Celebrity Suicide of a Pre-World War I Spy

Crisis ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Florian Arendt ◽  
Manina Mestas
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
News Story ◽  
World War ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Werther Effect ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Celebrity Suicide ◽  
The City ◽  
Civil Death

Abstract. Background: Alfred Redl, a colonel in the Imperial and Royal General Staff and Deputy Director of Military Intelligence for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a leading figure of pre-World War I spying. The "spy of the century," as he has been called, died by suicide in Vienna on May 25, 1913. It was a big news story based on espionage, sex, and betrayal. Aim: We aimed to test whether this celebrity suicide elicited an increase in suicides – a phenomenon consistent with the "Werther effect." Method: Given daily suicide numbers were not available, we conducted archival research. Civil death registers for the city of Vienna were used to identify suicides before and after Redl's suicide. Results: The analysis indicated that more people died by suicide in the immediate aftermath and that the quantity of news reporting on Colonel Redl predicted the number of suicides per day – a pattern that is consistent with the Werther effect. Limitations: Causal interpretations are limited. Conclusion: Given the fact that the "Redl affair" is relevant for many scientific disciplines, we discuss multiple contributions to suicide research, history, media research, and research on intelligence and counter-intelligence.

The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Franko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
World War ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Critical Discourses

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.

International Opera in Nineteenth-century New York

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-269
Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War I ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
World War ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
The City

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”

Development of John Dewey’s educational philosophy and its implications for children’s education

2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032098767
Author(s):  
Yan–Hong Ye ◽  
Yi-Huang Shih
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Educational Philosophy ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
World War ◽  
Children's Education ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Children’S Education ◽  
Problem Solving Process ◽  
Continuous Use

This study explores the role of John Dewey’s educational philosophy before and after World War I. Before World War I, Dewey’s educational philosophy emphasized individualized and socialized development for learners, importance of children’s education, and encouragement of diverse and creative educational measures. Although these views did not change significantly after World War I, Dewey reflected on the connection between education and social life to allow teachers to fulfill their social responsibilities and to integrate various social issues into teaching regimes to inspire children and create a habit of exploring experience. This study concludes that a democratic education allows children to participate in the problem–solving process, that continuous use of real social issues enhances democratic literacy for children, and that the quality of children’s education depends on teachers’ commitment to social responsibility.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

Commentary: ‘Just the tip of the iceberg’: Queensland’s experience of the influenza pandemic of 1918–20

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-165
Author(s):  
Patrick Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Coastal Shipping ◽  
The City

AbstractThis article provides a synopsis of the spread of epidemic influenza throughout Queensland in 1919–20.1 Statewide the story was, to a greater or lesser extent, the same – regardless of occupation or whether one was from the city or the bush, on the coast or in the far west, no one was immune; even being 300 kilometres from the nearest epicentre of the outbreak was no guarantee of safety. An examination of the state’s newspapers, particularly the Brisbane Courier, makes it evident that outbreaks of influenza erupted almost simultaneously throughout the state. Aided and abetted by Queensland’s network of railways and coastal shipping, together with the crowding of people at country shows, race meetings and celebrations of the formal conclusion of World War I, the disease was swiftly diffused throughout the state. This article hopes to give the reader a sense of how the sheer scale and urgency of the crisis at times overwhelmed authorities and communities.

Чловек, што остал президентом європской республикы

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 207-240
Author(s):  
Павел Роберт Маґочій
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
World War ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Western Pennsylvania ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
European Republic

AbstractThe Fellow Who Made Himself President of a European Republic. Gregory Ignatius Zhatkovych The study is the first comprehensive biography of Gregory Ignatius Zhatkovych, a Pittsburgh-based lawyer, who in 1918-1919 was instrumental in the creation of Czechoslovakia and the inclusion of its far eastern region, Subcarpathian Rus’/ Ruthenia, into the new country. Until now, information about Gregory Zhatkovych has come primarily from the extensive body of historical literature describing how Subcarpathian Rus’ was incorporated into Czechoslovakia at the close of World War I. The facts related in this literature are more or less the same. Their assessment, however, differs rather substantially depending on the ideological orientation of the authors and / or the time when they were writing. In the above literature Gregory Zhatkovych figures prominently, although until most recently he has been described in very different terms. For some authors, he is hailed as a friend of the young democratic Czechoslovak state. For others, especially those of Marxist persuasion, he is denigrated as a representative of Rusyn-American “bourgeois nationalist organizations”, a “lackey” and “loyal son of American capitalism”, and “an agent of American imperialism”. Finally, there are those who consider Zhatkovych a Carpatho-Rusyn patriot who did his best – but ultimately failed – to as sure that the promises made by the Czechoslovak government for Subcarpathian self-rule would be fulfilled. Despite his historic importance, to date there is no biography of Gregory Zhatkovych other than a few brief encyclopedic entries. Aside from their brevity, these entries generally focus on the few years just after World War I, when he was politically active in Europe. But Zhatkovych had a life both before and after those years as a lawyer and political activist in the United States, in particular in western Pennsylvania. Based on recently uncovered correspondence between Zhatkovych and his wife and between the wife and her sister, as well as unpublished biographical data provided by his surviving family members, the recently published correspondence with President Masaryk, and several rare newspaper reports especially from western Pennsylvania, this is the first study to provide a comprehensive biography that spans Gregory Zhatkovych’s pre- and especially post-World War I career in the United States until his death in 1967.

‘If you strike a King you must kill him’: Sir Archibald Salvidge and the Revolt of Liverpool’s Conservative MPs, 1927-1928

2020 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Paul A. Nuttall
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
News Story ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
Local Party

In the spring of 1927, Liverpool’s Conservative MPs concluded that the local party was not equipped to counter the rise of Socialism in the city. They therefore demanded significant changes were made to the structure of the Liverpool Conservative Party. At the head of the local party was Sir Archibald Salvidge, a ruthless political operator who was determined not to give up the powers he had accrued over decades of service. What began as an internal row between Salvidge and seven rebel MPs became a national news story, and the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Conservative Party Chairman became entangled. In many ways, the row represented the moment when Liverpool’s pre-war rowdy Unionism clashed with Stanley Baldwin’s post-war consensual conservatism; and the outcome of the dispute determined the character of Liverpool’s politics until the outbreak of the Second World War.

World War I and the Roaring Twenties, 1915–1929

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-171
Author(s):  
Robert G. Spinney
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War I ◽  
German Population ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The World ◽  
Indirect Impact ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the effects and significant indirect impact of World War I on Chicago. It points out how America was only a combatant in the war for slightly longer than a year, which is a period of time insufficient for the nation to mobilize fully for the war. It also discusses how the World War unleashed anti-German sentiments that severely affected the Chicago's sizeable German population. The chapter analyzes how the war drove Chicago employers to hire large numbers of African American laborers, which triggered a historic migration of southern blacks to the city. It also specifies how the war convinced politicians for ethnic and national allegiances to remain strong among the city's numerous immigrants.

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