“Farbe für die Republik” is the title of an eagerly awaited exhibition set to take place at one of Germany’s most prestigious museums.

The exhibit – which will be presented at the Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin between March and August 2014 – features hundreds of colour photographs taken during four decades in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The concept is extraordinary since most images from the country and are black and white photographs of mediocre quality.

Martin Schmidt and Kurt Schwarzer searched the archive of the museum for the best of their pictures. The photographers, who worked in the GDR, selected images showing women working in factories, youth football teams on the pitch, elderly hikers during an outing on a sunny day, people at the hairdresser’s and many more subjects and themes. The brilliant quality of their photographs – of which all seem to sparkle in the brightest colours –…

IN MEMORY OF ERNST TOLLER
(d. May 1939)
The shining neutral summer has no voice
To judge America, or ask how a man dies;
And the friends who are sad and the enemies who rejoice

Are chased by their shadows lightly away from the grave
Of one who was egotistical and brave,
Lest they should learn without suffering how to forgive.

What was it, Ernst, that your shadow unwittingly said?
O did the child see something horrid in the woodshed
Long ago? Or had the Europe which took refuge in your head

Already been too injured to get well?
O for how long,like the swallows in that other cell,
Had the bright little longings been flying in to tell

About the big friendly death outside,
Where people do not occupy or hide;
No towns like Munich; no need to write?

Dear Ernst, lie shadowless at last among
The other…

ハガレンズ
コロンビア国立大学
英文献学

‘A Concise History of Britain’ by F. E. Halliday is a useful, summarizing overview of the British Isles history. By using comprehensible and deeply argued explanations, the study of Halliday encompasses interesting topics such as ‘Early Invaders,’‘Three Centuries of Peace –43 to 410–,’ ‘The Rise and Fall of Wessex –410 to 1066–,’ ‘From Despotism to Anarchy –1066 to 1154–,’ and ‘The Making of the Nation –1154 to 1307.’ Additionally, charts, photographs, maps, and paintings make the reader feel he or she is closer to the subject matter. The book is indeed an astonishing touch on British history for civilisation investigators.

The first chapter, ‘Early Invaders,’ describes how England is, how it is gradually peopled by humans, and how the then invasions take place. After general features of the English territory –flat land, lower ground with uplands and valleys–, the story begins with Stone Age hunters arriving…

I keep telling you about all these people, like Kahlo and Picasso, Hemingway and Graves, plus my bits about Gandhi, and Elvis, and I do not even know whether you are interested in the slightest.

Oh well, never mind. I wouldn’t tell you, if I wasn’t interested. I suppose that has to be my guideline.

Today I’ll offer you an entry about Federico García Lorca. He was born in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, Spain, 5th June,1898; he died near Granada, 19th August,1936. Killed. Executed. Murdered. That is 71 years ago, today.

One does not know who killed him, or why. Perhaps it was a political murder, because García Lorca was considered left-leaning. Or it was a Fascist murder, because Lorca stood for the arts and the intellect and for freedom of the mind. Or it was, because Lorca was said to be more interested in men than in the opposite…

Guilhermina Suggia by Welsh artist Augustus John (1878-1971)

Postcard by H.A. Weiss, circa 1900

Photograph by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)

Miss M. Frank of Vienna

By American painter Joseph DeCamp (1858-1923)

By American painter Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933)

By American artist John White Alexander (1856-1915)

After I read Germinal a couple of years ago (see my review), Émile Zola became one of those authors that I really wanted to read more of, but it was not until I saw the BBC series based on The Ladies’ Paradiseand read the novel (see my review) that I decided to begin a long-term project to read them all. I’ve enjoyed reading this one, The Fortune of the Rougons, which puts the whole sequence into perspective.

With Les Rougon-Macquart, Zola apparently set out to emulate Balzac’s La Comedie Humaine but his 20-volume cycle differs in two significant ways: it consists of novels rather than short stories and novellas, and it focusses on a single family rather than a whole society. Zola believed in the fatalistic effects of heredity and environment, and so the novels trace three branches of the Rougon-Macquart family: the aspirational…

This series of posts comprises a few loosely translated extracts from Bolshoi Gorod, a fine Russian magazine of art and culture. In April this year, they did a small series on pre-Revolutionary private dwellings in Moscow, and these seemed of artistic interest in this blog. The tragedy is that it’s impossible for the average man-on-the-street to enter these residences, which are closed to the public even on the two days of the year (April 18, May 18) that are named Days of Culture, and it took nearly half a year of attrition and persuasion for Bolshoi Gorod to obtain access.

Alexandrinsky Palace

In 1754, Matryona Demidova, the wife of Prokofy Demidov, son of the Ural-based factory-man, bought lands from the Countess Repnin. Two years later, the baroque Demidov palace was constructed under the aegis of the Prague-based architect Jecht (I’m not sure I’m spelling this right and can’t find any…