History.

Skiing has a history of almost five millennia. Although modern skiing has evolved from beginnings in Scandinavia, it may have been practiced more than 100 centuries ago in what is now China, according to an interpretation of ancient paintings. However, this continues to be debated.  The word "ski" is one of a handful of words that Norway has exported to the international community. It comes from the Old Norse word "skíð" which means "split piece of wood or firewood".  Asymmetrical skis were used in northern Finland and Sweden until at least the late 19th century. On one foot, the skier wore a long straight non-arching ski for sliding, and a shorter ski was worn on the other foot for kicking. The underside of the short ski was either plain or covered with animal skin to aid this use, while the long ski supporting the weight of the skier was treated with animal fat in a similar manner to modern ski waxing.  Early skiers used one long pole or spear. The first depiction of a skier with two ski poles dates to 1741.  Troops on continental Europe were equipped with skis by 1747.  Skiing was primarily used for transport until the mid-19th century, but since then has also become a recreation and sport. Military ski races were held in Norway during the 18th century, and ski warfare was studied in the late 18th century. As equipment evolved and ski lifts were developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two main genres of skiing emerged—Alpine (downhill) skiing and Nordic skiing. The main difference between the two is the type of ski binding (the way in which the ski boots are attached to the skis).

Types.

Alpine.

Also called "downhill skiing", Alpine skiing typically takes place on a piste at a ski resort. It is characterized by fixed-heel bindings that attach at both the toe and the heel of the skier's boot. Ski lifts, including chairlifts, bring skiers up the slope. Backcountry skiing can be accessed by helicopter, snowcat, hiking and snowmobile. Facilities at resorts can include night skiing, après-ski, and glade skiing under the supervision of the ski patrol and the ski school. Alpine skiing branched off from the older Nordic type of skiing around the 1920s when the advent of ski lifts meant that it was no longer necessary to climb back uphill. Alpine equipment has specialized to the point where it can now only be used with the help of lifts.

Nordic.

The Nordic disciplines include cross-country skiing and ski jumping, which both use bindings that attach at the toes of the skier's boots but not at the heels. Cross-country skiing may be practiced on groomed trails or in undeveloped backcountry areas. Ski jumping is practiced in certain areas that are reserved exclusively for ski jumping.

Telemark.

Telemark skiing is a ski turning technique and FIS-sanctioned discipline, which is named after the Telemark region of Norway. It uses equipment similar to Nordic skiing, where the ski bindings are attached only at the toes of the ski boots, allowing the skier's heel to be raised throughout the turn. However, the skis themselves are often the same width as Alpine skis.

Competition.

The following disciplines are sanctioned by the FIS. Many have their own world cups and are included in the Winter Olympic Games.

Equipment.

Equipment used in skiing includes:

Technique.

Technique has evolved along with ski technology and ski geometry. Early techniques included the telemark turn, the stem, the stem Christie, snowplough, and parallel turn.  New parabolic designs like the Elan SCX have enabled the more modern carve turn.

On other surfaces.

Originally and primarily a winter sport, skiing can also be practiced indoors without snow, outdoors on grass, on dry ski slopes, with ski simulators, or with roller skis. A treadmill-like surface can also be used, to enable skiing while staying in the same place. Sand skiing involves sliding on sand instead of snow, but the skier uses conventional skis, ski poles, bindings and boots.

Skiing is a means of transport using skis to glide on snow. Variations of purpose include basic transport, a recreational activity, or a competitive winter sport. Many types of competitive skiing events are recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the International Ski Federation (FIS).


Life.

As with many medieval figures, little is known about Hugh's early life. He was probably born in the 1090s. His homeland may have been Lorraine, Ypres in Flanders, or the Duchy of Saxony. Some sources say that his birth occurred in the Harz district, being the eldest son of Baron Conrad of Blankenburg. Over the protests of his family, he entered the Priory of St. Pancras, a community of canons regular, where he had studied, located at "Hamerleve" or "Hamersleben", near Halberstadt.  Due to civil unrest shortly after his entry to the priory, Hugh's uncle, Reinhard of Blankenburg, who was the local bishop, advised him to transfer to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, where he himself had studied theology. He accepted his uncle's advice and made the move at a date which is unclear, possibly 1115–18 or around 1120. He spent the rest of his life there, advancing to head the school.

Works.

Hugh wrote many works from the 1120s until his death (Migne, "Patrologia Latina" contains 46 works by Hugh, and this is not a full collection), including works of theology (both treatises and "sententiae"), commentaries (mostly on the Bible but also including one of pseudo-Dionysius' "Celestial Hierarchies"), mysticism, philosophy and the arts, and a number of letters and sermons.  Hugh was influenced by many people, but chiefly by Saint Augustine, especially in holding that the arts and philosophy can serve theology.  Hugh's most significant works include:  Other works by Hugh of St Victor include:  Various other works were wrongly attributed to Hugh in later thought. One such particularly influential work was the "Exposition of the Rule of St Augustine", now accepted to be from the Victorine school but not by Hugh of St Victor.  A new edition of Hugh's works has been started. The first publication is: "Hugonis de Sancto Victore De sacramentis Christiane fidei", ed. Rainer Berndt, Münster: Aschendorff, 2008.

Philosophy and theology.

The early "Didascalicon" was an elementary, encyclopedic approach to God and Christ, in which Hugh avoided controversial subjects and focused on what he took to be commonplaces of Catholic Christianity. In it he outlined three types of philosophy or "science" [scientia] that can help mortals improve themselves and advance toward God: theoretical philosophy (theology, mathematics, physics) provides them with truth, practical philosophy (ethics, economics, politics) aids them in becoming virtuous and prudent, and "mechanical" or "illiberal" philosophy (e.g., carpentry, agriculture, medicine) yields physical benefits. A fourth philosophy, logic, is preparatory to the others and exists to ensure clear and proper conclusions in them. Hugh's deeply mystical bent did not prevent him from seeing philosophy as a useful tool for understanding the divine, or from using it to argue on behalf of faith.  Hugh was heavily influenced by Augustine's exegesis of Genesis. Divine Wisdom was the archetypal form of creation. The creation of the world in six days was a mystery for man to contemplate, perhaps even a sacrament. God's forming order from chaos to make the world was a message to humans to rise up from their own chaos of ignorance and become creatures of Wisdom and therefore beauty. This kind of mystical-ethical interpretation was typical for Hugh, who tended to find Genesis interesting for its moral lessons rather than as a literal account of events.  Along with Jesus, the sacraments were divine gifts that God gave man to redeem himself, though God could have used other means. Hugh separated everything along the lines of "opus creationis" and "opus restaurationis". "Opus Creationis" was the works of the creation, referring to God's creative activity, the true good natures of things, and the original state and destiny of humanity. The "opus restaurationis" was that which dealt with the reasons for God sending Jesus and the consequences of that. Hugh believed that God did not have to send Jesus and that He had other options open to Him. Why he chose to send Jesus is a mystery we are to meditate on and is to be learned through revelation, with the aid of philosophy to facilitate understanding.

Legacy.

Within the Abbey of St Victor, many scholars who followed him are often known as the 'School of St Victor'. Both Achard and Andrew of St Victor appear to have been direct disciples of Hugh. Others, who probably entered the community too late to be directly educated by Hugh, include Richard of Saint Victor and Godfrey. One of Hugh's ideals that did not take root in St Victor, however, was his embracing of science and philosophy as tools for approaching God.  His works are in hundreds of libraries all across Europe. He is quoted in many other publications after his death, and Bonaventure praises him in "De reductione artium ad theologiam".  He was also an influence on the critic Erich Auerbach, who cited this passage from Hugh of St Victor in his essay "Philology and World Literature": It is therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be able to leave them behind altogether. The person who finds his homeland sweet is a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.

Hugh of Saint Victor (c. 1096 – 11 February 1141), was a Saxon canon regular and a leading theologian and writer on mystical theology.


Life.

Edith was born to the reigning English king Edward the Elder by his second wife, Ælfflæd, and hence was a granddaughter of King Alfred the Great. She had an older sister, Eadgifu.  At the request of the East Frankish king Henry the Fowler, who wished to stake a claim to equality and to seal the alliance between the two Saxon kingdoms, her half-brother King Æthelstan sent his sisters Edith and Edgiva to Germany. Henry's eldest son and heir to the throne Otto was instructed to choose whichever one pleased him best. Otto chose Edith, according to Hrotsvitha a woman "of pure noble countenance, graceful character and truly royal appearance", and married her in 930. In 936 Henry the Fowler died and his eldest son Otto, Edith's husband, was crowned king at Aachen Cathedral. A surviving report of the ceremony by the medieval chronicler Widukind of Corvey makes no mention of his wife having been crowned at this point, but according to Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg's chronicle, Eadgyth was nevertheless anointed as queen, albeit in a separate ceremony.  As queen consort, Edith undertook the usual state duties of a "First Lady": when she turns up in the records it is generally in connection with gifts to the state's favoured monasteries or memorials to holy women and saints. In this respect she seems to have been more diligent than her now widowed and subsequently sainted mother-in-law, Queen Matilda, whose own charitable activities only achieve a single recorded mention from the period of Eadgyth's time as queen. There was probably rivalry between the Benedictine founded at Magdeburg by Otto and Eadgyth in 937, a year after coming to the throne, and Matilda's foundation Quedlinburg Abbey, intended by her as a memorial to her husband, the late King Henry. Edith accompanied her husband on his travels, though not during battles. While Otto fought against the rebellious dukes Eberhard of Franconia and Gilbert of Lorraine in 939, she spent the hostilities at Lorsch Abbey.  Like her brother, Æthelstan, Edith was devoted to the cult of their ancestor Saint Oswald of Northumbria and was instrumental in introducing this cult into Germany after her marriage to the emperor. Her lasting influence may have caused certain monasteries and churches in the Duchy of Saxony to be dedicated to this saint.  Eadgyth's death in 946 at a relatively young age, in her thirties, was unexpected. Otto apparently mourned the loss of a beloved spouse. He married Adelaide of Italy in 951.

Children.

Edith and Otto's children were: both buried in St. Alban's Abbey, Mainz.

Tomb.

Initially buried in the St Maurice monastery, Edith's tomb since the 16th century has been located in Magdeburg Cathedral. Long regarded as a cenotaph, a lead coffin inside a stone sarcophagus with her name on it was found and opened in 2008 by archaeologists during work on the building. An inscription recorded that it was the body of Eadgyth, reburied in 1510. The fragmented and incomplete bones were examined in 2009, then brought to Bristol, England, for tests in 2010.  The investigations at Bristol, applying isotope tests on tooth enamel, checked whether she was born and brought up in Wessex and Mercia, as written history indicated. Testing on the bones revealed that they are the remains of Eadgyth, from study made of the enamel of the teeth in her upper jaw. Testing of the enamel revealed that the individual entombed at Magdeburg had spent time as a youth in the chalky uplands of Wessex. The bones are the oldest found of a member of English royalty.  Following the tests the bones were re-interred in a new titanium coffin in her tomb at Magdeburg Cathedral on 22 October 2010.

External links.

Edith of England, also spelt Eadgyth or Ædgyth (, ; 910 – 26 January 946), a member of the House of Wessex, was German queen from 936, by her marriage with King Otto I.


Life.

Ansgar was the son of a noble Frankish family, born near Amiens (present day France). After his mother's early death, Ansgar was brought up in Corbie Abbey, and was educated at the Benedictine monastery in Picardy. According to the "Vita Ansgarii" ("Life of Ansgar"), when the little boy learned in a vision that his mother was in the company of Mary, mother of Jesus, his careless attitude toward spiritual matters changed to seriousness. His pupil, successor, and eventual biographer Rimbert considered the visions (of which this was the first) to have been Ansgar's main life motivator.  Ansgar was a product of the phase of Christianization of Saxony (present day Northern Germany) begun by Charlemagne and continued by his son and successor, Louis the Pious. In 822 Ansgar became one of many missionaries sent to found the abbey of Corvey (New Corbie) in Westphalia, where he became a teacher and preacher. A group of monks including Ansgar were sent further north to Jutland with the king Harald Klak, who had received baptism during his exile. With Harald's downfall in 827 and Ansgar's companion Autbert having died, their school for the sons of courtiers closed and Ansgar returned to Germany. Then in 829, after the Swedish king Björn at Hauge requested missionaries for his Swedes, King Louis sent Ansgar, now accompanied by friar Witmar from New Corbie as his assistant. Ansgar preached and made converts, particularly during six months at Birka, on Lake Mälaren, where the wealthy widow Mor Frideborg extended hospitality. Ansgar organized a small congregation with her and the king's steward, Hergeir, as its most prominent members.  In 831 Ansgar returned to Louis' court at Worms and was appointed to the Archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. This was a new archbishopric, incorporating the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden and with the right to send missions into all the northern lands, as well as to consecrate bishops for them. Ansgar received the mission of evangelizing pagan Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The King of Sweden decided to cast lots as to whether to admit the Christian missionaries into his kingdom. Ansgar recommended the issue to the care of God, and the lot was favorable. Ansgar was consecrated as a bishop in November 831, with the approval of Gregory IV. Before traveling north once again, Ansgar traveled to Rome to receive the pallium directly from the pope's hands, and was formally named legate for the northern lands. Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims had previously received a similar commission, but would be deposed twice before his death in 851, and never actually traveled so far north, so the jurisdiction was divided by agreement, with Ebbo retaining Sweden for himself. For a time Ansgar devoted himself to the needs of his own diocese, which was still missionary territory and had few churches. He founded a monastery and a school in Hamburg. Although intended to serve the Danish mission further north, it accomplished little.  After Louis the Pious died in 840, his empire was divided and Ansgar lost the abbey of Turholt, which Louis had given to endow Ansgar's work. Then in 845, the Danes unexpectedly raided Hamburg, destroying all the church's treasures and books. Ansgar now had neither see nor revenue, and many helpers deserted him. The new king, Louis' third son, Louis the German, did not re-endow Turholt to Ansgar, but in 847 he named the missionary to the vacant diocese of Bremen, where Ansgar moved in 848. However, since Bremen had been suffragan to the Bishop of Cologne, combining the sees of Bremen and Hamburg presented canonical difficulties. After prolonged negotiations, Pope Nicholas I would approve the union of the two dioceses in 864.  Through this political turmoil, Ansgar continued his northern mission. The Danish civil war compelled him to establish good relations with two kings, Horik the Elder and his son, Horik II. Both assisted him until his death; Ansgar was able to secure permission to build a church in Sleswick north of Hamburg and recognition of Christianity as a tolerated religion. Ansgar did not forget the Swedish mission, and spent two years there in person (848–850), averting a threatened pagan reaction. In 854, Ansgar returned to Sweden when king Olof ruled in Birka. According to Rimbert, he was well disposed to Christianity. On a Viking raid to Apuole (current village in Lithuania) in Courland, the Swedes plundered the Curonians.

Death and legacy.

Ansgar was buried in Bremen in 865. His successor as archbishop, Rimbert, wrote the "Vita Ansgarii". He noted that Ansgar wore a rough hair shirt, lived on bread and water, and showed great charity to the poor. Adam of Bremen attributed the "Vita et miracula of Willehad" (first bishop of Bremen) to Ansgar in "Gesta Hammenburgensis ecclesiæ"; Ansgar is also the reputed author of a collection of brief prayers "Pigmenta" (ed. J. M. Lappenberg, Hamburg, 1844). Pope Nicholas I declared Ansgar a saint shortly after the missionary's death. The first actual missionary in Sweden and the Nordic countries (and organizer of the Catholic church therein), Ansgar was later declared "Patron of Scandinavia".  Relics are located in Hamburg in two places: St. Mary's Cathedral (Ger.: Domkirche St. Marien) and St. Ansgar's and St. Bernard's Church (Ger.: St. Ansgar und St. Bernhard Kirche). Statues of Bishop Ansgar stand in Hamburg, Copenhagen and Ribe, as well as a stone cross at Birka. A crater on the Moon, Ansgarius, has been named for him. His feast day is 3 February.

Visions.

Although a historical document and primary source written by a man whose existence can be proven historically, the "Vita Ansgarii" ("The Life of Ansgar") aims above all to demonstrate Ansgar's sanctity. It is partly concerned with Ansgar's visions, which, according to the author Rimbert, encouraged and assisted Ansgar's remarkable missionary feats.  Through the course of this work, Ansgar repeatedly embarks on a new stage in his career following a vision. According to Rimbert, his early studies and ensuing devotion to the ascetic life of a monk were inspired by a vision of his mother in the presence of Mary, mother of Jesus. Again, when the Swedish people were left without a priest for some time, he begged King Horik to help him with this problem; then after receiving his consent, consulted with Bishop Gautbert to find a suitable man. The two together sought the approval of King Louis, which he granted when he learned that they were in agreement on the issue. Ansgar was convinced he was commanded by heaven to undertake this mission and was influenced by a vision he received when he was concerned about the journey, in which he met a man who reassured him of his purpose and informed him of a prophet that he would meet, the abbot Adalhard, who would instruct him in what was to happen. In the vision, he searched for and found Adalhard, who commanded, "Islands, listen to me, pay attention, remotest peoples", which Ansgar interpreted as God's will that he go to the Scandinavian countries as "most of that country consisted of islands, and also, when 'I will make you the light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth' was added, since the end of the world in the north was in Swedish territory".  <br

Ansgar (8 September 801 – 3 February 865), also known as Anskar, Saint Ansgar, Saint Anschar or Oscar, was Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen in the northern part of the Kingdom of the East Franks. Ansgar became known as the "Apostle of the North" because of his travels and the See of Hamburg received the missionary mandate to bring Christianity to Northern Europe.


Biography.

Lamprecht was born in Jessen in the Province of Saxony. As a student, he trained in history, political science, economics, and art at the universities of Göttingen, Leipzig, and Munich. Lamprecht taught at the university in Marburg and later at Leipzig, where he founded the "Institut für Kultur und Universalgeschicht" center dedicated to comparative world and cultural history.  Lamprecht was employee at the successful edition project “The Chronicles of the German Cities” under the leadership of the well-known and highly reputated German historian Karl von Hegel.  Lamprecht studied German and European social and economic history, particularly of the Middle Ages. He aroused considerable controversy with his loose interdisciplinary methods and focus on broad social, environmental, and even psychological, questions in history. To him, history meant as much the revelation of sociology as of political events.  Lamprecht's ambitious "Deutsche Geschichte" (13 vols., 1891-1908) on the whole trajectory of German history sparked a famous "Methodenstreit" (methodological dispute) within Germany's academic history establishment, especially Max Weber, who habitually referred to Lamprecht as a mere dilettante. Lamprecht came under criticism from scholars of legal and constitutional history like Friedrich Meinecke and Georg von Below for his lack of methodological rigor and inattention to important political trends and ideologies. As a result, Lamprecht and his students were marginalized by German academia, and interdisciplinary social history remained something of a taboo among German historians for much of the twentieth century. However, during the years of the series' publication, his work enjoyed a wide readership among the nonacademic German community.  He was the chief exponent of the "Kulturgeschichte" (“History of Culture”), and believed intensely in the superiority of German culture. Shortly before his death he repudiated, with some indignation, the conception of Germany's part in World War I as having been dictated by “war lords,” and avowed that in regard to it that Germany was united.  Lamprecht died in Leipzig on 10 May 1915 from what appears to have been the result of internal bleeding brought on by a perforated ulcer.

Influence.

According to Ernst Breisach,  Lamprecht found a much more positive reception for his ideas and methods in France and the United States. In 1904, he was invited to give a series of lectures at Columbia University, which were translated and published in 1905 as "What is History?"  Lamprecht's work was a formative influence in the thinking of the French social historian Marc Bloch as well the Annales School. One of his students was Cai Yuanpei, who later served as the chancellor of Beijing University and had an enormous influence on modern Chinese thought.

Karl Gotthard Lamprecht (25 February 1856 – 10 May 1915) was a German historian who specialized in German art and economic history.


Biography.

As a young man, while working as a bookseller's apprentice, Benkert had a close friend who was gay. This young man killed himself after being blackmailed by an extortionist. Benkert later recalled that it was this tragic episode which led him to take a close interest in the subject of homosexuality, following what he called his "instinctive drive to take issue with every injustice."  After a stint in the Hungarian army, Benkert made a living as a journalist and travel writer, and wrote at least twenty-five books on various subjects. In 1847, he legally changed his surname from Benkert to Kertbeny, a Hungarian name with aristocratic associations. He settled in Berlin in 1868, still unmarried at 44. He claimed in his writings to be "normally sexed". However, his diaries list a self-censored string of encounters with youths and men (“young barber lad";"very much in love with the lad"; "I have done it"), and recurring fear following the arrest of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs with whom he corresponded ("Awful days!...Horrible nightmares. I have burnt all the dangerous letters"), which suggest he was secretly homosexual.  He began to write extensively on the issue of homosexuality, motivated, he said, by an "anthropological interest" combined with a sense of justice and a concern for the "rights of man." In 1869, he anonymously published a pamphlet entitled "Paragraph 143 of the Prussian Penal Code of 14 April 1851 and Its Reaffirmation as Paragraph 152 in the Proposed Penal Code for the North German Confederation. An Open and Professional Correspondence to His Excellency Dr., Royal Prussian Minister of Justice".  A second pamphlet on the same subject soon followed. In his pamphlets, Kertbeny argued that the Prussian sodomy law, Paragraph 143 (which later became Paragraph 175 of the penal code of the German Empire), violated the "rights of man." He advanced the classic liberal argument that consensual sexual acts in private should not be subject to criminal law. Recalling his young friend, he argued strongly that the Prussian law allowed blackmailers to extort money from homosexuals and often drove them to suicide.  Kertbeny also put forward the view that homosexuality was inborn and unchangeable, an argument which would later be called the "medical model" of homosexuality. This contradicted the dominant view up to that time, that men committed "sodomy" out of mere wickedness. Gay men, he said, were not by nature effeminate, and he pointed out that many of the great heroes of history were gay. With Heinrich Hössli and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, he was among the first writers to put these now-familiar arguments before the public.  During 1869, in the course of these writings, Kertbeny published the term (in German) "homosexual" (which, along with "heterosexual", he first used in private correspondence on May 8, 1868), as part of his system for the classification of sexual types, as a replacement for the pejorative terms "sodomite" and "pederast" that were used in the German- and French-speaking world of his time. In addition, he called the attraction between men and women "heterosexualism", masturbators "monosexualists", and practitioners of anal intercourse "pygists".  After publishing his two important pamphlets, Kertbeny faded from the scene. In 1880, he contributed a chapter on homosexuality to Gustav Jäger's book "Discovery of the Soul", but Jäger's publisher decided it was too controversial and omitted it. Nevertheless, Jäger used Kertbeny's terminology elsewhere in the book.  The German sex researcher Richard von Krafft-Ebing, in his "Psychopathia Sexualis" (1886), borrowed the terms homosexual and heterosexual from Jäger's book. Krafft-Ebing's work was so influential that these became the standard terms for differences in sexual orientation, superseding Ulrichs' word "Urning".  Kertbeny did not live to see the wide acceptance of his terminology or his ideas. He died in Budapest in 1882 at age 58.

Gravesite.

His gravesite was traced in 2001 by sociologist Judit Takács (see the link below) who conducted extensive research on his life. It is located in Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest, the final resting place of numerous prominent Hungarians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The gay community set a new tombstone on it, and since 2002 it has been a recurring event at Hungarian gay festivals to place a wreath at his grave.

Karl-Maria Kertbeny or Károly Mária Kertbeny (born Karl-Maria Benkert) (Vienna, February 28, 1824 – Budapest, January 23, 1882) was an Austrian-born Hungarian journalist, memoirist, and human rights campaigner. He is best known for coining the words "heterosexual" and "homosexual".


Early years.

In 1276 Rudolf I, King of the Romans, placed Ottokar under the ban of the empire and besieged Vienna. This compelled Ottokar in November 1276 to sign a new treaty by which he gave up all claims to Austria and the neighbouring duchies, retaining for himself only Bohemia and Moravia. Ottokar's son Wenceslaus was also betrothed to Rudolph's daughter Judith. It was an uneasy peace. Wenceslaus's father died on 26 August 1278 in the Battle on the Marchfeld shortly before Wenceslaus' seventh birthday.  Before Wenceslaus became of age, the government was handled by Otto V, Margrave of Brandenburg, who is said to have held Wenceslaus captive in several locations. He returned to Bohemia in 1283, at the age of twelve. His mother's second husband, Záviš of Falkenštejn, ruled instead of him for a few years.  On 24 January 1285, Wenceslaus married Judith of Habsburg, daughter of Rudolf I, to whom he had been betrothed since 1276. In 1290, Wenceslaus had Záviš beheaded for alleged treason and began ruling independently.

King of Bohemia and Poland.

In 1291, Przemysł II, High Duke of Poland, ceded the sovereign Duchy of Kraków to Wenceslaus. Kraków was associated with the overlordship of Poland, but Przemysł held the other duchies and in 1295 was crowned King of Poland. After Przemysł's death in 1296, Wenceslaus became overlord of Poland and in 1300, and had himself crowned King of Poland.

Silver in Kutná Hora.

In 1298, silver was discovered at Kutná Hora in Central Bohemia. Wenceslaus took control of the mine by making silver production a royal monopoly and issued the Prague groschen, which became the most popular of the early Groschen-type coins. Kutná Hora was one of the richest European silver strikes ever: between 1300 and 1340 the mine may have produced as much as 20 tons of silver a year.  In 1300, Wenceslaus issued the new royal mining code "Ius regale montanorum". This was a legal document that specified all administrative as well as technical terms and conditions necessary for the operation of mines.

The Crown of Hungary and death.

Queen Judith died in 1297. Wenceslaus' second wife was Elisabeth Richeza, daughter of King Przemysl II of Poland (1295–1296).  In 1301, Wenceslaus' kinsman Andrew III of Hungary died and the Árpád dynasty became extinct in the male line. Wenceslaus was one of the relatives who claimed the throne, and he accepted it from a party of Hungarians on behalf of his young son, betrothed to Andrew's only child, Elizabeth. On 27 August 1301, his son was crowned in Székesfehérvár as king of Hungary.  At that time the Kingdom of Hungary was split into several de facto principalities, and young Wenceslaus was only accepted as the King of Hungary by the rulers in Upper Hungary (Matthew III Csák), in modern day Burgenland (the Güssings [Kőszegis]) and on territory around the capital, Buda. But the Abas and Matthew Csák switched sides in 1303 and started to support Wenceslaus' rival Charles Robert of Anjou. Consequently, the young Wenceslaus, in Ofen (Buda), became afraid and wrote to his father in Prague for help. His father took a large army and invaded Buda, but having considered the situation, he took his son and the Hungarian crown and returned to Bohemia (1304). Ivan Kőszegi was named to represent Wenceslaus III in Hungary.  Wenceslaus II died on 21 June 1305, at the age of 33, probably of tuberculosis. He was succeeded by his son, Wenceslaus III, the last of the Přemyslid kings.

Review of government of Wenceslaus II.

Wenceslaus II is considered as one of the most important Czech Kings. He built a great empire stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Danube river and established numerous cities, such as Plzeň in 1295. He won for his family three royal crowns (Bohemia, Hungary and Poland). The Kingdom of Bohemia was the largest producer of silver in Europe in his time. He created the penny of Prague, which was an important European currency for centuries.  During his reign, there was great urban development. He planned to build the first university in Central Europe. The power and wealth of the Kingdom of Bohemia gave rise to great respect, but also to the hostility of European royal families. His son King Wenceslaus III was unable to maintain a mighty empire, and soon after the untimely death of Wenceslaus II, his empire began to crumble.

Family.

In 1285 in Eger (Cheb), he married Judith of Habsburg (1271–1297), daughter of Rudolf I of Germany and his wife Gertrude of Hohenberg. She died shortly after their 10th child was born:  In 1300, he married Elisabeth Richeza (1286–1335), daughter of Przemysł II. They had one child:  Wenceslaus has also numerous illegitimate children, including Jan Volek (?? – 27 September 1351), bishop of Olomouc

Wenceslaus II Přemyslid (; ; 27 September 1271 – 21 June 1305) was King of Bohemia (1278–1305), Duke of Cracow (1291–1305), and King of Poland (1300–1305).


Generalization, corollaries, usage.

There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself) than others. For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law.  Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Mike Godwin himself has also criticized the overapplication of Godwin's law, claiming it does not articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate, hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics," Godwin wrote, "its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust."  In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician." In August 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis.  In October 2018, Godwin said on Twitter that it was acceptable to call Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro, who had won the first round and later the second round of the presidential election, a "Nazi".  In June 2019, after Chris Hayes invoked Godwin's Law in a discussion of whether it was appropriate to call the United States's refugee detention centers "concentration camps," Godwin explicitly stated his belief that the term "concentration camps" was appropriate.

Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1". That is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, the point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends.


Life.

Senfl was probably born in Basel around 1486, and lived in Zürich from 1488 until 1496, when he joined the choir of the Hofkapelle of Emperor Maximilian I in Augsburg. Apart from one brief visit in 1504 he appears never again to have lived in Switzerland.  In 1497 he followed the Hofkapelle to Vienna, and between 1500 and 1504 he probably studied in Vienna for three years, the standard practice for choirboys whose voices had broken, as part of the normal training for the priesthood. During this period he studied with Heinrich Isaac, serving as his copyist by 1509; he is known to have copied much of the older composer's "Choralis Constantinus", an enormous work which he was later to complete after Isaac's death.  After a trip to Italy sometime between 1508 and 1510, Senfl returned to the Hofkapelle; the Emperor appointed him to fill Isaac's position as court composer when Isaac died in 1517. In 1518 Senfl lost a toe in a hunting accident; evidently the injury disabled him for up to a year. When the Emperor died in 1519, Senfl was out of a job, and his circumstances altered for the worse: Charles V dismissed most of Maximilian's musicians, and even refused to pay Senfl the annual stipend which had been promised to him in the event of the emperor's death. During the next few years he traveled widely, mainly job-seeking, but he was also active as a composer. He is known to have attended the Diet of Worms in 1521, and, while he never officially became a Protestant, his sympathies evidently were with Luther, and he was later examined by the Inquisition and voluntarily gave up his priesthood. Senfl carried on an extensive correspondence both with Lutheran Duke Albrecht of Prussia and with Martin Luther himself, beginning in 1530.  Eventually Senfl acquired a post in Munich, a place which had high musical standards, a strong need for new music, and which was relatively tolerant of those with Protestant sympathies; he was to remain there for the rest of his life. By 1540 he was ill, judging from his correspondence with Duke Albrecht, and he probably died in early 1543.

Music and influence.

Senfl was an eclectic composer, at home both in the worlds of sacred and secular music, and he modeled his style carefully on models provided by the Franco-Flemish composers of the previous generation, especially Josquin des Prez. In particular, he was a gifted melodist, and his lines are warmly lyrical; his music remained popular and influential in Germany through the 17th century.  His sacred music includes masses, motets, vespers settings, and a Magnificat. Technically his music has many archaic features, such as the use of "cantus firmus" technique, which was more in vogue in the 15th century; he even occasionally employs isorhythm. However he also has a typically Germanic liking for singable melodic passages in parallel imperfect intervals (3rds and 6ths).  Senfl also wrote numerous German lieder, most of them secular (the handful on sacred texts were written for Duke Albrecht of Prussia). They vary widely in character, from extremely simple settings of a "cantus firmus" to contrapuntal tours-de-force such as elaborate canons and quodlibets.

Ludwig Senfl (born around 1486, died between December 2, 1542 and August 10, 1543) was a Swiss composer of the Renaissance, active in Germany. He was the most famous pupil of Heinrich Isaac, was music director to the court of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and was an influential figure in the development of the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style in Germany.


Etymology.

The Dolomites, also known as the "Pale Mountains", take their name from the carbonate rock dolomite. This was named after the 18th-century French mineralogist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu (1750–1801), who was the first to describe the mineral.

History.

During the First World War, the front line between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces ran through the Dolomites, where both sides used mines extensively. Open-air war museums are located at Cinque Torri (Five Towers) and Mount Lagazuoi. Many people visit the Dolomites to climb the vie ferrate, protected paths through the minefields that were created during the war.  A number of long-distance footpaths traverse the Dolomites. They are called "alte vie" (high paths), and are numbered 1 to 8. The trails take about a week to walk, and are served by numerous "rifugi" (huts). The first and the most renowned is the Alta Via 1. Radiocarbon dating has been used in the Alta Badia region to demonstrate a connection between landslide activity and climate change.

Geography.

The region is commonly divided into the Western and Eastern Dolomites, separated by a line following the Val Badia – Campolongo Pass – Cordevole Valley (Agordino) axis.

Current classification.

The Dolomites may be divided into the following ranges:

Tourism.

The Dolomites are renowned for skiing in the winter months and mountain climbing, hiking, cycling, and BASE jumping, as well as paragliding and hang gliding in summer and late spring/early autumn. Free climbing has been a tradition in the Dolomites since 1887, when 17-year-old Georg Winkler soloed the first ascent of the pinnacle Die Vajolettürme. The main centres include: Rocca Pietore alongside the Marmolada Glacier, which lies on the border of Trentino and Veneto, the small towns of Alleghe, Falcade, Auronzo, Cortina d'Ampezzo and the villages of Arabba, Urtijëi and San Martino di Castrozza, as well as the whole of the Fassa, Gardena and Badia valleys.  The Maratona dles Dolomites, an annual single-day road bicycle racing race covering seven mountain passes of the Dolomites, occurs in the first week of July.  Other characteristic places are:

The Dolomites ( ; Ladin: "Dolomites"; ; : ) are a mountain range located in northeastern Italy. They form part of the Southern Limestone Alps and extend from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Valley (Pieve di Cadore) in the east. The northern and southern borders are defined by the Puster Valley and the Sugana Valley (Italian: "Valsugana"). The Dolomites are nearly equally shared between the provinces of Belluno, South Tyrol and Trentino.


Inception.

The union was the work of Scandinavian aristocracy wishing to counter the influence of the Hanseatic League. More personally, it was achieved by Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412). She was a daughter of King Valdemar IV and had married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, who was the son of King Magnus IV of Sweden, Norway and Scania. Margaret succeeded in having her son Olaf recognized as heir to the throne of Denmark. In 1376 Olaf inherited the crown of Denmark from his maternal grandfather as King Olaf II, with his mother as guardian; when Haakon VI died in 1380, Olaf also inherited the crown of Norway.  Margaret became regent of Denmark and Norway when Olaf died in 1387, leaving her without an heir. She adopted her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania the same year. The following year, 1388, Swedish nobles called upon her help against King Albert. After Margaret defeated Albert in 1389, her heir Eric was proclaimed King of Norway. Eric was subsequently elected King of Denmark and Sweden in 1396. His coronation was held in Kalmar on 17 June 1397.  One main impetus for its formation was to block German expansion northward into the Baltic region. The main reason for its failure to survive was the perpetual struggle between the monarch, who wanted a strong unified state, and the Swedish and Danish nobility, which did not. Diverging interests (especially the Swedish nobility's dissatisfaction with the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein) gave rise to a conflict that would hamper the union in several intervals starting in the 1430s. Charles Bonde, for example, was made king of Sweden three times by nationalists there, in 1440, 1464 and 1467.

End and aftermath.

The Union lost territory when the Northern Isles were pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland in 1468. However the money was never paid, so in 1472 the islands were annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland.  The Kalmar union fell apart when Sweden rebelled and became independent on 6 June 1523 and Gustav I of Sweden was elected as king there.  One of the last structures of the Union remained until 1536/1537 when the Danish Privy Council, in the aftermath of the Count's Feud, unilaterally declared Norway to be a Danish province: this did not happen; instead, Norway became a hereditary kingdom in a real union with Denmark. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries, until it was transferred to Sweden in 1814. The ensuing union between Sweden and Norway lasted until 1905, when a grandson of both the incumbent king of Denmark and the late king of Sweden was elected king of Norway.

The Kalmar Union (Danish, Norwegian, and ; ) was a personal union in Scandinavia that from 1397 to 1523 joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including most of Finland), and Norway, together with Norway's overseas dependencies (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Northern Isles). The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states, but with their domestic and foreign policies being directed by a common monarch. Gustav Vasa's election as king on 6 June 1523 and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later marked Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union.


History.

The theoretical principles governing the operation of a maser were first described by Joseph Weber of the University of Maryland, College Park at the Electron Tube Research Conference in 1952 in Ottawa, with a summary published in the June 1953 Transactions of the Institute of Radio Engineers Professional Group on Electron Devices, and simultaneously by Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov from Lebedev Institute of Physics at an "All-Union Conference on Radio-Spectroscopy" held by the USSR Academy of Sciences in May 1952, subsequently published in October 1954.  Independently, Charles Hard Townes, James P. Gordon, and H. J. Zeiger built the first ammonia maser at Columbia University in 1953. This device used stimulated emission in a stream of energized ammonia molecules to produce amplification of microwaves at a frequency of about 24.0 gigahertz. Townes later worked with Arthur L. Schawlow to describe the principle of the "optical maser", or "laser", of which Theodore H. Maiman created the first working model in 1960.  For their research in the field of stimulated emission, Townes, Basov and Prokhorov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964.

Technology.

The maser is based on the principle of stimulated emission proposed by Albert Einstein in 1917. When atoms have been induced into an excited energy state, they can amplify radiation at a frequency particular to the element or molecule used as the masing medium (similar to what occurs in the lasing medium in a laser).  By putting such an amplifying medium in a resonant cavity, feedback is created that can produce coherent radiation.

Twenty-first century developments.

In 2012, a research team from the National Physical Laboratory and Imperial College London developed a solid-state maser that operated at room temperature by using optically pumped, pentacene-doped p-Terphenyl as the amplifier medium. It produced pulses of maser emission lasting for a few hundred microseconds.  In 2018, a research team from Imperial College London and University College London demonstrated continuous-wave maser oscillation using synthetic diamonds containing Nitrogen-Vacancy defects.

Uses.

Masers serve as high precision frequency references. These "atomic frequency standards" are one of the many forms of atomic clocks. Masers were also used as low-noise microwave amplifiers in radio telescopes, though these have largely been replaced by amplifiers based on FETs.  During the early 1960s, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a maser to provide ultra-low-noise amplification of S-band microwave signals received from deep space probes. This maser used deeply refrigerated helium to chill the amplifier down to a temperature of four kelvin. Amplification was achieved by exciting a ruby comb with a 12.0 gigahertz klystron. In the early years, it took days to chill and remove the impurities from the hydrogen lines. Refrigeration was a two-stage process with a large Linde unit on the ground, and a crosshead compressor within the antenna. The final injection was at through a micrometer-adjustable entry to the chamber. The whole system noise temperature looking at cold sky (2.7 kelvins in the microwave band) was 17 kelvins. This gave such a low noise figure that the Mariner IV space probe could send still pictures from Mars back to the Earth even though the output power of its radio transmitter was only 15 watts, and hence the total signal power received was only -169 decibels with respect to a milliwatt (dBm).

Hydrogen maser.

The hydrogen maser is used as an atomic frequency standard. Together with other kinds of atomic clocks, these help make up the International Atomic Time standard ("Temps Atomique International" or "TAI" in French). This is the international time scale coordinated by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Norman Ramsey and his colleagues first conceived of the maser as a timing standard. More recent masers are practically identical to their original design. Maser oscillations rely on the stimulated emission between two hyperfine energy levels of atomic hydrogen. Here is a brief description of how they work:

Astrophysical masers.

Maser-like stimulated emission has also been observed in nature from interstellar space, and it is frequently called "superradiant emission" to distinguish it from laboratory masers. Such emission is observed from molecules such as water (HO), hydroxyl radicals (•OH), methanol (CHOH), formaldehyde (HCHO), and silicon monoxide (SiO). Water molecules in star-forming regions can undergo a population inversion and emit radiation at about 22.0 GHz, creating the brightest spectral line in the radio universe. Some water masers also emit radiation from a rotational transition at a frequency of 96 GHz.  Extremely powerful masers, associated with active galactic nuclei, are known as megamasers and are up to a million times more powerful than stellar masers.

Terminology.

The meaning of the term "maser" has changed slightly since its introduction. Initially the acronym was universally given as "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation", which described devices which emitted in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.  The principle and concept of stimulated emission has since been extended to more devices and frequencies. Thus, the original acronym is sometimes modified, as suggested by Charles H. Townes, to ""molecular" amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." Some have asserted that Townes's efforts to extend the acronym in this way were primarily motivated by the desire to increase the importance of his invention, and his reputation in the scientific community.  When the laser was developed, Townes and Schawlow and their colleagues at Bell Labs pushed the use of the term "optical maser", but this was largely abandoned in favor of "laser", coined by their rival Gordon Gould. In modern usage, devices that emit in the X-ray through infrared portions of the spectrum are typically called lasers, and devices that emit in the microwave region and below are commonly called "masers", regardless of whether they emit microwaves or other frequencies.  Gould originally proposed distinct names for devices that emit in each portion of the spectrum, including "grasers" (gamma ray lasers), "xasers" (x-ray lasers), "uvasers" (ultraviolet lasers), " lasers" (visible lasers), "irasers" (infrared lasers), "masers" (microwave masers), and "rasers" (RF masers). Most of these terms never caught on, however, and all have now become (apart from in science fiction) obsolete except for "maser" and "laser".

A maser (, an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), is a device that produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission. The first maser was built by Charles H. Townes, James P. Gordon, and Herbert J. Zeiger at Columbia University in 1953. Townes, Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical work leading to the maser. Masers are used as the timekeeping device in atomic clocks, and as extremely low-noise microwave amplifiers in radio telescopes and deep space spacecraft communication ground stations.


History.

In the High Middle Ages, papal legates were often used to strengthen the links between Rome and the many parts of Christendom. More often than not, legates were learned men and skilled diplomats who were not from the country they were accredited to. For example, the Italian-born Guala Bicchieri served as papal legate to England in the early 13th century and played a major role in both the English government and church at the time. By the Late Middle Ages it had become more common to appoint native clerics to the position of legate within their own country, such as Cardinal Wolsey acting as legate to the court of Henry VIII of England. The reason for this switch in policy could be attributed to a change in attitude on the eve of the Reformation; by this point, foreign men representing the papacy would be more likely to reinforce dissent than bring Christendom closer together.  Papal legates often summoned legatine councils, which dealt with church government and other ecclesiastical issues. According to Pope Gregory VII, writing in the "Dictatus papae", a papal legate "presides over all bishops in a council, even if he is inferior in rank, and he can pronounce sentence of deposition against them". During the Middle Ages, a legatine council was the usual means that a papal legate imposed his directives.

Diplomatic ranks.

There are several ranks of papal legates in diplomacy, some of which are no longer used.

Apostolic nuncio.

The most common form of papal legate today is the apostolic nuncio, whose task it is to strengthen relations between the Holy See and the Catholic Church in a particular country and at the same time to act as the diplomatic representative of the Holy See to the government of that country. An apostolic nuncio is generally equivalent in rank to that of ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, although in Catholic countries the nuncio often ranks above ambassadors in diplomatic protocol. A nuncio performs the same functions as an ambassador and has the same diplomatic privileges. Under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which the Holy See is a party, a nuncio is an ambassador like those from any other country. The Vienna Convention allows the host state to grant seniority of precedence to the nuncio over others of ambassadorial rank accredited to the same country, and may grant the deanship of that country's diplomatic corps to the nuncio regardless of seniority.

Pro-nuncio.

Pro-nuncio was a term used from 1965 to 1991 for a papal diplomatic representative of full ambassadorial rank accredited to a country that did not accord him precedence over other ambassadors and "ex officio" deanship of the diplomatic corps. In those countries, the papal representative's precedence within the corps is exactly on a par with that of the other members of ambassadorial rank, so that he becomes dean only on becoming the senior member of the corps.

Apostolic delegate.

For countries with which the Holy See has no diplomatic relations, an apostolic delegate is sent to serve as a liaison with the Catholic Church in that country, though not accredited to its government.

"Legati".

"Legatus a latere".

This highest rank (literally "from the (pope's) side", i.e. "intimately" trusted) is normally awarded to a priest of cardinal rank. It is an exceptional investiture and can either be focused or broad in scope. The legate "a latere" is the alter ego of the pope, and as such, possesses full plenipotentiary powers.

"Legatus natus".

Literally "born legate", i.e. not nominated individually but "ex officio", namely a bishop holding this rank as a privilege of his see, e.g. archbishops of Canterbury (pre-Reformation), Prague, Esztergom, Udine, Salzburg, Gniezno and Cologne. The "legatus natus" would act as the pope's representative in his province, with a "legatus a latere" only being sent in extraordinary circumstances. Although limited in their jurisdiction compared to "legati a latere", a "legatus natus" was not subordinate to them.

"Legatus missus".

Literally "sent legate", possessing limited powers for the purpose of completing a specific mission. This commission is normally focused in scope and of short duration.

Gubernatorial legates.

Some administrative (temporal) provinces of the papal states in (mostly central) Italy were governed by a papal legate. This has been the case in Benevento, in Pontecorvo (of Campagna e Marittima/ of Frosinone) and in Viterbo. In four cases, including Bologna, this post was awarded exclusively to Cardinals; the Velletri post was created for Bartolomeo Pacca.  The title could be changed to Apostolic Delegate, as happened in Frosinone (for Pontecorvo) in 1827.

A papal legate or apostolic legate (from the ancient Roman title "legatus") is a personal representative of the pope to foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic Church. He is empowered on matters of Catholic faith and for the settlement of ecclesiastical matters.


History.

Early history.

The theatre was the brainchild of the Viennese theatrical impresario Emanuel Schikaneder, who is best known as Mozart's librettist and collaborator on the opera "The Magic Flute" (1791). Schikaneder's troupe had already been successfully performing for several years in Vienna in the smaller and this is where "The Magic Flute" had premiered. As the troupe's performances often emphasized spectacle and scenery, the librettist felt ready to move to a larger and better equipped venue.  He had already been granted an imperial licence to build a new theatre in 1786, but it was only in 1798 that he felt ready to act on this authorization. The building was designed by the architect Franz Jäger in Empire style (it has since been remodeled). Construction was completed in 1801. The theatre has been described as "the most lavishly equipped and one of the largest theatres of its age.". The theatre opened on 13 June 1801 with a prologue written by Schikaneder followed by a performance of the opera "Alexander" by Franz Teyber. The new theatre proved to be a sensation. Adolf Bäurle, a local critic, wrote "if Schikaneder and [his partner] Zitterbarth had had the idea... to charge admission simply for looking at the glories of their, Schikaneder would certainly have been able to take in vast sums of money without giving one single performance." The "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung" called it the "most comfortable and satisfactory in the whole of Germany" (which meant at the time, "all German-speaking lands").  In 1807 the theatre was acquired by a group of court nobles that included Count Ferdinand Palffy von Erdöd, who bought it outright in 1813. During the period of his proprietorship, which lasted until 1826, he offered opera and ballet and, to appeal to a wider Viennese audience, popular pantomime and variety acts, losing money in elaborate spectacles until finally he was forced to sell the theatre at auction in 1826.  Only a part of the original building is preserved: the "" (Papageno Gate) is a memorial to Schikaneder, who is depicted playing the role of Papageno in "The Magic Flute", a role he wrote for himself to perform. He is accompanied by the Three Boys, characters in the same opera.  From 1889 to 1905, Alexandrine von Schönerer was managing director after the lease ended in 1884 between her and the librettist Camillo Walzel.  In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the theatre experienced a golden age during the flourishing of Viennese operetta, as referenced in the list below.

Later history.

From 1945 to 1955, it was one of the temporary homes of the Vienna State Opera, whose own building had been destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. However, in 1955, the theatre was closed for safety reasons. It languished unused for several years, and by the early 1960s, the threat had emerged that it would be converted to a parking garage. (This was the same era of "urban renewal" that in America nearly destroyed Carnegie Hall).  By 1962 the theatre had a new and successful role as a venue for contemporary musical theatre. Many English-language musicals had their German premieres there. In 1992, the musical "Elisabeth" (about Franz Joseph I of Austria's wife, Elisabeth of Bavaria, also known as Sisi), premiered there and ran for six consecutive years until 1998; Elisabeth went on to become the most successful German-language musical to date, returning to the Theater an der Wien for a revival production from 2003 to 2005. The musical "Cats" directed and choreographed by Gillian Lynne played successfully for seven years.  Despite its focus on operettas and musicals, the theatre still served as a venue for occasional opera productions, especially during the Vienna Festival seasons, and sometimes co-produced with the Vienna State Opera. Notable productions of the non-standard repertory include: Between 1996 and 2002, Riccardo Muti conducted new productions of the three da Ponte operas of Mozart, based on an original production by Giorgio Strehler.

Today.

In 2006, the 250th anniversary year of Mozart's birth, the presented a series of major Mozart operas, thus initiating its conversion to a full-time venue for opera and other forms of classical music under the direction of. Major musical productions since are now presented at either the Raimund Theater or the Ronacher. The first opera to be given was Mozart's "Idomeneo" with Neil Shicoff in the title role and Peter Schneider conducting the new production by Willy Decker. Other members of the cast were Angelika Kirchschlager, Genia Kühmeier, and Barbara Frittoli.  Geyer is quoted as saying that he wishes to "present cutting edge directors and interesting productions", and his three main areas of focus are on Baroque opera, contemporary opera, and Mozart.  In recent years, the theatre's seasons have included the following works outside the standard repertoire:

Premieres.

The has seen the premieres of many works by celebrated composers and playwrights. It was a particularly favorite venue for Ludwig van Beethoven, who actually lived in rooms inside the theatre, at Schikaneder's invitation, during part of the period he was composing his opera "Fidelio".

References.

Notes Sources

The is a historic theatre in Vienna located on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district. Completed in 1801, the theatre has hosted the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music. Since 2006, it has served primarily as an opera house, hosting its own company.


Ancestry.

His father was Christian Augustus (1673–1726) duke and a younger prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, prince-bishop of Lübeck, and administrator, during the Great Northern War, of the duchies of Holstein-Gottorp for his relative Charles Frederick.  His mother Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach (1682–1755) was a descendant of earlier royal dynasties of Sweden, great-granddaughter of Princess Catherine of Sweden, mother of King Charles X of Sweden. On his mother's side, Adolf Frederick descended from King Gustav Vasa and from Christina Magdalena, a sister of Charles X of Sweden.

Reign.

From 1727 to 1750 Prince Adolf Frederick was prince-bishop of Lübeck, which meant the rulership of a fief around and including Eutin. After his first cousin Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp died in 1739, Adolf Frederick became administrator of Holstein-Kiel during the minority of the duke's orphan son, then known as Charles Peter Ulrich. Shortly afterwards, the young boy was invited to Russia by his maternal aunt, Empress Elizabeth, who soon declared him her heir; he later became known as Peter III of Russia.  In 1743, Adolf Frederick was elected heir to the throne of Sweden by the Hat faction (Swedish: "Hattarna") in order that they might obtain better conditions at the Treaty of Abo from Empress Elizabeth of Russia, who had adopted his nephew as her heir. He succeeded as King Adolf Frederick twelve years later on 25 March 1751.  During his twenty-year reign, Adolf Frederick was little more than a figurehead, the real power being lodged in the hands of the Riksdag of the Estates, often distracted by party strife. Twice he endeavoured to free himself from the tutelage of the estates. The first occasion was in 1756 when, stimulated by his imperious consort Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (sister of Frederick the Great), he tried to regain a portion of the attenuated prerogative through the Coup of 1756 to abolish the rule of the Riksdag of the Estates and reinstate absolute monarchy in Sweden. He nearly lost his throne in consequence. On the second occasion during the December Crisis (1768), under the guidance of his eldest son, Gustav, he succeeded in overthrowing the "Cap" (Swedish: "Mössorna") senate, but was unable to make any use of his victory.

Death.

Adolf Frederick died in Stockholm on 12 February 1771 after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers and champagne, which was topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: "hetvägg" made of semla and served in a bowl of hot milk.  The king was regarded, both during his time and in later times, as dependent on others, a weak ruler and lacking of any talents. But he was allegedly also a good husband, a caring father, and a gentle master to his servants. His favourite pastime was to make snuffboxes, which he allegedly spent a great deal of time doing. His personal hospitality and friendliness were witnessed by many who deeply mourned him at his death.  Following his death, his son Gustav III seized power in 1772 in a military coup d'état, reinstating absolute rule.

Children.

By his marriage to Princess Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (which took place on 18 August/29 August 1744 in Drottningholm), he had the following children:  With Jeanne Du Londel he had one son:  With Marguerite Morel he had one son who died as a child:  Adolf Frederick may have been the father of Lolotte Forssberg by Ulla von Liewen, but this has however never been confirmed.

Adolf Frederick or Adolph Frederick (, ; 14 May 171012 February 1771) was King of Sweden from 1751 until his death. He was the son of Christian August of Holstein-Gottorp, Prince of Eutin, and Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach.


Youth.

He was the son of Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and Princess Maria Amalia of Courland. In 1692 the young prince made his Grand Tour to the Dutch Republic, in 1695 to the Italian Peninsula and later he studied in Geneva. After this he had a military career, leading the Hessian troops as Lieutenant General in the War of the Spanish Succession on the side of the Dutch. He was defeated in 1703 in the Battle of Speyerbach, but participated the next year in the great victory in the Battle of Blenheim. In 1706 he was again defeated by the French in the Battle of Castiglione. Both in 1716 and 1718 he joined the campaign of Charles XII of Sweden against Norway, and was appointed Swedish Generalissimus.

Prince consort of Sweden.

He married his second wife, Princess Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden, in 1715. He was then granted the title Prince of Sweden, with the style "Royal Highness" by the estates, and was prince consort there during Ulrika Eleonora's rule as queen regnant from 1718 until her abdication in 1720. He is the only Swedish prince consort there has been to date. Frederick I had much influence during the reign of his spouse.  Some historians have suggested that the bullet which killed his brother-in-law Charles XII of Sweden in 1718 was actually fired by Frederick's aide André Sicre. Charles had been an authoritarian and demanding ruler; one reason the Swedish Estates elected Frederick was because he was taken to be fairly weak, which indeed he turned out to be.

King of Sweden.

Frederick succeeded Ulrika Eleonora on the throne upon her abdication in his favor in 1720, elected by the Swedish Estates.  The defeats suffered by Charles XII in the Great Northern War ended Sweden's position as a first-rank European power. Under Frederick, this had to be accepted. Sweden also had to cede Estonia, Ingria and Livonia to Russia in the Treaty of Nystad, in 1721.  Frederick I was a very active and dynamic king at the beginning of his 31-year reign. But after the aristocracy had regained power during the wars with Russia, he became not so much powerless as uninterested in affairs of state. In 1723, he tried to strengthen royal authority, but after he failed, he never had much to do with politics. He did not even sign official documents; instead a stamp of his signature was used. He devoted most of his time to hunting and love affairs. His marriage to Queen Ulrika Eleonora was childless, but he had several children by his mistress, Hedvig Taube.  In 1723 Frederick rewarded the military inventor Sven Åderman with the estate of Halltorps on the island of Öland, for improving the rate of fire of the musket.  As a king, he was not very respected. When he was crowned, it was said of him: "King Charles we recently buried, King Frederick we crown – suddenly the clock has now passed from twelve to one". It is said about him, that although a lot of great achievements in the country's development happened during his reign, he never had anything to do with them himself. When he died, Carl Gustaf Tessin said about him: Under the reign of King Frederick, science has developed – he never bothered to read a book. The merchant business has flourished – he has never encouraged it with a single coin. The Stockholm Palace has been built – he has never been curious enough to look at it. Neither did he have anything to do with the founding of the first Swedish speaking theater at Bollhuset during his reign. One of his few important policies was the banning of duels.  On 23 February 1748 Frederick I instituted the three Swedish royal orders of the Seraphim, of the Sword and of the North Star, the three principal Swedish orders of chivalry.

Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel.

Frederick became Landgrave of Hesse only in 1730, ten years after becoming King of Sweden. He immediately appointed his younger brother William governor of Hesse.  As Landgrave, Frederick is generally not seen as a success. Indeed, he did concentrate more on Sweden, and due to his negotiated, compromise-like ascension to the throne there, he and his court had a very low income. The money for that very expensive court, then, since the 1730s came from wealthy Hesse, and this means that Frederick essentially behaved like an absentee landlord and drained Hessian resources to finance life in Sweden. Also, Frederick's father, Charles I of Hesse-Kassel, had been the state's most successful ruler, rebuilding the state over his decades-long rule by means of economic and infrastructure measures and state reform, as well as tolerance, such as attracting, for economic purposes, the French Huguenots. His brother the governor, who would succeed Frederick as Landgrave William VIII of Hesse-Kassel, though by background a distinguished soldier, was likewise a great success locally. There are very few physical remainders of Frederick in Hesse today; one of them is his large Royal Swedish paraph (FR) over the old door of the University of Marburg's former riding hall, now the Institute of Physical Education.

Family and issue.

On 31 May 1700, he married his first wife, Louise Dorothea, Princess of Prussia (1680–1705), daughter of Frederick I of Prussia (1657–1713) and Elizabeth Henrietta of Hesse-Kassel (1661–1683). Louise Dorothea died in childbirth in December 1705.  His second wife, whom he married in 1715, was Ulrika Eleonora, Princess of Sweden, (1688–1741), daughter of Charles XI of Sweden (1655–1697) and of Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark (1656–1693). Ulrika suffered two miscarriages, one in 1715 and another in 1718, after which there are no further recorded pregnancies.  Frederick I had three extramarital children with his mistress Hedvig Taube:  After the death of Hedvig Taube, his official mistress was the noblewoman Catharina Ebba Horn, whom he gave the title and recognition of German-Roman Countess (1745–1748).  Thus, the Hessian line in Sweden ended with him and was followed by that of Holstein-Gottorp. In Hesse-Kassel, he was succeeded by his younger brother William VIII, a famous general.

Frederick I (; 28 April 1676 – 5 April 1751) was prince consort of Sweden from 1718 to 1720, and King of Sweden from 1720 until his death and (as "Frederick I") also Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel from 1730. He ascended the throne following the death of his brother-in-law absolutist Charles XII in the Great Northern War, and the abdication of his wife, Charles's sister and successor Ulrika Eleonora, after she had to relinquish most powers to the Riksdag of the Estates and thus chose to abdicate. His powerless reign and lack of legitimate heirs of his own saw his family's elimination from the line of succession after the parliamentary government dominated by pro-revanchist Hat Party politicians ventured into a war with Russia, which ended in defeat and the Russian tsarina Elizabeth getting Adolph Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp instated following the death of the king.


Function.

Albumins in general are transport proteins that bind to various ligands and carry them around. Human types include:  The four canonical human albumins are arranged on chromosome 4 region 4q13.3 in a tandem manner.

Classification.

Albumins found in animals can be divided into six subfamilies by phylogeny. The Vitamin-D binding proteins occupy families 1-3. The other albumins are mixed among each other in families 4-6. ECM1 is in family 6.  In addition to their medical use, serum albumins are valued in biotechnology. Bovine serum albumin is usually used, although versions from humans and genetically-modified rice are also used to reduce animal cruelty.

Other albumin types.

A few other proteins are also sometimes called albumins. They are not in the same family as vertebrate albumins:

Structure.

The 3D structure of human serum albumin has been determined by X-ray crystallography to a resolution of. Albumin is a 65–70 kDa protein.  Albumin comprises three homologous domains that assemble to form a heart-shaped protein. Each domain is a product of two subdomains that possess common structural motifs. The principal regions of ligand binding to human serum albumin are located in hydrophobic cavities in subdomains IIA and IIIA, which exhibit similar chemistry. Structurally, the serum albumins are similar, each domain containing five or six internal disulfide bonds.

Forensic uses.

Worldwide, certain traditional Chinese medicines contain wild bear bile, banned under CITES legislation. Dip sticks, similar to common pregnancy tests, have been developed to detect the presence of bear albumin in traditional medicine products, indicating that bear bile had been used in their creation.

Terminology.

Albumin is pronounced ; formed from Latin: "albumen" "(egg) white; dried egg white".

Albumin is a family of globular proteins, the most common of which are the serum albumins. All the proteins of the albumin family are water-soluble, moderately soluble in concentrated salt solutions, and experience heat denaturation. Albumins are commonly found in blood plasma and differ from other blood proteins in that they are not glycosylated. Substances containing albumins are called "albuminoids".


Etymology.

Narvik is named after the old "Narvik" farm ("Narduigh" – 1567), since the town is built on its ground.  The Old Norse form of the port was probably "*Knarravík". The first element is the genitive pluralis of "knarr" which means'merchant ship' and the last element is "vík" meaning 'inlet'. The name "Knarravík" (modern forms "Knarvik" or "Narvik") is found in several places along the Norwegian coast (and three places in the old Norwegian province of Bohuslän), and it tends to refer to good, natural ports.  The port was once called "Victoriahavn" after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, however Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria was also honoured.

History.

The history of Narvik as a settlement began in the Bronze Age. Not very much is known about these people, but the Vikings lived in this area.  Narvik was developed as an all-year ice free port for the Swedish Kiruna and Gällivare iron mines. The history of modern Narvik begins in the 1870s, when the Swedish government began to understand the potential of the iron ore mines in Kiruna, Sweden. Obtaining iron ore from Kiruna had one significant problem in that there was no suitable Swedish port. The nearest Swedish port, Luleå, had limitations. It was covered with ice all winter, it is far from Kiruna, and it allows only medium-sized bulk freight vessels. Narvik offered a port which is ice-free thanks to the warm Gulf Stream, and is naturally large, allowing boats of virtually any size to anchor, up to long and deep. The Swedish company "(Gällivare Aktiebolag)" built the Iron Ore Line ("Malmbanan") to Riksgränsen on the Norway–Sweden border. The Norwegian Ofotbanen railway line connects Narvik to the Swedish border.  Swedish mining corporation LKAB still ships the majority of its ore from Narvik (a total 25 million tons a year). The corporation is still important in the area, both as an employer and landowner, although its influence is not as prominent now as it has been in previous years.  The town of Narvik was established on 1 January 1902 when the village of Narvik received status as a proper town and was separated from the large municipality of Ankenes so it could have its own municipal government. Initially, the town-municipality of Narvik had 3,705 residents. On 1 January 1974, the municipality of Ankenes was merged with the town-municipality of Narvik, forming a new, larger municipality of Narvik.

World War II.

The port of Narvik proved to be strategically valuable in the early years of World War II and the town became a focal point of the Norwegian Campaign. In 1939, Germany's war industry depended upon iron ore mined in Kiruna and Malmberget in Sweden. During the summer season, this ore could be sent by cargo ship to Germany through the Baltic Sea via the Swedish port of Luleå on the Gulf of Bothnia. However, when the Gulf of Bothnia froze during the winter, more shipments of the ore needed to be transported through Narvik and, from there, down the west coast of Norway to Germany. The town of Narvik is linked by rail to Sweden, but not to any other towns in Norway. As a result, Narvik serves as a gateway to the ore fields of Sweden that cannot be easily reached from southern Norway via land. Winston Churchill realised that the control of Narvik meant stopping most German imports of iron ore during the winter of 1940. This would be advantageous to the Allies, and it might help shorten the war. Equally as important, later in the war, German submarines and warships based there threatened the allied supply line to the Soviet Union.  Churchill proposed laying a naval minefield in Norwegian territorial waters around Narvik (referred to as "the Leads"), or else occupying the town with Allied troops. The Allies hoped that they might be able to use an occupied Narvik as a base from which to secure the Swedish ore fields and/or to send supplies and reinforcements to Finland, then fighting the Finnish Winter War with the Soviet Union. Plans to lay a minefield around Narvik or to seize the town met with debate within the British government – since both plans would mean a violation of Norway's neutrality and sovereignty.  Finally, on 8 April 1940, the British Admiralty launched Operation Wilfred, an attempt to lay anti-shipping minefields around Narvik in Norwegian territorial waters. Coincidentally, Germany launched its invasion of Norway (Operation Weserübung) on the next day. During this invasion, ten German destroyers, each carrying 200 mountain infantry soldiers, were sent to Narvik. The outdated Norwegian coastal defence ships and attempted to resist the invasion, but both Norwegian warships were sunk after a short and uneven battle. The Royal Navy quickly dispatched several ships to Narvik, including the battleship, and during the Battles of Narvik, the British took control of the coast, destroying the German destroyers that had brought the invasion force to Narvik, as well as other German ships in the area.  On 12 April 1940, the first convoys of Allied soldiers were sent under Major-General Pierse Joseph Mackesy to Narvik. The Admiralty urged Mackesy to conduct an assault on Narvik from the sea as soon as possible. However, Mackesy believed that the German harbour defences were too strong for such an invasion to take place. The Admiralty argued that a naval bombardment of Norway would enable the troops to land safely, but General Mackesy refused to subject Norwegian citizens to such a bombardment, and instead he chose to land his troops near Narvik and wait until the snow melted to take over the town.  Coordinated by the Norwegian General Carl Gustav Fleischer, Norwegian, French, Polish, and British forces recaptured Narvik on 28 May 1940. This is also considered the first Allied infantry victory in World War II. However, by that time, the Allies were losing the Battle of France and the evacuation from Dunkirk was underway. Since the Nazi German invasion of France had made Scandinavia largely irrelevant, and since the valuable troops assigned to Narvik were badly needed elsewhere, the Allies withdrew from Narvik on 8 June 1940 in Operation Alphabet. The same day, while operating in the Narvik area, the German battleships and sank the British aircraft carrier during the withdrawal from this battle. Without support from the Allied naval task force, the Norwegians were outnumbered, and they had to lay down their arms in Norway on 10 June 1940. This was not a complete capitulation, since the Norwegians kept on fighting guerrilla operations inland.  Possession of the Ofotfjord was also important to the German Kriegsmarine (navy) since it provided a refuge for warships like the "pocket battleship" and the battleship outside the range (at the time) of air attacks from Scotland. Also, possibly U-boats could be based at Narvik.

Narvik is a town and the administrative centre of Narvik Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The town is located along the Ofotfjorden in the Ofoten region. The town lies on a peninsula located between the Rombaken fjord and the Beisfjorden. The European route E06 highway runs through the Beisfjord Bridge and Hålogaland Bridge crossing the two small fjords surrounding the town.


Cellular structure.

Green algae have chloroplasts that contain chlorophyll "a" and "b", giving them a bright green color, as well as the accessory pigments beta carotene (red-orange) and xanthophylls (yellow) in stacked thylakoids. The cell walls of green algae usually contain cellulose, and they store carbohydrate in the form of starch.  All green algae have mitochondria with flat cristae. When present, paired flagella are used to move the cell. They are anchored by a cross-shaped system of microtubules and fibrous strands. Flagella are only present in the motile male gametes of charophytes bryophytes, pteridophytes, cycads and "Ginkgo", but are absent from the gametes of Pinophyta and flowering plants.  Members of the class Chlorophyceae undergo closed mitosis in the most common form of cell division among the green algae, which occurs via a phycoplast. By contrast, charophyte green algae and land plants (embryophytes) undergo open mitosis without centrioles. Instead, a 'raft' of microtubules, the phragmoplast, is formed from the mitotic spindle and cell division involves the use of this phragmoplast in the production of a cell plate.

Origins.

Photosynthetic eukaryotes originated following a primary endosymbiotic event, where a heterotrophic eukaryotic cell engulfed a photosynthetic cyanobacterium-like prokaryote that became stably integrated and eventually evolved into a membrane-bound organelle: the plastid. This primary endosymbiosis event gave rise to three autotrophic clades with primary plastids: the green plants, the red algae and the glaucophytes.

Evolution and classification.

Green algae are often classified with their embryophyte descendants in the green plant clade Viridiplantae (or Chlorobionta). Viridiplantae, together with red algae and glaucophyte algae, form the supergroup Primoplantae, also known as Archaeplastida or Plantae "sensu lato". The ancestral green alga was a unicellular flagellate.  The Viridiplantae diverged into two clades. The Chlorophyta include the early diverging prasinophyte lineages and the core Chlorophyta, which contain the majority of described species of green algae. The Streptophyta include charophytes and land plants. Below is a consensus reconstruction of green algal relationships, mainly based on molecular data.  Abdalla, the famous man from Iqa was The basal character of the Mesostigmatophyceae, Chlorokybophyceae and "spirotaenia" are only more conventionally basal Streptophytes.  The algae of this paraphyletic group "Charophyta" were previously included in Chlorophyta, so green algae and Chlorophyta in this definition were synonyms. As the green algae clades get further resolved, the embryophytes, which are a deep charophyte branch, are included in "algae", "green algae" and "Charophytes", or these terms are replaced by cladistic terminology such as Archaeplastida, Plantae, Viridiplantae or streptophytes, respectively.

Reproduction.

Green algae are a group of photosynthetic, eukaryotic organisms that include species with haplobiontic and diplobiontic life cycles. The diplobiontic species, such as "Ulva", follow a reproductive cycle called alternation of generations in which two multicellular forms, haploid and diploid, alternate, and these may or may not be isomorphic (having the same morphology). In haplobiontic species only the haploid generation, the gametophyte is multicellular. The fertilized egg cell, the diploid zygote, undergoes meiosis, giving rise to haploid cells which will become new gametophytes. The diplobiontic forms, which evolved from haplobiontic ancestors, have both a multicellular haploid generation and a multicellular diploid generation. Here the zygote divides repeatedly by mitosis and grows into a multicellular diploid sporophyte. The sporophyte produces haploid spores by meiosis that germinate to produce a multicellular gametophyte. All land plants have a diplobiontic common ancestor, and diplobiontic forms have also evolved independently within Ulvophyceae more than once (as has also occurred in the red and brown algae).  Diplobiontic green algae include isomorphic and heteromorphic forms. In isomorphic algae, the morphology is identical in the haploid and diploid generations. In heteromorphic algae, the morphology and size are different in the gametophyte and sporophyte.  Reproduction varies from fusion of identical cells (isogamy) to fertilization of a large non-motile cell by a smaller motile one (oogamy). However, these traits show some variation, most notably among the basal green algae called prasinophytes.  Haploid algal cells (containing only one copy of their DNA) can fuse with other haploid cells to form diploid zygotes. When filamentous algae do this, they form bridges between cells, and leave empty cell walls behind that can be easily distinguished under the light microscope. This process is called "conjugation" and occurs for example in "Spirogyra".

Sex pheromone.

Sex pheromone production is likely a common feature of green algae, although only studied in detail in a few model organisms. "Volvox" is a genus of chlorophytes. Different species form spherical colonies of up to 50,000 cells. One well-studied species, "Volvox carteri" (2,000 – 6,000 cells) occupies temporary pools of water that tend to dry out in the heat of late summer. As their environment dries out, asexual "V. carteri" quickly die. However, they are able to escape death by switching, shortly before drying is complete, to the sexual phase of their life cycle that leads to production of dormant desiccation-resistant zygotes. Sexual development is initiated by a glycoprotein pheromone (Hallmann et al., 1998). This pheromone is one of the most potent known biological effector molecules. It can trigger sexual development at concentrations as low as 10M. Kirk and Kirk showed that sex-inducing pheromone production can be triggered experimentally in somatic cells by heat shock. Thus heat shock may be a condition that ordinarily triggers sex-inducing pheromone in nature.  The "Closterium peracerosum-strigosum-littorale (C. psl)" complex is a unicellular, isogamous charophycean alga group that is the closest unicellular relative to land plants. Heterothallic strains of different mating type can conjugate to form zygospores. Sex pheromones termed protoplast-release inducing proteins (glycopolypeptides) produced by mating-type (-) and mating-type (+) cells facilitate this process.

Physiology.

The green algae, including the characean algae, have served as model experimental organisms to understand the mechanisms of the ionic and water permeability of membranes, osmoregulation, turgor regulation, salt tolerance, cytoplasmic streaming, and the generation of action potentials.

The green algae (singular: green alga) are a large, informal grouping of algae consisting of the Chlorophyta and Charophyta/Streptophyta, which are now placed in separate divisions, together with the more basal Mesostigmatophyceae, Chlorokybophyceae and Spirotaenia.


Geography.

Tournai is located in the Wallonia Picarde (Picard language) and Romance Flanders region of Belgium, at the southern limit of the Flemish plain, in the basin of the River Scheldt ("Escaut" in French, "Schelde" in Dutch). Administratively, the town is part of the Province of Hainaut, itself part of Wallonia. It is also a municipality that is part of the French-speaking Community of Belgium. Tournai has its own arrondissements, both administrative and judicial.  Its area of makes it the largest municipality in size in Belgium; it is also the largest in population in Western Hainaut. The municipality of Tournai consists of the former municipalities of Ere, Saint-Maur, Orcq, Esplechin, Froyennes, Froidmont, Willemeau, Ramegnies-Chin, Templeuve, Chercq, Blandain, Hertain, Lamain, Marquain, Gaurain-Ramecroix, Havinnes, Beclers, Thimougies, Barry, Maulde, Vaulx, Vezon, Kain, Melles, Quartes, Rumillies, Mont-Saint-Aubert, Mourcourt and Warchin.

Geology.

Rocks from the Tournai area date from the Carboniferous Period and have been used to define the Tournaisian Age, a subdivision of the Carboniferous lasting from 359 to 345 million years ago. Tournai stone is a dark limestone which takes a polish and was used particularly in the Romanesque period for sculpted items such as Tournai fonts. It is also hard enough to have been used locally for pavements and kerb-stones. It is sometimes called Tournai marble, though this is geologically inaccurate.

History.

Tournai, known as "Tornacum", was a place of minor importance in Roman times, a stopping place where the Roman road from Cologne on the Rhine to Boulogne on the coast crossed the river Scheldt. It was fortified under Maximian in the 3rd century AD, when the Roman "limes" was withdrawn to the string of outposts along the road. It came into the possession of the Salian Franks in 432. Under king Childeric I, whose tomb was discovered there in 1653, Tournai was the capital of the Frankish empire. In 486, Clovis moved the center of power to Paris. In turn, a native son of Tournai, Eleutherius, became bishop of the newly created bishopric of Tournai, extending over most of the area west of the Scheldt. In 862 Charles the Bald, first king of Western Francia and still to become Holy Roman Emperor, would make Tournai the seat of the County of Flanders.  After the partition of the Frankish empire by the Treaties of Verdun (843) and of Meerssen (870), Tournai remained in the western part of the empire, which in 987 became France. The city participated in 11th-century rise of towns in the Low Countries, with a woollen cloth industry based on English wool, which soon made it attractive to wealthy merchants. An ambitious rebuilding of the cathedral was initiated in 1030. The commune's drive for independence from the local counts succeeded in 1187, and the city was henceforth directly subordinated to the French Crown, as the "seigneurie de Tournaisis", as the city's environs are called. The stone over the Scheldt, with defensive towers at either end, was built in 1290, replacing an earlier wooden structure.  During the 15th century, the city's textile trade boomed and it became an important supplier of tapestry. The art of painting flourished too: Jacques Daret, Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden all came from Tournai. It was captured in 1513 by Henry VIII of England, making it the only Belgian city ever to have been ruled by England. It was also represented in the 1515 Parliament of England. The city was handed back to French rule in 1519, following the Treaty of London (1518).  In 1521, Emperor Charles V added the city to his possessions in the Low Countries, leading to a period of religious strife and economic decline. During the 16th century, Tournai was a bulwark of Calvinism, but eventually it was conquered by the Spanish governor of the Low Countries, the Duke of Parma, following a prolonged siege in 1581. After the fall of the city, its Protestant inhabitants were given one year to sell their possessions and emigrate, a policy that was at the time considered relatively humane, since very often religious opponents were simply massacred.  One century later, in 1668, the city briefly returned to France under Louis XIV in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. After the end of the War of Spanish Succession in 1713, under terms of the Treaty of Utrecht the former Spanish Netherlands, including Tournai, came into possession of the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1794, France annexed the Austrian Netherlands during the French Revolutionary Wars and Tournai became part of the department of Jemmape. From 1815 on, following the Napoleonic Wars, Tournai formed part of the United Netherlands and after 1830 of newly independent Belgium. Badly damaged in 1940, Tournai has since been carefully restored.

Main sights.

Tournai is considered to be one of the most important cultural sites in Belgium. The mixed Romanesque- and Gothic-style cathedral of "Notre Dame de Tournai" and the belfry, considered the oldest in Belgium, have been designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. Inside the cathedral, the "Châsse de Notre-Dame flamande", a beautifully ornate 12th-century reliquary, gives witness to Tournai's wealth in the Middle Ages. Other places of interest are the 13th-century Scheldt bridge ("Pont des Trous") and the main square ("Grand Place"), as well as several old city gates, historic warehouses, and a variety of museums.  On rue Barre-St-Brice are two of the oldest private houses in Europe, dating from between 1175 and 1200 and built in the Romanesque style, while the rue des Jésuites includes a Gothic house from the 13th century.  As in many Belgian cities there are a number of cafés and pubs in the "Grand Place". In the middle of the "Grand Place" there are a series of water fountains while the circular staircase to the top of the belfry can be climbed.  There are several buildings in the art nouveau style.

Culture.

A French-speaking Walloon town.

Tournai is a French-speaking town of Belgium. The local language is "tournaisien", a Picard dialect similar to that of other communes of Hainaut and Northern France.  Tournai belongs to Romance Flanders, like Lille, Douai, Tourcoing, and Mouscron. The city of Tournai was one of the greatest cultural and economic centers of the County of Flanders. Some traces can still be seen today:  Although Tournai is in the Flemish cultural area (of the Scheldt), it also possesses some treasures of the Mosan style. Indeed, the two most beautiful shrines of the Cathedral, commissioned by the Bishop of Tournai, were made in the region of Liège by the artist Nicholas of Verdun: the shrines of "Saint-Eleutherius" and of "Our Lady of Flanders" (13th century). Those shrines testify to the opulence of the towns of Tournai and Liège during the Middle-Ages. The shrine of "Our Lady of Flanders" has been called one of the seven wonders of Belgium.

Education.

The Faculty of architecture, architectural engineering and urban planning of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) is located in Tournai.

Tournai (, ; (and ) ; ), known in Dutch as Doornik and historically as Dornick in English, is a Walloon municipality of Belgium, southwest of Brussels on the river Scheldt. In the province of Hainaut, Tournai is part of Eurometropolis Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai, which had 2,155,161 residents in 2008.