Suso Cecchi d'Amico
Suso Cecchi D'Amico was an Italian screenwriter and actress. She won the 1980 David di Donatello Award for lifetime career, she worked with all of the most celebrated post-war Italian film directors, wrote or co-wrote many award winning films—among them: Franco Zeffirelli: The Taming of the Shrew, Brother Sun, Sister Moon Luchino Visconti: Bellissima and His Brothers, Ludwig, The Leopard, Conversation Piece Vittorio de Sica: Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan Michelangelo Antonioni: Le Amiche Mario Monicelli: Big Deal on Madonna Street, Risate di gioia, Casanova 70 Alessandro Blasetti: Lucky to Be a Woman Luigi Zampa: L'onorevole Angelina, To Live in Peace Francesco Rosi: Salvatore Giuliano Luigi Comencini: The Window to Luna Park Alberto Lattuada: Flesh Will SurrenderCecchi D'Amico wrote the libretto for Nino Rota's opera I due timidi and collaborated on the script of William Wyler's Roman Holiday. She was a member of the jury at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, she was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 1994 Venice film festival.
Suso Cecchi D'Amico was the daughter of writer Emilio Cecchi. In 1938, she married the musicologist Fedele D'Amico, son of theatre critic Silvio D'Amico, they had three children who have themselves made significant contributions to Italian culture: Masolino and Catherine. Suso Cecchi D'Amico died in Rome at the age of 96, she worked as a translator of literary works but was asked to read a screenplay, in order to give feedback. She was asked to write one herself and her career as a screenwriter was launched. 1962: Boccaccio 70 Suso Cecchi D'Amico on IMDb "Suso Cecchi d'Amico". Find a Grave. Retrieved March 27, 2011. Literature on Suso Cecchi D'Amico
Josef Kainz
Josef Gottfried Ignaz Kainz was an Austrian actor of Hungarian birth. He was active in theatres in Austria and Germany from 1873–1910. Revered as one of the greatest actors of the German-speaking theatre, the city of Vienna annually bestowed a theatre award for outstanding acting performance named after him, the Kainz Medal, from 1958 to 1999. Kainz was born in the town of Moson in the Austrian Empire, today part of Mosonmagyaróvár, where his father worked as a railroad official. In 1867, the family returned to Vienna, where Josef started his performance career at the age of 15, followed by engagements at theatres in Maribor and Meiningen. From 1880, he worked with Ernst von Possart at the National Theatre Munich and became one of the favourite actors of King Ludwig II of Bavaria appearing in private performance for the monarch's delight. Three years Kainz joined the ensemble of the newly established Deutsches Theater in Berlin, where he gained immense popularity with performances of Hamlet, Richard II, Schiller's Don Carlos and as Franz Moor in The Robbers.
With director Ludwig Barnay he went to the Berliner Theater in 1888. Both men, soon came into conflict with each other, which earned Kainz a professional disqualification on German stages for breaking his contract, he toured abroad for several years. In 1899, he achieved an employment at the Vienna Burgtheater and, vested with the title of Hofschauspieler, played characters like Shylock in The Merchant of Venice or Tartuffe. Kainz died of cancer in Vienna aged 52, a few days after he was appointed director of the Burgtheater, his body is buried at the Döbling cemetery
Unification of Germany
The unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state occurred on 18 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France. Princes of the German states, excluding Austria, gathered there to proclaim William I of Prussia as German Emperor after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War. Unofficially, the de facto transition of most of the German-speaking populations into a federated organization of states had been developing for some time through alliances formal and informal between princely rulers, but in fits and starts; the self-interests of the various parties hampered the process over nearly a century of autocratic experimentation, beginning in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, which prompted the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the subsequent rise of German nationalism. Unification exposed tensions due to religious, linguistic and cultural differences among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 only represented one moment in a continuum of the larger unification processes.
The Holy Roman Emperor had been called "Emperor of all the Germanies". In the empire, higher nobility were referred to as "Princes of Germany" or "Princes of the Germanies"—for the lands once called East Francia had been organized and governed as pocket kingdoms since before the rise of Charlemagne. In the mountainous terrain of much of the territory, isolated peoples developed cultural, educational and religious differences over such a lengthy time period. By the nineteenth century and communications improvements brought these regions closer together; the Holy Roman Empire, which had included more than 500 independent states, was dissolved when Emperor Francis II abdicated during the War of the Third Coalition. Despite the legal and political disruption associated with the end of the Empire, the people of the German-speaking areas of the old Empire had a common linguistic and legal tradition further enhanced by their shared experience in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. European liberalism offered an intellectual basis for unification by challenging dynastic and absolutist models of social and political organization.
Economically, the creation of the Prussian Zollverein in 1818, its subsequent expansion to include other states of the German Confederation, reduced competition between and within states. Emerging modes of transportation facilitated business and recreational travel, leading to contact and sometimes conflict among German speakers from throughout Central Europe; the model of diplomatic spheres of influence resulting from the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 after the Napoleonic Wars endorsed Austrian dominance in Central Europe. The negotiators at Vienna took no account of Prussia's growing strength within and among the German states and so failed to foresee that Prussia would rise to challenge Austria for leadership of the German peoples; this German dualism presented two solutions to the problem of unification: Kleindeutsche Lösung, the small Germany solution, or Großdeutsche Lösung, the greater Germany solution. Historians debate whether Otto von Bismarck—Minister President of Prussia—had a master plan to expand the North German Confederation of 1866 to include the remaining independent German states into a single entity or to expand the power of the Kingdom of Prussia.
They conclude that factors in addition to the strength of Bismarck's Realpolitik led a collection of early modern polities to reorganize political, economic and diplomatic relationships in the 19th century. Reaction to Danish and French nationalism provided foci for expressions of German unity. Military successes—especially those of Prussia—in three regional wars generated enthusiasm and pride that politicians could harness to promote unification; this experience echoed the memory of mutual accomplishment in the Napoleonic Wars in the War of Liberation of 1813–14. By establishing a Germany without Austria, the political and administrative unification in 1871 at least temporarily solved the problem of dualism. 1797: The French First Republic annexed the Left Bank of the Rhine as a result of the War of the First Coalition. 1802: Previous annexations by France confirmed following its victory in the War of the Second Coalition. 1804: Francis I of Austria declared the new Austrian Empire as a reaction to Napoleon Bonaparte's proclamation of the First French Empire in 1804.
1806: As a result of the War of the Third Coalition, Napoleon I annexed some territories East of the Rhine, replaced the Holy Roman Empire by the Confederation of the Rhine as a French client-state. 1807: Prussia lost one half of its territory following the War of the Fourth Coalition. 1815: After the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna reinstated the Germanic states into the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire. 1819: The Carlsbad Decrees suppressed any form of pan-Germanic activities to avoid the creation of a'German state'. 1834: The Prussian-led custom union evolved into the Zollverein that included all Confederation states except the Austrian Empire. 1848: Revolts across the German Confederation, such as in Berlin and Frankfurt, forced King Frederick William IV of Prussia to grant a constitution to the Confederation. In the meantime, the Frankfurt Parliament was set up in 1848 and attempted to pro
Cosima Wagner
Cosima Wagner was the illegitimate daughter of the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt and Marie d'Agoult. She became the second wife of the German composer Richard Wagner, with him founded the Bayreuth Festival as a showcase for his stage works. Commentators have recognised Cosima as the principal inspiration for Wagner's works Parsifal. In 1857, after a childhood spent under the care of her grandmother and with governesses, Cosima married the conductor Hans von Bülow. Although the marriage produced two children, it was a loveless union, in 1863 Cosima began a relationship with Wagner, 24 years her senior, she married him in 1870. During her directorship, Cosima opposed theatrical innovations and adhered to Wagner's original productions of his works, an approach continued by her successors long after her retirement in 1907, she shared Wagner's convictions of German cultural and racial superiority, under her influence, Bayreuth became identified with antisemitism. This was a defining feature of Bayreuth for decades, into the Nazi era which followed her death in 1930.
Thus, although she is perceived as the saviour of the festival, her legacy remains controversial. In January 1833 the 21-year-old Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt met Marie d'Agoult, a Parisian socialite six years his senior. Marie's antecedents were mixed. Marie had been married since 1827 to Charles, Comte d'Agoult, had borne him two daughters, but the union had become sterile. Drawn together by their mutual intellectual interests and Liszt embarked on a passionate relationship. In March 1835 the couple fled Paris for Switzerland. In the following two years Liszt and Marie travelled in pursuit of his career as a concert pianist. Late in 1837, when Marie was pregnant with their second child, the couple were at Como in Italy. Here, on 24 December in a lakeside hotel in Bellagio, a second daughter was born, they named her Francesca Gaetana Cosima, the unusual third name being derived from St Cosmas, a patron saint of physicians and apothecaries. With her sister she was left in the care of wet nurses, while Liszt and Marie continued to travel in Europe.
Their third child and only son, was born on 9 May 1839 in Venice. In 1839, while Liszt continued his travels, Marie took the social risk of returning to Paris with her daughters, her hopes of recovering her status in the city were dented when her influential mother, Madame de Flavigny, refused to acknowledge the children. Liszt's solution was to remove the girls from Marie and place them with his mother, Anna Liszt, in her Paris home while Daniel remained with nurses in Venice. By this means, both Marie and Liszt could continue their independent lives. Relations between the couple cooled, by 1841 they were seeing little of each other. By 1845 the breach between them was such. Liszt forbade contact between mother and daughters. Marie threatened to fight him "like a lioness", but soon gave up the struggle. Though they were living in the same city, she did not see either of her daughters for five years, until 1850. Cosima and Blandine remained with Anna Liszt until 1850, joined by Daniel. Cosima's biographer George Marek describes Anna as "a simple, unworldly but warmhearted woman... for the first time experienced what it was to be touched by love".
Of the sisters, Blandine was evidently the prettier. Although Liszt's relations with his children were formal and distant, he provided for them liberally, ensured that they were well educated. Both girls were sent to Madame Bernard's, an exclusive boarding school, while Daniel was prepared for the prestigious Lycée Bonaparte. In 1847 Liszt met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, the estranged wife of a German prince who lived in Russia. By the autumn of 1848 she and Liszt had become lovers, their relationship lasted for the remainder of his life, she assumed responsibility for the management of Liszt's life, including the upbringing of his daughters. Early in 1850 Liszt had been disturbed to learn that Blandine and Cosima were seeing their mother again. Liszt's instructions were clear—Madame Patersi was to control every aspect of the girls' lives: "She alone is to decide what is to be permitted them and what forbidden". Blandine and Cosima were subjected to the Patersi curriculum for four years.
Cosima's biographer Oliver Hilmes likens the regime to that used for breaking in horses, though Marek describes it as exacting but u
Austro-Prussian War
The Austro-Prussian War or Seven Weeks' War was a war fought in 1866 between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, with each being aided by various allies within the German Confederation. Prussia had allied with the Kingdom of Italy, linking this conflict to the Third Independence War of Italian unification; the Austro-Prussian War was part of the wider rivalry between Austria and Prussia, resulted in Prussian dominance over the German states. The major result of the war was a shift in power among the German states away from Austrian and towards Prussian hegemony, impetus towards the unification of all of the northern German states in a Kleindeutsches Reich that excluded the German Austria, it saw the abolition of the German Confederation and its partial replacement by a North German Confederation that excluded Austria and the other South German states. The war resulted in the Italian annexation of the Austrian province of Venetia. For several centuries, Central Europe was split into a few large- or medium-sized states and hundreds of tiny entities, which while ostensibly being within the Holy Roman Empire ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor, operated in a independent fashion.
When an existing Emperor died seven secular and ecclesiastical princes would elect a new Emperor. Over time the Empire became smaller and by 1789 came to consist of German peoples. Aside from five years, the Habsburg family, whose personal territory was Austria, controlled the Emperorship from 1440 to 1806, although it became ceremonial only as Austria found itself at war at certain times with other states within the Empire, such as Prussia, which in fact defeated Austria during the War of Austrian Succession to seize the state of Silesia in 1742. While Austria was traditionally considered the leader of the German states, Prussia became powerful and by the late 18th century was ranked as one of the great powers of Europe. Francis II's abolition of the office of Holy Roman Emperor in 1806 deprived him of his imperial authority over most of German-speaking Europe, though little true authority remained by that time. After 1815, the German states were once again reorganized into a loose confederation: the German Confederation, under Austrian leadership.
The pretext for the conflict was found in the dispute between Prussia and Austria over the administration of Schleswig-Holstein, which the two of them had conquered from Denmark and agreed to jointly occupy at the end of the Second Schleswig War in 1864. When Austria brought the dispute before the German Diet and decided to convene the Diet of Holstein, Prussia declared that the Gastein Convention had thereby been nullified and invaded Holstein; when the German Diet responded by voting for a partial mobilization against Prussia, Bismarck claimed that the German Confederation was ended. Crown Prince Frederick "was the only member of the Prussian Crown Council to uphold the rights of the Duke of Augustenburg and oppose the idea of a war with Austria which he described as fratricide". Although he supported unification and the restoration of the medieval empire, "Fritz could not accept that war was the right way to unite Germany." In reaction to the triumphant French nationalism of Napoleon I and as an organic feeling of commonality glorified during the Romantic era, German nationalism became a potent force during this period.
The ultimate aim of most German nationalists was the gathering of all Germans under one state, although most accepted that the German portions of Switzerland would remain in Switzerland. Two ideas of national unity came to the fore – one including and one excluding Austria; the New York Times summarized its views of German nationalism shortly after the outbreak of the war: There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, each separately ruled by an independent sovereign with all the machinery of State, yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit. There are many interpretations of Otto von Bismarck's behaviour before the Austrian-Prussian war, which concentrate on whether he had a master plan that resulted in this war, the North German Confederation and the unification of Germany.
Bismarck maintained that he orchestrated the conflict in order to bring about the North German Confederation, the Franco-Prussian War and the eventual unification of Germany. However, historians such as A. J. P. Taylor dispute his interpretation and believe that Bismarck did not have a master plan, but rather was an opportunist who took advantage of the favourable situations that presented themselves. Taylor thinks Bismarck manipulated events into the most beneficial solution possible for Prussia. On 22 February 1866, Count Karolyi, Austrian ambassador in Berlin, sent a dispatch to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Alexander Mensdorff-Pouilly, he explained to him that Prussian public opinion had become sensitive about the Duchies issue and that he had no doubt that "this artificial exaggeration of the danger by public opinion formed an essential part of the calculations and actions of Count Bismarck the annexation of the Duchies... a matter of life and death for his political existence to make it appear such for Prussia too
Romy Schneider
Romy Schneider was a film actress born in Vienna and raised in Germany who held German and French citizenship. She started her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy, reprised the role in a more mature version in Visconti's Ludwig. Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era. Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Vienna into a family of actors that included her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty, her Austrian father Wolf Albach-Retty, her German mother, Magda Schneider. Four weeks after Schneider's birth, the parents brought her to Schönau am Königssee in Germany, where she and her brother Wolf-Dieter grew up with their grandparents Franz Xaver and Maria Schneider on the estate named Mariengrund. In her first year Romy Schneider was given into the hands of a governess.
The parents were rarely present due to their acting engagements. In 1943 they separated and were divorced in 1945. Schneider was enrolled in the elementary school of Schönau in September 1944 and attended from July 1949 the girls residential school at Castle Goldenstein, a private secondary school of the Augustinian choir women B. M. V. in Elsbethen near Salzburg. During her schooldays, she discovered her passion for acting, why she was on stage at theatrical performances at the residential school. In her diary entry of June 10, 1952, she wrote: "If it were up to me, I would become an actress; every time I see a nice movie, my first thoughts are about the idea: I have to become an actress. Yes! I have to! " On July 12, 1953, she left the residential school Goldenstein with the degree of secondary school level 1. After the summer holidays, she was supposed to start studying at the college of art in Cologne, as she had shown a talent for painting and drawing during art classes at the school. In addition, Magda Schneider was meanwhile in Cologne with the restaurateur and entrepreneur Hans Herbert Blatzheim.
The training, she did not compete in favor of her first film role. After her parents' divorce in 1945, Magda took charge of Romy and her brother Wolf-Dieter supervising the young girl's career appearing alongside her daughter, her career was overseen by her stepfather, Hans Herbert Blatzheim, a restaurateur who, Schneider indicated, had an unhealthy interest in her. Romy Schneider's first film, made when she was 15, was When the White Lilacs Bloom Again in 1953, credited as Romy Schneider-Albach. In 1954, for the first time, portrayed a royal, playing a young Queen Victoria in the Austrian film Mädchenjahre einer Königin. Schneider's breakthrough came with her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, in the romantic biopic Sissi and its two sequels, Sissi – The Young Empress, Sissi – Fateful Years of an Empress, all with Karlheinz Böhm, who became a close friend. Less stereotypical films during this busy period include The Girl and the Legend, working with a young Horst Buchholz, Monpti, directed by Helmut Käutner, again with Buchholz.
Schneider soon starred in a remake of Max Ophüls's 1933 film Liebelei. It was during the filming of Christine that Schneider fell in love with French actor Alain Delon, who co-starred in the movie, she left Germany to join him in Paris, they announced their engagement in 1959. Schneider decided to live and to work in France gaining the interest of film directors such as Orson Welles for The Trial, based upon Franz Kafka's The Trial, she was introduced by Delon to Luchino Visconti. Under Visconti's direction, she gave performances in the Théâtre Moderne as Annabella in John Ford's stage play'Tis Pity She's a Whore, in the film Boccaccio'70. In 1962, Schneider played Anna in Sacha Pitoëff's production of Chekhov's play The Seagull at the Théâtre Moderne. A brief stint in Hollywood included a starring role in Good Neighbor Sam, a comedy with Jack Lemmon, while What's New Pussycat?, although American-financed, was shot in and around Paris. Schneider co-starred with Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen.
Schneider and Delon decided to separate in 1963. They continued to work together in such films as La Piscine, which revitalized her career, The Assassination of Trotsky. Schneider continued to work in France during the 1970s, most notably with director Claude Sautet on five films, their first collaboration, The Things of Life with Michel Piccoli, was a great success, made Schneider an icon in France. The three worked together again for the noir thriller Max et les ferrailleurs, she appeared with Yves Montand in Sautet's César et Rosalie. Schneider portrayed a more mature and realistic Elisabeth of Austria in Ludwig, Visconti's film about the life of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. "Sissi sticks to me just like oatmeal", Schneider once said. Other successes from this period included Le Train, where she played a German-Jewish refugee in World War II, Claude Chabrol's thriller Innocents with Dirty Hands with Rod Steiger, Le vieux fusil; the gritty That Most Important Thing: Love garnered her first César Award (France's equivalen
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890 and was the first Chancellor of the German Empire between 1871 and 1890. In 1862, King Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck as Minister President of Prussia, a position he would hold until 1890, with the exception of a short break in 1873, he provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark and France. Following the victory against Austria, he abolished the supranational German Confederation and instead formed the North German Confederation as the first German national state in 1867, leading it as Federal Chancellor; this aligned the smaller North German states behind Prussia. Receiving the support of the independent South German states in the Confederation's defeat of France, he formed the German Empire in 1871, unifying Germany with himself as Imperial Chancellor, while retaining control of Prussia at the same time.
The new German nation excluded Austria, Prussia's main opponent for predominance among the German states. With that accomplished by 1871, he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany's position in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace. For historian Eric Hobsbawm, it was Bismarck who "remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for twenty years after 1871, devoted himself and to maintaining peace between the powers". However, his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine gave new fuel to French nationalism and promoted Germanophobia in France; this helped set the stage for the First World War. Bismarck's diplomacy of realpolitik and powerful rule at home gained him the nickname the "Iron Chancellor". German unification and its rapid economic growth was the foundation to his foreign policy, he disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion. Juggling a complex interlocking series of conferences and alliances, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany's position and used the balance of power to keep Europe at peace in the 1870s and 1880s.
A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working class support that might otherwise go to his Socialist enemies. In the 1870s, he allied himself with the Liberals and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturkampf, he lost that battle as the Catholics responded by forming a powerful Centre party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck reversed himself, ended the Kulturkampf, broke with the Liberals, imposed protective tariffs, formed a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists. A devout Lutheran, he was loyal to his king, who argued with Bismarck but in the end supported him against the advice of his wife and his heir. While the Reichstag, Germany's parliament, was elected by universal male suffrage, it did not have much control of government policy. Bismarck distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong, well-trained bureaucracy with power in the hands of a traditional Junker elite that consisted of the landed nobility in eastern Prussia.
Under Wilhelm I, Bismarck controlled domestic and foreign affairs, until he was removed by the young Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890, at the age of seventy-five. Bismarck – a Junker himself – was strong-willed and overbearing, but he could be polite and witty, he displayed a violent temper, he kept his power by melodramatically threatening resignation time and again, which cowed Wilhelm I. He possessed not only a long-term national and international vision but the short-term ability to juggle complex developments; as the leader of what historians call "revolutionary conservatism", Bismarck became a hero to German nationalists. Many historians praise him as a visionary, instrumental in uniting Germany and, once, accomplished, kept the peace in Europe through adroit diplomacy. Bismarck was born in Schönhausen, a wealthy family estate situated west of Berlin in the Prussian province of Saxony, his father, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bismarck, was a Junker estate owner and a former Prussian military officer.
He had two siblings: his younger sister Malwine. The world saw Bismarck as a typical Prussian Junker, an image that he encouraged by wearing military uniforms. Bismarck was well cosmopolitan with a gift for conversation. In addition to his native German, he was fluent in English, Italian and Russian. Bismarck was educated at Johann Ernst Plamann's elementary school, the Friedrich-Wilhelm and Graues Kloster secondary schools. From 1832 to 1833, he studied law at the University of Göttingen, where he was a member of the Corps Hannovera, enrolled at the University of Berlin. In 1838, while stationed as an army reservist in Greifswald, he studied agriculture at the University of Greifswald. At Göttingen, Bismarck befriended the American student John Lothrop Motley. Motley, who became an eminent historian and diplomat while remaining close to Bismarck, wrote a novel in 1839, Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial, about l
