The Year That Was - Episodes Tagged with “European History”

Through Cloud, Hopeful: Eddington, Einstein, and the Eclipse of 1919

Elizabeth Lunday — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 15:00:00 -0500

Arthur Eddington was committed to testing Einstein's General Theory of Relativity during the 1919 Solar Eclipse, not only to remove all doubts about the theory but also to demonstrate the value of scientific internationalism. But the British Army was determined to send him to the Front. Eddington faced the greatest challenge of his life: proving his opposition to violence and his dedication to science were both a matter of conscience.

Conscientious objectors in Britain could be sent to prison if their claims were rejected by local tribunals. Many were sent to solitary confinement, while others were put to hard labor. This prisoner is standing on a stool to get a glimpse of the sky.

Some COs were subjected to field punishment. Field punishment was introduced in 1881 following the abolition of flogging in the Army--so I guess that's a good thing? The punishment was applied to soldiers who disobeyed orders, which included COs who had been denied official status and continued to refuse to fight. Men would be tied up to a fixed object for up to two hours a day.

Conscientious objectors were despised by the general public and often mocked in political cartoons. In this image, as in many, COs were depicted as unmanly cowards--as "sissies" with a major dose of homophobia.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity describes space as curving in response to the mass of heavy objects. The amount of the curvature depends on the mass of the object, so the Sun will cause greater curvature than the Earth. The Earth orbits the Sun because it is caught in the well of the Sun's gravity.

One of the problems with most explanations of relativity theory, including my own, is that they imply that massive objects sit on top of space. In fact, they existing within space. This graphic tries to represent this concept.

Eddington arranged for two expeditions to view the 1919 eclipse. One went to Sobral in northern Brazil and the other to Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea.

Príncipe is a gorgeous tropical island with misty mountains and white beaches. Eddington was amazed at the lush landscape and tropical fruits; he ate about a dozen bananas a day.

Some fifteen years before Eddington arrived, the world learned that the cocoa plantations in Príncipe, which primarily supplied Cadbury's Chocolate, were worked by enslaved laborers kidnapped from Angola. The Portugese government promised to stamp out the practice, but political instability meant that these efforts received little attention. It is unclear in 1919 if Eddington saw free or enslaved laborers at work.

Northern Brazil, meanwhile, had been struck by a devastating drought in 1915 that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Many of those who survived fled the region, but the government feared they would cause instability if they arrived in Brazil's cities. What can only be called concentration camps were established and people were forced to live in them, as seen here. The drought was beginning to lessen in 1919, but the region was struggling.

The eclipse observation teams arrived with telescopes, cameras, glass photographic plates, developer chemicals, motors, clocks, waterproof tents and more. Here you can see the set up in Sobral.

The light from the Hyades had been traveling about 153 years when it reached Eddington's telescope. Scientists now know that at least one of the stars within the cluster has three planets, one roughly the size and composition of the Earth. It is considered unlikely any advanced life exists on the planet, but anything is possible.

This is one of Eddington's original photos of the eclipse. It has been scanned, and the stars that he was measuring are circled and labeled. You can see that the stars are incredibly dim and hard to spot even when pointed out.

The announcement by Eddington and Dyson caught the world's attention and newspapers struggled to make sense of the discovery. The Illustrated London News did a fairly good job of explaining what the astronomers were looking for.

The New York Times, on the other hand, was more bombastic that clear. I can only imagine readers were perplexed by this announcement, which seems at pains to tell everyone that (a) no one understands what has happened but (b) you don't need to worry about it. I suppose with everything else going on, readers did like having that reassurance.

The bit about "A Book for 12 Wise Men" refers to a story that circulated widely at the time. Supposedly, Einstein had gone to a publisher about writing about book about his theory, but the publisher replied that since only about 12 wise men in all the world would understand it, there was no point in publishing. This story seems to have been completely made up but got a lot of traction in the years to come. (Also, apparently only men of science were more or less agog. No word on the women of science, who, while small in number, did exist.)

Einstein made his first visit to Britain in 1921. He toured the United States first (a tour he found exhausting and "horrendous" because of all of the press attention) and then journeyed to the UK on his way back to Germany. In this image, he and his wife Elsa stand on deck during their journey. Einstein met Eddington for the first time on this trip, but I haven't found any photos of the occasion.

Einstein made multiple visits to Britain over the years and often met with Eddington. Here the two men sit and talk in 1930. I don't know where this photo was taken, but I wonder if they are at Eddington's house in Cambridge. His sister Winifred found great joy in her garden.

The Theory of Relativity as been confirmed and reconfirmed in the last 100 years. The distortion of light by large masses is well known today and described as "gravitational lensing." It has become an important tool in modern astronomy because it allows astronomers to study objects that are incredibly far away. It also provides a way to measure the mass of distant galaxies and therefore to estimate the amount of invisible dark matter within. You can read more about this in the sources I've linked to below.

This image shows one galaxy distorted into a ring that appears around a galaxy positioned directly in front of it.

Here is another example of lensing. The blue curve is the light of a galaxy located behind the bright yellow galaxies, its light distorted by their mass.

This amazing image from the Hubble telescope shows multiple examples of lensing. The stretched out and arced lines of light are distorted images of far-away galaxies. Some galaxies might even appear more than once as their light is split and sent along different paths. Eddington could have had no idea how dramatic the effects of lensing could be, or how important they are for modern astronomers.

I hope you will take the time to watch this video of Neil Gaiman reading his poem about Arthur Eddington. (The actual poem begins at about 4:18.) You can also read along on the Brain Pickings website. Warning, there is one NSFW word in the poem, but I think you all can handle it.

It captures so much about Eddington--his passion, his reticence, his brilliance, and, perhaps, his desperate need to keep hidden one essential part of his identity, his homosexuality.

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The Pursuit of Truth: Eddington, Einstein, and the Eclipse of 1919

Elizabeth Lunday — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:00:00 -0500

In 1914, most scientists claimed their work knew no borders, but the Great War slammed the door on international scientific cooperation. So when a obscure German physicist named Albert Einstein presented a radical new explanation of gravity, he feared no one outside of Germany would be willing to help confirm his theory. He had no idea that his work would come to the attention of the one man able to make the critical observations and willing to explore German ideas--the pacifist astronomer Arthur Eddington.

Arthur Stanley Eddington was born in 1882 to a devout Quaker family. He would remain a faithful member of the Society of Friends his entire life and shared their deep conviction in pacifism and opposition to war.

Eddington's first total solar eclipse was in October 1912. This map show the path of totality. Eddington was stationed with several teams from around the world in Passa Quatro, Brazil. Unfortunately, the eclipse was rained out--an all-too-common occurance.

While in Brazil, Eddington was likely told about the work of the still-obscure German physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein, seen here with his first wife Mileva, had already published several groundbreaking papers and had begun his work on general relativity. In 1913, he moved to Berlin to teach at the University of Berlin and become the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

Einstein discussed his Theory of General Relativity with the German astronomer Erwin Freundlich, seen here looking like the villian in an early silent movie. Freundlich passed the ideas on Charles Dillon Perrine, who most likely described them Eddington. Freundlich mounted an expedition to observe the 1914 eclipse in Russia to prove Einstein's predictions on the deflection of starlight.

The 1914 eclipse passed over Sweden and Norway, into Russia, and down through the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Astronomers believed they would have the best conditions in Ukraine and Crimea, and many of them set up there in late summer 1914.

War broke out before the eclipse took place. Freundlich and his German team were detained by Russian officials. British and American teams were able to go on with their work, but again, the eclipse was rained out. The teams then face the difficult task of getting out of war-time Russia. They all had to leave their equipment behind, and getting it back was a lingering headache. The American team didn't receive their telescope and cameras until 1918.

This fascinating graphic from the weekly British illustrated newspaper The Graphic combines a map of the path of totality with a map of the conflict in Belgium and northern France, Serbia, and the Russian border. The graphic ominously describes "The Shadow Sweeping Across Europe."

Allied outrage at German atrocities in Belgium prompted a spirited defense of German actions by scientists, writers, artists and theologians including Fritz Haber. The "Manifesto to the Civilized World," also known as the "Manifesto of the 93," offended Allied scientists and prompted many to call for complete repudiation of German science. Einstein refused to sign the Manifesto.

British scientists relentlessly hounded German-born astronomer Arthur Schuster, despite the fact he had moved to Britain as a teenager. His son served in the British army and was wounded in the Dardanelles.

At the same time, British physicist James Chadwick, who was studying in Germany in 1914, was detained in a former racetrack. He remained in German custody under dire conditions until the Armistice.

Einstein published his complete Theory of Relativity in November 1915. One of the few German scientists who showed any interest was astronomer Karl Schwartzchild. Schwartzchild was serving in the army on the Russian front, where he put his advanced mathematic skills to use calculating artillery trajectories. In his spare time, while under heavy Russian fire, he worked through the math in Einstein's paper. He demonstrated that the math worked beautifully to calculate the movements of planets and stars. He also inadvertently, and without at all realizing it, discovered black holes.

Britain tried to fight the Great War with a volunteer army, but by 1916 it was clear conscription would be necessary. Men could claim exemption for hardship, work of national importance, and conscientious objection. The goverment established tribunals to issue these exemptions but offered no guidance on qualifications.

Conscientious objectors were deeply suspect as slackers and cowards. In this editorial cartoon, a lazy conscientious objector lounges before a fire with a cigar ignoring images of his entire family doing war work. It is titled "This little pig stayed home."

Meanwhile, light from the Hyades star cluster continued on its way toward Earth from 153 light years away. (Image copyright Jose Mtanous, from science.nasa.gov.

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Dulce Et Decorum Est: The Legacies of Fritz Haber

Elizabeth Lunday — Sat, 29 May 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Note: This episode contains a description of a poison gas attack in World War I and a discussion of the injuries caused by different gases. I do not dwell on the details, but even the bare facts can be disturbing. There is also a discussion of suicide. Take care of yourself, and thank you.

The title of this episode is taken from a famous poem by writer and soldier Wilfred A. Owen. His 1918 poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" quotes another poet, the Roman lyricist Horace, and his line "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." This translates as "It is sweet and fitting [appropriate, proper] to die for one's country."

Fritz Haber was born in 1868 to Jewish parents in the town of Breslau, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry and earned a reputation as a hardworking and painstaking researcher. In 1919, he was both accused of war crimes and awarded a Nobel Prize.

Ancient farmers understood the role of nitrogen in the soil, although they couldn't have told you what nitrogen was or how it worked. They knew, however, that land lost its productivity when it was farmed extensively. Farmers could renew their soil to some degree by adding dung and compost to the land.

They also knew crop rotation was important. Medieval farmers, such as those seen in this image, generally used a three-field system. One field was used for grains, one for peas or lentils, and one left fallow.

In the 19th century, scientists learned about the role of nitrogen in living things and discovered how certain bacteria are able to "fix" nitrogen and make it available to plants. The bacteria, known as "diazotrophs," are found in nodules such as you see above in the roots of plants such as peas and lentils.

Crop rotation and manure were the best farmers could do until the discovery of the incredible effectiveness of South American guano in the mid-1900s. The above image depicts one of the islands off the coast of Peru where birds had deposited guano for millions of years. You can see the guano formed massive peaks. Miners hacked away at the guano so it could be exported to Europe and North America.

Germany, like most modern nations, became heavily dependent on these imports, both for fertilizer and to make explosives.

Clara Immerwahr Haber married Haber in 1901. She was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from her university in Germany, a remarkable achievement for a woman in her era. Haber, however, expected only to keep house.

Haber began work on ammonia synthesis in 1904. It was a matter of slow, painstaking work tinkering with temperature, pressure and the right catalyst. Above is a reconstruction of Haber's final table-top process.

I compared the setup to the 1970s board game "Mousetrap." Haber's setup looks simpler than the Rube Goldberg contraption in the game, but his device was far more dangerous and likely to explode and send red-hot shrapnel flying everywhere.

Carl Bosch, a brilliant engineer with the German chemical giant BASF, took over the ammonia synthesis project from Haber. He refined the process and expanded it to an industrial scale. His work was significant, which is why the process is known today as Haber-Bosch.

The announcement of the invention of the ammonia process brought Haber international acclaim. His income soared, he became famous in Germany and soonhe was appointed the founding director of the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. The institute is seen here shortly after its construction in 1911; it was a government-founded research organization and think tank, intended to keep Germany at the forefront of scientific research.

When the Great War began, Haber immediately volunteered for service. He is seen here, at the front; he is the one pointing. He dedicated himself to using chemistry to win the war. One of his first contributions was to convince BASF to convert their ammonia factory to make the starting materials for explosives. This was a critical step for Germany, one that doesn't receive as much attention as it deserves. Without the BASF factories, Germany would have run out of explosives early in the war.

Haber also worked on an experimental program to develop chemical weapons. He eventually convinced the German High Command to test a system that would release the highly toxic chlorine gas across No Man's Land to the Allied troops on the other side.

Here you can see the gas flowing across the line toward the Allies at the first attack at Ypres on April 22, 1915. The gas killed or severely injured those who inhaled it in large quantities--and terrified those who saw it in action. This attack opened a four-mile wide hole in the Allied lines, injured 15,000 Allied soldiers and killed 5000.

The attack was immediately condemned by everyone except Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm, delighted by the attack, awarded Haber the Iron Cross.

Allied condemnation didn't stop Britain and France from quickly developing their own gas weapons. Both sides regularly tried to poison their enemies with an increasingly deadly arsenal of gases. Simultaneously, gas masks were developed and refined.

Animals such as horses and mules were widely used to haul supplies during the war, and masks were created for the beasts as well--although they never proved particularly effective.

A chilling and unforgettable description of a gas attack is found in the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by poet and soldier Wilfred Owen, seen here. You can read the text of the poem here and see actor Christopher Eccleston recite it here.

After the war ended, Fritz Haber fled to Germany to avoid arrest and prosecution for war crimes. After a few months hiding out in Switzerland, he was relieved to learn he wasn't in any danger and returned home.

He arrived home just in time to learn he had been awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the synthesis of ammonia. The official certificate can be seen above.

I found a video of several Nobel laureates and their wives posing for a photo at the ceremony in the summer of 1920. Haber is at the far left; his wife Charlotte sits in front of him in white. You can see the entire video here on the Nobel Prize site. I hoped it would give me some glimpse into Haber's character--perhaps you will see more than I see?

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"The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler" by Thomas Hager — An excellent look at the story of Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, as well as a fascinating discussion of the Guano Era and a consideration of the effects of synthetic fertilizer on the planet.
"Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare" by Daniel Charles — A thorough and entertaining biography that does not shy away from the most unpleasant aspects of Haber's character.
"Science and Neutrality: The Nobel Prizes of 1919 and Scientific Internationalism in Sweden" by Sven Widmalm, Minerva, via JSTOR — A look at the politics behind the scenes in Sweden that led to Haber's 1918 Nobel Prize. Unfortunately behind a paywall, but many libraries grant access.
"Fritz Haber, the Monster Who Made the Modern World Possible," History Collection.com
The Tragedy of Fritz Haber: The Monster Who Fed The World | by Paul Barach | Mission.org | Medium
The Father Of Poison Gas - Fritz Haber I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1? - YouTube
Fritz Haber’s Experiments in Life and Death | History | Smithsonian Magazine
The chemical reaction that feeds the world - Daniel D. Dulek - TED-Ed - YouTube
Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen: Read by Christopher Eccleston | Remembering World War 1 | C4 - YouTube
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen | Poetry Foundation
How do you solve a problem like Fritz Haber? | Radiolab | WNYC Studios — I will be honest--I didn't listen to this episode before I recorded my own. I didn't want it to influence me, because RadioLab has a voice that will sneak into my head and make me want to sound like, well, RadioLab. And I just can't do what they do, alas. But I know it's very, very good and I encourage you to listen!
"Fertilizer has saved billions of lives, but it also has a dark side," by Paul Offit, Popular Science
How many people does synthetic fertilizer feed? - Our World in Data

The Object of Power: The Russian Revolution and Conflict in Eastern Europe, Part II

Elizabeth Lunday — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 04:00:00 -0500

The world has been obsessed with the tragedy of the Romanov family for more than a century. It's easy to forget that the Tsar's family were among hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Revolution as well as in conflicts that swept across Eastern Europe. These conflicts would have lasting implications for the entire world.

Notes and Links

I have really struggled to find a map that shows what I want a map to show. None of them really focus on exactly what I'm focusing on, alas. But, this is one of the best I've found.

This map is dated to the end of 1918. Notice the purple stripe that goes all the way across central Siberia--that's the Trans-Siberian Railway and the territory controlled by the Czechoslovak Legion. Eventually, the White Army would travel along the railway with the Czechoslovaks and fight the Red Army.

The dark blue areas labeled "1" are areas where Allies invaded and seized territory. The reddish-brown area in the west is the territory controlled by the Bolsheviks.

OK, here's another map--and you're going to say, "That's not even in English!" No, it's not, but work with me here. Just refer to the previous image. This map is a year or so later than the previous one. The Trans-Siberian Railway is the black and white line crossing the entire map. Those red arrows along the line show the path of the Bolsheviks moving against the Legion and the White Army as they retreat back to Vladivostok.

Notice the dark red striped area in the upper west. That's the Bolshevik-controlled territory, and you can see from the red arrows how the Red Army moved out of this stronghold and across the entire country. Ukraine is the lime green area on the far left of the map. It was handed over to Germany in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but Russia reclaimed it. The borders on this map reflect the final size of the new USSR by 1922.

It's not hard to see the Romanov daughters as individuals. You can find biographies of each young woman online and learn all sorts of details of their lives. Here you see Tatiana seated, with Maria, Anastasia, and Olga from left to right.

Similarly, Alexei is recognizable across history as a little boy whose life was shadowed by an incurable and painful illness but who liked to play tricks on his sisters and always wanted a bicycle.

In contrast, the many victims of the Red Terror, and the simultaneous White Terror, are difficult to discern as individuals.

I found photos from the Terror, but I'm not going to post them here. They are horrifying.

Allied troops, including British, French, Japanese, and American soldiers, were sent to Vladivostok in the far east and Archangel north of St. Petersburg. French and British troops also fought in southern Russia. This photo depicts American units marching through Vladivostok.

The Allies never sent enough men to make a real difference in the conflict, and they were withdrawn after having done little more than offend the Russians.

The Allies took their own sweet time returning the Czechoslovak Legion to their newly formed homeland; the last troops weren't evacuated from Vladivostok until early 1921. The Legion was incredibly frustrated by the delay. This is a cartoon from a newspaper operated by Legion troops . It shows one last soldier standing along the Sea of Japan waiting for a ship home; it's dated, facetiously, 1980.

This map shows the new nations created after the war in eastern Europe. Finland, Estonia and Latvia achieve independence from Russia. Poland was combined from portions of Russia, Germany, and the Austria-Hungarian empire. Notice the pale green strip extending to the Baltic Sea; that's the Polish corridor, that left East Prussia separate from the rest of Germany.

Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary arose out of the former Austria-Hungarian Empire. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was soon renamed Yugoslavia; it combined territory from Austria-Hungary with the former Serbia. Romania seized territory from its neighbors, gaining a sizeable increase in land.

Dividing up territory in Eastern Europe was difficult and contentious. Self-determination had made it seem easy, but who "owned" a city like Cieszyn in Upper Silesia? The region had been controlled by multiple states over its history and was claimed by the Poles, the Czechs, and the Germans. Cieszyn (its Polish spelling), also known as Těšín in Czech and Teschen in German, was divided down the middle by the Paris Peace Conference, a solution that satisfied no one. Here you can see a guard station hastily erected on the international border in the middle of town.

Another contested territory in eastern Europe was the Sudetenland; those are the dark brown portions on the map. While traditionally part of Czech territory, they were largely inhabited by ethnic Germans. The Paris Peace Conference sided with the Czechs and gave the land to the new Czechoslovakia, to the fury of the Germans. The Nazis would never let the perceived injustice of the Sudetenland die.

Many of the sources for this week are the same as last week, and I won't repeat them here. The following are a few sources that are particularly relevant to this episode.

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The Russian Civil War in Early 1919 I THE GREAT WAR - YouTube — This is a great overview of the Russian Revolution in 1919. You'll notice that the situation is a lot more complicated than I have presented it; in fact, it's more complicated even than the Great War guys explained. From what I can tell, if you think you understand the Russian Revolution, read another book and you'll have to start over in your assessment.
The Czechoslovak Legion's Odyssey Through Russia I THE GREAT WAR Special - YouTube — This is the second part of the The Great War's look at the Czechoslovak Legion, and again it's very well done.
The Long Shadow: Europe After World War One — This is part I of a very good BBC series about the aftermath of World War I. You can find Part II here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54GJXMqat8s&t=642s and Part II here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2TI3f9LD7E&t=768s . It may also be available on streaming services.

A Gladiator's Gesture: Art after the Great War

Elizabeth Lunday — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 04:00:00 -0500

In 1919, two competing art movements went head-to-head in Paris. One was the Return to Order, a movement about purity and harmony. The other was Dada, a movement about chaos and destruction. Their collision would change the trajectory of Western art.

Hugo Ball established the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, where Dada came to life in February 1916. In this photo, he's dressed in his "magic bishop" costume. The costume was so stiff and ungainly that Ball had to be carried on and off stage.

You can hear the entire text of Ball's "Karawane" on Youtube. You can also read the text.

Marcel Duchamp arrived in New York to a hero's welcome, a far cry from the disdainful treatment he was receiving in France. He was hailed for his success at the 1913 Armory Show, where his painting "Nude Descending a Staircase" was the hit of the show.

"Nude Descending a Staircase" was considered radical art, but it was still oil paint on canvas. Duchamp would soon leave even that much tradition behind.

Francis Picabia was handsome, rich, dashing, and about as faithful as an alley cat. That he wasn't court martialed for neglecting his diplomat mission to Cuba for artistic shenanigans in New York was entirely due to his family's wealth and influence. He was also well known in New York for his visit there during the Armory Show.

Picabia abandoned traditional painting for meticulous line drawings of mass-produced items, including this work, titled "Young American Girl in a State of Nudity."

Duchamp horrified New Yorkers when he presented "Fountain" to an art exhibit as a work of sculpture. A urinal may not seem particularly shocking now, but it violated any number of taboos in 1917.

While "Fountain" is generally atttributed to Duchamp, it is possible, although by no mean certain, that it was actually created by the Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven. A German ex-pat, she was creating art out of ready-made objects more than a year before Duchamp and lived her life as a kind of non-stop performance art. Whatever her role in "Fountain," she deserves to be better remembered as a pioneering modernist.

After he returned to Europe, Picabia's art became less disciplined and more outlandish. He titled this ink-blot "The Virgin Saint."

Picabia also published a Dadaist journal, in which he published this work by Duchamp. It's a cheap postcard of the "Mona Lisa" to which he added a mustache. The title "L.H.O.O.Q. is a pun in French; it sounds like "she has a hot ass."

Tzara and other Dadaists in Paris devoted themselves to events and performances. This is a handbill for a "Festival Dada" that took place on May 26, 1920. Tzara and Picabia are listed as performing, along with several other prominent Dadaists including Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, and Paul Eluard. These evenings became increasingly frantic and nihilistic as Dada wore on.

By 1919, Pablo Picasso part of the artistic establishment and no longer a radical on the edges of society.

In 1911/1912, Picasso paintings looked like this--this is "Ma Jolie," a dense, complicated, frankly intimidating Cubist painting.

Ten years later, he painted this work, Woman in White. With its clarity, beauty, and nods to tradition, it is a prime example of Picasso's embrace of neo-classicism after the Great War.

The impulse to create clear, simple, ordered art existed in many European countries. In the Netherlands, Piet Mondrian worked in the Neoplasticist movement creating his iconic grid paintings. This is "Composition No. 2" from 1920.

At the same time, in Germany the Bauhaus was established. As a school of arts and crafts, it taught a stripped-down, clean aesthetic that applied to everything from architecture to furniture design, industrial design to graphic design. This poster advertising a 1923 exhibition is a good example of Bauhaus design and typography.

The Surrealist movement arose out of Dada's ashes in the mid- to late-1920s. It combined the traditional painting technique of neo-Classicism with the bizarre imagery of Dada. Salvador Dali's "Persistence of Memory," for example, is a technical masterpiece, with masterful execution. It's also impossible and, frankly, disturbing.

T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" gives the impression of randomness, of lines picked out of a coat pocket. In fact, it is painstakingly constructed and shows as much technical skill as Dali's clocks. You can read the poem, or listen to Alec Guinness read it--or maybe do both at the same time.

This meme was created in 2013 by cartoonist KC Green. It captures the Dadaist attitude that shows up in popular culture a great deal here in 2019--a sense that the world is really weird right now.

Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

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Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century by Jed Rasula — A really well done history of Dada from its origins in Zurich to its collapse in Paris. Rasula's book was my primary source for this episode, and I recommend it very highly.
Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction by Anne Umland, Cathérine Hug, Francis Picabia, George Baker, Carole Boulbes, Masha Chlenova, Briony Fer, Gordon Hughes, Michèle Cone — This is a pricey exhibit catalog, but it's also the best English-language biography of Picabia I've ever found and contains an excellent cross-section of his work.
Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare: A Biography by Alice Goldfarb Marquis — My favorite biography of Duchamp, and I've read several. (Duchamp haunts my career, along with Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." I can't seem to escape them.) The author looks beyond the mask that Duchamp tried to keep between himself and the world.
"Biography of Elsa Von Freytag Loringhoven" from Widewalls — A short but compelling biography of the Baroness. I'm not entirely convinced she created "Fountain," but I'm not convinced she didn't either. In any case, she's an important figure who should be better remembered.
"Cabaret Voltaire: A night out at history's wildest nightclub," by Alastair Sooke BBC Culture — A look at Cabaret Voltaire, where Dada began.
School of Paris: The Historical Context by Jeanne Willette, Art History Unstuffed — A really good introduction to Return to Order in post-war Paris. Art History Unstuffed is really an excellent resource.
"This Is Fine creator explains the timelessness of his meme," - The Verge — A fun interview with the creator of the iconic--and very Dada-esque--meme.

Incident at Chelyabinsk: The Russian Revolution and Conflict in Eastern Europe, Part I

Elizabeth Lunday — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 04:00:00 -0500

One of the strangest conflicts of the Great War happened 1000 miles east of Moscow between two units of Czech and Hungarian former POWs. What these troops were doing on the edge of Siberia is a fascinating tale of ethnic resentments, self-determination, and unintended consequences.

Notes and Links

A word about dates. Anyone writing about the Russian Revolution must wrestle with the date issue. The Russian empire used a different calendar than the rest of the world for several centuries. This means that the Russian calendar ran about two weeks ahead of the rest of the world. So an event such as the February Revolution occurred on February 23rd on the Russian calendar but March 8 on the western calendar.

The Bolsheviks converted to the western calendar in February 1918, making life easier for them but more complicated for humble podcasters a century later who must decide which date system to use. I have chosen to give dates before the Revolution according to the old calendar, as people in Russian themselves would have experienced them. So in my text, the February Revolution happens in February and the October Revolution in October.

Comparing the map of Europe before and after World War I reveals how many new nations came into being after the collapse of the Austria-Hungarian empire and the division of territory by the Paris Peace Conference. For years the Armistice, armed conflict stretched from southern Finland through the Baltics, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania.

Before the Great War, Tomáš Masaryk was a professor of philosophy and Czechoslovak nationalist leader. He fled Prague early in the war and spent time in London drumming up support for a new Czechoslovak nation. After the Tsarist regime was overthrown in February 1917, he traveled to St. Petersburg to convince revolutionary leaders to allow the creation of a Czechoslovak Legion drawn from POWs that would fight the Central Powers.

Russian POW camps were grim, overcrowded, and disease-ridden. They only became worse after the Revolution, when the new government put little priority on the care and feeding of prisoners. POWs were eager to leave the camps, to go home, to support the Czechoslovak Legion, or to join the Bolsheviks.

Tsar Nicholas II was the heir to the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty and the supreme autocrat of all Russians. In effect, the entire nation was his personal fiefdom. He was diligent and hardworking but utterly unprepared for the task of rule and, frankly, not very smart.

Nicholas was married to Alexandra, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and the couple had four daughters and one son. Alexandra became even more passionate about Russian autocracy than her husband, once telling her grandmother than the Russian people love to be whipped.

Alexei, the young son and heir, had a blood disease hemophilia. He was frequently ill and likely would not have lived to adulthood. The trauma of her son's illness sent Alexandra scrambling for help and healing. She found both in the peasant mystic Grigori Rasputin.

Rasputin was foul-mouthed, lecherous, and dirty, but he convinced the Empress that he and he alone could save her son.

During the 1905 Russian Revolution, the people rose up in protest, but the military remained loyal to the regime and put down riots before they got out of hand. In one incident, troops opened fire on peaceful protesters, killing hundreds; this is an artistic representation of that scene. The Tsar implemented reforms to limit the revolution, but he walked them back as soon as possible.

By 1917, the military had lost faith in the regime and began supporting protesters rather than fighting them.

After the Revolution, the Provisional Goverment tried to control the government. On paper, they looked powerful, but in reality they quickly squandered any authority they might have had.

The soviets or councils of Moscow and Petrograd had the real power in 1917. They were large, unruly bodies made up of factory workers, peasants in from the countryside, soldiers, and a handful of trained, experienced communist organizers. They attempted a form of direct democracy that ended up disorganized and brutal.

Vladimir Lenin rushed back to Russia after the Revolution and quickly began organizing the Bolsheviks into the most formidable political force in the country. He and his party seized control in October 1917.

The Czecho-Slovak Legion traveled east along the Trans-Siberian Railway. This map shows the entire route of the railway. The Legion actually joined the railway on a leg not pictured on this map that extended into Ukraine southwest of Moscow. According to their original plan, they would have to travel roughly 5000 miles from Ukraine to Vladivostock.

A unit of the Czechoslovak Legion stands with one of their trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Five members of the Legion pose in a photo studio. I love this photo--it raises so many questions. When and where did they find a photo studio? Who came up with the pose? Did anyone recognize how silly they looked against a clearly painted backdrop of a classical column?

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Links:

Dreams of a Great Small Nation: The Mutinous Army that Threatened a Revolution, Destroyed an Empire, Founded a Republic, and Remade the Map of Europe by Kevin J McNamara — McNamara's book is one of the few texts available on the Czechoslovak Legion. I found the book incredibly useful in understanding both the motives and the logistics of the Czechslovak nationalist movement and the Legion.
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes — There are many excellent books about the Russian Revolution, but I found Figes' to be the most helpful. This is not a casual book, and it will require sustained attention, but it never loses focus on the human scope of the Revolution.
The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore — This is a really fascinating look at the entire history of the Romanovs, and it opened up a lot of history to me. It also paints a picture of the slow accumulation of missteps, errors in judgment, and, sometimes, utter idiocy that paved the way to revolution.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty by Robert K. Massie — Massie's book was published all the way back in 1967, and I must have read it for the first time about 1980. It was published in one of those Reader's Digest condensed books that everyone's grandparents (including mine) seemed to have. Would I rely on it exclusively for an academic paper? No, but it's still a good read and an insightful psychological study of the emperor and empress.
Fighting Without A Country - Czechoslovak Legions of World War 1 -- THE GREAT WAR Special - YouTube — I've praised The Great War series on YouTube more than once, and I must do so again. They provide a great summary of the adventures of the Czechoslovak Legion.
Revolutions — Mike Duncan's always amazing "Revolutions" podcast began its examination of the Russian Revolution, and of course it's fantastic. He is spending weeks on events I skip over in a sentence, so if you want to dive deep, make sure you're listening.