ida suddenly had to leave school when both of her parents and one sibling died of yellow fever in the 1878 epidemic; she became the primary care giver for her 6 surviving siblings! Only in 1882, when her brothers worked as carpenter apprentices and her sisters moved to an aunt’s house in Memphis, could Wells study again at Shaw University.

On a Memphis-Nashville train ride in 1884, Wells had a 1st-class ticket. Unexpectedly the conductor ordered her to move to the 2nd class car for African Americans; outraged, this brave black woman refused! As she was forcibly removed from the train by the conductor and some passengers, she bit a conductor’s hand. Wells returned to Memphis and sued the Chesapeake-Ohio Railroad Co, winning a settlement of $500. The Railroad Co appealed, and in 1887 the Supreme Court of Tennessee ordered Wells to pay court fees instead.

This double humiliation led Ida Wells to write about race and politics. She wrote editorials in southern black news papers, challenging the infamous Jim Crow system that legalised segregation.

Ida was offered a job in, then bought a share of a Memphis newspaper, the Free Speech and Headlight.

Shaw University-Rust College,
Holly Springs Mississippi
opened for newly freed slaves in 1866.

While working as a journalist and publisher, Wells also held a position as a teacher in a segregated public school in Memphis. She became a vocal critic of the condition of blacks-only schools in the city, and was fired from her job!

Wells first became very well known internationally as an activist when she brought attention to the lynching of African Americans in the South. In 1892, African-American Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart set up the Peoples’ Grocery Shop in Memphis. Their new, successful business drew customers away from local white-owned shops, so inevitably the white shop-owners and their supporters clashed with the black men.

One night, Moss and his friends guarded their shop against white men gathered to attack and injured several of the white vandals. The three black men were arrested and brought to gaol, but didn’t get to court; a lynch mob took the three from their cells and murdered them.

After the brutal lynching of her friends, Wells put her own life at risk; she spent two months travelling in the South, gathering information on other lynching incidents. One of her editorials infuriated some of the city's whites. A mob stormed the office of her newspaper, tearing the place apart. Fortunately Wells had been travelling to New York City at the time and was safe.

Bravely she went on to found groups striving for African-American justice. Wells wrote a detailed report on lynching for the New York Age, an African-American newspaper. In 1892 she published the book Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, detailing her findings.

The Peoples’ Grocery Shop in Memphis

ran by African-American Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart
Photo credit: Memphis History

She was teaching, looking to raise support for her cause among reform-minded whites. Upset by the ban on African-American exhibitors at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Wells protested the ban by writing a pamphlet called "The Reason Why the Coloured American Is Not Represented in the World's Columbian Exposition." Her project was supported by the famous abolitionist lawyer-editor Ferdinand Barnett. [He had been the third black person to be admitted to the Illinois bar; his first wife Molly had been the first black woman to graduate from the University of Michigan].

Wells took her movement to England, and created the British Anti-Lynching Society in 1894. She came home, settled in Chicago where she married her beloved Ferdinand Barnett in 1895, a widower with two children of his own. While the couple eventually had another four children together, Wells remained committed to her social and political activism.

Wells wrote that during the post-war Reconstruction Era, whites ran mob lynchings to suppress black political activity and to re-establish white supremacy. Through her lectures and books eg Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching 1895, Wells dealt with the Rape Myth used by lynch mobs to justify the murder of African American males.

In 1898 Wells brought her anti-lynching campaign to the White House, leading a protest in Washington DC where she visited President William McKinley (1897-1901).

After brutal assaults on African-Americans continued in Springfield Ill in 1908, Wells attended a special conference for the National Association of Coloured Women.

Ida Wells-Barnett House, the Chicago home of Ida and Ferdinand Barnett from 1919-30

In Chicago, she co-founded many African-American reform organisations. In March 1913, as Wells prepared to join the suffrage parade through President Woodrow Wilson (1913–21)’s inauguration in Washington D.C, march organisers asked her to leave. Apparently many middle-class white women had embraced the suffragists’ cause because they believed the vote would guarantee white supremacy (sic)!

The connection with Woodrow Wilson was important. As part of the National Equal Rights League’s role, Wells asked the President to put an end to discriminatory hiring practices for government jobs.

In Chicago, Ida Wells and reforming social workers Jane Addams successfully blocked the establishment of segregated schools. In 1930, Wells stood for the Illinois State Legislature but failed. Alas her health problems continued; she died in Mar 1931 in Chicago, leaving behind a powerful written record of her lifetime crusading for justice.

↧

Children and Dogs – A Bridge to Nature guest post

June 29, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov - great pretenders

≪ Previous: Ida Wells, a very special black-rights and women's-rights activist

In Nov 2016, Animal Medicines Australia released its Pet Ownership in Australia Report, providing insight into the state of pet ownership in this country. At 62%, Australia continues to have one of the highest household rates of pet ownership in the world with 5.7 million of Australia’s 9.2 million households home to a pet. Dogs remain the most popular type of pet.

Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital in its report agreed that pets are an integral part of our lives as Australians - some 80% of Australians have an animal companion at some time in their life. Sometimes pet relationships are ranked higher than certain kinds of human relationships for comfort, esteem, support and confidence, with benefits in areas of child development, family harmony and health.

For a more detailed examination, let us go over to Mat Coulton of Wileypup, with thanks for his text, photos and links.

Recent scholarship has demonstrated the health benefits dogs offer their human companions. The scientific research found 15 ways in which positive health effects come from time spent with dogs! These studies have focused on measurable physical and mental health indicators such as lower levels of stress, reduced blood pressure and heart rates, lower levels of obesity, and decreased feelings of anxiety, depression and social isolation.

However, our canine companions are also playing a role in how we understand the world around us by serving as a bridge between our modern lives and the splendour of the nature. In particular, they may be a valuable asset in helping children connect intellectually, emotionally and spatially with the environment.

An Age-Old Connection
It may surprise many readers to learn that the oldest domesticated animal that joined the human evolutionary journey was, in fact, Canis familiaris, the domesticated dog. Their presence as invited members in human societies predates horses and livestock.

In fact, this relationship with dogs is so old that modern science has begun to demonstrate evidence of the co-evolution of humans with these important companion animals. Not only has our social organisation been shaped by canines, our biological selves have likely been influenced by our cooperation with them.

The connection goes deeper than hand to harness, the relationship with dogs is clearly significant, however, what do we know about how they may be impacting the lives of our children? Let us take a closer look.

Empathy
Dogs have a way of reaching us with their unconditional love and loyalty. Children often develop empathetic bonds with dogs which is an important aspect of breaking through the often transactional and entertainment driven exchanges with modern technology.

Emotional Intelligence

Learning to understand that other animals have their own emotional reality is an important part of emotional intelligence, also known as EQ. It turns out that EQ is related to better mental health, lower rates of risky behaviour, and higher levels of educational success in children.

Interest in Biology
Interactions with dogs may prepare children to take an interest in learning about biology. Although this is an area in need of more study, research does show that children’s interest in and sense of basic biological concepts is improved by spending time with, and particularly taking part in the care of, our companion animals, such as pet dogs.

Curiosity
Dogs have a natural curiosity about the world around them that is simply contagious. They instinctively set about investigating the sights, feels, and smells of outdoor spaces inspiring adults and children alike to wonder about the mystery and adventure that awaits when we put down the video games and social media to take in wild spaces.

Environmental Stewardship
Caring for a pet gives children a chance to understand the positive impact that taking responsibility for the well being of others can have on our lives, including the care of non-human animals. Although solid research has yet to demonstrate the link, it seems likely that children’s relationships with dogs may contribute to fostering a sense of environmental stewardship if properly nurtured.

Teaching children about their agency to affect the natural world, including through their relationships with dogs, is a critical step towards creating a sense of empowerment relative to pressing environmental issues facing humanity today.

Perhaps this ancient partnership with a non-human ally is continuing to influence and shape the course of human history as a result!

Mat Coulton

↧

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov - great pretenders

July 3, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: The kangaroo in WW1 - nationalist pride and homesickness

≪ Previous: Children and Dogs – A Bridge to Nature guest post

In July 1918 Bolshevik revolutionaries, acting on Moscow’s orders, shot Czar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, four daughters (Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia), their son Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and four servants. Their bodies were taken from the Yekaterinburg cellar, in the Urals, and buried in the forest, yet a rumour got out that the body of the Grand Duchess Anastasia had not been accounted for. Did she hide in the closed cellar?

Since 1918 many women have presented themselves as the missing Anastasia (or another sister). However only Anna Anderson and Eugenia Smith gathered substantial support. Thank you to True Crimes and Curiosities for much of the information .

The princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia

Alexander Palace, 1916

Olga, Alexei, Anastasia and Tatiana

Under house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, 1917

Last known photo of the Romanov siblings

A] In 1920 Anna Anderson tried to commit suicide and was sent to a mental health centre in Berlin. One of the patients took her for the Grand Duchess and later this legend was supported by Russian immigrants. Two years later Anna started believing that she was in fact the real Grand Duchess Anastasia. In 1928 she moved to the USA and lived off Russian princess Xenia Georgievna, who was actually distantly related to the Romanovs. However, after failing to prove herself, Anna returned to Germany.

Those who had known Anastasia personally said Anna Anderson was an imposter, but most ordinary people believed her. So the Tsarina of Russia’s brother Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, hired a private investigator in 1927 to find out who she really was - Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker suffering from mental illness

For 20 years Anna struggled to get her name recognised by the European courts, but failed. In 1968 she moved back to the USA where she married a wealthy man. Anderson died there in 1984 and post-mortem DNA tests finally disproved her claim of being a Romanov. As they did for every other claimant mentioned here.

I saw the film Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) decades ago.

B] Eugenia Smith (1899-1997) was born Eugenia Smetisko. According to her naturalisation papers, Eugenia was born and raised in 1899 in Bukovina, an artist & writer who emigrated to the USA in 1929. In Chicago in 1963 she presented a book to a publisher which she said was a manuscript given to her by the Grand Duchess Anastasia herself. Doubting her tale, the publisher asked her to take a lie detector test, which Smith failed. So she then changed her statement, instead claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

In her book, Autobiography of HIH Anastasia Nicholaevna of Russia, Smith adopted 1901 as her birth date, same as the Grand Duchess, and changed her birthplace to St Petersburg. Her autobiography recounted her life in the Imperial family and how she escaped execution by the Bolsheviks. And her many art works depicted scenes of her Russian childhood in the Imperial family.

Eugenia was a popular society woman when LIFE magazine featured her claims in an Oct 1963 story. LIFE pointed out that she had failed to convince: a) anthropologists (who compared her features to Anastasia’s), b) a handwriting analyst (comparing the two women’s handwriting) and c) a cousin-childhood playmate of Anastasia. Eugenia died in 1997 in Rhode Island. Because cremation is forbidden in Orthodoxy, Eugenia Smith was buried in Orthodox manner in the Holy Trinity Orthodox Monastery in New York.

L to R: Anna Anderson, Eugenia Smith & Eleonora Kruger

True Crimes and Curiosities

C] Eleonora Kruger originally did not claim to be royalty, yet she had apparently written letters to the British King George V asking for help. She first claimed she was Anastasia, then a merchant’s daughter, and then Anastasia again. Her changing claims led to her being institutionalised in a mental hospital in Kazan on the Volga River, where she eventually died.

D] Marga Boodts first appeared in France just post-WW2. She claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, first daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and was considered to be one of the most successful claimants to the Romanov family. Having said she miraculously escaped the execution of the Romanov family, Marga collected money from the public to prove her cause. But in court she was arrested for fraud.

Marga appeared in court again in 1950, this time denying any knowledge of her previous fraudulent activities. She could convince Nikolaus, the Hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg and Wilhelm of her claim; he supported her financially until their death. Only when Anna Anderson became famous did Boodts make her claim public - she did everything in her power to destroy Anderson’s credibility. And of course she wrote a book (unpublished) to tell the story of her family.

Boodts lived in solitude for the rest of her life in Italy, dying in 1976.

E] Ceclava Czapska was first noticed in 1919 in Romania where she was taken under the protection of Queen Marie of Romania. And it was there that Ceclava Czapska married Russian Prince Nicolas Dolgoruky, son of General Alexander Dolgoruky, and started claiming to be the Grand Duchess Maria of Russia. She said all members of the royal family, with the exception of her dad Nicholas II and the servants, escaped from being executed. Ceclava died in 1970 in Rome.

F] The last woman to declare that she was Anastasia was Natalya Bilikhodze, apparently the heiress to a fabulous Georgian fortune, was aged nearly 101. Supporters proved via a video press conference that Mrs Bilikhodze would visit Russia in 2002 when her real identity would be acknowledged and the Romanov fortune would then be handed over to her. But it turned out that Bilikhodze had actually died back in 2000; the press conference video had simply been recorded years prior.

The canonisation of the dead Romanovs in Nov 1981 showed the Orthodox Church made them saints on the belief that they were all totally and irrevocably murdered.

In 1991, the Tsar, his wife and 3 of their daughters were found in the woods outside Yekaterinburg. An exhaustive post mortem examination confirmed that they were the Romanovs. The family was buried in in a vault in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, St Petersburg.

This did not end the rumours because one of the four daughter might have still been alive. Then in 2007 the fourth daughter and the son were found partially cremated near Yekaterinburg. It was never verified if the fourth sister was Maria or Anastasia, but ALL the girls had been proven by DNA testing to be part of the royal family.

↧

The kangaroo in WW1 - nationalist pride and homesickness

July 6, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Bruges, a perfectly preserved medieval Belgian city

≪ Previous: Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov - great pretenders

As shown in the photo below, a toy kangaroo, made of brown velvet and with movable legs, was dated between 1914 and 1918. Pinned to it was a collection of World War I fundraising badges made of materials such as brass, enamel and glass. Some of the badges were first issued when the Australian Government wanted to identify and thank the nearest female relatives of members of the Australian forces on active service. Separate badges were issued to signify relatives serving in the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Imperial Force.

Funds went to the repatriation and rehabilitation of soldiers, the erection of war memorials, and to children and families affected by the war in France & Belgium. At school, children learned about Empire, citizenship, national pride and duty. The war reinforced their lessons and inspired them to contribute.

Australian diggers (soldiers) and a kangaroo,

Mena Camp in Cairo, Dec 1914

Photo credit: Australian Geographic

Visitors can see this velvet kangaroo at the National Museum of Australia’s Terence Lane Collection, amassed by the former Senior Curator of Australian Art. With 180 objects of Australiana, predominantly featuring the kangaroo, this is considered the best collection of kangaroo theme items in Australia and is therefore of important cultural value.

The kangaroo has long been a patriotic symbol, and one used widely in wartime. But not only toy kangaroo were popular. In the shadows of the great pyramids and amid kitbags and Lee-Enfield rifles, an Australian Imperial Force infantryman encounters a kangaroo. Skippy was on permanent shore leave at Mena Camp, the British Empire's training ground in Egypt. Members of the 9th and 10th Battalions smuggled these "mascots" from home aboard transport ships. The first Australian troops to arrive in Egypt in 1914 were proud to be serving the British Empire, and some men took kangaroos and wallabies aboard ship when they left home. Apparently they were a common sight in the Australian camps at Mena, Heliopolis and Ma'adi in 1914-15. There were at least a dozen, and they were mentioned frequently in soldiers' letters home.

These men had just signed up, voluntarily, for war. They were young, with not a lot of thought for the future. The soldier in the photo treated the marsupial expat with tenderness and homesickness. It is believed it ate the same food as the British force's horses and donkeys, a hay and chaff mix. In March 1915, after three months of military training, the men left Mena bound for Gallipoli, bequeathing their mascot to the care of the Cairo Zoological Garden.

Velvet kangaroo and war badges 1914-8

National Museum of Australia

In 1915 recruiting committees were formed in nearly every sizeable town in Australia. In the central west of New South Wales a movement began under the leadership of Captain Bill Hitchen; 20 rural men enlisted and started to march to Sydney on the Kangaroo or Coo-ee March. Gathering other recruits along the way, they numbered about 300 by the time they reached the capital city. Their example was soon followed by other marches from around New South Wales and Queensland, including the Waratahs, Kangaroos, Wallabies, Men from Snowy River, Kookaburras and Boomerangs.

The total number of recruiters was only 1,500 but the marchers relied on the support of the towns they passed through, which was often enthusiastic. They attracted wide publicity, encouraging fund-raising and enlistment. The longest was the Kangaroo March in Dec 1915, going to Wagga Wagga, Junee, Cootamundra, Yass, Goulburn, Moss Vale, Campbelltown and ending at The Domain, Sydney.

Posters were used for various government propaganda campaigns over the course of WWI, most significantly to encourage enlistment, but also to raise money for war charities, to encourage saving and frugality and to rally the home front.

"Australia has promised Britain 50,000 more men. Will YOU help us keep that promise"
1916, lithograph, recruitment poster.

Australian War Memorial

**

World War One Love & Sorrow was an exhibition in the Melbourne Museum in Carlton back in 2014. It explored the enormous impact of the war on Australians. A shared experience in towns and cities across Australia was the worry of having loved ones serving overseas. Newspapers were searched for announcements of deaths and injuries. The sight of a minister or telegraph messenger approaching a family's front door could fill the family with dread. Many of the objects in this exhibition relate to WW1 in one street: Normanby Ave Caulfield, a typical street where almost everyone was touched by war.

Millions of letters were posted around the world during WWI; letters and cards were the only ways most people kept in touch.

Australian Christmas card 1916

posted home by servicemen and women.

World War One Love & Sorrow exhibition

↧

Bruges, a perfectly preserved medieval Belgian city

July 10, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: The late Thelma Webberley, a very fine journalist

≪ Previous: The kangaroo in WW1 - nationalist pride and homesickness

Bruges (pop 120,000) was founded in the north of Belgium in the C9th by Vikings who settled locally. A town developed around the fortress that the Counts of Flanders built in the area and the young settlement worked hard to acquire city rights. In fact a very protective city wall was built around Bruges, with solid gates.

The settlement very quickly became an important harbour close to the North Sea. Inside the city, the river and canals became the vital communication links. By the C14th Bruges was the starting point of a commercial transport road to the Rhineland; traders from all over came to sell their products and to buy Flemish cloth.

Markt Place, outdoor coffee shops and sculpture (top)

The Beguinage (second photo)

Growing from a few North German towns in the late 1100s, the German Hanseatic League dominated Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the Northern European coast. Bruges became a port of even greater importance when it joined the Hanseatic League.

St Saviour’s Church was founded in C10th and added to later eg the high altar is C17th. Serious fires may have been the result of wars, accidents or iconoclastic destruction. But some lovely part of this church still stand: C15th choir stalls with the Knights of the Golden Fleece’s arms, organ, cloisters and treasury.

The Beguinage was founded by Margaret of Constantinople, countess of Flanders in the mid C13th. Some women were the bereft widows or daughters of knights killed in the Holy Crusades, women who did not want to be secluded nuns but who wanted to do good works. The Beguinage is still a green space and lovely whitewashed houses; the Beguine Museum enables visitors to feel the C13th.

Markt Place is a central, large square used for all social and political activities. On one side, the medieval belfry looms 272' over Markt Place, the proud symbol of the wealth of Bruges since 1282. And there were renovations added during C15th glory days. Inside the belfry, see the treasury room; then up 366 steps, past the C18th carillon and onto the roof. The 47 bells chime each day.

On the east side of the square is the neo-Gothic Provincial Palace. From 1850, it was used to house the provincial government meetings. Then it became a government meeting hall and now a ceremonial building-exhibition space.

The Basilica of the Holy Blood (mid C12th) was built on the site that the First Count of Flanders built his fort. It didn't become a chapel until the bones of St Basil the Great AND Holy Blood of Jesus Christ were brought from the Holy Land or Constantinople (C12th). The ground floor of this double church has its original darkish Romanesque character, while the upper chapel is a totally Gothic storey built in the C15th.

The relic of the Holy Blood is always in the upper chapel, in a tiny crystal phial with a golden stopper hung with silver chains. Only on May’s Ascension Day does it move around the town in proud procession. The relic is the responsibilities of the Confraternity of the Precious Blood, town worthies celebrated in Pieter Pourbus’ Triptych of the Brotherhood.

By C14th, Bruges, Ghent and Ypres were the three centres of Belgium's amazing cloth trade, using first class raw English wool, ideally suited for weaving Flanders’ luxury cloth. Banking and merchant houses from all over Europe thrived in Bruges. The population boomed!

Joined to the Holy Blood Basilica is the old Town Hall. It was built from light cream sandstone in the Gothic style in the late C14th. The facade has octagonal turrets, arched and ribbed windows, and statues of all the counts of Flanders. The Gothic Hall above has stunning murals depicting the major events in Bruges’ history.

Basilica of the Holy Blood, exterior (top) and

Gothic upper chapel with blood relic (below)

Next door is the more classical Palace of Justice. Except for the Magistrates’ Hall, the first building was destroyed. The Palace was rebuilt in the 1528-81 period. Other buildings in Burg Square are the Provost's House and the Old Recorder's House, a fine renaissance building topped with statues representing justice.

And see the Church of Notre Dame. Work began on the nave and aisles in c1230 but, typically, more changes were made in the 14th and C15th. The huge tower is 122ms high! Inside Notre Dame Church is Michelangelo's only known sculptural piece in Belgium, Virgin and Child 1504 in marble. It was brought from Tuscany by a Flemish merchant.

Opposite Our Lady Church is St John’s Hospital, founded in 1188 and one of the oldest in Europe. It still functions as a hospital today, but a dispensary and an old ward have been fitted out as they were back then. In one of the hospital’s old chapels the Hans Memling Museum is located. This artist spent most of his career in Bruges.

Among the amazing collection of Memling paintings to be found in Bruges is the altarpiece called The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine 1479, painted for the Hospital of St John chapel, as was the Madonna and Child 1487 and the Hospitallers of St John. The wooden Reliquary of St Ursula 1489 is a portable Gothic shrine to Ursula’s 11,000 martyred virgins, covered with exquisite panels.

Bruges was THE creative centre for many of the great Flemish painters, especially when Duke Philip the Good (ruled 1419-67) was commissioning art. Hans Memling, plus Jan van Eyck painted his stunning altarpiece Adoration of the Mystic Lamb in Bruges (1432). Hugo van der Goes (1440-82) also worked in Bruges and left his Portarini Altarpiece c1475, painted for a rich Italian banker working in Bruges. Groeninge Museum is a 1930 building with a fine collection of Flemish Old Masters: Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, Petrus Christus, David Gerard, Pieter Pourbus and Hieronymus Bosch. And some C17th Dutch art.

St John's Hospital and Memling Museum along one of the canals

St John Altarpiece by Hans Memling

The decline of Bruges' wealth started in C15th: terrible silting up of the Zwin meant that ships could no longer transport goods to and from Bruges. Plus competition with the bigger harbour of Antwerp resulted in less commercial activity. Sadly the country's wealthiest merchants left Bruges and took their business to Antwerp. The only building flourish were houses and warehouses with stepped gables that were built along the canals throughout the C17th.

Today this economic failure to thrive has had an ironic effect. Bruges was snap-frozen in time and is the best preserved medieval city in western Europe. Even the solid medieval town walls were only torn down in the mid C19th.

The C20th has brought new life because tourists love the medieval heritage, and chocolate. The new harbour of Zeebrugge, 16ks from the city, also brought new industries. Bruges is also home to many interesting art galleries eg The Absolute Art Gallery which promotes the artwork of young and talented Belgian artists, and of international artists - paintings, sculptures, installations and photographs. But the greatest modern fame came from the film, In Bruges (2008), that starred two Irish hitmen, filmed across the city’s iconic cityscape.

The Bruges Triennial 2018 | Liquid City will gather artists and architects from around the world to leave their mark on the city's public space. From May-September 2018, impressive constructions of contemporary artists and architects will appear in the historic heart of the city.

↧

The late Thelma Webberley, a very fine journalist

July 13, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Can a great book be made into a very good film? On Chesil Beach

≪ Previous: Bruges, a perfectly preserved medieval Belgian city

Thelma Komesaroff (1923-2015) was a student at University High, an elective school in Melbourne that encouraged its students to stay at school, even throughout the Great Depression and the 1939-45 World War. At a time when most girls and some boys were encouraged to leave school at the minimum legal age, Thelma finished Matriculation and was offered a place in the prestigious University of Melbourne. Her passion was English and Russian Literature.

Thelma and Les, post retirement

The University did not close during the war, but students whose husbands, fiancés and fathers were recruited into the Armed Services felt obligated to get paying jobs. Thelma married Lieutenant Les Webberley (1922-2015) in 1945; she continued working in a city bookshop when Les returned to University after demobilisation, to finish his engineering degree.

Once their babies were out of nappies, Thelma became a journalist at The Australian Jewish Herald, published weekly in Melbourne. After 18 years of columns on music, the arts, travel and community organisations, Thelma took the opportunity to go back to Melbourne University, this time to earn a degree in Journalism. And this time with her daughter (me) on the same campus!

I have already documented Thelma’s community work. Courage to Care offered workshops, presentations, exhibition viewing and facilitated discussions designed for high school students. And one section of Bnai Brith Victoria provided scholarships for teachers to travel to Israel and to learn in in-depth teaching programmes.

But I have not discussed the rest of Thelma's professional career, intended to be spent as a journalist in tertiary educational institutions. Only one mid-career move was a surprise, still as a journalist but not in a tertiary educational institution. Thelma was given 3 years to write a history of the Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers in Melbourne, starting in the 1870s in Melbourne. In August 1881 it became the Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers/VCM. It remained an unincorporated association until 1922, when it was incorporated under the Victorian Companies Act. VCM played a role in Australian industrial relations and within a couple of years the Australian Chamber of Manufacturers formed the Manufacturing Grocers' Section.

The VCM wanted a book that could be published in time for the century anniversary of the organisation. The final version of the book ENTERPRISE, 100 Years of the VCM was written by Thelma Webberley, edited by CF Sullivan and published in 1979.

The Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers

across the state of Victoria

Book Orphanage says the book is a hardcover, 10½" x 7½", with dark-blue cloth-bound boards with gold title to spine, 218 pages, photographs and a foreword by the Premier of Victoria. This book traces the first century of the VCM, which started in one hotel room and, at the time of writing, had 6,000 members and wide influence in industrial matters in Victoria.

Now to the book launch itself. Printed sheets were added inside the book saying Many people contributed to the preparation of this history of the first 100 years of The Victorian Chamber of Manufactures. Among the members of VCM staff who contributed to the production of the History, were Mr CF Sullivan and Mrs T Webberley. Mr Sullivan was responsible for guiding the compilation of the material included in this work while Mrs Webberley, in writing the text, did so with great enthusiasm and dedication.

The Foreword was written by the Premier of Victoria, the Honourable RJ Hamer. I was particularly interested to hear the premier say inter alia that the Chamber was interested in technical education, being part of the Administrative Staff College, Council of Public Education, Council of Melbourne University and its Faculty of Economics and Commerce, Victorian Institute of Secondary Education, Victorian University and Schools Education Board.

There are 17 chapters in the book, covering the era of the first men with the first visions (eg Robert Harper, the Chamber’s first president) until the completion of the Chamber’s anniversary and its plans for the future. My personal favourites were the chapters set in the post-war years and the 1950s, discussing the Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Mr Chifley, socialism, unions and industrialisation. This was a very influential era for my family, and for the primary schools we all went to.

After the formal speeches in front of Victoria’s dignitaries at the book launch, Thelma Webberley gave the best speech of her professional career. And no time before or since had she ever had three State Ministers shaken her hand on one day!

A separate letter to Thelma Webberley was written directly from Brian Powell, Director of the VCM. Mr Powell’s invitation to the function on 2nd May 1980 was to thank Thelma in front of the VCM staff, for her writing of the book. That function would mark the internal release of the VCM history “Enterprise”.

The books, printed sheets acknowledging the authorship and editorship, and the Director’s personal invitation to Thelma all came to me in my late mother’s library. They are treasured items. Plus I was delighted to find a Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers’ Certificate of Membership at the National Wool Museum in Geelong.

ENTERPRISE, 100 Years of the VCM

A Decade of Achievement: Phillip Institute of Technology

As I said, Thelma intended to spent the rest of her career as a journalist in tertiary education. And she did! Phillip Institute offered Arts, Commerce, Business, Engineering, Social Work and Youth Work. Readers can enjoy Thelma’s career at PIT in Brian Carroll’s A Decade of Achievement: Phillip Institute of Technology. Starting his history in 1982, Carroll documented the important contributions made by Thelma's closest colleagues Professor Don Edgar, Betty Churcher (Head of the School of Art and Design) and Henry Talbot (Senior Lecturer in Photography). Carroll highlighted the quarterly magazine Upfront that was written by Thelma, the means by which the Institute reached out to the local community and northern suburban newspapers.

Later Thelma worked with students and wrote journal articles, books and newspaper columns at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (now RMIT University). In preparation for RMIT's School of Media and Communication to be developed within the College of Design and Social Context, the journalists and publishers had to work very hard. The School eventually hosted advertising, audio-visual, communication, creative writing, editing and publishing, film and television, journalism, music industry, photography and public relations.

↧

Can a great book be made into a very good film? On Chesil Beach

July 17, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: Little Tich - best comedic performer in the world, from 1884 on!

≪ Previous: The late Thelma Webberley, a very fine journalist

I had good reasons for seeing the 2017 film On Chesil Beach. Firstly Ian McEwan is one of the most intriguing modern novelists I have read, especially his 2007 novella of the same name! Secondly the brilliant film Atonement was based on Ian McEwan's 2001 novella Atonement and starred, amongst others, Keira Knightley and Saoirse Ronan. Thirdly Chesil Beach was set in 1962, an intriguing time that came just before my personal “Golden Era” of 1965-1970. Finally the book was quite rightly shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2007, my best guide for selecting novels to read every year.

Author McEwan did the screenplay adaptation, and the film was directed by Dominic Cooke.

The newlywed stars on their honeymoon were both anxious virgins. The new wife was Florence Ponting, a talented and ambitious violinist, and the new husband was Edward Mayhew. I remember my grand mother talking about the dangers of sex before marriage, but who discussed the terror of sexual intimacy after marriage?

Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle, the young stars of Chesil Beach

I assumed “Chesil Beach” was a fanciful location for the film's honeymoon hotel .. because I had never heard the name outside McEwan's novel. Now it turns out that the 18 miles of protected pebble beach along the Dorset coast is real. And famous! What an appropriate and moody location for a brief marriage that ended after a night of disastrous non-sex. Florence and Edward Mayhew, who came from different backgrounds, had an idyllic courtship. But they never got to consummate their marriage, breaking up in tears before doing the deed.

Saoirse Ronan (born 1994) was an inspired Florence, daughter of a wealthy but icy cold family. The Irish actress knew how to express an innocence and repression, while remaining outwardly charming. The actress herself explained that she had been too young to read McEwan’s book when it had first been released. She was also too young to deal with this very intimate topic and acknowledged that it had to be told in a delicate way. Perhaps Ronan didn’t even know about the societal pressure that could accompany physical intimacy back in 1962.

Theatre actor Billy Howle (born 1989) played a character whose working class father was a teacher, while his mother was damaged in an accident; their home was more informal and closer to nature than Florence’s posher background. Edward was a recent university graduate (in history) and had decided to become an author.

Looking down from Abbotsbury Hill onto Chesil Beach, Dorset

Photo credit: The Guardian

Transmission gives a synopsis with extra information that I could not have elucidated myself. It was a gripping, heart-rending account of a loving relationship battered by outside forces and influences first formed in childhood, in a society with inflexible rules about uniformity & respectability. They married as virgins: two very different people, but deeply in love. Only hours after their wedding they found themselves at their dull, formal honeymoon hotel on the Dorset coast at Chesil Beach. They dined in their room, and their conversation became stilted and nervous.

The consummation of their marriage was fast approaching, and while Edward welcomed the prospect of sexual intimacy, Florence was scared by it. The tension between them boiled over into a heated argument as Florence tried to repel Edward’s advances. She dashed from the room, out of the hotel and on to Chesil Beach, with Edward in pursuit. On a remote part of the beach they had a blazing argument about the profound differences between them. One of them made a startling decision that would have life-long consequences for them both.

But as often happened in the film world, it took a long time for the book to make the transition to the big screen. Yet producer Elizabeth Karlsen had been interested in a film adaptation of the beautifully written novel, even before the On Chesil Beach book was first published.

She noted the simplicity of narrative and the clarity of emotion that was already visible. Finding Dominic Cooke, one of Britain’s most eminent theatre directors, Artistic Director at the Royal Court and Associate Director at the National Theatre, was inspired. Cooke was impressed by how the film conveyed the importance of how people talk, or don’t talk about sex, and how people are affected by their upbringings.

Ian McEwan and some of his most famous novels,

Wall St Journal

In 2008, after weeks of concentrating on the job at hand, I created a list of my most loved novels. If I was asked to re-create a favourite list a decade later, it probably would not be very different. But I would certainly have included an Ian McEwan novel or two.

And yes, great books can be made into very good films!

↧

Little Tich - best comedic performer in the world, from 1884 on!

July 20, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Intellectual Jewish life in Vienna in the early 20th century - Peter Singer

≪ Previous: Can a great book be made into a very good film? On Chesil Beach

Harry Relph (1867-1928) was the 16th child of a very elderly Kent publican. Harry stood only 4’6” high, with dwarfish legs, and was born with six digits on each hand and foot. His deformities were emphasised for publicity, although he never wanted to be seen as a handicapped person.

His earliest professional performance in 1880 was at a the Rosherville Gardens Gravesend, a favourite riverside resort. The 12 year old lad made his very first stage appearance with his own black-face comedy act.

Harry took his stage name from an infamous English court case against The Tichborne Claimant that lasted from Ap 1873-Feb 1874, when Harry was still a toddler. In this court case, a Wapping butcher’s son called Arthur Orton turned up from Wagga Wagga in rural Australia. He pretended he was Roger Charles Titchborne, lost at sea in Ap 1854, and heir to an ancient Hampshire baronetcy. Orton, who weighed 25 stones, did 14 years in gaol. He was released on ticket-of-leave in 1884, and later appeared on the music halls, telling of his adventures and prison experience.

Dwarfish Harry Relph took his stage name in an ironic and comedic reference to the huge Tichborne claimant.

Harry Relph, Little Tich, c1900

Wikipedia

Arthur Orton, Tichborne Claimant,

National Portrait Gallery London

By the time of his solo London music hall debut in 1884 at 13, Harry had developed a speciality dance in which he “defied” gravity, either leaning forward at a precarious angle or balancing on the tips of long shoes. This eccentric dance became his specialty. In his famous flopping Big Boots, 30” in length, Tich danced, leant almost horizontal to retrieve his lost hat, and then rose on tiptoe to become over 7’ tall. Finally he took his bow with another quick horizontal lurch which knocked his bald forehead against the stage.

In Drury Lane, his next London home, pantomime audiences loved Little Tich in the 1891 Humpty Dumpty performance with Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd. Then in 1892 with Hop on My Thumb. Three Drury Lane pantomimes, 1891-94, established him as one of Britain's foremost comedians. To see Harry walk on stage, with his burlesque evening dress, top hat, cigar and his silly smile, made people quickly laugh.

Tich’s music hall earnings made him rich. He loved to ride in a big car around London, and into Kent. But he never forgot his Kentish childhood, his early struggles as a poorly paid performer or his nights in a doss-house.

After succeeding in London, Little Tich went on to triumph overseas. In 1896 Little Tich made his debut in Paris and became a good friend of very short Toulouse-Lautrec. He was also greatly admired by famous actor-manager Lucien Guitry and his actor-dramatist son Sacha. The young Charlie Chaplin, in Paris with Fred Karno's Troupe, saw Tich at the Folies Bergère and based his walk on the music hall star (even though Chaplin became the more famous man).

Also in 1896 Tich appeared at the Alhambra Theatre London and the Olympia Music Hall in Paris.

Little Tich sang comic songs & was a skilful instrumentalist, but his greatest successes were energetic dances in which he often parodied artists like Loïe Fuller. Soon Tich was made an officer of the Académie Française for services to French music-hall.

1905’s biggest star on the Australian Tivoli Circuit was Little Tich. This comic little showman commanded a salary that was double the largest sum theatre proprietor Henry Rickards had ever paid to previous stars!!

For 17 years the performer was the toast of the old Tivoli Theatre in London’s Strand. In an unforgettable show in 1907 Tich was one of the Five Harrys: along with Harrys Lauder, Tate, Fragson and Randell. The show was billed as a sensational success.

He was enticed by an American producer to the USA at 3 times his British salary. Phineas T Barnum was a great show man. There Tich developed a series of hilarious sketches of suburban characters: a love-sick tram conductor, sea-sick sailor, incompetent blacksmith and a succession of eccentric elderly ladies. He was most famous for his Spanish Senorita, Tax Collector, the Gas Inspector and Little Miss Turpentine.

Famous at home and abroad, his highly visual comic routines influenced both stage and early film performers. Victorian Cinema reported that the surviving film of the Big Boots dance, made by Clément-Maurice for the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre in 1900, was a piece of comedic genius. And fans could see Georges Méliès' Le Raid Paris - Monte-Carlo en Deux Heures (1905), Pathé's Little Tich (1907) and Gaumont's Little Tich, the Tec (1909).

Back in Australia Tich told the audience that he was used to playing to ladies and gentlemen, not to a mob of hooligans. Then he walked off. After the afternoon papers’ headlines screamed, ‘Little Tich Insults Australian Audiences’, Tich had misgivings about what sort of reception he would get in later performances. But Little Tich was 60 and his big boots and silly songs were no longer universally loved. Australians broke his heart. He had come on the stage cocky and energetic; he left it a shaky old man. Tich returned to London but his spirit was never the same again.

Relph was married to three professional entertainers; a] English dancer Laurie Brooks in 1889, b] Spanish dancer Julia Recio in 1898 and c] actress Winifred Ivey in 1926. Harry and Winifred’s daughter Mary went on to have a successful stage career of her own.

Ealing Hippodrome,

starring Little Tich 1907

His final performance was at the London Alhambra Theatre in 1927, then he died in 1928. Buried in East Finchley Cemetery, Little Tich’s tombstone says: le plus petit et le plus grand comique du monde.

See the V&A Theatre and Performance Department collections, including the biographical, productions and photographs files, the library holdings, the Richard Findlater Archive and a pair of the famous Big Boots. Read Little Tich, Giant of the Music Hall by Mary Tich and Richard Findlater, 1979 and Little Tich – Music Hall Star by Gordon Irving.

↧

Intellectual Jewish life in Vienna in the early 20th century - Peter Singer

July 24, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: Germany’s Colonial Empire 1884-1918: Deutsches Historisches Museum

≪ Previous: Little Tich - best comedic performer in the world, from 1884 on!

Here is a blog post of mine, reposted from 23/12/2008 and now modified.

Prof Peter Singer, born safely in Australia straight after the 1939-1945 war, wanted to get to know his late grandfather, David Oppenheim. This was a man who died in the war in 1943, before he could reach a safe place. Luckily for Singer, heaps of documents survived. His aunt, Doris Liffman, had studied some of the letter-based material years earlier for her university degree.

These days I ask my students to read Pushing Time Away ( Ecco, 2003), but not because they are necessarily interested in Peter Singer’s task in discovering his own family history. Rather I want them to understand Viennese Jewish intellectual life from the late C19th until 1933.

Peter Singer's book

with his grandparents' portraits

A new golden age of building came to Vienna, based on the gracious Ringstrasse which was created 1860-90: all the city’s great institutions were located there. Different from the churches and imperial buildings which were already present in central Vienna, the new Ringstrasse developments were buildings which stressed secular culture, education and the new constitutional government. These included the Parliament, Rathaus, galleries and University. But above all, it was a place for café society to parade and debate.

Vienna was hopping and jumping in this period, creating world leaders in medicine, psychiatry, chemistry, physics, design, music, architecture, painting, politics, publishing, philosophy and every other intellectual field. The Jewish community of Vienna was largely secular, highly educated and extremely motivated to succeed intellectually.

At the end of the century, 10% of the total population of Vienna were Jews. Note that at the same time, c30% of the Akademisches Gymnasium students, 60% of Vienna’s physicians and more than 60% of Vienna's lawyers were Jewish. Ideas were in ferment and Vienna was a very cultivated city. The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1903-7) was a perfect example of integrated Viennese culture. The greatest patron of the Vienna Secession artists was Jewish businessman Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (although this gorgeous painting by Gustav Klimt was stolen by the Nazis in 1941).

In Oppenheim, Singer found a well placed man to witness Vienna’s Golden Age. Oppenheim “only” taught classical languages in the high-class Gymansium, so he was not in the centre of Vienna’s intellectual ferment at work. But he moved to the centre in everything he did. Oppenheim’s life was lived in cosmopolitan Vienna and he could not help contemplating and writing about many of the significant issues that crossed his fertile mind.

Inevitably Oppenheim was drawn into Sigmund Freud’s circle, where his literary and philological skills seemed to be much appreciated. This earned him a footnote in the 1911 edition of The Interpretation of Dreams (suppressed when Oppenheim threw in his lot with the “heretic” Alfred Adler).

I am uncertain what to make of Singer’s grandmother, Amalie Pollack Oppenheim. She was no intellectual slouch herself, having enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1899; she was only the 39th woman to ever graduate from that august institution. But her career went nowhere, so one is left to guess that her role was a] raising healthy, happy, educated children and b] supporting her husband in his research, writing and publications. I was quite interested in the complexities of Oppenheim’s and Amalie’s relationship, but I would have loved to have known what contributions to learning Amalie made, outside the home. At least Amalie had the huge good luck and the strength to survive the Nazi camps, and to reach freedom in Australia.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1, 1907
by Klimt
Neue Galerie, NY

Coffee house culture, c1905

Vienna, BBC

Historical researchers have to thank families who kept copies of all the letters they wrote and received. Those families had enormous foresight! Even had David Oppenheim been born in Ballarat or Leeds, his story would have been worth telling. But Pushing Time Away focused on the critical moments in the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s transition from the late C19th glory days and of learning, to the arrival of Nazism and despair.

In the early decades of C20th Vienna, the city's cultural influences were unsurpassed. So it was impossible that David and Amalie Oppenheim could have known that they had seen the decaying decades of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Could they have understood what the terrible Anschluss in March 1938, when Austria became an integrated part of Germany, revealed?

Andrew Riemer of the Sydney Morning Herald had believed such ideals were destroyed by the ideological fury of Nazism, the sign of Hitler's true triumph; that post-Holocaust, many Jews sloughed off the rich secular heritage their European ancestors evolved. So Riemer might have been wrong. Peter Singer clearly saw was the continuity between his grandfather's intellectual preferences and his own: a dedication to secular humanism that so many European Jews had espoused. The triumphant brilliant Jewish Viennese culture!

Therefore I suggest that Prof Singer's book subtitle, The Tragedy of Jewish Vienna, should be changed to The Great Successes and Unthinkable Tragedy of Jewish Vienna.

↧

Germany’s Colonial Empire 1884-1918: Deutsches Historisches Museum

July 27, 2018, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: anti-Sudanese racism in Australia. Shame, ministers, shame!!

≪ Previous: Intellectual Jewish life in Vienna in the early 20th century - Peter Singer

Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands etc had booming colonial empires, often after long and brutal struggles against local citizens. By the late 19th century, Germany also wanted colonies.

We need to start with Germany's unification in 1871. Although the German Empire went on to become a European colonial power until the end of WW1, it might be difficult for the modern historian to see how colonial power entered public consciousness. Certainly not from Otto von Bismarck and the politicians in the Reichstag who felt they had enough
problems to deal with, inside the new German nation.

However it must be noted that there were many geographical associations and colonial societies in Germany. And there were many German citizens who moved to the colonies, temporarily or for the long term: missionaries, civil servants, military people, settlers and merchants.

In 1884 Bismarck reluctantly changed his mind. In order to protect trade, to safeguard raw materials and export markets and to build capital investment, he approved the acquisition of colonies by the German Empire.

Map of German colonies in black

Plus Pacific islands and Chinese concessions in red

As a straggler in the race for colonies, Germany had to agree to four less-than-desirable Protectorates.

A) In South West Africa, they colonised Namibia (1884-1918).

B) In East Africa, the Germans colonised the nations now called Cameroon, Togo, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Mozambique and Rwanda (1891-1918).

C) To protect German trading interests in the Pacific and to take advantage of British failures, the German Government annexed north eastern New Guinea in 1884. The Marshall and the Solomon Islands were annexed in 1885. The Germans took over Nauru, then annexed Samoa to acquire forced labour for its plantations.

D) In China, Qingdao Treaty Port became the German bay concession of Tsingtau, leased by the Qing Dynasty. From 1898-1914, it was the centre for German commercial development in China and a base for the Imperial German Navy.

German military forces had to battle against many angry marches, to lock up or execute local trouble makers. Perhaps it was because Germany became involved in empire building much later than the other Europeans, and were therefore less experienced. Africans resisted the annexation of their territories, which led to violent colonial wars. Genocide in Namibia was infamous as one of the first examples of genocide in the C20th. Between 1904-05, tens of thousands of rebelling Herero and Namaqua died when the German army destroyed supplies of food and water. Afterwards, the colonising army drove refugees into the Namib Desert.

Germany committed its first mass deaths in Namibia against the Namas and the Hereros, from 1904 to 1907, often in camps.

In Tanzania in German East Africa, the 1905 Maji-Maji War was another devastating event for the local population. The Maji Majis had to work in labour gangs to build roads and grow cotton, but they died from largely from German-organised famine.

Even in times of peace, the military forces employed the Maxim machine gun to reinforce their rule and bring home the superiority of the Europeans to the colonised peoples. The machine gun was sometimes used to decimate whole groves of trees in a short period of time to engender fear, or destroy food.

These genocides were a source of tension between the German Empire and other European powers, especially Britain and France. This was even though a] Germany did not have the military resources to seriously compete and v] Britain and France had their own colonial wars and their own brutal colonial histories.

A conference was organised by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, with representatives of 14 nations, but no Africans were invited. The General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 formalised the Scramble for Africa, and eliminated most existing forms of African self-rule. Germany was placing colonialism in its pan-European context, and publicising its sudden emergence as an imperial power.

German colonial efforts, despite being limited, did not create a happy time in world history. So it did not surprise historians that early in WWI, most of Germany’s African and Pacific colonies were occupied by other European colonial powers. Only in German East Africa did the Generals and African mercenaries persevere until the end of the war.

Perhaps because of its tradition of expansion within Europe, Germany's renewed attempt to conquer Europe in WWI resulted in loss of its overseas possessions. Post-WW1 Germany was stripped of all its colonies under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The confiscated territories were distributed to the victors, under the new system of mandates set up by the League of Nations.

Thus the German colonial empire ended. Yet colonial consciousness did not disappear. Nazi Germany’s attempt to acquire new European “colonies” before and during WW2 started with the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Then Germany wanted parts of Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Baltic states. Undoubtedly there was a legitimate concern for the millions of ethnic Germans who lived there, but that would have led to the unification of Greater Germany, not colonisation of unrelated European nations.

A German colonial army

in khaki uniforms and helmets

For the first time Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum has focused on German colonialism in an exhibition called German Colonialism Fragments Past and Present (Oct 2016-May 2017).

Displays dealt with German colonialism via paintings, graphics, everyday objects, posters, documents, photographs, colonial wares, toys and travel reports from Germans and locals. One example. European civil servants and military travellers from all the colonial powers wore tropical helmets made of pith or cork. Used extensively across all the tropical colonies, the helmets offered protection against sun and rain for Imperial German Officials. The helmet became a fixture of the colonial dress code and a sign of membership of the racially-defined rulers.

The exhibition examined the motives of the German missionaries, administrators, military forces, settlers and merchants, as well as the interests of the colonised people. And it examined whether the perspectives of the colonised peoples were included in the historical tradition.

The exhibition published by an excellent booklet in German and English. From this catalogue, I was most interested in the underlying ideology of colonialism, worldwide political rivalry with other colonial powers, and the pursuit of economic power in the 19th and early C20th. The discussion of German domination, with its violence, crushing of rebellions and genocide, was harsher. Nonetheless the exhibition did inform current debates about the recognition of genocides.

↧

Latest Images