today’s birthday: Paul Gauguin (1848)

Paul Gauguin (1848)

First a sailor and then a successful stockbroker in Paris, Gauguin took up painting on weekends when he was in his mid-20s. Eventually, with the encouragement of Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, he devoted himself completely to art, quitting his job and separating from his wife and five children. Today, he is recognized as a highly influential founding father of modern art whose bold experiments with color led directly to the Synthetist style. What did Gauguin and Van Gogh have in common? More… Discuss

this day in the yesteryear: Victory Day (1945)

Victory Day (1945)

Still celebrated in most of the Soviet successor states, Victory Day marks Nazi Germany‘s capitulation to the USSR in WWII. Signed on the evening of May 8, 1945—May 9 in Moscow’s time zone—the surrender followed Germany’s initial capitulation to the Allies. When the first surrender document was being signed, only one Soviet representative was present, and he had no instructions from Moscow nor any means of immediate contact with Soviet leaders. Was he punished or lauded for deciding to sign it? More… Discuss

today’s holiday: Dutch Liberation Day

Dutch Liberation Day

Liberation Day, or National Day, in the Netherlands celebrates May 5, 1945, the day on which the Nazi forces were driven out of Holland by the Allies. Although the Dutch had succeeded in remaining neutral during World War I, the country was invaded by the Nazis in May 1940 and rapidly overrun. The liberation of Holland in 1945 was an important step toward the subsequent defeat of the Nazis. Many Dutch cities hold special concerts on this day. Special commemorations are held in Amsterdam and around the country on May 5 each year, as well as on May 4, Remembrance Day. More… Discuss

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picture of the day: St. Lo, France (In the summer of 1944)

St. Lo, France

In the summer of 1944, two French boys watch from a hilltop as convoys of Allied vehicles pass through the badly damaged city of St. Lo en route to the battle front. St. Lo was the scene of major fighting the latter stages of the Normandy campaign during World War II.

Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps

– See more at: http://www.historynet.com/picture-of-the-day#sthash.OSqSJkFy.dpuf

Muntii Fagaras. Saua Caprei. Zona periculoasa greu de trecut. Priveliste super. (…curaj gaina ca te tai!’)

Muntii Fagaras. Saua Caprei. Zona periculoasa greu de trecut. Priveliste super.

Cezar Navruc

Adevarul e ca desi am fost pe trseul acla de 4 ori, de fiecare data am avut noro sa ajung co bine la destinatie! de accea pot sa public blog, despre acest subiect! 🙂

Creasta Muntilor Fagaras este o incercare a curajului ce unii, il au, sua la-au mostenit, si altii, daca nu sant de la Constanta,  si alte plaiuri plate, cu sau far-da apa, supravietuiesc daca au noroc de vreme buna…

  (dar nucred ca se incumeta sa vina pentru o alta incercare!)

Oricum , am crezut ca filmul, si comentariile sant de foarte potrivite pentru ocazie ( mai putin limbajul colocvial, dar considerand imprejurarile…): 

Ce parere aveti? Ati ras putin, sau ati ras mult? 🙂   EUZICASA

2,844

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picture of the day: Adolf Hitler Becomes Chancellor

Adolf Hitler Becomes Chancellor

German President Paul von Hindenburg (right) made Adolf Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. After World War I, Germany fell into disarray and looked for a leader to strengthen it again. Hitler had emerged after joining the Nazi Party in 1919 and taking it over in 1921. In 1932 Hitler ran against von Hindenburg and lost–but not by a wide margin. The Nazis won 230 seats in the German parliament and continued to gain influence, stifling democracy and communism by force and by making laws against them. After Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Der Führer of the Third Reich and continued as Germany’s leader through World War II.

Image: Collier’s Magazine

– See more at: http://www.historynet.com/picture-of-the-day#sthash.UOuYX7Ws.dpuf

Wine, Women and Song – Johann Strauss Jr.

Juancitoamericano

Published on Jun 7, 2014

Vienna, the waltz and the Strauss family are inseparable entities. The waltzes of Johann Strauss, Sr. evoked the air of the Viennese countryside, beer gardens and wine from the latest harvest. Those of his eldest son, Johann Jr., at first had the same rhythmic vitality and brief melodies. After 1860, however, this would change. The younger Strauss infused the traditional waltz format and sound with a new vitality and sophistication that reflected the glittery, hedonistic spirit of nineteenth century imperial Vienna. He melded the rhythmic drive of his father’s works with the lyricism of Austrian dance music composer Joseph Lanner.

Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899), known especially for his waltzes, showed remarkable skills early in his childhood, despite his father’s opposition to any career in music. Johann, Sr. wanted him to become a banker, but the younger Strauss had his own ideas, taking violin lessons in secret from a player in his father’s orchestra. When Strauss was 17 his father left the family, thus allowing him to begin serious study without encumbrance. His mother, a good amateur violinist who had always encouraged him, remained supportive.

In 1844 he led his first concert and a year later formed his own ensemble, thereby competing with his father’s orchestra. He was also writing his own quadrilles, mazurkas, polkas, and waltzes for performance by his ensemble, even conducting works by his father, and receiving praise from the press. He was given the honorary position of Bandmaster of the 2nd Vienna Citizens’ Regiment (his father was bandmaster of the 1st regiment) in 1845, and in 1847 began composing for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association. Wine, Women and Song (Wein, Weib und Gesang), published in Vienna in 1869, is a choral waltz he composed for this Association for a performance of February 2, 1869, with text by Josef Weyl.

The real success of Strauss, Jr. began in 1849 after his father Johann Strauss, Sr. died. He then merged his father’s orchestra with his own and took up his father’s contracts. His career moved along smoothly for the next several years, but in 1853 he became seriously ill and turned over conducting duties to his younger brother, Josef, for six months. After his recovery he resumed fully both his conducting and his composing activities, eventually gaining the respect of such composers as Brahms, Wagner, and Verdi for his seemingly unlimited imagination for using melodies.

Strauss married singer Henriette “Jetty” Treffz in August 1862, and they settled in Hietzing, a municipal District of Vienna. Thereafter, she became his business manager and apparently a great inspiration, drawing him toward operetta, just as Viennese theater operators were becoming tired of the works of Jacques Offenbach. His first, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, came in 1871, and his most famous, Die Fledermaus, was staged three years later with great success. Eine Nacht in Venedig (1883) and Der Zigeunerbaron (1885) were his only other international operetta well-known works.

In 1872, he traveled to the United States and led highly successful concerts in Boston and New York. For all the success that came in the 1870, there was also much grief: his mother and brother Josef died in 1870, and his wife died suddenly of a heart attack in 1878. Her death devastated him, and the suddenly helpless composer unwisely married the much-younger actress Angelika Dittrich, six weeks later. The marriage lasted only four years, though it may have saved the composer from personal disaster in the months following his wife’s death.

Strauss, Jr., a Roman Catholic, left the church and had to give up his Austrian citizenship to marry Adele Deutsch in 1887, owing to the Church’s unwillingness to recognize his divorce. His new wife, with whom he had lived for a long period before their marriage, seemed to inspire him much like his first wife. In his last years, Johann Strauss remained quite productive and active. He was working on a ballet, Cinderella, when he developed a respiratory ailment which grew into pneumonia. He died on June 3, 1899.

Wine, Women and Song, Op.333
Performed by the Budapest Strauss Ensemble
Istvan Bogar, Conductor

Today’s Birthday: Simon Wiesenthal (1908)

Today’s Birthday

Simon Wiesenthal (1908) One of just a few hundred Galician Jews to have survived the Nazi death machine that was Hitler‘s Final Solution, Wiesenthal devoted his remaining years to tracking down fugitive Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice. “Many times I was thinking,” he told his biographer, “that everything in life has a price, so to stay alive must also have a price. And my price was always that, if I lived, I must be deputy for many people who are not alive.” How many of

today’s birthday: Leni Riefenstahl (1902)

Leni Riefenstahl (1902)

Riefenstahl was a German filmmaker whose most famous works are documentary propaganda films for the German Nazi Party. Her Triumph of the Will, a documentary of a huge Nazi rally glorifying Hitler, is widely regarded as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever produced. After the war, Riefenstahl was classified as a Nazi sympathizer and blacklisted. Later, she became interested in underwater photography and the Nuba tribe in the Sudan. What did she do on her 100th birthday? More… Discuss

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today’s birthday: Adam von Trott zu Solz (1909)

Adam von Trott zu Solz (1909)

Von Trott was a German lawyer and diplomat who opposed the Nazi regime and used his position to travel to the UK and US seeking support for the resistance. In order to better monitor Nazi activities and party information, von Trott joined the Nazi party. At the same time, he served as a foreign policy advisor to the Kreisau Circle, a clandestine group of intellectuals that worked to disrupt the Nazi regime. Von Trott was hanged in 1944 after being arrested for attempting to do what? More… Discuss

quotation: Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man. Friedrich Nietzsche

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Discuss

this day in the yesteryear: Adolf Hitler Publishes First Volume of Mein Kampf (1925)

Adolf Hitler Publishes First Volume of Mein Kampf (1925)

Hitler dictated his manifesto, whose title means “my struggle,” while serving a prison term for treason. The book, filled with anti-Semitic outpourings, political ideology, and strategy for world domination, became the bible of National Socialism. By the end of WWII, about 10 million copies of the book had been sold or distributed in Germany—owing much to the fact that every newlywed couple and every soldier at the battlefront received a free copy. Where is it illegal to sell copies of the book? More… Discuss

today’s birthday: Anne Frank (1929)

Anne Frank (1929)

Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who, with her parents and sister, hid from the Nazis in a secret annex above her father’s Amsterdam office building for two years. Betrayed to the Germans in 1944, the Franks were deported to concentration camps, where all but father Otto perished. The diary Anne kept during their time in the annex, a work characterized by poignancy, humor, and tart observation, was later published and is now an international bestseller. Why did Otto edit out some parts of the diary? More… Discuss

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TODAY’S BIRTHDAY: JOSEF MENGELE (1911)

Josef Mengele (1911)

Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” was an SS officer and doctor in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. He supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who would be killed immediately and who would be a forced laborer. He also selected inmates to be test subjects in horrific experiments, during which they were frequently subjected to sterilization surgeries, limb amputations, injections into the eyes, and other brutal procedures. What became of Mengele after the war? More… Discuss

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TODAY’S BIRTHDAY: ZARAH LEANDER (1907)

Zarah Leander (1907)

Leander was a Swedish actress and singer. As a contracted performer with Germany‘s principal film studio, Leander made a number of successful films that contributed to the Third Reich‘s propaganda. Though Leander did not take part in official Nazi party functions, her association with Nazism caused her to be shunned in Sweden after the war. She resumed acting but never regained the popularity she had enjoyed before. Why did Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels dub her an “Enemy of Germany”? More… Discuss

 

THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT: OBEDIENCE VS. CONSCIENCE

While top Nazi official Adolf Eichmann stood trial for his crimes against humanity during the Holocaust, psychologist Stanley Milgram sought to understand the Nazis‘ behavior. He launched an experiment in 1961 that investigated a person’s willingness to follow orders that conflict with his or her conscience. His method, in which subjects were ordered to administer “electric shocks” of varying intensity to people in another room, were later deemed unethical. What were Milgram’s findings? More… Discuss

 

THIS DAY IN THE YESTERYEAR: ANSCHLUSS: GERMAN TROOPS OCCUPY AUSTRIA (1938)

Anschluss: German Troops Occupy Austria (1938)

Though the union of Austria and Germany was forbidden by the Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919, the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. The German term Anschluss—”annexation“—is most frequently used in reference to this event. When the Nazis entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss, they encountered no military opposition and quickly took control. The US, USSR, and UK signed a declaration proclaiming the Anschluss null and void in 1943, yet Austria did not regain its sovereignty until what year? More…Discuss

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ARTICLE: THE SWASTIKA

The Swastika

Though in the minds of many Westerners the swastika is inextricably linked with Nazis and genocide, it has long been a symbol of prosperity and good fortune. In India, it remains the most common auspicious symbol of Hindus and Jains, as well as Buddhists, for whom it symbolizes the Buddha‘s feet. In China and Japan, where it traveled with the spread of Buddhism, it has been used to denote plurality, prosperity, and long life. Why did the Nazi Party adopt the ancient symbol as its emblem? More… Discuss

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NEWS: THE NAZIS AND INSECT WARFARE

The Nazis and Insect Warfare

Biological warfare was prohibited by the 1925 Geneva Protocol, but this did not stop Nazi scientists from looking for ways to weaponize diseases. A review of World War II-era archives from the Entomological Institute at Dachau reveals that biologists were studying mosquitoes and their ability to survive outside of their natural habitat. Doctors at the concentration camp also deliberately infected prisoners with malaria in order to study the disease. The conclusion drawn by a researcher investigating the topic is that the Nazis were exploring the feasibility of infecting mosquitoes with malaria and then releasing them over enemy targets. More… Discuss

 

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY: MIEP GIES (1909)

Miep Gies (1909)

Gies was one of five heroic Dutch citizens who helped hide Otto Frank, his wife and daughters, and four other Jews from the Nazis during the occupation of the Netherlands. After the hidden Jews were betrayed to the Gestapo in 1944, Gies took Otto’s daughter Anne‘s diary, and kept it—unread—in hopes of someday returning it to her. After the war, Gies gave the now-famous diary to the only surviving member of the family, Otto. Why did she later say that had she read it, she would have destroyed it? More… Discuss

 

THIS DAY IN THE YESTERYEAR: AUSCHWITZ IS LIBERATED (1945)

Auschwitz Is Liberated (1945)

During the implementation of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution, between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people, more than 90% of them Jews, were tortured, starved, and murdered at Auschwitz in southern Poland. The Third Reich’s largest death camp network, it consisted of three main camps and dozens of satellite camps. Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, a day that is now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. How had the Nazis tried to cover up their crimes there? More… Discuss

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News: TROVE OF NAZI-LOOTED ART FOUND IN MUNCH MAN’S APARTMENT

Trove of Nazi-Looted Art Found in Munch Man’s Apartment

A cache of 1,500 works of art looted by the Nazis has been found in the apartment of a Munich, Germany, recluse being investigated for tax evasion. The man in question is the son of an art dealer who worked hand in hand with the Nazis during World War II. Valued at about one billion euros ($1.35 billion), this may well be one of the largest recoveries of Nazi-looted art, yet it represents only a small fraction of what was taken. Authorities discovered the trove in 2011, but news of the find is only emerging now. More… Discuss

 

Today’s Birthday: HANNAH ARENDT (1906)

Hannah Arendt (1906)

Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt fled Germany for France and then the US following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Her reputation as a scholar and writer was firmly established with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, which linked Nazism and Communism to 19th-century imperialism and anti-Semitism. Her next major publication, The Human Condition, likewise received wide acclaim. What controversial concept did she put forth in her Eichmann in Jerusalem? More… Discuss

 

This Day in the Yesteryear: THE GLEIWITZ INCIDENT (1939)

The Gleiwitz Incident (1939)

In 1939, Nazi forces staged an attack on a German radio station. They shot a well-known Polish sympathizer and planted his body at the scene, reporting the attack as the work of Polish saboteurs. The attack was part of a Nazi propaganda campaign called Operation Himmler, which involved a series of staged incidents intended to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany and provide a basis for the invasion of Poland. What did the Nazis broadcast from the radio station? More… Discuss

 

Today’s Birthday: Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross – Edith Stein (1891)

Edith Stein (1891)

Born into an observant Jewish family, Stein converted to Christianity in 1922. After studying philosophy, she became a nun in 1934. She moved from Germany to the Netherlands to avoid Nazi persecution, but in 1942 she was arrested because of her Jewish heritage. She was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and died in the gas chamber that year. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1998, and is also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. With what miracles is Stein credited? More… Discuss

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Maximilian Kolbe

Kolbe was a Polish priest who in 1941 was starved and killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz after volunteering to take the place of a condemned stranger. Ordained in 1918, he founded the City of Mary Immaculate religious center and was the director of Poland‘s chief Catholic publishing complex. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939 and again in 1941 on charges of aiding Jews and the Polish underground. He was canonized in 1982 and declared a martyr of charity. Who was the man whose life Kolbe saved? More… Discuss