1.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
2.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
3.
Dahlem (Berlin)
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Dahlem is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin. Until Berlins 2001 administrative reform it was a part of the borough of Zehlendorf. Dahlem is one of the most affluent parts of the city, Dahlem is home to the renowned Freie Universität Berlin with its Philological Library by Norman Foster as an important local landmark. Several other research institutions, the Berlin Botanical Garden and many museums are located there, although Dahlem has a reputation of an idyllic and quiet area, it is very busy with students arriving by U-Bahn on weekdays. The western part of the locality includes parts of the Grunewald forest, the first written account of Dahlem dates to the year 1275. The history of the village is connected to the Dahlem Demesne first mentioned in 1450 and its estates were sold to the state of Prussia in 1841 and developed by dividing it into lots for building villas and mansions. The Demesne buildings today house a farm and an agricultural open-air museum. In 1920 the village was amalgamated into Greater Berlin, from 1931 on Martin Niemöller, a leader of the Confessing Church, was pastor of the United Protestant Sankt-Annen-Kirche until he was arrested by the Nazis in 1937. During the Cold War Dahlem belonged to the American Sector of West Berlin, from 1945 to 1991 the seat of the Allied Kommandatura of Berlin was in Dahlem on Kaiserswerther Straße. Today it serves as the office for the president of the local university, until 1994, the headquarters of the United States Army Berlin command and the Berlin Brigade were located on Clayallee street. Parts of the building are used by the Embassy of the United States in Berlin. The former library and Outpost theater across the street today house the Allied Museum, the newly founded university should uphold the traditional values of academic freedom and the educational ideal proposed by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Rudi Dutschke, spokesman of the German student movement in the 1960s, is buried at the cemetery of the Sankt-Annen-Kirche, stations in Dahlem include Breitenbachplatz, Podbielskiallee, Dahlem-Dorf, Thielplatz and Oskar-Helene-Heim. Berlin-Verlag, ISBN 3-87061-155-3 Media related to Dahlem at Wikimedia Commons
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
6.
Ethnological Museum of Berlin
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The Ethnological Museum of Berlin is one of the Berlin State Museums, the de facto national collection of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is presently located in the complex in Dahlem, along with the Museum of Asian Art. The museum holds more than 500,000 objects and is one of the largest and most important collections of works of art, as the museum’s collections expanded in the early twentieth century, the museum quickly outgrew its facility in the center of Berlin on Königgrätzer Straße. A new building was erected in Dahlem to house the museum’s store rooms, in the Second World War, the main building of the museum was heavily damaged. It was demolished in 1961, and the buildings in Dahlem were reconfigured to serve as the exhibition spaces. Following German reunification, although many of the Berlin museum collections were relocated, starting in 2000, concrete plans were developed to relocate the collections back to the center of the city. Beginning in January 2016, the Ethnological Museum began the process of dismantling its exhibitions in preparation for its move to the Humboldt Forum. Until January 2017, the museum remain open to the public, and its permanent exhibitions of works from Africa, Mesoamerican archaeology. Highlights include the collections of painted Maya vases and drinking cups, Benin bronzes, sculpture from Cameroon, the collections themselves encompass more than 500,000 from around the world. In addition, the museum more than 280,000 historical photographs, a substantial archive, more than 125,000 sound recordings. The collection is organized according to geography as well as methodological approaches, the main divisions are Africa, Oceania, East-and North-Asia, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia, American ethnology, American archaeology, and ethnomusicology. The museum also houses a reference library of more than 140,000 volumes relating to ethnology, non-European art. These collections are all housed in the complex in Dahlem. The museums first building in the center of Berlin on Königgrätzer Straße was already too small to accommodate the collections when it opened in 1886, by 1906, the first construction began on a second facility for the museum in Dahlem. The museum intended to use space in Dahlem to store and conduct research on the large collections, but to continue to exhibit portions of the collection in the building in the city center. Plans were developed for a complex in Dahlem, consisting of four large buildings, one for each of the non-European geographical regions of the globe, Asia, Africa, Oceania. Construction began in 1914, the architect Bruno Paul was commissioned to build the structure to house the Asian collections, the work was stopped, however, because of the First World War and was only completed in 1921. However, the museum lacked the resources to erect the other three planned buildings, the museum continued to function with two separate facilities housing its collections until the Second World War
7.
Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
8.
Berlin State Museums
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The Berlin State Museums are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters, several research institutes, libraries, and supporting facilities. They are overseen by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and funded by the German federal government in collaboration with Germanys federal states, the central complex on Museum Island was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1999. By 2007 the Berlin State Museums had grown into the largest complex of museums in Europe, director-general of the Berlin State Museums is Michael Eissenhauer. Museum Island Altes Museum, Roman and Greek Classical Antiquities Alte Nationalgalerie, 19th century sculptures and paintings
9.
Museum of Asian Art
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The Museum of Asian Art is located in the Dahlem neighborhood of the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin, Germany. It is one of the Berlin State Museums institutions and is funded by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and it houses some 20,000 Asian artifacts, making it one of the largest museums of ancient Asian art in the world. The museum is located in the building as the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. The museum houses important collections of Art houses of South, Southeast and Central Asian countries and art from the Indo-Asian cultural area, the collection originally belonged to the Ethnological Museum of Berlin founded in 1873. From 1904 it was known as the Indian Department, on November 8,1906, by government decree, Wilhelm von Bode, director-general of the Royal Museums of Berlin, founded the collection of the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin. Germanys oldest museum of its kind, it was first located on Museum Island, as a result of the four German Turfan expeditions, from 1902 to 1914, the collection was expanded to include Central Asia. In 1924, the exhibition was moved into the building belonging to the Arts and Crafts Museum, the Society for East Asian Art founded in 1926 has provided substantial support for the museums work. Thanks to their consistent expansion until the Second World War, the collections were among the most important in the world. During the Second World War, there were losses, partly due to damage to the museum building. After the war, the Red Army took about 90 percent of the collections to the Soviet Union as war booty. There they were taken to the Hermitage in St Petersburg where they have remained until today, only a few pieces were returned to Berlin. The almost complete loss necessitated recreating the collection but this could only be achieved gradually, from 1952, it was the Pergamon Museum that exhibited East Asian Art. At the instigation of the first director, Herbert Härtel, the collections were presented as part of an independent Indian Art Department, after the Berlin Wall went up, it was decided in 1970 to build new exhibition premises in West Berlin in the Zehlendorf district. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, efforts were made to reorganize Berlins museum scene, in 1992, the two separate collections were brought together in Dahlem. The Association of Friends of the Department, the Society of Indo-Asian Art Berlin eV, was founded in 1993 and it publishes the annual Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift. The artifacts date from the third millennium BC to the present day, sculptures of stone, bronze and wood, as well as ritual objects from Nepal, Tibet, Burma, and southeast Asia complete coverage of the Indo-Asian region. Special sections include the Gandhara Art Collection and a replica of a Central Asian Buddhist cave with a section of the original. The Gandhara art displays include artifacts from the Swat Valley, the museum, with an outstanding collection of some 20,000 artifacts, has example of stone sculptures, reliefs, bronze and terracotta works representative of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism
10.
Sepik
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The Sepik River is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and after the Fly and the Mamberamo the third largest by volume. The majority of the flows through the Papua New Guinea provinces of Sandaun and East Sepik. The Sepik has a catchment area, and landforms that include swamplands, tropical rainforests. Biologically, the system is possibly the largest uncontaminated freshwater wetland system in the Asia-Pacific region. The Sepik was named Kaiserin Augusta River by the German colonial explorer Otto Finsch, the river originates in the Victor Emanuel Range in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea. From its mountain headwaters near Telefomin, it travels north-west and leaves the mountains abruptly near Yapsei, from here it flows into Indonesian Papua, before turning back north-east for the majority of its journey following the Great Depression. Along its course it receives numerous tributaries from the Bewani and Torricelli Mountains to the north, for most of the Sepiks length the river winds in serpentine fashion, like the Amazon River, to the Bismarck Sea off northern Papua New Guinea. Unlike many other rivers, the Sepik has no delta whatsoever. It is also navigable for most of its length, the rivers total length is 1,126 kilometres and has a drainage basin of over 80,000 km². There is a 5-10 kilometres wide belt of active meanders formed by the river along most of its course that has created a floodplain up to 70 kilometres wide with extensive backwater swamps. There are around 1,500 Oxbow and other lakes in the floodplain, the Sepik basin is largely an undisturbed environment, as there are no major urban settlements or mining and forestry activities in the river catchment. Local villagers have lived along the river for many millennia and the river has formed the basis for food, transport, european contact with the river started in 1885 when the Germans as part of establishing German New Guinea explored the area. The river was named by Dr Otto Finsch, Kaiserin Augusta, upon finding the river, Finsch navigated about 50 kilometres upstream from its mouth. In 1886 and 1887, further expeditions by steam boat were conducted by the Germans, between 1912 and 1913 the Germans sent further expeditions to explore the river and surrounding areas. They collected flora and fauna, studied local tribes and produced the first maps, the station town of Angoram was established as a base on the lower Sepik for explorations, but with the beginning of World War I, the explorations ceased. After the first World War the Australian government took trusteeship of the German colony, creating the Territory of New Guinea, during this period the Australians established a station on the middle Sepik at Ambunti to conduct further explorations. In 1935 Sir Walter McNicolls the new administrator of the Territory of New Guinea travelled up length of the Sepik to have a look at the river people, in 2010 Clark Carter and Andrew Johnson travelled the length of the Sepik River from source to sea. They hiked to the source from Telefomin and kayaked down the upper reaches in an inflatable kayak, the Japanese held the area throughout most of the Second World War
11.
Hawaii
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Hawaii is the 50th and most recent state to have joined the United States of America, having received statehood on August 21,1959. Hawaii is the only U. S. state located in Oceania and it is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean. Hawaii is the only U. S. state not located in the Americas, the state encompasses nearly the entire volcanic Hawaiian archipelago, which comprises hundreds of islands spread over 1,500 miles. At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight main islands are—in order from northwest to southeast, Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and the Island of Hawaiʻi. The last is the largest island in the group, it is called the Big Island or Hawaiʻi Island to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The archipelago is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania, Hawaii has over a million permanent residents, along with many visitors and U. S. military personnel. Its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaii is the 8th-smallest and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated of the fifty U. S. states. It is the state with an Asian plurality. The states coastline is about 750 miles long, the fourth longest in the U. S. after the coastlines of Alaska, Florida, the state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that was named for Hawaiʻiloa and he is said to have discovered the islands when they were first settled. The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is very similar to Proto-Polynesian *Sawaiki, cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori, Rarotongan and Samoan. According to linguists Pukui and Elbert, lsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the home, but in Hawaii. A somewhat divisive political issue arose in 1978 when the Constitution of the State of Hawaii added Hawaiian as an official state language. The title of the constitution is The Constitution of the State of Hawaii. Article XV, Section 1 of the Constitution uses The State of Hawaii, diacritics were not used because the document, drafted in 1949, predates the use of the okina and the kahakō in modern Hawaiian orthography. The exact spelling of the name in the Hawaiian language is Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaii Admission Act that granted Hawaiian statehood, the government recognized Hawaii as the official state name. Official government publications, department and office titles, and the Seal of Hawaii use the spelling with no symbols for glottal stops or vowel length
12.
Benin Empire
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The Benin Empire was a pre-colonial empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. Its capital was Edo, now known as Benin City, Edo and it should not be confused with the modern-day country called Benin, formerly called Dahomey. The original people and founders of the Benin Empire, the Edo people, were ruled by the Ogiso dynasty who called their land Igodomigodo. The rulers or kings were known as Ogiso. Igodo, the first Ogiso, wielded much influence and gained popularity as a good ruler and he died after a long reign and was succeeded by Ere, his eldest son. In the 12th century, a palace intrigue and battle for power erupted between the warrior crown prince Ekaladerhan son of the last Ogiso and his young paternal uncle. In anger over an oracle, Prince Ekaladerhan left the court with his warriors. When his old father the Ogiso died, the Ogiso dynasty was ended as the people, the exiled Prince Ekaladerhan later became Izoduwa or Oduduwa the first Oni in uhe. Oranmiyan, grand son of Oduduwa took up his abode in the built for him at Usama by the elders. Soon after his arrival he married a lady, Erinmwinde, daughter of Osa-nego, was the ninth Enogie of Ego. He caused his son born to him by Erinmwinde to be made King in his place, therefore, Oranmiyan of Ife, the father of Eweka I, the Oba of Benin, was also the father of Ajaka, the first Alafin of Oyo. Oni of Ife and Alafe of Oyo, by the 15th century, Edo as a system of protected settlements expanded into a thriving city-state. In the 15th century, the twelfth Oba in line, Oba Ewuare the Great would expand the city-state to an empire, the Portuguese would write this down as Benin City. Though, farther Edo clans, such as the Itsekiris and the Urhobos still referred to the city as Ubini up till the late 19th century, as evidence implies. The first name of the Benin Empire, since its creation some time in the first millennium CE, was Igodomigodo, nowadays, nearly 36 known Ogiso are accounted for as rulers of this first form of the state. Prince Ekaladerhan was a warrior and well loved. On leaving Benin he travelled west to the land of the Yoruba where he became a king. Most Yoruba cultures and festival ethnics are now practiced by Edo such as Ishango, Ogun, oduduwas reply was that a ruler cannot leave his domain but he had seven sons and would ask one of them to go back to become the next king there
13.
Cameroon
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Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Cameroons coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. French and English are the languages of Cameroon. The country is referred to as Africa in miniature for its geological and cultural diversity. Natural features include beaches, deserts, mountains, rainforests, the country is well known for its native styles of music, particularly makossa and bikutsi, and for its successful national football team. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad, portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in the north in the 19th century, Cameroon became a German colony in 1884 known as Kamerun. After World War I, the territory was divided between France and the United Kingdom as League of Nations mandates, the Union des Populations du Cameroun political party advocated independence, but was outlawed by France in the 1950s, leading to the Cameroonian Independence War. It waged war on French and UPC militant forces until 1971, in 1960, the French-administered part of Cameroon became independent as the Republic of Cameroun under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. The southern part of British Cameroons federated with it in 1961 to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, the federation was abandoned in 1972. The country was renamed the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972, Cameroon enjoys relatively high political and social stability. This has permitted the development of agriculture, roads, railways, nevertheless, large numbers of Cameroonians live in poverty as subsistence farmers. Power lies firmly in the hands of the president since 1982, Paul Biya. The English-speaking territories of Cameroon have grown increasingly alienated from the government, politicians and civil society in English-speaking regions have called for greater decentralization and even complete separation or independence from the former French-governed territories. The territory of present-day Cameroon was first settled during the Neolithic Era, the longest continuous inhabitants are groups such as the Baka. From here, Bantu migrations into eastern, southern, and central Africa are believed to have originated about 2,000 years ago, the Sao culture arose around Lake Chad c. AD500 and gave way to the Kanem and its successor state, kingdoms, fondoms, and chiefdoms arose in the west. Portuguese sailors reached the coast in 1472 and they noted an abundance of the ghost shrimp Lepidophthalmus turneranus in the Wouri River and named it Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English
14.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as DR Congo, DRC, DROC, East Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo is a country located in Central Africa. From 1971 to 1997 it was named, and is still called, Zaire. It is the second-largest country in Africa by area and eleventh largest in the world, the Congolese Civil Wars, which began in 1996, brought about the end of Mobutu Sese Sekos 32-year reign and devastated the country. These wars ultimately involved nine African nations, multiple groups of UN peacekeepers and twenty armed groups, besides the capital, Kinshasa, the other major cities, Lubumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi, are both mining communities. DR Congos largest export is raw minerals, with China accepting over 50% of DRCs exports in 2012, as of 2015, according to the Human Development Index, DR Congo has a low level of human development, ranking 176 out of 187 countries. The country was known officially as the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 27 October 1971, in 1992, the Sovereign National Conference voted to change the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the change was not put into practice. The countrys name was restored by former president Laurent-Désiré Kabila following the fall of longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, some historians think that Bantu peoples began settling in the extreme northwest of Central Africa at the beginning of the 5th century and then gradually started to expand southward. Their propagation was accelerated by the transition from Stone Age to Iron Age techniques, the people living in the south and southwest were mostly San Bushmen and hunter-gatherer groups, whose technology involved only minimal use of metal technologies. The development of tools during this time period revolutionized agriculture. This led to the displacement of the groups in the east and southeast. The 10th century marked the expansion of the Bantu in West-Central Africa. Rising populations soon made intricate local, regional and foreign commercial networks that traded mostly in salt, iron. Belgian exploration and administration took place from the 1870s until the 1920s and it was first led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who undertook his explorations under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. The eastern regions of the precolonial Congo were heavily disrupted by constant slave raiding, mainly from Arab–Swahili slave traders such as the infamous Tippu Tip, Leopold had designs on what was to become the Congo as a colony. Leopold formally acquired rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and he named it the Congo Free State. Leopolds rėgime began various infrastructure projects, such as construction of the railway ran from the coast to the capital of Leopoldville. Nearly all such projects were aimed at making it easier to increase the assets which Leopold. In the Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of automobiles, rubber sales made a fortune for Leopold, who built several buildings in Brussels and Ostend to honor himself and his country
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Tanzania
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Tanzania /ˌtænzəˈniːə/, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in Eastern Africa within the African Great Lakes region. Parts of the country are in Southern Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, Africas highest mountain, is in northeastern Tanzania. Tanzanias population of 51.82 million is diverse, composed of ethnic, linguistic. Dar es Salaam, the capital, retains most government offices and is the countrys largest city, principal port. Tanzania is a one party dominant state with the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party in power, from its formation until 1992, it was the only legally permitted party in the country. Elections for president and all National Assembly seats were last held in October 2015, the CCM holds approximately 75% of the seats in the assembly. Prehistoric population migrations include Southern Cushitic speakers, who are ancestral to the Iraqw, Gorowa, and Burunge and who moved south from Ethiopia into Tanzania. Based on linguistic evidence, there may also have two movements into Tanzania of Eastern Cushitic people at about 4,000 and 2,000 years ago. These movements took place at about the time as the settlement of the iron-making Mashariki Bantu from West Africa in the Lake Victoria. They brought with them the west African planting tradition and the staple of yams. They subsequently migrated out of these regions across the rest of Tanzania, European colonialism began in mainland Tanzania during the late 19th century when Germany formed German East Africa, which gave way to British rule following World War I. The mainland was governed as Tanganyika, with the Zanzibar Archipelago remaining a separate colonial jurisdiction, following their respective independence in 1961 and 1963, the two entities merged in April 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. Tanzania is mountainous and densely forested in the northeast, where Mount Kilimanjaro is located, three of Africas Great Lakes are partly within Tanzania. To the north and west lie Lake Victoria, Africas largest lake, and Lake Tanganyika, the eastern shore is hot and humid, with the Zanzibar Archipelago just offshore. The Menai Bay Conservation Area is Zanzibars largest marine protected area, over 100 different languages are spoken in Tanzania, making it the most linguistically diverse country in East Africa. Among the languages spoken in Tanzania are all four of Africas language families, Bantu, Cushitic, Nilotic, Swahili and English are Tanzanias official languages. In connection with his Ujamaa social policies, President Nyerere encouraged the use of Swahili, approximately 10% of Tanzanians speak Swahili as a first language, and up to 90% speak it as a second language. Most Tanzanians thus speak both Swahili and a language, many educated Tanzanians are trilingual, also speaking English
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China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
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Mesoamerica
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It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas along with Norte Chico in present-day northern coastal Peru. As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures, while Mesoamerican civilization did know of the wheel and basic metallurgy, neither of these technologies became culturally important. Among the earliest complex civilizations was the Olmec culture, which inhabited the Gulf coast of Mexico and extended inland, frequent contact and cultural interchange between the early Olmec and other cultures in Chiapas, Guatemala and Oaxaca laid the basis for the Mesoamerican cultural area. All this was facilitated by considerable regional communications in ancient Mesoamerica and this Formative period saw the spread of distinct religious and symbolic traditions, as well as artistic and architectural complexes. In the subsequent Preclassic period, complex urban polities began to develop among the Maya, with the rise of such as El Mirador, Calakmul and Tikal. Mesoamerica is one of three regions of the world where writing is known to have independently developed. Upon the collapse of Teotihuacán around AD600, competition between several important political centers in central Mexico, such as Xochicalco and Cholula, ensued. During the early period, Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec. Towards the end of the period, the Aztecs of Central Mexico built a tributary empire covering most of central Mesoamerica. The distinct Mesoamerican cultural tradition ended with the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, over the next centuries, Mesoamerican indigenous cultures were gradually subjected to Spanish colonial rule. The exact geographic extent of Mesoamerica has varied through time, as the civilization extended North and South from its heartland in southern Mexico, Mesoamerica is recognized as a near-prototypical cultural area, and the term is now fully integrated in the standard terminology of pre-Columbian anthropological studies. Conversely, the sister terms Aridoamerica and Oasisamerica, which refer to northern Mexico, 10° and 22° northern latitude, Mesoamerica possesses a complex combination of ecological systems, topographic zones, and environmental contexts. A main distinction groups these different niches into two categories, the lowlands and the altiplanos, or highlands. In the low-lying regions, sub-tropical and tropical climates are most common, as is true for most of the coastline along the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The highlands show much more diversity, ranging from dry tropical to cold mountainous climates. The rainfall varies from the dry Oaxaca and north Yucatan to the humid southern Pacific, several distinct sub-regions within Mesoamerica are defined by a convergence of geographic and cultural attributes. These sub-regions are more conceptual than culturally meaningful, and the demarcation of their limits is not rigid, the Maya area, for example, can be divided into two general groups, the lowlands and highlands. The lowlands are further divided into the southern and northern Maya lowlands, the southern Maya lowlands are generally regarded as encompassing northern Guatemala, southern Campeche and Quintana Roo in Mexico, and Belize
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Ethnomusicology
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Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. Stated broadly, ethnomusicology may be described as an investigation of music in its cultural contexts. When the field first came into existence, it was limited to the study of non-Western music—in contrast to the study of Western art music. Over time, the definition broadened to study of all the musics of the world according to certain approaches. While there is not a single, authoritative definition for ethnomusicology, Musical fieldworkers often also collect recordings and contextual information about the music of interest. Thus, ethnomusicological studies do not rely on printed or manuscript sources as the source of epistemic authority. Oskar Kolberg is regarded as one of the earliest European ethnomusicologists as he first began collecting Polish folk songs in 1839, comparative musicology, the primary precursor to ethnomusicology, emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The International Musical Society in Berlin in 1899 acted as one of the first centers for ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music and the Society for Ethnomusicology are the primary international academic organizations for advancing the discipline of ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicologists have offered varying definitions of the field, more specifically, scholars debate what constitutes ethnomusicology. Bruno Nettl distinguishes between discipline and field, believing ethnomusicology is the latter, there are multiple approaches to and challenges of the field. Some approaches reference musical areas like musical synthesis in Ghana while others emphasize a study of culture through the avenue of music, the multifaceted and dynamic approaches to ethnomusicology allude to how the field has evolved. The primary element that distinguishes ethnomusicology from musicology is the expectation that ethnomusicologists engage in sustained, there are many individuals and groups who can be connected to ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology has evolved both in terminology and ideology since its inception in the late 19th century. While studying in Berlin at Frederick William University and attending the International Music Society, in his notes, he emphasized cultural and religious elements as well as social aspects of music and poetry. Inspired by these thoughts, many Western European nations began to transcribe and categorize music based on ethnicity, inspired by these thoughts, many Western European nations began to put many ethnic and cultural pieces of music onto paper and separate them. In 1956 the hyphen was removed with ideological intent to signify the discipline’s validity and these changes to the field’s name paralleled its internal shifts in ideological and intellectual emphasis. Kolinski also urged the field to move beyond ethnocentrism even as the term grew in popularity as a replacement for what was once described by comparative musicology. In the 1970s, ethnomusicology was becoming well known outside of the small circle of scholars who had founded and fostered the early development of the field
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Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv
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The archives first director was Erich von Hornbostel, serving from 1905 to 1933. The last cylinder field recording in the collection was made in 1953, in 1944 during the wartime invasion of Germany, around 90% of the collection was taken into Russia. In 1991, following the reunification of East and West Germany, the historical collections include approximately 30,000 cylinders on which more than 16,000 distinct recordings are stored. In 1999, the recordings of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Initially, the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv belonged to the Institute for Psychology of the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Later, in the 1920s, it was relocated to part of the Berlin Conservatory. After the Second World War the collections of the Phonogramm-Archiv were divided, most of its recordings were in East Germany, while the bulk of the corresponding documentation remained in the West. Both sides viewed the collection to be mainly lost, in West Berlin, Kurt Reinhard rebuilt an archive at the Ethnological Museum. New recordings were made, mostly on tape, due to this, and the fact that by this time the archive had also assembled an important collection of musical instruments, in the 1960s the collection was renamed the Department for Ethnomusicology. Today, the Ethnomusicological Museum forms part of the Musikethnologie department of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin of the Berlin State Museums, deutsches Musikarchiv Koch, Lars-Christian, Wiedmann, Albrecht, Ziegler, Susanne. The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, A treasury of sound recordings, acoustical science and technology 25, 227–231, ISSN 1346-3969 Simon, Arthur, ed. Das Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv 1900–2000. Sammlungen der traditionellen Musik der Welt, internationale Wochenschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 2, 225-246 Ziegler, Susanne. Musikethnologie, Medien-Technik und Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv Bd XII
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Cabinet of curiosities
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Cabinets of curiosities were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history, geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art, the Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patrons control of the world through its indoor, the term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. The classic cabinet of curiosities emerged in the century, although more rudimentary collections had existed earlier. The earliest pictorial record of a natural history cabinet is the engraving in Ferrante Imperatos DellHistoria Naturale, some of the volumes doubtless represent his herbarium. Every surface of the ceiling is occupied with preserved fishes, stuffed mammals and curious shells. Examples of corals stand on the bookcases, above them, stuffed birds stand against panels inlaid with square polished stone samples, doubtless marbles and jaspers or fitted with pigeonhole compartments for specimens. Below them, a range of cupboards contain specimen boxes and covered jars, two of the most famously described seventeenth-century cabinets were those of Ole Worm, known as Olaus Wormius, and Athanasius Kircher. Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction, including apparently mythical creatures, Worms collection contained, for example, what he thought was a Scythian Lamb, a woolly fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. However he was responsible for identifying the narwhals tusk as coming from a whale rather than a unicorn. The specimens displayed were often collected during exploring expeditions and trading voyages, Cabinets of curiosities would often serve scientific advancement when images of their contents were published. The catalog of Worms collection, published as the Museum Wormianum, used the collection of artifacts as a point for Worms speculations on philosophy, science, natural history. Cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create, many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. A rather under-used example, stronger in art than other areas, was the Studiolo of Francesco I, frederick III of Denmark, who added Worms collection to his own after Worms death, was another such monarch. A third example is the Kunstkamera founded by Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg in 1714, many items were bought in Amsterdam from Albertus Seba and Frederik Ruysch. The fabulous Habsburg Imperial collection included important Aztec artifacts, including the feather head-dress or crown of Montezuma now in the Museum of Ethnology, similar collections on a smaller scale were the complex Kunstschränke produced in the early seventeenth century by the Augsburg merchant, diplomat and collector Philipp Hainhofer. The best preserved example is the one given by the city of Augsburg to King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632, the curio cabinet, as a modern single piece of furniture, is a version of the grander historical examples. In 1714, Michael Bernhard Valentini published an early work, Museum Museorum
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West Berlin
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West Berlin was an enclave which comprised the western part of the city of Berlin during the Cold War. It was formally controlled by the Western Allies and formed a de facto part of West Germany, and was entirely surrounded by the Soviet-controlled East Berlin and East Germany. West Berlin had great significance during the Cold War, as it was widely considered by westerners as an island of freedom. A wealthy city, West Berlin was noted for its liberal and cosmopolitan character. With about two million inhabitants, West Berlin had the biggest population of any city in Cold War Germany and it was 100 miles east of the Inner German border and only accessible by land from West Germany by narrow rail and highway corridors. It consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors established in 1945 and was de facto part of West Germany and it had a special and unique legal status because its administration was formally conducted by the Western Allies. East Berlin, de jure occupied and administered by the Soviet Union, was the de facto capital of East Germany, the Berlin Wall, built in 1961, physically divided West Berlin from its East German surroundings until it fell in 1989. The Potsdam Agreement established the framework for the occupation of Germany in the wake of World War II. The territory of Germany, as it existed in 1937, would be reduced by most of Eastern Germany thus creating the former territories of Germany. The remaining territory would be divided into four zones, each administered by one of the allied countries, according to the agreement, the occupation of Berlin would end only as a result of a quadripartite agreement. The Western Allies were guaranteed three air corridors to their sectors of Berlin, and the Soviets also informally allowed road, at first, this arrangement was intended to be only a temporary administrative structure, with all parties declaring that Germany and Berlin would soon be reunited. However, as the relations between the allies and the Soviet Union soured and the Cold War began, the joint administration of Germany. Soon, Soviet-occupied Berlin and western-occupied Berlin had separate city administrations, in 1948, the Soviets tried to force the Western Allies out of Berlin by imposing a land blockade on the western sectors—the Berlin Blockade. The West responded by using its air corridors for supplying their part of the city with food, in May 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade, and West Berlin as a separate city with its own jurisdiction was maintained. Following the Berlin Blockade, normal contacts between East and West Berlin resumed, however, in cases this proved only temporary. In 1952, the East German government began sealing its borders, as a direct result the electrical grids were separated and phone lines were cut. However, the culmination of the schism did not occur until 1961 with the construction of the Berlin Wall. From the legal theory followed by the Western Allies, the occupation of most of Germany ended in 1949 with the declaration of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic
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Berlin Palace
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The Berlin City Palace was a royal and imperial palace in the centre of Berlin, the historical capital of Prussia, and subsequently Germany. It was located on the Museum Island at Schlossplatz, opposite the Lustgarten park and it was the winter residence of the Kings of Prussia and the German Emperors. In 2013 work started on reconstruction and a part of the exterior of the palace has been rebuilt, the completion is expected in 2019. The palace was built in the 15th century and changed throughout the next few centuries. It served as a residence to various Electors of Brandenburg and it was the principal residence and winter residence of the Hohenzollern Kings of Prussia from 1701 to 1918. After the unification of Germany in 1871, it was also the residence for the German Emperors. It became a museum following the fall of the German Empire in 1918, the palace was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in World War II. Although it could have repaired, the palace was demolished in 1950 by the German Democratic Republic authorities. Following the reunification of Germany, it was decided to rebuild the exterior of the palace in the original style except for one side. The new building will have the cubature of the former palace, the interior will be modern, but the facades of one of the courts will be in the original style. However, the floorplan has been designed to allow potential future reconstruction of notable historical rooms, the building will house the Humboldtforum museum and congress complex, and is scheduled to be finished 14 September 2019. The palace replaced an earlier fort or castle guarding the crossing of the Spree river at Cölln, the castle stood on Fishers Island, as the southern end of the Museum Island in the Spree is known. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth, Margrave and Prince Elector of Brandenburg, at the completion of the castle in 1451, Frederick moved there from the town of Brandenburg. The castle also included a chapel, in 1454 Frederick II, after having returned via Rome from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, made the castle chapel a parish church, richly endowing it with relics and altars. Pope Nicholas V ordered Stephan Bodecker, then Prince-Bishop of Brandenburg and this collegiate church became the nucleus of todays Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, adjoining the site of the castle. In 1538, the Margrave Joachim II demolished the palace and engaged the master builder Caspar Theiss to build a new, after the Thirty Years War, Frederick William, the Great Elector, embellished the palace further. In 1688, Nicodemus Tessin designed courtyard arcades with columns in front. Not much is known about the alterations of 1690–1695, when Johann Nering was the court architect, martin Grünberg continued the alterations in 1695–1699
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Museum Island
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Museum Island is the name of the northern half of an island in the Spree river in the central Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, the site of the old city of Cölln. The Neues Museum finished in 1859 according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler, destroyed in World War II, it was rebuilt under the direction of David Chipperfield for the Egyptian Museum of Berlin and re-opened in 2009. It exhibits the sculpture collections and late Antique and Byzantine art, the Pergamon Museum, the final museum of the complex, constructed in 1930. It contains multiple reconstructed immense and historically significant buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, in 1999, the museum complex was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. A first exhibition hall was erected in 1797 at the suggestion of the archaeologist Aloys Hirt, in 1822, Schinkel designed the plans for the Altes Museum to house the royal Antikensammlung, the arrangement of the collection was overseen by Wilhelm von Humboldt. The island, originally an area, was dedicated to art. Further extended under succeeding Prussian kings, the collections of art. They are today maintained by the Berlin State Museums branch of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Museum Island further comprises the Lustgarten park and the Berlin Cathedral. Between the Bode and Pergamon Museums it is crossed by the Stadtbahn railway viaduct, the adjacent territory to the south is the site of the former Stadtschloss and the Palace of the Republic. These include the Priams Treasure, also called the gold of Troy, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in 1873, then smuggled out of Turkey to Berlin and today kept at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Then, six months later, Peter-Klaus Schuster took over and set in motion a far more ambitious program intended to turn Museum Island into a Louvre on the Spree. The federal government pledged $20 million a year through 2010 for projects to enhance Berlins prestige and Unesco declaring the island a World Heritage Site. The contents of the museums were decided on as follows, The Pergamon, with the Greek altar that gives it its name, the Neues Museum presented archaeological objects as well as Egyptian and Etruscan sculptures, including the renowned bust of Queen Nefertiti. The Altes Museum, the oldest on the island, displayed Greek and Roman art objects on its first floor, the Bode Museums paintings went from Late Byzantine to 1800. And, as now, the Alte Nationalgalerie will cover the 19th century, the James Simon Gallery, a $94 million visitors’ center designed by the British architect David Chipperfield, is being built beside the Neues Museum. It will in turn be linked to the Neues, Altes, Pergamon, once the Museum Island Master Plan is completed, the so-called Archaeological Promenade will connect four of the five museums in the Museum Island. The Promenade will begin at the Old Museum in the south, lead through the New Museum, before World War II, these museums were connected by bridge passages above ground, they were destroyed due to the effects of the war. There have never been plans to them, instead, the central courts of individual museums will be lowered
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Maya peoples
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The Maya people are a group of Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. They inhabit southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, the pre-Columbian Maya population was approximately eight million. There were a seven million Maya living in this area at the start of the 21st century. Guatemala, southern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, El Salvador, one of the largest groups of modern Maya can be found in Mexicos Yucatán State and the neighboring states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and in Belize. These peoples commonly identify themselves simply as Maya with no further ethnic subdivision and they speak the language which anthropologists term Yucatec Maya, but is identified by speakers and Yucatecos simply as Maya. Among Maya speakers, Spanish is commonly spoken as a second or first language, linguists refer to the Maya language as Yucatec or Yucatec Maya to distinguish it from other Mayan languages. This norm has often been misinterpreted to mean that the people are also called Yucatec Maya, that refers only to the language. Maya is one language in the Mayan language family, thus, to refer to Maya as Mayans would be similar to referring to Spanish people as Romantics because they speak a language belonging to the Romance language family. Confusion of the term Maya/Mayan as an ethnic label occurs because Maya women who use traditional dress identify by the ethnic term mestiza, the Yucatáns indigenous population was first exposed to Europeans after a party of Spanish shipwreck survivors came ashore in 1511. One of the sailors, Gonzalo Guerrero, is reported to have taken up with a woman and started a family. Later Spanish expeditions to the region were led by Córdoba in 1517, Grijalva in 1518, from 1528 to 1540, several attempts by Francisco Montejo to conquer the Yucatán failed. His son, Francisco de Montejo the Younger, fared almost as badly when he first took over, while holding out at Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza was conquered by 1570, in 1542, the western Yucatán Peninsula also surrendered to him. Historically, the population in the half of the peninsula was less affected by. In the 21st century in the Yucatán Peninsula, between 750,000 and 1,200,000 people speak Mayan, however, three times more than that are of Maya origins, hold ancient Maya surnames, and do not speak Mayan languages as their first language. Matthew Restall, in his book The Maya Conquistador, mentions a series of letters sent to the King of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. The noble Maya families at that time signed documents to the Spanish Royal Family, surnames mentioned in letters are Pech, Camal, Xiu, Ucan, Canul, Cocom. A large 19th-century revolt by the native Maya people of Yucatán, for a period the Maya state of Chan Santa Cruz was recognized as an independent nation by the British Empire, particularly in terms of trading with British Honduras
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Benin Bronzes
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The Benin Bronzes are a group of more than a thousand commemorative metal plaques and sculptures that decorated the royal palace of the Benin Kingdom in modern-day Nigeria. In 1897, most of the plaques and other objects were removed by the British during an expedition to the area as imperial control was being consolidated in Southern Nigeria. Two hundred of the pieces were taken to the British Museum, London, today, a large number are held by the British Museum. Other notable collections are in Germany and the United States, the Benin Bronzes led to a greater appreciation in Europe of African culture and art. Initially and naively, it appeared incredible to the discoverers that people supposedly so primitive, some even concluded that Benin knowledge of metallurgy came from the Portuguese traders who were in contact with Benin in the early modern period. Today, it is clear that the bronzes were made in Benin from an indigenous culture, many of these dramatic sculptures date to the thirteenth century, centuries before contact with Portuguese traders, and a large part of the collection dates to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is believed that two golden ages in Benin metal workmanship occurred during the reigns of Esigie and of Eresoyen, while the collection is known as the Benin Bronzes, like most West African bronzes the pieces are mostly made of brass of variable composition. There are also made of mixtures of bronze and brass, of wood, of ceramic. The metal pieces were made using lost-wax casting and are considered among the best sculptures made using this technique, bronze and ivory objects had a variety of functions in the ritual and courtly life of the Kingdom of Benin. They were used principally to decorate the palace, which contained many bronze works. They were hung on the pillars of the palace by nails punched directly through them, as a courtly art, their principal objective was to glorify the Oba—the divine king—and the history of his imperial power or to honor the queen mother. Art in the Kingdom of Benin took many forms, of bronze and brass reliefs. In tropical Africa of the center, the technique of lost-wax casting was developed early. When a king died, his successor would order that a head be made of his predecessor. Approximately 170 of these sculptures exist, and the oldest date from the twelfth century, the Oba, or king, monopolized the materials that were most difficult to obtain, such as gold, elephant tusks, and bronze. These kings made possible the creation of the splendid Benin bronzes, thus, in 1939, heads very similar to those of the Benin Empire were discovered in Ife, the holy city of the Yoruba, which dated to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This discovery supported an earlier tradition holding that it was artists from Ife who had taught Benin the techniques of bronze metalworking, recognition of the antiquity of the technology in Benin advanced when these sculptures were dated definitively to that era. Few examples of African art had been collected by Europeans in the eighteenth century and this attitude changed after the Benin Expedition of 1897
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Friedrichshagen
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Friedrichshagen is a German locality within the Berlin borough of Treptow-Köpenick. Until 2001 it was part of the borough of Köpenick. The colony of Friedrichsgnade was founded on May 29,1753 by King Frederick II of Prussia, autonomous Prussian municipality of the former Niederbarnim district until 1920, it merged into Berlin with the Greater Berlin Act. From 1949 to 1990, like the rest of the borough of Köpenick, located in the south-eastern suburb of Berlin, Friedrichshagen borders with the Brandenburger municipalities of Hoppegarten, and Schöneiche. It is also bounded by the Berliner localities of Köpenick and Rahnsdorf, the residential area is surrounded in north by a big portion of the Berliner Stadtforst, and in south by the river Müggelspree, and by the western side of Müggelsee, the biggest lake in Berlin. Friedrichshagen counts 1 zone, Hirschgarten As urban railways, the locality is served by S-Bahn line S3 and it is also served by the tram lines 60 and 61. The line 88, not operated by BVG and partially separated from the network, connects Friedrichshagen station to Schöneiche. Albert Burkhardt, Ein Rundgang durch Friedrichshagen auf den Spuren des Dichterkreises - Berlin 2001 Rolf F. berlin. de
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Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
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Its purview encompasses over 27 institutions, including all of Berlins State-run Museums, the Berlin State Library, the Prussian Privy State Archives and a variety of institutes and research centers. As such it has one of largest cultural organizations in the world. The Federal Government and the German States are jointly responsible for the Foundation, during World War II, the cultural artifacts and fine arts in Prussia, especially in Berlin, came under increasing threat of loss. To protect them from Allied bombing, millions of items were evacuated to safety in monasteries, castles. With the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, many of these wound up damaged, destroyed. All the former Prussian institutions ceased to officially exist when the State of Prussia was abolished in 1947, as Germany became divided into West and East, what remained of the buildings and scattered collections were also separated by the Iron Curtain. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation began in 1957 by a West German constitutional mandate to find, in 1961, efforts began to move these materials to West Berlin. Upon German Reunification in 1990, the Foundations role expanded considerably to encompass many of the most important cultural properties of the former East Germany, the most important tasks today are in the consolidation of collections, reconstruction of physical space, conservation-restoration and Provenance research. In 1980 the Foundations headquarters moved into a building at Von-der-Heydt-Straße 16. After Von der Heydts death in 1874 the building home to the first Chinese ambassador to Wilhelm II. In 1938 the villa was bought by the Nazi government and used as a residence by Hans Lammers. The house was damaged in World War II, with only the basement. In the immediate post-war years it was occupied by a sweets factory, the villas gloomy ruins also once formed the backdrop for a spy film. It was not until 1971 that plans for reconstruction of the building began under the aegis of the German Federal Buildings Authority, the Foundation has since expanded operations to a new office building at Von-der-Heydt-Straße 16 52°30′24. 83″N 13°21′10. 18″E. Each year a different instrument is chosen, since 2004, the Foundation sponsors positions for the Voluntary Social Year in Culture, a program of National Service for teenagers and young adults who meet certain educational requirements. There is a position each at the Directorate-General of the Berlin State Museums, Ibero-American Institute, Berlin State Library, the Heritage Foundation also awards scholarships for one- to three-month research and work residencies in Berlin. The scholarships are primarily intended to enable scholars to work at the museums, libraries and archives
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Berlin State Library
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The Berlin State Library is a universal library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It is one of the largest libraries in Europe, and one of the most important academic research libraries in the German-speaking world. It collects texts, media and cultural works from all fields in all languages, from all periods and all countries of the world. The history of the Berlin State Library closely parallels that of German history and it has lived through creation, neglect, expansion, war damage, division, unification and re-creation like few other libraries. In the early period, the fortunes of the State Library rose, in 1658 Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg decreed that his private books be organized, cataloged and made available to the public. His library opened in 1661 at Cölln as the Library of the Elector, in 1699, Frederick I more than doubled the collection, extended opening hours and introduced the first Prussian legal deposit law. In 1701 it was renamed the Royal Library upon Frederick Is accession as first King of Prussia, Frederick William I then cancelled the acquisition budget in 1722 and gave away the valuable scientific collection to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1735. Frederick the Great also cared little for the library at first, however, in 1770 he granted the library substantial assets and it made several important acquisitions. To avoid the problems caused by its dependence on the crown, with new resources and authority, construction began on a Royal Library building on the Bebelplatz in the center of Berlin. Built between 1775 and 1785 by Georg Christian Unger to plans by Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, the collection then underwent nearly continuous improvement and expansion. By 1905 it had become the largest and most influential repository of materials in the German language, today the old Royal building houses the Faculty of Law of Humboldt University. At the founding of the Weimar Republic the library was renamed the Prussian State Library, after 1919, economic effects of war and inflation on the library were mitigated through the active support of the Emergency Association of German Sciences. The Nazi period severely damaged the institution through political intimidation, employee dismissals, restrictions on foreign acquisitions, today a glass plate set into the Bebelplatz, giving a view of empty bookcases, commemorates the event. After an Allied bomb hit the Unter den Linden building in 1941, with the formal dissolution of the State of Prussia in 1947, support for the library ended and the Prussian State Library ceased to exist. After 1945, parts of the collection that had hidden in what became the Soviet occupation zone were returned to the war-damaged Unter den Linden building in East Berlin. It first opened in 1946 as the Public Scientific Library, when further restoration work was completed in 1955, the library was renamed the German State Library. The great domed reading room, however, remained a ruin in the center of the building and this collection first opened to the public as the Hessian Library and in 1949, as the last lost stores arrived, it was renamed the West German Library. Those parts of the collection that had been in the French occupation zone, in 1962 the Federal Republic passed a law giving administrative responsibility for all these collections to Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and endowed it with State funding
29.
Tepukei
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A tepukei is a very old Melanesian and Polynesian boat type, produced primarily by the Polynesian-speaking inhabitants of Taumako. It was first reported in print by Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña in 1595, a tepukei looks like an outrigger canoe with a crab claw sail, and is in fact a very sophisticated ocean-going sailing ship, belonging to the proa type. Its main differences from other proas are, The main hull has an almost circular section whose submerged profile remains constant despite heeling, and has a minimum of wet surface when heavily loaded. The vakas top is very close to the line, so it is closed with planks. In common with a typical proa, it uses a crab claw sail, oFerrall, an Anglican missionary to Melanesia between 1897 and 1904, described the tepukei as a sailing canoe. He described it as consisting of a dugout log equipped with a deck upon which a hut was built, powered by a lofty and strikingly shaped sail. He reported that men from Santa Cruz used the boat to travel as far away as the Solomon Islands, what may be the only surviving original tepukei is in the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. It was brought by Dr. Gerd Koch from the Santa Cruz Islands in 1967, in recent years, tepukeis have been experiencing a renaissance. The Vaka Taumako Project has revived the construction of these boats
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Santa Cruz Islands
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The Santa Cruz Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. They lie approximately 250 miles to the southeast of the Solomon Islands Chain, the Santa Cruz Islands lie just north of the archipelago of Vanuatu, and are considered part of the Vanuatu rain forests ecoregion. The term Santa Cruz Islands is sometimes used to all of the islands of the present-day Solomon Islands province of Temotu. The largest island is Nendö, which is known as Santa Cruz Island proper. Lata, located on Nendö, is the largest town, other islands belonging to the Santa Cruz group are Vanikoro and Utupua. The Santa Cruz Islands are less than five years old. The islands are composed of limestone and volcanic ash over limestone. The highest point in the Santa Cruz Islands is on Vanikoro,924 m, the native languages of the islands are classified as the Reef Islands–Santa Cruz languages, within the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Some Polynesian societies of eastern Solomon Islands built ocean-going outrigger canoes known as Tepukei, the films that Koch completed are now held by the German National Library of Science and Technology in Hanover. He brought back to the Ethnological Museum of Berlin the last still complete Tepukei from the Santa Cruz Islands, in 1971 Koch published Die Materielle Kultur der Santa Cruz-Inseln. The islands were visited by Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña, the first European to sight them, Mendaña started a colony on Nendö which he named Santa Cruz, at the place also named by the Spaniards as Graciosa Bay, and he died there in 1596. During the Pacific War, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands was fought north of the Santa Cruz group and some sea planes were based in Graciosa Bay, chemical ordnance stored on Vanikoro Island was not completely removed until the 1990s. The Santa Cruz Islands were affected by the 2013 Solomon Islands earthquake, the earthquake produced a tsunami measuring 1 metre at Lata, Solomon Islands, that reached about 500 m inland. The airport and low-lying areas were flooded, killing nine people, five of them elderly, more than 100 houses on the island were damaged, and the water and electricity services were interrupted. It was reported that almost all houses in Nela village were washed away, american Caesar, Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964, by William Manchester, p.320 Melanesia Oceania Pacific Islands Santa Cruz and the Reef Islands, by W. C. OFerrall—1908 account with many illustrations by missionary in Santa Cruz from 1897-1904, john Seach, Solomon Islands page Santa Cruz, an archipelago of the Pacific Ocean, in the division of Melanesia
31.
Gerd Koch
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Gerd Koch was a German cultural anthropologist best known for his studies on the material culture of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific. His work in cultural and social anthropology extended to researching and recording the music and he collaborated with Dieter Christensen, a music-ethnologist, on The Music of the Ellice Islands and Koch also published the Songs of Tuvalu. In Tuvalu he was known as Keti. As a child Gerd Koch was fascinated by accounts of explorers including the Pacific voyages of James Cook, after he completed his secondary school leaving examination his family could not afford to send him to university so he became an apprentice salesman at the Pelikan fountain pen company in Hanover. He joined the German Navy in 1941 and was trained as a radio operator and his military service involved monitoring radio communications in the English Channel. He was accepted at Göttingen University in the term of 1945 where he studied ethnology. He was interested in the subject of acculturation, the process of change that results following meeting between cultures. In 1949 he wrote a dissertation that was titled Die frühen europäischen Einflüsse auf die Kultur der Bewohner der Tonga-Inseln 1616-1852, after he received his PhD, he worked at sorting and cataloguing exhibits of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, which were in storage at Celle. In 1951 Koch carried out studies in Tonga and also visited Samoa, Fiji. On his return he found temporary work cataloguing the collection of the state museum in Hanover. In 1957 he was offered a position as the custodian of the Pacific Department at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and he also lectured at the Free University of Berlin. In 1960 and 1961 he undertook studies in the Ellice Islands. He returned to the Ellice Islands in 1964 then he carried out research in the Gilbert Islands, at this time these islands were administered by the British as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony. In 1966 he undertook studies in the Pacific, visiting the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain, Papua New Guinea, followed by the Santa Cruz Islands. In the 1970s he carried out work in the Papua Province of New Guinea belonging to Indonesia. In 1951 he obtained the support of the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft to carry out work on cultural change in the Kingdom of Tonga from October 1951 to June 1952. He received assisted from the Crown Prince who arranged for Koch to stay with relatives on Nomuka in the Haapai group of islands, Koch developed techniques in the recording of culture, including the use of tape-recorders and cinematographic cameras. Koch completed five films about Tonga culture
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Chinese art
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Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists. The Chinese art in the Republic of China and that of overseas Chinese can also be considered part of Chinese art where it is based in or draws on Chinese heritage, early stone age art dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. After this early period Chinese art, like Chinese history, is classified by the succession of ruling dynasties of Chinese emperors. After contacts with Western art became increasingly important from the 19th century onwards, traditional Chinese painting involves essentially the same techniques as Chinese calligraphy and is done with a brush dipped in black or colored ink, oils are not used. As with calligraphy, the most popular materials on which paintings are made of paper, the finished work can be mounted on scrolls, such as hanging scrolls or handscrolls. Traditional painting can also be done on album sheets, walls, lacquerware, folding screens, the two main techniques in Chinese painting are, Gong-bi, meaning meticulous, uses highly detailed brushstrokes that delimits details very precisely. It is often coloured and usually depicts figural or narrative subjects. It is often practised by artists working for the court or in independent workshops. Bird-and-flower paintings were often in this style and this style is also referred to as xie yi or freehand style. Artists from the Han to the Tang dynasties mainly painted the human figure, much of what is known of early Chinese figure painting comes from burial sites, where paintings were preserved on silk banners, lacquered objects, and tomb walls. Many early tomb paintings were meant to protect the dead or help their souls get to paradise, others illustrated the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, or showed scenes of daily life. Most Chinese portraits showed a formal full-length frontal view, and were used in the family in ancestor veneration, Imperial portraits were more flexible, but were generally not seen outside the court, and portraiture formed no part of Imperial propaganda, as in other cultures. Many critics consider landscape to be the highest form of Chinese painting, the time from the Five Dynasties period to the Northern Song period is known as the Great age of Chinese landscape. In the south, Dong Yuan, Juran, and other artists painted the rolling hills and rivers of their native countryside in peaceful scenes done with softer and these two kinds of scenes and techniques became the classical styles of Chinese landscape painting. Chinese ritual bronzes from the Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties come from a period of over a thousand years from c,1500, and have exerted a continuing influence over Chinese art. They are cast with complex patterned and zoomorphic decoration, but avoid the human figure, smaller figures in pottery or wood were placed in tombs for many centuries afterwards, reaching a peak of quality in the Tang Dynasty. Buddhism is also the context of all large portrait sculpture, in total contrast to other areas in medieval China even painted images of the emperor were regarded as private. Imperial tombs have spectacular avenues of approach lined with real and mythological animals on a scale matching Egypt, and smaller versions decorate temples and palaces
33.
Guanyin
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Guanyin or Guan Yin is an East Asian bodhisattva associated with compassion as venerated by Mahayana Buddhists. She is commonly known as the Goddess of Mercy in English, the Chinese name Guanyin is short for Guanshiyin, meaning Perceives the Sounds of the World. She is also referred to as Guanyin Bodhisattva, some Buddhists believe that when one of their adherents departs from this world, they are placed by Guanyin in the heart of a lotus, and then sent to the western Pure Land of Sukhāvatī. Guanyin is often referred to as the most widely beloved Buddhist Divinity with miraculous powers to assist all those who pray to her, as is said in the Lotus Sutra and Karandavyuha Sutra. Several large temples in East Asia are dedicated to Guanyin including Shitennoji, Sensoji, Kiyomizu-dera, furthermore, Guanyin can also be found in some influential Theravada temples such as Gangaramaya and Kelaniya of Sri Lanka. Statues can also be found in the Asian art sections of most museums in the world as a widely depicted subject of Asian art and it is generally accepted among East Asian adherents that Guanyin originated as the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. In Chinese folk religion, there are mythical accounts about Guanyins origins that are not associated with the Avalokiteśvara described in Buddhist sutras, Guānyīn is a translation from the Sanskrit avalokitasvara or Avalokiteshvara, referring to the Mahāyāna bodhisattva of the same name. Another later name for this bodhisattva is Guānzìzài and it was initially thought that the Chinese mis-transliterated the word Avalokiteśvara as Avalokitasvara which explained why Xuanzang translated it as Guānzìzài instead of Guānyīn. However, the form was indeed Avalokitasvara with the ending svara. This is the equivalent of the Chinese translation Guānyīn. The original form Avalokitasvara already appears in Sanskrit fragments of the fifth century, the original meaning of the name Avalokitasvara fits the Buddhist understanding of the role of a bodhisattva. The reinterpretation presenting him as an īśvara shows an influence of Śaivism, as the term īśvara was usually connected to the Hindu notion of Śiva as a creator god. The Lotus Sutra has been dated to between the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE, in Japanese, Guanyin is pronounced Kannon, occasionally Kanon, or more formally Kanzeon, the spelling Kwannon, based on a premodern pronunciation, is sometimes seen. This rendition was used for a spelling of the well-known camera manufacturer Canon Inc. which was named for Guanyin. When iconography of Kannon depicts her with the Nyoihōju wishing gem she is known as Nyoirin Kannon, in Korean, Guanyin is called Gwan-eum or Gwanse-eum. In Thai, she is called Kuan Im, Phra Mae Kuan Im, in Burmese, the name of Guanyin is Kwan Yin Medaw, literally meaning Mother Kwan Yin. In Vietnamese, the name is Quan Âm or Quán Thế Âm, in Indonesian, the name is Kwan Im or Dewi Kwan Im. She is also called Mak Kwan Im Mother Guanyin, in Malaysian Mandarin, the name is Kwan Im Ma Mother GuanYin, GuanYin Pusa, Guan Shi Yin Pusa
34.
Song dynasty
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The Song dynasty was an era of Chinese history that began in 960 and continued until 1279. It succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, coincided with the Liao and Western Xia dynasties and it was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money nationally and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty also saw the first known use of gunpowder, as well as the first discernment of true north using a compass, the Song dynasty is divided into two distinct periods, Northern and Southern. During the Northern Song, the Song capital was in the city of Bianjing. The Southern Song refers to the period after the Song lost control of its half to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. During this time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze, the Southern Song dynasty considerably bolstered its naval strength to defend its waters and land borders and to conduct maritime missions abroad. To repel the Jin, and later the Mongols, the Song developed revolutionary new military technology augmented by the use of gunpowder, in 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and his younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan, though his claim was only partially recognized by the Mongols in the west. In 1271, Kublai Khan was proclaimed the Emperor of China, after two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khans armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279. The Mongol invasion led to a reunification under the Yuan dynasty, the population of China doubled in size during the 10th and 11th centuries. The Northern Song census recorded a population of roughly 50 million, much like the Han and this data is found in the Standard Histories. However, it is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of some 100 million people and this dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China. The expansion of the population, growth of cities, and the emergence of a national economy led to the withdrawal of the central government from direct involvement in economic affairs. The lower gentry assumed a role in grassroots administration and local affairs. Appointed officials in county and provincial centers relied upon the gentry for their services, sponsorship. Social life during the Song was vibrant, citizens gathered to view and trade precious artworks, the populace intermingled at public festivals and private clubs, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the expansion of woodblock printing. Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished over the course of the Song, although the institution of the civil service examinations had existed since the Sui dynasty, it became much more prominent in the Song period
35.
Berlin Conference
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The conference ushered in a period of heightened colonial activity by European powers, which eliminated or overrode most existing forms of African autonomy and self-governance. Before the conference, European diplomacy treated African indigenous people in the manner as the New World natives. By the mid-19th century, Europeans considered Africa to be disputed territory ripe for exploration, trade, with the exception of trading posts along the coasts, the continent was essentially ignored. In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium, who had founded the International African Society in 1876. In 1878, the International Congo Society was also formed, with more economic goals, Léopold secretly bought off the foreign investors in the Congo Society, which was turned to imperialistic goals, with the African Society serving primarily as a philanthropic front. From 1878 to 1885, Stanley returned to the Congo, not as a reporter, French intelligence had discovered Leopolds plans, and France quickly engaged in its own colonial exploration. Finally, Portugal, which already had a long, but essentially abandoned colonial Empire in the area through the mostly defunct proxy state Kongo Empire and its claims were based on old treaties with Spain and the Roman Catholic Church. It quickly made a treaty on 26 February 1884 with its former ally, stanleys charting of the Congo River Basin removed the last terra incognita from European maps of the continent, and delineating the areas of British, Portuguese, French, and Belgian control. The powers raced to push these rough boundaries to their furthest limits, France moved to take over Tunisia, one of the last of the Barbary Pirate states, under the pretext of another piracy incident. French claims by Pierre de Brazza were quickly solidified with French taking control of todays Republic of the Congo in 1881, Italy became part of the Triple Alliance, upsetting Bismarcks carefully laid plans with the state and forcing Germany to become involved in Africa. Through it, the UK also ruled over the Sudan and what would later become British Somaliland, owing to the European race for colonies, Germany started launching expeditions of its own, which frightened both British and French statesmen. Hoping to quickly soothe this brewing conflict, King Leopold II convinced France, the conference was convened on Saturday, November 15,1884 at Bismarcks official residence on Wilhelmstrasse. The British representative was Sir Edward Malet, Henry Morton Stanley attended as a U. S. delegate. The General Act fixed the following points, To gain public acceptance, thus, an international prohibition of the slave trade throughout their respected spheres was signed by the European members. Because of this point the writer Joseph Conrad sarcastically referred to the conference as the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs in his novella Heart of Darkness. The Congo Free State was confirmed as the property of the Congo Society. The territory of todays Democratic Republic of the Congo, some two square kilometers, was confirmed by the European powers as essentially the property of Léopold II. The 14 signatory powers would have free trade throughout the Congo Basin as well as Lake Malawi, the Niger and Congo rivers were made free for ship traffic
36.
Bruno Paul
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Bruno Paul was a German architect, illustrator, interior designer, and furniture designer. Paul was born in Seifhennersdorf, a village in rural Saxony and his father was an independent tradesman, craftsman, and dealer in building materials. At twelve years old Paul left Seifhennersdorf for Dresden, where he briefly attended Gymnasium before entering a training school. By 1892 he was determined to pursue a career in the arts, in 1893 he was accepted as a student at the Saxon Academy of Fine Arts. In 1894, Paul moved to Munich, then the capital of Wilhelmine Germany. He enrolled at the Munich Academy as a student of the painter Paul Hoecker, in 1896, Paul left the Academy to begin an independent career. After working briefly as a painter, he won lasting renown as an illustrator. He was a contributor to Jugend, the magazine from which the Jugendstil. After 1897, Paul joined the staff of the satirical magazine Simplicissimus, pauls weekly contributions to Simplicissimus between 1897 and 1906 won him international acclaim. In 1898, Paul, together with Behrens, Pankok, and he won another gold medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, introducing his interior designs to a broad American audience. In 1906, Paul designed a festival decoration for a barracks in Munich, Paul’s appointment in Berlin was part of a wider program of educational reforms promoted by Hermann Muthesius and Wilhelm von Bode. Paul, who was a member of the Munich Secession and the Berlin Secession as well as being one of the artists who founded the German Werkbund. He revised the curriculum of the Unterrichtsanstalt to promote practical craftsmanship as the basis of artistic education and he emphasized the training of professional designers for the applied arts industries, establishing a precedent that continues in schools of design to the present day. As a designer, Bruno Paul provided more than 2,000 furniture patterns to the Vereinigte Werkstätten and he also designed furniture for Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau as well as designing ship interiors for the Norddeutscher Lloyd, Pianos for Ibach, and streetcars for the city of Berlin. Like much of his work, the Typenmöbel was widely published in professional journals. Paul’s architecture was closely related to his designs for furnishings and interiors, prior to the First World War he was best known as a residential architect. His houses were simple and elegant, efficiently planned and devoid of superfluous ornament and his favored vocabulary, an abstracted classicism, had a profound influence on the work of his students and apprentices. In 1914, Paul designed a house and two restaurants for the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne
37.
Fritz Bornemann
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Fritz Bornemann was a German architect. Bornemann studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin, after graduating in 1936, he was Assistant Scenic Designer at the Berlin Municipal Opera and, starting in 1945, Construction Supervisor with the city of Berlin. Since 1950 he became an independent architect active in Berlin, the designs for the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Freie Volksbühne and the Museumszentrum Berlin-Dahlem were drawn up by him. He also designed the headquarters of the Commerzbank Berlin and he designed the German Pavilion for the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka. Later there appeared, amongst others, the extension of the Rathaus of Berlin-Wedding, less well-known is his work in multimedia. He designed some exhibitions, amongst them Atom and Farmer Smith, the Osaka Pavilion was his crowning achievement in this field. Bornemann’s architecture was and is a subject of violent controversial opinions over the trends of the 1950s and 1960s. The critics speak of cold or austere architecture and belittle his buildings with expressions like elegance in exposed-aggregate concrete and his adherents see in his work a model for modern architecture, and especially for modern theatre architecture. For more than 16 years Fritz Bornemann was Chairman of the Bund Deutscher Architekten, der deutsche Beitrag auf der Expo70 in Osaka
38.
Modernism
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Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief, the poet Ezra Pounds 1934 injunction to Make it new. Was the touchstone of the approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the novel, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. While J. M. W. Art critic Clement Greenberg describes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-Modernists, There the proto-Modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites actually foreshadowed Manet, with whom Modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, rationalism has also had opponents in the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and later Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom had significant influence on existentialism. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was The Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron, Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals in London, such as Paddington Station and Kings Cross Station. These technological advances led to the building of structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be and these engineering marvels radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, the philosopher Schopenhauer called into question the previous optimism, and his ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Nietzsche. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness, in particular, the notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as lower animals proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued that there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system, historians, and writers in different disciplines, have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Everdell also thinks modernism in painting began in 1885–86 with Seurats Divisionism, the poet Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, and Flauberts novel Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. In the arts and letters, two important approaches developed separately in France, the first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors. Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, the school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention
39.
Neoclassical architecture
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Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century. In its purest form, it is a style derived from the architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles. In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro, Neoclassical architecture is still designed today, but may be labelled New Classical Architecture for contemporary buildings. In Central and Eastern Europe, the style is referred to as Classicism. Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée, the many graphite drawings of Boullée and his students depict spare geometrical architecture that emulates the eternality of the universe. There are links between Boullées ideas and Edmund Burkes conception of the sublime, the baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, the book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio. At first the book featured the work of Inigo Jones. Palladian architecture became well established in 18th-century Britain, at the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic architect earl, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, in 1729, he and William Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was a reinterpretation of Palladios Villa Capra, but purified of 16th century elements and this severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of Englands finest examples of Palladian architecture with Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the main block of this house followed Palladios dictates quite closely, but Palladios low, often detached, wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance. This classicising vein was also detectable, to a degree, in the Late Baroque architecture in Paris. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned façade for S, by the mid 18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of Classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece. The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s, in France, the movement was propelled by a generation of French art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden. A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire, in France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the Louis XVI style, and the second in the styles called Directoire or Empire. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg, indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved an audience in the 1760s
40.
Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied
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Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied was a German explorer, ethnologist and naturalist. It was translated into languages and recognized as one of the greatest contributions to the knowledge of Brazil at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1832 he embarked on another expedition, this time to North America, the genus Neuwiedia Blume was named for him. Wied was born in Neuwied, the grandson of the ruling count Johann Friedrich Alexander of Wied-Neuwied and he joined the Prussian army in 1800 during the Napoleonic Wars, rising to the rank of major. He was given a leave of absence from the army in 1815, Wied led an expedition to southeast Brazil from 1815 to 1817. In 1816 he found the tribe of the Botocudos, about which he gave details for the first time. On account of the war among the different tribes of the country he was obliged to abandon his original route, North of the Belmonte river he made his way through the woods, and after many difficulties arrived in the province of Minas Gerais. His delicate health forced him to abandon his expedition, and he was detained on unfounded suspicions for four days, after this he resolved to leave the country, and embarked for Germany on 10 May 1817. On his return, he wrote Reise nach Brasilien and Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte von Brasilien, Bodmers watercolour paintings of individuals, artefacts and customs among the Indians are acknowledged as among the most accurate and informative ever made. Many were adapted as hand-coloured engravings to illustrate the publication of 1840, editor, Josef Röder and Hermann Trimborn. Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, Maximilian Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, london 1843-1844 Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, Maximilian Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834. In, Early Western Travels, 1748-1848,1906, from Reuben Gold Thwaites, hunt, William J. Orr, W. H. Goetzmann, Karl Bodmers America. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha 1984 +1985 Paul Schach, Maximilian, Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, in Tom Taylor and Michael Taylor, Aves, A Survey of the Literature of Neotropical Ornithology, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Libraries,2011. Marsha V. Gallagher, Karl Bodmers eastern views, joslyn Art Museum, Omaha 1996 Brandon K. Ruud, Karl Bodmers North American Prints. ISBN 0-8032-1326-3 Michael G. Noll, “Prince Maximilians Other Worlds. ”Michael G. Noll, Prince Maximilians America, The Narrated Landscapes of a German Explorer and Naturalist, Dissertation, University of Kansas, nordamerika Native Museum Zürich, Karl Bodmer. A Swiss Artist in America 1809-1893, University of Chicago Press and Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich 2009
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Karl Bodmer
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Johann Carl Bodmer was a Swiss-French printmaker, etcher, lithographer, zinc engraver, draughtsman, painter, illustrator and hunter. Known as Karl Bodmer in literature and paintings, as a Swiss and French citizen, his name was recorded as Johann Karl Bodmer and Jean-Charles Bodmer, respectively. After 1843, likely as a result of the birth of his son Charles-Henry Barbizon, Karl Bodmer was well known in Germany for his watercolours, drawings and aquatints of cities and landscapes of the Rhine, Mosel and Lahn rivers. After he moved to France following his return from an expedition in the American West, he became a member of the Barbizon School and he created many oil paintings with animal and landscape motifs, as well as wood engravings, drawings, and book illustrations. For his work, Bodmer was made a Knight in the French Legion of Honour in 1877 and he is best known in the United States as a painter who captured the American West of the 19th century. He painted extremely accurate works of its inhabitants and landscape and he accompanied the German explorer Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied from 1832 through 1834 on his Missouri River expedition. Bodmer had 81 aquatints made from his work to illustrate Prince Maximilians book entitled Maximilian Prince of Wieds Travels in the Interior of North America, Johann Carl Bodmer was born on 11 February 1809 in Zurich, Switzerland. When he was thirteen, his mother’s brother, Johann Jakob Meier, Meier was an artist, having studied under the well-known artists Heinrich Füssli and Gabriel Lory. Young Bodmer and his brother, Rudolf, joined their uncle on artistic travels throughout their home country. By 1828, Bodmer had left his native Switzerland to work as a painter and engraver in the German city of Koblenz and it was there that he and his work came to the attention of Prinz Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. This German aristocrat had successfully led an expedition to Brazil in 1815–1817. He decided to embark on another venture, this time to North America. He hired Bodmer to accompany his expedition and make a record of the places and peoples encountered, through painting, drawings. The aristocrat was known popularly to naturalists then and now as Prince Max, after delays, Bodmer, in the company of Prince Max and David Dreidoppel, a huntsman and taxidermist, sailed for North America on 17 May 1832. He makes no demands, and in diligence he is never lacking, arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, on 4 July, the three encountered hardships and delays caused largely by a cholera epidemic in the eastern states. It swept across the northern tier to Michigan via travelers on the waterways, the three men finally reached Pittsburgh, and started from there October 8 to travel west along the Ohio River. They arrived in Mt. Vernon, Indiana about midnight on 18 October, the next morning, the party made their way to New Harmony, Indiana. Prince Max had planned to only a few days in New Harmony
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International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
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