1.
Grand Duchy of Finland
–
The Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed between 1809 and 1917 as an part of the Russian Empire and was ruled by the Russian Emperor as Grand Duke. The new title Grand Duke of Finland did not result in any Finnish autonomy, during the next two centuries, the title was used by some of Johns successors on the throne, but not all. Usually it was just a title of the king, used only on very formal occasions. The title Grand Duke of Finland was added to the long list of titles of the Russian Tsar, after his return to Finland in 1812, the Finnish-born Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt became counsellor to the Russian emperor. The formation of the Grand Duchy stems from the Treaty of Tilsit between Czar Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon Bonaparte of France, the treaty mediated peace between Russia and France and allied the two countries against Napoleons remaining threats, Great Britain and Sweden. Russia invaded Finland in February of 1808, claimed as an effort to impose sanctions against Sweden, but not a war of conquest. The oath also dubbed anyone person who gave aid to the Swedish or Finnish armies a rebel, the Finns complied, bitter over Sweden abandoning the country for their war against Denmark and France, and begrudgingly embraced Russian conquest. The Diet of Finland was now to only meet whenever requested, further on, Alexander I requested a deputation of the four Finnish estates, as he expressed concern over continued Finnish resistance. The deputation refused to act without the Diet, to which Alexander agreed with, by 1809, all of Finland had been conquered and The Diet was summoned in March. Finland was then united through Russia via crown, and Finland was able to keep the majority of its own laws, the earlier years of the Grand Duchy can be seen as uneventful. In 1812, the area of Old Finland, known as the Viipuri Province was returned to Finland after being annexed by Russia in the Great Northern War, despite the outcry, the borders remained set until 1940. Moreover, Alexander moved the capital from Turku to Helsinki, a fortified town protected by Suomenlinna. Finlands main university also transferred to Helsinki after a fire out in Turku. Alexander went a step further to demand a Finnish House of Nobles, the house was designed to register all noble families in Finland, so that the highest Finnish estate would be representative of the next Finnish diet. As for Sweden, the majority did not think too much about Finlands conquest, as Sweden itself annexed Norway from Denmark in 1814, despite this, Alexander I ceased to give in to Finnish affairs and returned to governing Russia. In 1823, Arseny Zakrevsky was made general of Finland and quickly became unpopular by the Finns. Zakrevsky abolished the Committee for Finnish Affairs and managed to obtain the right to submit Finnish affairs to the Czar, bypassing the Finnish Secretary of State
2.
Helsinki
–
Helsinki is the capital and largest city of Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. Helsinki has a population of 629,512, a population of 1,231,595. Helsinki is located some 80 kilometres north of Tallinn, Estonia,400 km east of Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki has close historical connections with these three cities. The Helsinki metropolitan area includes the core of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen. It is the worlds northernmost metro area of one million people. The Helsinki metropolitan area is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the Nordic countries, Helsinki is Finlands major political, educational, financial, cultural, and research center as well as one of northern Europes major cities. Approximately 75% of foreign companies operating in Finland have settled in the Helsinki region, the nearby municipality of Vantaa is the location of Helsinki Airport, with frequent service to various destinations in Europe and Asia. In 2009, Helsinki was chosen to be the World Design Capital for 2012 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, the city was the venue for the 1952 Summer Olympics and the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest 2007. In 2011, the Monocle magazine ranked Helsinki the most liveable city in the world in its Liveable Cities Index 2011, in the Economist Intelligence Units August 2015 Liveability survey, assessing the best and worst cities to live in globally, Helsinki placed among the worlds top ten cities. Helsinki is used to refer to the city in most languages, the Swedish name Helsingfors is the original official name of the city. The Finnish name probably comes from Helsinga and similar names used for the river that is known as the Vantaa River. Helsingfors comes from the name of the parish, Helsinge and the rapids, which flowed through the original village. As part of the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, one suggestion for the origin of the name Helsinge is that it originated with medieval Swedish settlers who came from Hälsingland in Sweden. Others have proposed that the name derives from the Swedish word helsing, other Scandinavian cities located at similar geographic locations were given similar names at the time, for example Helsingør and Helsingborg. The name Helsinki has been used in Finnish official documents and in Finnish language newspapers since 1819, the decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish, in Helsinki slang the city is called Stadi. Hesa, is not used by natives to the city, helsset is the Northern Sami name of Helsinki
3.
Nobel Prize in Literature
–
Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, here work refers to an authors work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize in any given year, the academy announces the name of the chosen laureate in early October. Although the Nobel Prize in Literature has become the worlds most prestigious literature prize, many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. The prize has become seen as a political one - a peace prize in literary disguise, whose judges are prejudiced against authors with different political tastes to them. Tim Parks has expressed skepticism that it is possible for Swedish professors, as of 2016,16 of the 113 recipients have been of Scandinavian origin. The Academy has often been alleged to be biased towards European, Nobels vague wording for the criteria for the prize has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word translates as either idealistic or ideal. The Nobel Committees interpretation has varied over the years, in recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million Swedish kronor, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed, the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, the Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II, according to Nobels will, the Royal Swedish Academy was to award the Prize in Literature. Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature and it is not permitted to nominate oneself. Thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals are returned and these proposals must be received by the Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee. By April, the Academy narrows the field to around twenty candidates, by May, a short list of five names is approved by the Committee. The subsequent four months are spent in reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote and the candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature
4.
Peasant
–
A peasant is a member of a traditional class of farmers, either laborers or owners of small farms, especially in the Middle Ages under feudalism, or more generally, in any pre-industrial society. In Europe, peasants were divided into three classes according to their status, slave, serf, and free tenant. Peasants either hold title to land in fee simple, or hold land by any of several forms of tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold. The implication of the term is that the peasant is uneducated, ignorant, the word peasant is also commonly used in a non-pejorative sense as a collective noun for the rural population in the poor and under-developed countries of the world. The word peasant is derived from the 15th century French word païsant, meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, Peasants typically made up the majority of the agricultural labour force in a pre-industrial society. The majority of the people in the Middle Ages were peasants, more generally, the word peasant is sometimes used to refer pejoratively to those considered to be lower class, perhaps defined by poorer education and/or a lower income. The open field system of agriculture dominated most of northern Europe during medieval times, under this system, peasants lived on a manor presided over by a lord or a bishop of the church. Peasants paid rent or labor services to the lord in exchange for their right to cultivate the land, fallowed land, pastures, forests, and wasteland were held in common. The open field system required cooperation among the peasants of the manor and it was gradually replaced by individual ownership and management of land. This process happened in a pronounced and truncated way in Eastern Europe. Lacking any catalysts for change in the 14th century, Eastern European peasants largely continued upon the original medieval path until the 18th and 19th centuries, even before emancipation in 1861, serfdom was on the wane in Russia. The proportion of serfs within the empire had decreased from 45-50 percent at the end of the eighteenth century. In Germany, peasants continued to center their lives in the well into the 19th century. They belonged to a body and helped to manage the community resources. In the East they had the status of serfs bound permanently to parcels of land, a peasant is called a Bauer in German and Bur in Low German. In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who paid rents, Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights, maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which handled minor offenses. Inside the family the patriarch made all the decisions, and tried to arrange marriages for his children. Much of the communal life centered on church services and holy days
5.
Tampere
–
Tampere is a city in Pirkanmaa, southern Finland. It is the most populous city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of 223,292 growing to 313,058 people in the urban area, Tampere is the second-largest urban area and third most-populous individual municipality in the country, after Helsinki and Espoo municipalities. Its also the most populous Finnish city outside the Greater Helsinki area and inner Finlands major urban, economic, Tampere is between two lakes, Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi. Since the two differ in level by 18 metres, the rapids linking them, Tammerkoski, have been an important power source throughout history. Tampere is dubbed the Manchester of Finland for its industrial past as the center of Finnish industry. Helsinki is approximately 160 kilometres south of Tampere, and can be reached in 1.5 hours by train and 2 hours by car, the distance to Turku is roughly the same. Tampere–Pirkkala Airport is Finlands third-busiest airport, with over 400,000 passengers annually, there have been many debates on the origin of the name Tampere. One theory is that it comes from the Swedish word damber, other suggestions have been the Swedish tamper-dagar, fasting days, and also the Finnish word tammi. Although the name Tampere or its Swedish counterparts Tammer- part cannot be completely confirmed, Tampere was founded as a market place on the banks of the Tammerkoski channel in 1775 by Gustav III of Sweden and four years later,1 October 1779, Tampere was granted full city rights. At this time, it was a small town, consisting of only a few square kilometres of land around the Tammerkoski. Tampere grew as a market town and industrial centre in the 19th century. The towns industrial nature in the 19th and 20th centuries gave it the nickname Manchester of the North, Tampere was the centre of many important political events of Finland in the early 20th century. On 1 November 1905, during the strike, the famous Red Declaration was proclaimed on the Keskustori. In 1918, when Finland had recently gained independence, Tampere also played a major role, Tampere was a red stronghold during the war, with Hugo Salmela in command. White forces captured the town after the Battle of Tampere, seizing about 10,000 Red prisoners on 6 April 1918, prevalent in Tamperes post-World War II municipal politics was the Brothers-in-Arms Axis. From 2007 on, Tampere switched to a new model of having a mayor and four deputy mayors, timo P. Nieminen was elected by the city council as the first mayor of Tampere for the years 2007–09. He was re-elected in 2009 and was succeeded by Anna-Kaisa Ikonen in 2013, after World War II, Tampere was enlarged by joining some neighbouring areas
6.
University of Helsinki
–
The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but was founded in the city of Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo, at that time part of the Swedish Empire. It is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available, around 36,500 students are currently enrolled in the degree programs of the university spread across 11 faculties and 11 research institutes. As of August 1,2005, the University complies with the structure of the Europe-wide Bologna Process and offers Bachelor, Master, Licenciate. Admission to degree programmes is determined by entrance examinations, in the case of bachelors degrees. It has been ranked a top 100 university in the according to the 2016 ARWU, QS. The university is bilingual, with teaching officially provided both in Finnish and Swedish, generally speaking, however, the university is monolingual Finnish, as courses taught in Swedish are very few and far apart. Teaching in English is extensive throughout the university at Master, Licentiate, remaining true to its traditionally strong Humboldtian ethos, the University of Helsinki places heavy emphasis on high-quality teaching and research of a top international standard. It is a member of various prominent international university networks, such as Europaeum, UNICA, the Utrecht Network, the first predecessor of the university, The Cathedral School of Åbo, was presumably founded in 1276 for education of boys to become servants of the Church. It was the university founded in the Swedish Empire, following Uppsala University. The second period of the Universitys history covers the period when Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, as Finland became part of the Russian Empire in 1809, Emperor Alexander I expanded the University and allocated substantial funds to it. In the capital the primary task of the University was to educate the Grand Duchy’s civil servants, the University became a community subscribing to the new Humboldtian ideals of science and culture, studying humanity and its living environment by means of scientific methods. The Alexander University was a centre of life that promoted the birth of an independent Finnish State. The great men of 19th century Finland, Johan Vilhelm Snellman, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Elias Lönnrot, in the 19th century university research changed from being collection-centred to being experimental, empirical, and analytical. The more scientific approach of the university led to specialisation and created new disciplines, as the scientific disciplines developed, Finland received ever more scholarly knowledge and highly educated people, some of whom entered rapidly evolving industry or the government. The third period of the universitys history began with the creation of the independent Republic of Finland in 1917, once Finland gained her independence in 1917 the University was given a crucial role in building the nation state and, after World War II, the welfare state. Members of the community promoted the international relations of the new state. Furthermore, they were involved in national politics and the struggle for equality. In the 20th century, scholarly research at the University of Helsinki reached the level of the European elite in many disciplines. I, virtanen and the Nobel Prize in Medicine shared by Professor Ragnar Granit
7.
Pekka Halonen
–
Pekka Halonen was a painter of Finnish landscapes and people in the national romantic style. His favorite subjects were the Finnish landscape and its people which he depicted in his Realist style, Pekka Halonen was born on 23 September 1865 in Linnasalmi, Lapinlahti, Finland, the son of Olli Halonen, a farmer, and Wilhelmina Halonen. Halonens father was himself an amateur artist who not only ran the farm, Halonen often accompanied his father on these painting trips and was thus introduced into the craft of painting. He studied in Helsinki at the Art Societys Drawing School for four years and he graduated with good grades and won a scholarship to study abroad. He went in 1890 to Paris, where he first studied at the Academie Julian, in 1895 Pekka Halonen married a young music student, Maija Mäkinen. In the beginning of their marriage, the couple lived in places before settling down in a house with a studio on Lake Tuusula in Tuusula. Here the Halonen family lived in an imposing pinewood villa known as ‘Halosenniemi’, Halosenniemi was designed by Pekka Halonen himself and his brother Antti Halonen and was completed in 1902. The building is now a museum that includes original furnishings and Halonen’s own art, on the shores of the lake where he resided an artists’ community flourished, helping to develop a sense of Finnish national identity. Adjacent to the house Halonen built a sauna, which in typical Finnish tradition also served as a laundry, the landscape near Halosenniemi was an important source of inspiration for his art. In Tuusula Halonen had a circle of artist friends and relatives which provided him with a daily source of social and cultural stimulation. Hallonen and his wife had eight children, four sons and four daughters, Halonen died in Tuusula on 1 December 1933. Halonen chronicled the Finnish landscape and its people and he had an early interest in Symbolism, but Gauguin’s decorative Synthetism, as well as Japanese woodcuts, had a deeper impression on his work. Many of his paintings depict scenes from his everyday surroundings, such as Sauna in the Snow. When at the beginning of the 20th century Finland’s existence was threatened, Halonen stated that he never painted for anyone but himself. He felt that “Art should not jar the nerves like sandpaper – it should produce a feeling of peace. ”Pekka Halonen Media related to Pekka Halonen at Wikimedia Commons
8.
Jean Sibelius
–
Jean Sibelius, born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, was a Finnish composer and violinist of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. The core of his oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies which, like his major works, continue to be performed and recorded in his home country. His other best-known compositions are Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the Violin Concerto, the choral symphony Kullervo, throughout his career, the composer found inspiration in nature and Nordic mythology, especially the heroic legends of the national epic, the Kalevala. Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he attempted to continue writing, including abortive efforts on an eighth symphony, in later life, he wrote Masonic music and re-edited some earlier works while retaining an active but not always favourable interest in new developments in music. The Finnish 100 mark note featured his image until 2002, when the euro was adopted, since 2011, Finland has celebrated a Flag Day on 8 December, the composers birthday, also known as the Day of Finnish Music. In 2015, the 150th anniversary of the birth, a number of special concerts and events were held. Sibelius was born on 8 December 1865 in Hämeenlinna in the Grand Duchy of Finland and he was the son of the Swedish-speaking medical doctor Christian Gustaf Sibelius and Maria Charlotta Sibelius née Borg. The family name stems from the Sibbe estate in Eastern Uusimaa which was owned by his paternal great-grandfather, Sibeliuss father died of typhoid in July 1868, leaving substantial debts. As a result, his mother—who was again pregnant—had to sell their property and move the family into the home of Katarina Borg, her widowed mother, who also lived in Hämeenlinna. Sibelius was therefore brought up in a decidedly female environment, the only male influence coming from his uncle, Pehr Ferdinand Sibelius and it was he who gave the boy a violin when he was ten years old and later encouraged him to maintain his interest in composition. For Sibelius, Uncle Pehr not only took the place of a father, from an early age, Sibelius showed a strong interest in nature, frequently walking around the countryside when the family moved to Loviisa on the coast for the summer months. In his own words, For me, Loviisa represented sun, Hämeenlinna was where I went to school, Loviisa was freedom. It was in Hämeenlinna, when he was seven, that his aunt Julia was brought in to give him piano lessons on the familys upright instrument and he progressed by improvising on his own, but still learned to read music. He later turned to the violin, which he preferred and he participated in trios with his elder sister Linda on piano, and his younger brother Christian on the cello. Furthermore, Sibelius often played in quartets with neighboring families, adding to his experience in chamber music, fragments survive of his early compositions of the period, a trio, a piano quartet and a Suite in D Minor for violin and piano. Around 1881, he recorded on paper his short pizzicato piece Vattendroppar for violin, in 1881, he started to take violin lessons from the local bandmaster, Gustaf Levander, immediately developing a particularly strong interest in the instrument. Despite such success as an instrumentalist, he chose to become a composer. Although his mother tongue was Swedish, in 1874 Sibelius attended Lucina Hagmans Finnish-speaking preparatory school, despite having to repeat a year, he succeeded in passing the schools final examination in 1885 which allowed him to enter a university
9.
Juhani Aho
–
Juhani Aho, originally Johannes Brofeldt, was a Finnish author and journalist. He was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature twelve times, Juhani Aho was born at Lapinlahti in 1861. His parents were Theodor and Emma Brofeldt, the Brofeldts were a priestly family, Theodor was a relatively well-known revivalist preacher whose sermons were published in 1917 as Rovasti H. G. Th. Brofeldtin saarnoja and his father had been a chaplain and his grandfather a vicar, Juhani had two younger brothers Kaarlo and Petter who, following Juhanis example, adopted the Finnish names Kalle and Pekka as well as the surname Aho. From 1872 to 1880 Juhani Aho attended the Kuopion Lyseo, one of the few secondary schools offering education in Finnish. During his time at the school he adopted the pen name Juhani Aho for many of his school works, in the 1880s he studied at the University of Helsinki and was associated with political radicals. His literary pursuits were aided by Elisabeth Järnefelt and her circle, the Järnefelt school, Ahos literary output is wide-ranging since he pursued different styles as time passed. He started as a realist and his first novel Rautatie, which is considered one of his works, is from this period. Later he moved towards neoromanticism with novels Panu and Kevät ja takatalvi as well as Juha. The last one is one of his most famous works and has twice as adapted an opera, by Aare Merikanto and by Leevi Madetoja. His novel Yksin, published in 1890, controversially bold by the standards of Finnish literature in that epoch, is a roman à clef. Its tale of unfulfilled love is the novel of Ahos passion for Aino Järnefelt who, at that time, was secretly engaged to Jean Sibelius. In addition to his novels Aho wrote a number of stories of distinct style. Their topics could vary from political allegories to depictions of everyday life, the first and most famous of the short stories is When Father Brought Home the Lamp, depicting the effect of the innovation on people living in the countryside. Nowadays the title is a Finnish saying used when something related to new technology is introduced, Aho was one of the founders of Päivälehti, the predecessor of the biggest newspaper in Finland today, Helsingin Sanomat. In 1906 he got to know Huopanankoski rapids in Viitasaari, after that he went there every spring and autumn for 14 years. Aho died in Helsinki in 1921, the photographer Claire Aho is his granddaughter
10.
Finnish Civil War
–
The Finnish Civil War concerned leadership and control of Finland during the transition from a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire to an independent state. The conflict formed a part of the national, political, the war was fought between the Reds, led by the Social Democratic Party and the Whites, conducted by the non-socialist, conservative-led senate. The paramilitary Red Guards, composed of industrial and agrarian workers, controlled the cities, the paramilitary White Guards, composed of peasants and middle-class and upper-class factions, controlled rural central and northern Finland. Finnish society had experienced population growth, industrialization, pre-urbanization. World War I led to the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Reds carried out an unsuccessful general offensive in February 1918, supplied with weapons by Soviet Russia. A counteroffensive by the Whites began in March, reinforced by an Imperial German Army squad in April, both the Reds and Whites engaged in political terror. A high number of Red POWs died due to malnutrition and disease, altogether, around 39,000 people -36,000 Finns - perished in the conflict. In the aftermath, the Finns passed from Russian government to the German power sphere with a plan to establish German-led Finnish monarchy, the outline was aborted by the defeat of Germany in World War I. Finland emerged as an independent, democratic republic, the main factor behind the Finnish Civil War was World War I, the Russian Empire collapsed under the pressures of the war, leading to the February and October Revolutions in 1917. The breakdown caused a power vacuum and subsequent power struggle in Eastern Europe. The Grand Duchy of Finland, a part of the Russian Empire since 1809, geopolitically less important than the continental Moscow-Warsaw gateway, the northerly Finnish ground, isolated by the Baltic sea was a peaceful sidefront until early 1918. The war between the German Empire and Russia had indirect effects on the Finns, the German Empire saw Eastern Europe - primarily Russia - as a major source of vital products and raw materials, both during World War I and in the future. Between 30 and 40 million marks were spent on this endeavor, controlling the Finnish area would allow the Imperial German Army to penetrate Petrograd and the Kola Peninsula, an area rich in raw materials for the mining industry. Finland possessed large ore reserves and a well-developed forest industry, russias defeat in the Crimean War in the 1850s led to attempts to speed up the modernization of the country. This caused more than 50 years of economic, industrial, cultural and educational progress in the Grand Duchy of Finland, in 1899, the Russian Empire initiated a policy of integration through the Russification of Finland. In the power struggle, the most radical political group opposing Russia, the Activist movement, included terrorist factions from the working class and the Swedish-speaking intelligentsia. The major reasons for rising tensions among the Finns were the autocratic rule of the Russian Czar. The system originated in the Swedish Empire regime, preceding the Russian power, Finlands population grew rapidly in the 19th century, and a class of industrial and agrarian workers and property-less peasants emerged
11.
Winter War
–
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939–1940. It began with the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, the League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the League on 14 December 1939. Finland refused and the USSR invaded the country, the Soviets possessed more than three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. The Red Army, however, had been crippled by Soviet leader Joseph Stalins Great Purge of 1937. With more than 30,000 of its officers executed or imprisoned, including most of those of the highest ranks, because of these factors, and high morale in the Finnish forces, Finland repelled Soviet attacks for several months, much longer than the Soviets expected. However, after reorganization and adoption of different tactics, the renewed Soviet offensive overcame Finnish defenses at the borders, hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland ceded territory representing 11% of its area and 13% of its economy to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses were heavy, and the international reputation suffered. While the Soviet Union did not conquer all Finland, Soviet gains exceeded their pre-war demands and they gained substantial territory along Lake Ladoga, providing a buffer for Leningrad, and territory in northern Finland. Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation, the end of the war cancelled the Franco-British plan to send troops to Finland through northern Scandinavia. One of the goals of the projected Franco-British operation had been to take control of northern Swedens iron ore. For this reason it was also a factor in the launching of Operation Weserübung, Nazi Germanys invasion of Denmark. The poor performance of the Red Army encouraged Hitler to think that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful, until the beginning of the 19th century, Finland constituted the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. In 1809, to protect their capital, Saint Petersburg. While abortive because of Russias internal strife, these attempts ruined Russias relations with the Finns, the new Bolshevik Russian government was weak, and with the threat of civil war looming Soviet Russia recognized the new Finnish government just three weeks after the declaration of independence. Sovereignty was fully achieved in May 1918 after a civil war. Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920, from which it sought security guarantees, nevertheless, the government of Sweden carefully avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Another Finnish military policy was the top secret military cooperation between Finland and Estonia, the 1920s and early 1930s were a politically unstable time in Finland
12.
Karelian Isthmus
–
The Karelian Isthmus is the approximately 45–110 km wide stretch of land, situated between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in northwestern Russia, to the north of the River Neva. Its northwestern boundary is the narrow area between the Bay of Vyborg and Lake Ladoga. If the Karelian Isthmus is defined as the territory of present-day Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast to the north of the Neva. The smaller part of the isthmus to the southeast of the old Russia-Finland border is considered historically as Northern Ingria, the rest of the isthmus was historically a part of Finnish Karelia. This was conquered by the Russian Empire during the Great Northern War in 1712, when Finland became independent in 1917, the isthmus remained Finnish. Finnish Karelia was ceded to the Soviet Union by Finland following the Winter War, in 1940–1941, during the Interim Peace, most of the ceded territories in the isthmus were included within the Karelo-Finnish SSR. However, since World War II the entire isthmus has been divided between the city of Saint Petersburg, as well as Priozersky District, Vsevolozhsky District and Vyborgsky District of Leningrad Oblast. According to the 2002 census, the population of the Kurortny District of Saint Petersburg, many Saint Petersburg residents also decamp to the Isthmus during their vacations. The isthmus terrain has been influenced dramatically by the Weichsel glaciation and its highest point lies on the Lembolovo Heights moraine at about 205 m. There are no mountains on the isthmus, but steep hills occur in some places, the Vuoksi, largest river, runs southeastwards from Lake Saimaa of Finland to Lake Ladoga, dividing the isthmus into two uneven parts. Saimaa Canal opened in 1856 links Lake Saimaa to the Bay of Vyborg, the Karelian Isthmus lies within the ecoregion of Scandinavian and Russian taiga. Geobotanically, it lies at the juncture of the Central European, Eastern European, the isthmus is mostly covered by coniferous forests formed by Scots pine and Norway spruce, with numerous lakes as well as small grass, fen and Sphagnum raised bogs. Forests cover approximately 11.700 km of the isthmus, more than three-fourths of its total square, swampy areas occupy on average 5.5 percent of the territory. In the large area along the shore of Lake Ladoga in Vsevolozhsky District, in the southeastern part of the isthmus. The same was true of the lowland along the Neva River. The soil is predominantly podsol, which contains massive boulders, especially in the north and northwest, pine forests are the most widespread and occupy 51% of the forested area of the Karelian Isthmus, followed by spruce forests and birch forests. Prominent vegetation of birch forests include meadowsweet, common wood sorrel, bilberry and graminoids Calamagrostis arundinacea. 1184 species of vascular plants are recorded in the isthmus
13.
Asteroid
–
Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
14.
Teuvo Tulio
–
Theodor Antonius Tugai, better known as Teuvo Tulio, was a Finnish film director and actor. Beginning his career as an actor at the end of the silent era and his films are noted for their extremely melodramatic style. Tulio was born as Theodor Antonius Tugai to a Turkish-Polish father and Persian-Latvian mother in Rēzekne, Tugai spent the early part of his childhood in Latvia with his grandparents, before moving with his mother, who had married a Finn, to Helsinki. At age fourteen, Tugai was the star of his fellow Russian expatriate Valentin Vaalas film Mustat silmät, due to his exotic appearance, the young Tugai was sometimes referred to as Finlands answer to Rudolph Valentino. In 1936 he changed his name to the more Finnish Teuvo Tulio and his first work as director was the 1936 film Taistelu Heikkilän talosta, starring Regina Linnanheimo. Linnanheimo would become Tulios lifelong companion, though the two were never married and she acted in many of his films and helped write the screenplays for three of his features, including his last film, 1973s Sensuela. Altogether, Tulio directed 15 feature films, three of which were destroyed in a fire, Tulios films were an influence on the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, whose admiration brought the filmmaker international attention later in his life. In 2008 and 2009, short retrospectives of his work were held in the United States at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Tulios strenuous lyricism allows the objective correlative to run wild
15.
Valentin Vaala
–
Valentin Vaala was a Finnish film director, screenwriter and editor. His career spanned decades, from 1929 to 1973, and has been called one of the most significant. As a teenager, Vaala befriended Theodor Tugai – who later became known as a director and actor under the name Teuvo Tulio –. They decided to start making films together, but their first feature-length attempt, Mustat silmät in 1929, Vaala himself was reportedly so disappointed with the resulting film that he dumped the original camera negatives into the sea. However, later in the year, Vaala and Tulio partially remade the film as Mustalaishurmaaja for the Fennica-Filmi company. This film became a hit and earned the starring Tulio the nickname Finlands Valentino, the pair went on to make two other films, Laveata tietä and Sininen varjo with Vaala directing and Tulio starring. While Tulio moved on with his own acting and directing career, Vaala went on to direct his last film for Fennica-Filmi, Helsingin kuuluisin liikemies, after the demise of Fennica, Vaala directed one film for Bio-Kuva, Kun isä tahtoo…, also in 1934. The next year Vaala was hired as the director of the film production company, Suomi-Filmi. Vaala remained contracted to the company for the rest of his career, during his career, Vaala directed 44 feature-length theatrical films, the second most among Finnish directors, behind only Toivo Särkkä. 38 of those films were made while he was employed by Suomi-Filmi and his first film with the company was the romantic comedy Kaikki rakastavat. It was also the first film that Ansa Ikonen and Tauno Palo starred in together. The film was followed by a comedy, Vaimoke in 1936, which starred the same leading pair. The film was an adaptation from a work by Hilja Valtonen, as was the sequel, Mieheke, many of Vaalas films were adaptations of popular classics of Finnish literature, by authors such as Mika Waltari, Aleksis Kivi and Maiju Lassila. Another personal favorite of his, and also a success, was Loviisa, Niskavuoren nuori emäntä. During Vaalas career, his most popular films reached huge audiences in relation to the size of his home country, one of his most popular films, Juurakon Hulda, was seen in cinemas by approximately a million viewers out of a population of 3.5 million. It was also remade in Hollywood as The Farmers Daughter, Vaalas other popular films included Niskavuoren naiset in 1938 and his adaptations from Mika Waltaris books Gabriel, tule takaisin and Omena putoaa…. Nummisuutarit in 1957 and Nuori Mylläri in 1958 were also among the most watched films in Finland during their release years, Vaalas final feature film was Totuus on armoton in 1963, but his career still continued as a director of short films. His last credited work was a documentary film about the Finlandia Hall
16.
Jack Witikka
–
Jack Witikka was a Finnish film director and screenwriter. He directed 15 films between 1951 and 1968 and his 1961 film Little Presents was entered into the 12th Berlin International Film Festival. He is buried in the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki, Little Presents Jack Witikka at the Internet Movie Database
17.
Svenska Dagbladet
–
Svenska Dagbladet, abbreviated SvD, is a daily newspaper published in Stockholm, Sweden. The first issue of Svenska Dagbladet appeared on 18 December 1884, ivar Anderson is among its former editors-in-chief who assumed the post in 1940. The paper is published in Stockholm and provides coverage of national and international news as well as coverage of the Greater Stockholm region. Its subscribers are concentrated in the capital, but it is distributed in most of Sweden, during the beginning of the 1900s the paper was one of the right-wing publications in Stockholm. Svenska Dagbladet is owned by Schibsted which purchased it in the late 1990s, the stated position of the editorial page is independently moderate, which means it is independent but adheres to the liberal conservatism of the Moderate Party. On the other hand, the paper is regarded as conservative. In November 2000 Svenska Dagbladet changed its format from broadsheet to tabloid, in 2005 the paper started a Web portal for business news as a joint venture with Aftonbladet. Since 1925 Svenska Dagbladet has awarded an individual sportsperson or a team the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal at the end of each year, the circulation of Svenska Dagbladet was 185,000 copies in 2003. The paper had a circulation of 187,100 copies on weekdays in 2005, among Swedish morning newspapers Svenska Dagbladet had the third largest circulation with 195,200 copies in 2007 after Dagens Nyheter and Göteborgs-Posten. In 2008 Svenska Dagbladet had a circulation of 123,383 copies, the circulation of the paper was 185,600 copies in 2011. It was 159,600 copies in 2012 and 143,400 copies in 2013, gunilla Asker, in 2009 appointed CEO of Svenska Dagbladet. Cordelia Edvardson, Jerusalem correspondent for Svenska Dagbladet from 1977 to 2006, list of Swedish newspapers Svenska Utlandstidningen Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. The worlds great dailies, profiles of fifty newspapers pp 308–13 Official website of Svenska Dagbladet
18.
Helsingin Sanomat
–
Helsingin Sanomat, abbreviated HS and colloquially known as Hesari, is the largest subscription newspaper in Finland and the Nordic countries, owned by Sanoma. Except after certain holidays, it is published daily and its name derives from that of the Finnish capital, Helsinki, where it is published. The paper was founded in 1889 as Päivälehti, when Finland was a Grand Duchy under the Tsar of Russia and its proprietors re-opened the paper under its current name in 1905. Founded as the organ of the Young Finnish Party, the paper has been politically independent, Helsingin Sanomat has a long history as a family business, owned by the Erkko family. It is currently owned by the Sanoma media group also owns Ilta Sanomat. The relationship between the owners of Helsingin Sanomat and Finlands government have sometimes been close, for instance, during the run-up to the Winter War, Eljas Erkko was at the same time the papers publisher and Finlands foreign minister. Mikael Pentikäinen was the editor-in-chief until May 2013 when he was fired from the post, riikka Venäläinen replaced him temporarily in the post. Helsingin Sanomat is published daily in Finnish in tabloid format with the exception of the days after public holidays when the paper does not appear, the only exception to this is the day after Finnish independence day when the revenue from Christmas advertising ensures an edition after that public holiday. Subscriptions make up 97% of the circulation and the lack of a need to attract casual readers on newsstands had led to the front page usually being totally devoted to advertisements. The newspaper was published in broadsheet format until 6 January 2013, the paper also has a monthly supplement named Kuukausiliite, and a weekly TV guide and entertainment-oriented supplement named Nyt. Between 1999 and 2012 there were also both Finnish and English-language online newspaper editions, Helsingin Sanomat is published daily for the iPad. iPad version of Helsingin Sanomat resembles the newspapers traditional version but is optimized for the tablet device. Content of Helsingin Sanomat can be accessed through mobile devices as well. The circulation of Helsingin Sanomat was 476,163 copies in 1993, in the period of 1995–96 the paper had a circulation of 470,600 copies. Its circulation was 446,380 copies in 2001, making it the largest paper in the country, in 2008 its daily circulation was 412,421 on weekdays and 468,505 on Sundays. In 2011 the daily had a circulation of 365,994 copies, the same year it was also the largest paper in terms of readership. The paper has a penetration of approximately 75% of the households of the Greater Helsinki region and its total daily circulation is well over 400,000, or about 8% of Finlands total population, making it the biggest daily subscription newspaper in the Nordic countries. The paper is a significant factor in Finnish society and in public opinion, pertti Klemola, a Finnish journalist and scholar, once called it a state authority, an institution with its own independent social and political will. Helsingin Sanomat strongly advocated Finland joining the European Union in the run-up to the decision to do so in 1994 and it has also openly expressed support for Finlands membership of NATO
19.
Open Library
–
Open Library is an online project intended to create one web page for every book ever published. It provides access to public domain and out-of-print books, which can be read online. Its book information is collected from the Library of Congress, other libraries, if books are available in digital form, a button labelled Read appears next to its catalog listing. Links to where books can be purchased or borrowed are also provided, tens of thousands of modern books were made available from four and then 150 libraries and publishers for ebook digital lending. Open Library began in 2006 with Aaron Swartz as the engineer and leader of Open Librarys technical team. The project was led by George Oates from April 2009 to December 2011, Oates was responsible for a complete site redesign during her tenure. In 2015, the project was continued by Giovanni Damiola and then Brenton Cheng, the site was redesigned and relaunched in May 2010. The site uses Infobase, its own database framework based on PostgreSQL, the source code to the site is published under the GNU Affero General Public License. The website was relaunched adding ADA compliance and offering over 1 million modern, under certain provisions of United States copyright law, libraries are sometimes able to reproduce copyrighted works in formats accessible to users with disabilities
20.
IMDb
–
In 1998 it became a subsidiary of Amazon Inc, who were then able to use it as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes. As of January 2017, IMDb has approximately 4.1 million titles and 7.7 million personalities in its database, the site enables registered users to submit new material and edits to existing entries. Although all data is checked before going live, the system has open to abuse. The site also featured message boards which stimulate regular debates and dialogue among authenticated users, IMDb shutdown the message boards permanently on February 20,2017. Anyone with a connection can read the movie and talent pages of IMDb. A registration process is however, to contribute info to the site. A registered user chooses a name for themselves, and is given a profile page. These badges range from total contributions made, to independent categories such as photos, trivia, bios, if a registered user or visitor happens to be in the entertainment industry, and has an IMDb page, that user/visitor can add photos to that page by enrolling in IMDbPRO. Actors, crew, and industry executives can post their own resume and this fee enrolls them in a membership called IMDbPro. PRO can be accessed by anyone willing to pay the fee, which is $19.99 USD per month, or if paid annually, $149.99, which comes to approximately $12.50 per month USD. Membership enables a user to access the rank order of each industry personality, as well as agent contact information for any actor, producer, director etc. that has an IMDb page. Enrolling in PRO for industry personnel, enables those members the ability to upload a head shot to open their page, as well as the ability to upload hundreds of photos to accompany their page. Anyone can register as a user, and contribute to the site as well as enjoy its content, however those users enrolled in PRO have greater access and privileges. IMDb originated with a Usenet posting by British film fan and computer programmer Col Needham entitled Those Eyes, others with similar interests soon responded with additions or different lists of their own. Needham subsequently started an Actors List, while Dave Knight began a Directors List, and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST from Hank Driskill, which would later be renamed the Actress List. Both lists had been restricted to people who were alive and working, the goal of the participants now was to make the lists as inclusive as possible. By late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series correlated with actors and actresses appearing therein. On October 17,1990, Needham developed and posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, at the time, it was known as the rec. arts. movies movie database
21.
Sully Prudhomme
–
René François Armand Prudhomme was a French poet and essayist. He was the first ever winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901, born in Paris, Prudhomme originally studied to be an engineer, but turned to philosophy and later to poetry, he declared it as his intention to create scientific poetry for modern times. In character sincere and melancholic, he was linked to the Parnassus school, although, at the same time, Prudhomme was born to a French shopkeeper. Prudhomme attended the Lycée Bonaparte, but eye trouble interrupted his studies and he worked for a while in the Creusot region for the Schneider steel foundry, and then began studying law in a notarys office. The favourable reception of his poems by the Conférence La Bruyère encouraged him to begin a literary career. His first collection, Stances et Poèmes, was praised by Sainte-Beuve and it included his most famous poem, Le vase brisé. He published more poetry before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and this war, which he discussed in Impressions de la guerre and La France, permanently damaged his health. The inspiration was clearly Lucretiuss De rerum natura, for the first book of which he made a verse translation and his philosophy was expressed in La Justice and Le Bonheur. The extreme economy of means employed in these poems has, however and he was elected to the Académie française in 1881. Another distinction, Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, was to follow in 1895, after, Le Bonheur, Prudhomme turned from poetry to write essays on aesthetics and philosophy. The first writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, he devoted the bulk of the money he received to the creation of a prize awarded by the Société des gens de lettres. He also founded, in 1902, the Société des poètes français with Jose-Maria de Heredia, at the end of his life, his poor health forced him to live almost as a recluse at Châtenay-Malabry, suffering attacks of paralysis while continuing to work on essays. He died suddenly on 6 September 1907, and was buried at Père-Lachaise in Paris,1901, Testament poétique 1905, La vraie religion selon Pascal 1922, Journal intime, lettres-pensée Gale Contemporary Authors Online, from the Gale Biography Resource Center database Petri Liukkonen. Archived from the original on 4 July 2013
22.
Theodor Mommsen
–
His work regarding Roman history is still of fundamental importance for contemporary research. He was also a prominent German politician, as a member of the Prussian and German parliaments and his works on Roman law and on the law of obligations had a significant impact on the German civil code. Mommsen was born to German parents in Garding in the Duchy of Schleswig in 1817, then ruled by the king of Denmark, and grew up in Bad Oldesloe in Holstein and he studied mostly at home, though he attended the gymnasium Christianeum in Altona for four years. He studied Greek and Latin and received his diploma in 1837, as he could not afford to study at Göttingen, he enrolled at the University of Kiel. Mommsen studied jurisprudence at Kiel from 1838 to 1843, finishing his studies with the degree of Doctor of Roman Law, during this time he was the roommate of Theodor Storm, who was later to become a renowned poet. Together with Mommsens brother Tycho, the three friends even published a collection of poems, thanks to a royal Danish grant, Mommsen was able to visit France and Italy to study preserved classical Roman inscriptions. During the revolution of 1848 he worked as a war correspondent in then-Danish Rendsburg, supporting the German annexation of Schleswig-Holstein, having been forced to leave the country by the Danes, he became a professor of law in the same year at the University of Leipzig. When Mommsen protested against the new constitution of Saxony in 1851, however, the next year he obtained a professorship in Roman law at the University of Zurich and then spent a couple of years in exile. In 1854 he became a professor of law at the University of Breslau where he met Jakob Bernays, Mommsen became a research professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1857. He later helped to create and manage the German Archaeological Institute in Rome. In 1858 Mommsen was appointed a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and he became professor of Roman History at the University of Berlin in 1861. At 2 a. m. on 7 July 1880 a fire occurred in the upper floor workroom-library of Mommsens house at Marchstraße 6 in Berlin, after being burned while attempting to remove valuable papers, he was restrained from returning to the blazing house. Several old manuscripts were burnt to ashes, including Manuscript 0.4.36, there is information that the important Manuscript of Jordanes from Heidelberg University library was burnt. Two other important manuscripts, from Brussels and Halle, were also destroyed, Mommsen was an indefatigable worker who rose at five to do research in his library. People often saw him reading whilst walking in the streets, Mommsen had sixteen children with his wife Marie. Their oldest daughter Maria married Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, the great Classics scholar and their grandson Theodor Ernst Mommsen became a professor of medieval history in the United States. Two of the great-grandsons, Hans Mommsen and Wolfgang Mommsen, were prominent German historians, Mommsen published over 1,500 works, and effectively established a new framework for the systematic study of Roman history. He pioneered epigraphy, the study of inscriptions in material artifacts
23.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
–
Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz was a Polish journalist, novelist and the Nobel Prize laureate. He is best remembered for his novels, especially for his internationally known best-seller Quo Vadis. Born into an impoverished Polish noble family in Russian-ruled Congress Poland, in the late 1860s he began publishing journalistic, in the late 1870s he traveled to the United States, sending back travel essays that won him popularity with Polish readers. In the 1880s he began serializing novels that further increased his popularity, many of his novels remain in print. The Trilogy and Quo Vadis have been filmed, the several times. Sienkiewicz was born on 5 May 1846 in Wola Okrzejska, now a village in the part of eastern Polish region of Lubelskie. His family were impoverished Polish nobles, on his fathers side deriving from Tatars who had settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and his parents were Józef Sienkiewicz and Stefania, née Cieciszowska. He had five siblings, a brother, Kazimierz, and four sisters, Aniela, Helena. His family were entitled to use the Polish Oszyk coat of arms, Wola Okrzejska belonged to the writers maternal grandmother, Felicjana Cieciszowska. His family moved several times, and young Henryk spent his childhood on family estates in Grabowce Górne, Wężyczyn, in September 1858 he began his education in Warsaw, where the family would finally settle in 1861, having bought a tenement house in eastern Warsaws Praga district. He received relatively poor school grades except in the humanities, notably Polish language, due to the hard times, 19-year-old Sienkiewicz took a job as tutor to the Weyher family in Płońsk. It was probably in this period that he wrote his first novel, Ofiara and he also worked on his first novel to be published, Na marne. He completed extramural secondary-school classes, and in 1866 he received his secondary-school diploma, Little is known about this period of his life, other than that he moved out of his parents home, tutored part-time, and lived in poverty. His situation improved somewhat in 1868 when he became tutor to the princely Woroniecki family, in 1867 he wrote a rhymed piece, Sielanka Młodości, which was rejected by Tygodnik Ilustrowany. He completed his university studies in 1871, though he failed to receive a diploma because he did not pass the examination in Greek language, Sienkiewicz also wrote for Gazeta Polska and Niwa, under the pen name Litwos. In 1873 he began writing a column, Bez tytułu, in The Polish Gazette, in 1874 a column, Sprawy bieżące for Niwa and he also collaborated on a Polish translation, published in 1874, of Victor Hugos last novel, Ninety-Three. In June that year, he became co-owner of Niwa, meanwhile, in 1872, he had debuted as a fiction writer with his short novel Na marne, published in the magazine Wieniec. This was followed by Humoreski z teki Woroszyłły, Stary Sługa, Hania, the last three are known as the Little Trilogy
24.
Rudyard Kipling
–
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kiplings works of fiction include The Jungle Book, Kim, and many short stories and his poems include Mandalay, Gunga Din, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, The White Mans Burden, and If—. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, Henry James said, Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known. In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on occasions for a knighthood. Kiplings subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age, George Orwell called him a prophet of British imperialism. Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote, is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary, but as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and a recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts. Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865, in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, to Alice Kipling, Alice was a vivacious woman about whom Lord Dufferin would say, Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room. Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, was the Principal, John Lockwood and Alice had met in 1863 and courted at Rudyard Lake in Rudyard, Staffordshire, England. They married and moved to India in 1865 and they had been so moved by the beauty of the Rudyard Lake area that when their first child was born they referenced it when naming him. Alices sister Georgiana was married to painter Edward Burne-Jones, and her sister Agnes was married to painter Edward Poynter, Kiplings most famous relative was his first cousin, Stanley Baldwin, who was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times in the 1920s and 1930s. Kiplings birth home on the campus of the J J School of Art in Bombay for many years was used as the Deans residence. Although the cottage bears a plaque stating that this is the site where Kipling was born, the original cottage may have torn down decades ago. Some historians and conservationists are also of the view that the bungalow merely marks a site close to the home of his birth, as the bungalow was built in 1882, Kipling seems to have also said so to the dean when he visited J J School in the 1930s. Kipling was to write of Bombay, According to Bernice M. Murphy, Kipling’s parents considered themselves Anglo-Indians and so too would their son, complex issues of identity and national allegiance would become prominent features in his fiction. So one spoke English, haltingly translated out of the idiom that one thought. Kiplings days of light and darkness in Bombay ended when he was five years old
25.
Rudolf Christoph Eucken
–
Rudolf Christoph Eucken was a German philosopher. Eucken was born on 5 January 1846 in Aurich, then in the Kingdom of Hanover and his father, Ammo Becker Eucken died when he was a child, and he was brought up by his mother, Ida Maria. He was educated at Aurich, where one of his teachers was the classical philologist and he studied at Göttingen University, where Hermann Lotze was one of his teachers, and Berlin University. In the latter place, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg was a professor whose ethical tendencies, Eucken received his Ph. D. in classical philology and ancient history at Göttingen University in 1866 with a dissertation under the title De Aristotelis dicendi ratione. However, the bent of his mind was definitely towards the side of theology. He stayed there until 1874 when he took up a position at the University of Jena. He stayed there until he retired in 1920, from 1913–1914 he served as guest lecturer at New York University. During World War I, Eucken, like many of his academic colleagues, Euckens philosophical work is partly historical and partly constructive, the former side being predominant in his earlier, the latter in his later works. Their most striking feature is the organic relationship between the two parts. The aim of the works is to show the necessary connexion between philosophical concepts and the age to which they belong, the same idea is at the root of his constructive speculation. All philosophy is philosophy of life, the development of a new culture, not mere intellectualism and this practical idealism Eucken described by the term ethical activism. In accordance with this principle, Eucken gave considerable attention to social and educational problems and he maintained that humans have souls, and that they are therefore at the junction between nature and spirit. He believed that people should overcome their non-spiritual nature by continuous efforts to achieve a life, another aspect of his ethical activism. He married Irene Passow in 1882 and had a daughter and two sons and his son Walter Eucken became a famous founder of ordoliberal thought in economics. His son Arnold Eucken was a chemist/physicist, Rudolf Eucken died on 15 September 1926 in Jena at the age of 80. Main Currents of Modern Thought, A Study of the Spiritual and Intellectual Movements of the Present Day, the Meaning and Value of Life, A. and C. Collected Essays, T. Fisher Unwin,1914 and he delivered lectures in England in 1911 and spent six months lecturing at Harvard University and elsewhere in the United States in 1912–1913. Rudolf Eucken, His Philosophy and Influence, Charles Scribners Sons,1913, Rudolf Euckens Philosophy, The Dublin Review, Vol. CLV, July/October,1914
26.
Paul Heyse
–
Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was a distinguished German writer and translator. A member of two important literary societies, the Tunnel über der Spree in Berlin and Die Krokodile in Munich, he wrote novels, poetry,177 short stories, the sum of Heyses many and varied productions made him a dominant figure among German men of letters. Wirsen, one of the Nobel judges, said that Germany has not had a literary genius since Goethe. Heyse is the fifth oldest laureate in literature, after Doris Lessing, Theodor Mommsen, Alice Munro, paul Heyse was born on 15 March 1830 in Heiliggeiststraße, Berlin. His paternal grandfather Johann Christian August Heyse, was a famous German grammarian, Heyse attended the renamed Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium until 1847. He was later remembered as a model student, after leaving school Heyse began studying classical philology. He met Jacob Burckhardt, Adolph Menzel, Theodor Fontane and Theodor Storm, frühlingsanfang 1848, the first of Heyses poems to see print, expressed his enthusiasm for the recent Revolution. After a brief excursion to see the student militias he returned home without joining them, apparently out of consideration for the concerns of his parents and friends. Having studied for two years at the University of Berlin he left for Bonn in April 1849 in order to art history. Heyses first book, Der Jungbrunnen was published anonymously by his father that year as was his tragedy Francesca von Rimini. About the same time, Heyse received from the publisher Alexander Duncker a manuscript by the then-unknown Theodor Storm, Heyses enthusiastic critique of Sommergeschichten und Lieder laid the foundations of their future friendship. In 1851 Heyse won a contest held by the members of the Tunnel for the ballad Das Tal von Espigno, wolf also set poems from Heyses collection Italienisches Liederbuch of 1860. Throughout his career Heyse worked as a translator, above all of Italian literature, in May 1852 Heyse was awarded a doctorate for his work on the troubadours, and a Prussian scholarship allowed him to depart for Italy to look for old Provençal manuscripts. He made friends with Arnold Böcklin and Joseph Victor von Scheffel but was banned from the Vatican library after being discovered copying passages from unpublished manuscripts, much of his new writing appeared in the Argo, the yearbook of the Rütli writers. Emanuel Geibel persuaded the King of Bavaria, Maximilian II, to grant Heyse a titular professorship in Munich, Heyse was thus appointed professor of Romance philology, although he never taught at that citys university. After his marriage on 15 May to Margarete Kugler he arrived in Munich on 25 May 1854, in December Heyse began a long correspondence with Eduard Mörike. On 22 August 1855 Heyses first son, Franz, was born, Heyse would have four children by his first marriage, Franz, Julie or Lulu, Ernst and Clara. On 30 September 1862, his wife Margarete died in Meran of a lung illness and he completed the historical drama, Ludwig der Bayer – a Bavarian period piece which Maximilian II had long been eager to see – but its theatrical production was a failure
27.
Maurice Maeterlinck
–
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement. In later life, Maeterlinck committed plagiarism, Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, to a wealthy, French-speaking family. His mother, Mathilde Colette Françoise, came from a wealthy family and his father, Polydore, was a notary who enjoyed tending the greenhouses on their property. In September 1874 he was sent to the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe and his experiences at this school influenced his distaste for the Catholic Church and organized religion. He had written poems and short novels during his studies, after finishing his law studies at the University of Ghent in 1885, he spent a few months in Paris, France. He met some members of the new Symbolism movement, Villiers de lIsle Adam in particular, Maeterlinck instantly became a public figure when his first play, Princess Maleine, received enthusiastic praise from Octave Mirbeau, the literary critic of Le Figaro in August 1890. In the following years, he wrote a series of symbolist plays characterized by fatalism and mysticism, most importantly Intruder, The Blind and Pelléas and he had a relationship with the singer and actress Georgette Leblanc from 1895 until 1918. Leblanc influenced his work for the two decades. With the play Aglavaine and Sélysette Maeterlinck began to create characters, especially female characters, Leblanc performed these female characters on stage. Even though mysticism and metaphysics influenced his work throughout his career, in 1895, with his parents frowning upon his open relationship with an actress, Maeterlinck and Leblanc moved to the district of Passy in Paris. The Catholic Church was unwilling to grant her a divorce from her Spanish husband and they frequently entertained guests, including Mirbeau, Jean Lorrain, and Paul Fort. They spent their summers in Normandy, during this period, Maeterlinck published his Twelve Songs, The Treasure of the Humble, The Life of the Bee, and Ariadne and Bluebeard. In 1903, Maeterlinck received the Triennial Prize for Dramatic Literature from the Belgian government. During this period, and down to the Great War, he was looked up to, throughout Europe, as a great sage. In 1906, Maeterlinck and Leblanc moved to a villa in Grasse and he spent his hours meditating and walking. As he emotionally pulled away from Leblanc, he entered a state of depression, diagnosed with neurasthenia, he rented the Benedictine Abbey of St. Wandrille in Normandy to help him relax. By renting the abbey he rescued it from the desecration of being sold and used as a chemical factory, Leblanc would often walk around in the garb of an abbess, he would wear roller skates as he moved about the house
28.
Gerhart Hauptmann
–
Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist. He is counted among the most important promoters of literary naturalism and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912. Gerhart Hauptmann was born in 1862 in Obersalzbrunn, now known as Szczawno-Zdrój and his parents were the Robert and Marie Hauptmann, who ran a hotel in the area. As a youth, Hauptmann had a reputation of being loose with the truth, beginning in 1868, he attended the village school and then, in 1874, the Realschule in Breslau for which he had only barely passed the qualifying exam. Hauptmann had difficulties adjusting himself to his new surroundings in the city and he lived, along with his brother Carl, in a somewhat run-down student boarding house before finding lodging with a pastor. He also ran into problems with the Prussian-influenced school, above all the strictness of the teachers and the better treatment of his noble classmates. His dislike and numerous illness which kept him from attending class, over time, he came to appreciate Breslau because of the opportunity to visit the theater. In the spring of 1878, Hauptmann left the Realschule to learn agriculture on his uncles farm in Lohnig, after a year and a half, however, he had to break off his training. He was not physically prepared for the work and he had a contracted a lung ailment that troubled him for the next twenty months. After he failed to pass an entry exam for the Prussian Army, Hauptmann entered the sculpture school at the Royal Art. There he met Josef Block who became a lifelong friend, for his brothers wedding, he wrote a short play, Liebesfrühling, that was performed on the night before the wedding. Also at the wedding, he met the sister, Marie Thienemann. After he left Jena, Marie financed a Mediterranean trip, which he undertook with his brother Carl, on the trip, he decided to settle in Rome as a sculptor, however he had little success. His attempt to himself as part of Romes German expatriate community also failed. Hauptmann returned to Germany, disappointed and began a stint at the Royal Academy in Dresden before beginning to study history at Humboldt University of Berlin. While there, he devoted his interests to the rather than to his studies. In 1891 he moved to Schreiberhau in Silesia and it was followed by The Reconciliation, Lonely People and The Weavers, a powerful drama depicting the uprising of the Silesian weavers in 1844 for which he is best known outside of Germany. Hauptmann married Marie Theienemann in Radebeul on May 5,1885, in July, they took their honeymoon to Rügen along with Carl and his wife, Maries sister, Martha
29.
Rabindranath Tagore
–
Author of Gitanjali and its profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Sometimes referred to as the Bard of Bengal, Tagores poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial, however, his elegant prose, a Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha, by 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and ardent anti-nationalist, he denounced the British Raj, Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal, Gitanjali, Gora and Ghare-Baire are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems, Indias Jana Gana Mana and Bangladeshs Amar Shonar Bangla, the Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work. The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born on 7 May 1861 in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta to Debendranath Tagore, Tagore was raised mostly by servants, his mother had died in his early childhood and his father travelled widely. The Tagore family was at the forefront of the Bengal renaissance and they hosted the publication of literary magazines, theatre and recitals of Bengali and Western classical music featured there regularly. Tagores father invited several professional Dhrupad musicians to stay in the house, Tagores oldest brother Dwijendranath was a philosopher and poet. Another brother, Satyendranath, was the first Indian appointed to the elite, yet another brother, Jyotirindranath, was a musician, composer, and playwright. His sister Swarnakumari became a novelist, jyotirindranaths wife Kadambari Devi, slightly older than Tagore, was a dear friend and powerful influence. Her abrupt suicide in 1884, soon after he married, left him for years profoundly distraught, Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor or nearby Bolpur and Panihati, idylls which the family visited. His brother Hemendranath tutored and physically conditioned him—by having him swim the Ganges or trek through hills, by gymnastics and he learned drawing, anatomy, geography and history, literature, mathematics, Sanskrit, and English—his least favourite subject. Tagore loathed formal education—his scholarly travails at the local Presidency College spanned a single day, there Tagore read biographies, studied history, astronomy, modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the classical poetry of Kālidāsa. Tagore returned to Jorosanko and completed a set of works by 1877. As a joke, he claimed that these were the lost works of a newly discovered 17th-century Vaiṣṇava poet Bhānusiṃha, regional experts accepted them as the lost works of Bhānusiṃha. He debuted in the genre in Bengali with Bhikharini. Published in the year, Sandhya Sangit includes the poem Nirjharer Swapnabhanga
30.
Romain Rolland
–
Rolland was born in Clamecy, Nièvre into a family that had both wealthy townspeople and farmers in its lineage. Writing introspectively in his Voyage intérieur, he himself as a representative of an antique species. He would cast these ancestors in Colas Breugnon, accepted to the École normale supérieure in 1886, he first studied philosophy, but his independence of spirit led him to abandon that so as not to submit to the dominant ideology. When he returned to France in 1895, he received his degree with his thesis Les origines du théâtre lyrique moderne. Histoire de l’opéra en Europe avant Lulli et Scarlatti, for the next two decades, he taught at various lycées in Paris before directing the newly established music school École des Hautes Études Sociales from 1902–11. In 1903 he was appointed to the first chair of history at the Sorbonne. His first book was published in 1902, when he was 36 years old, through his advocacy for a peoples theatre, he made a significant contribution towards the democratization of the theatre. As a humanist, he embraced the work of the philosophers of India, Rolland was strongly influenced by the Vedanta philosophy of India, primarily through the works of Swami Vivekananda. A demanding, yet timid, young man, he did not like teaching and he was not indifferent to youth, Jean-Christophe, Olivier and their friends, the heroes of his novels, are young people. But with real-life persons, youths as well as adults, Rolland maintained only a distant relationship and he was first and foremost a writer. Assured that literature would provide him with a modest income, he resigned from the university in 1912, Romain Rolland was a lifelong pacifist. He was one of the few major French writers to retain his pacifist internationalist values and he protested against the first World War in Au-dessus de la mêlée, Above the Battle. In 1924, his book on Gandhi contributed to the Indian nonviolent leaders reputation, in 1932 Rolland was among the first members of the World Committee Against War and Fascism, organized by Willi Münzenberg. Rolland criticized the control Münzenberg assumed over the committee and was against it being based in Berlin, Rolland moved to Villeneuve, on the shores of Lac Léman to devote himself to writing. His life was interrupted by health problems, and by travels to art exhibitions and his voyage to Moscow, on the invitation of Maxim Gorky, was an opportunity to meet Joseph Stalin, whom he considered the greatest man of his time. Rolland served unofficially as ambassador of French artists to the Soviet Union, however, as a pacifist, he was uncomfortable with Stalins brutal repression of the opposition. During Serges imprisonment, Rolland had agreed to handle the publications of Serges writings in France, in 1937, he came back to live in Vézelay, which, in 1940, was occupied by the Germans. During the occupation, he isolated himself in complete solitude, never stopping his work, in 1940, he finished his memoirs
31.
Verner von Heidenstam
–
Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam was a Swedish poet, novelist and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1916. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1912 and his poems and prose work are filled with a great joy of life, sometimes imbued with a love of Swedish history and scenery, particularly its physical aspects. He was born in Olshammar, Örebro County on 6 July 1859 to a noble family and he studied paintings in the Academy of Stockholm, but soon left because of ill health. He then traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and the orient and he was at once greeted as a poet of promise on the publication of his first collection of poems, Vallfart och vandringsår. It is a collection of inspired by his experiences in the orient. His love for beauty is also by the long narrative poem Hans Alienus. Dikter and Karolinerna, a series of portraits of King Charles XII of Sweden and his cavaliers. English translations of stories from Karolinerna can be found in the American-Scandinavian Review, May 1914, November 1915. The two volumes of Folkunga Trädet are the inspired, epic story of a clan of Swede chieftains in the Middle Ages, professors Lidforss and Böök also took part. Heidenstams chief contribution was the pamphlet, directed chiefly against Strindberg, heidenstams poetical collection Nya Dikter, published in 1915, deals with philosophical themes, mainly concerning the elevation of man to a better humanity from solitude. He died at his home Övralid on 20 May 1940, works in English translation A King and his Campaigners The Soothsayer Swedens Laureate. Sweden and Visions of Norway, Politics and Culture, 1814-1905, Swedish Literature, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 8, pp. 313–329
pronunciation (help·info)) (16 September 1888 – 3 June 1964) was one of the most famous Finnish writers and in 1939 became the first Finnish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature "for his deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature".[1]
