During the Age of Enlightenment, Menschlichkeit in German translated the concept humanitas of Cicero, a person with the qualities one would hope for in a friend or trusted colleague.
Die Menschenerziehung published in 1826 by Friedrich Froebel outlined his ideas for educating a “better human being”. His philosophy of human development provided the basis for a plan to implement these ideas.
One of the most important books on education ever written, it was translated into English by W.N. Hailmann in 1887.
Kandinsky, an instructor at the Bauhaus school, distributed a questionnaire in 1923 asking which of the primary colors should represent each of these basic forms.
The consensus was that the triangle should be assigned the color yellow, the circle blue and the square red. These motifs became an enduring symbol of the Bauhaus.
One of the guiding principles of the Bauhaus architectural movement was that all objects can be formed by simple shapes, the triangle, circle and square.
You can see these motifs in Walter Gropius’ houses, Marianne Brandt’s teapot, Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings and in the works of many other Bauhaus artists.
A pendant incorporating a triangle, circle and square has been designed in honor of this artistic movement, which celebrates its 100th birthday in 2019.
This pendant incorporating a triangle, circle and square is printed in interlocking cast metal so that the circle and square swing freely in relation to the triangle.
According to the fashion of the humanists, Jan Cizek used the latinized form of his name, Johannes Zeising.
A former monk from Silesia, Jan Cizek was educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood, studied at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow from 1504 and became a Franciscan monk at Breslau in 1510.
He and a couple of his colleagues, Michael Weisse and Johann Mönch, were influenced by the writings of Martin Luther (1483-1546). As a result the three friends were expelled from Breslau around 1517.
Zeising wrote on the topics of Scripture, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper in ways that influenced the “Colloquy of Austerlitz” held on March 14, 1526.
He wrote that the salvific spiritual presence of Christ manifested itself in living things, in the thoughts, hearts, and souls of believers.
“If salvation came through the Scriptures or the sacraments, then everyone who read or heard Scripture or received the sacraments would receive salvation and moral transformation.”
“Preaching is vain when God does not use it to do his inner work in people. For the person who is born again, the external word is a testimony of the internally experienced truth.”
“On the external or serving and the inner or essential word of God”
Zeising objected to the idea that the external, written, and preached word has the same power as the inner and essential word of God.
“The external word is a mere letter and transient voice. The inner, living word is Spirit and life. God does his work in people through the Holy Spirit how and when he wills. The outer word can transmit an external, rational knowledge of Christian doctrine and a historical, literal belief, but not a spiritual rebirth. Spiritual rebirth is a work of the Spirit; it produces a knowledge of God that is written in the human heart, and brings salvation.”
In respect to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Zeising distinguished between the direct, salvific inner event and its external witness or signification through water baptism and the partaking of the communion elements, the same distinction that he drew between inner and outer word.
The protocol of the Austerlitz colloquy distinguished between a spiritual communion necessary to salvation and the reception of outer signs, which was not necessary to salvation:
“All believers should recognize and acknowledge two kinds of communion, one inward and spiritual, the other an external remembrance. The first, the spiritual, is necessary for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life; it happens through faith and is sufficient for salvation. The other communion is in no sense to be disparaged, but should be held in all respects according to the last will and testament of Christ.”
Moravia was part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which fell to the Habsburgs in 1526. Johannes Zeising was burned at the stake on April 10, 1528 at Brunn (Brno), formerly the seat of the Moravian Provincial Diet or Estates.
The incorporation of Bohemia into the Habsburg Monarchy against the resistance of the local Protestant nobility sparked the 1618 Defenestration of Prague and the Thirty Years’ War.
Silesia was part of the Kingdom of Bohemia until 1740, when Prussia annexed Silesia.
In 1813 Silesia became the center of the revolt against Napoleon. The Prussian royal family moved to Breslau, where Frederick William III published the letter An mein Volk (to my people) which called the German people to arms. The experience of the war of liberation strengthened the bond of Silesians to Prussia and the Province of Silesia became one of Prussia’s most loyal provinces.
William Strutt depicts the bushfires which engulfed Victoria on Black Thursday, 6 February 1851. The city of Melbourne was filled with dust, smoke and a rain of cinders, the glow of which could be seen from far out at sea.
“I can never forget the morning of that scorching Thursday, ever after memorable in the annals of the Colony as “Black Thursday”. The sun looked red all day, almost as blood, and the sky the colour of mahogany. We felt in town that something terrible must be going on up country and sure enough messenger after messenger came flocking in with tales of distress and horror.”
William Strutt in his journal.
Widespread bushfires covered a quarter of Victoria, approximately 5 million hectares. Approximately 12 lives, one million sheep and thousands of cattle were lost.
After an intense drought throughout 1850 and extreme heat, the weather reached record extremes. By eleven it was about 47 °C (117 °F) in the shade. The air cooled to 43 °C (109 °F) by one o’clock and rose to 45 °C (113 °F) around four o’clock. A strong furnace like wind came from the north and gained power and speed as the hours passed. The hot north wind was so strong that a ship at sea came under burning ember attack and was covered in cinders and dust.
Bushfires become possible, because of inappropriate landscape management by settlers. The people, who for tens of thousands of years had maintained tracts of walkable land and hunting grounds, where displaced by sheep eating the yams, which they cultivated as a major food source.
An estate purchased in 1799 with the intention to make agriculture the basis of a new system of education .
Returning to Berne from Paris in 1791, Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg resolved to create a school for pupils of all social classes to learn skills and personal integrity. By fostering enterprise, Christianity and understanding, he hoped to prevent French style Revolutions and violent uprisings.
Working with Pestalozzi, their intention was elevating the lower and rightly training the higher orders of the state, and welding them together in a closer union than had previously been deemed attainable.
The school at first excited a large amount of ridicule, but gradually it began to attract the notice of foreign countries; and pupils, some of them of the highest rank, began to flock to him from every country in Europe, both for the purpose of studying agriculture and to profit by the high moral training associated with his educational system.
For forty five years Fellenberg, assisted by his wife, continued his educational labours, and finally raised his institution to the highest point of prosperity and usefulness. He died on the 21st of November 1844.
See Hamm, Fellenberg’s Leben und Wirken (Bern, 1845); and
Schoni, Der Stifter von Hofwyl, Leben und Wirken Fellenberg’s.
Blocking out, turning a blind eye, shutting off, not wanting to know, wearing blinkers, seeing what we want to see … these are all expressions of ‘denial’.
When we deny, are we aware of what we are doing or is this an unconscious defence mechanism to protect us from unwelcome truths?
Can there be cultures of denial?
Is denial always so bad – or do we need positive illusions to retain our sanity?
States of Denial is the first comprehensive study of both the personal and political ways in which uncomfortable realities are avoided and evaded. It ranges from clinical studies of depression, to media images of suffering, to explanations of the ‘passive bystander’ and ‘compassion fatigue’. The book shows how organized atrocities – the Holocaust and other genocides, torture, and political massacres – are denied by perpetrators and by bystanders, those who stand by and do nothing.
Congratulations to Stanley Cohen on winning the American Society of Criminology’s International Division Award for outstanding publication of 2000-2001 for States of Denial!
Each type of authority is legitimate since it involves both explicit and implicit consent of the governed.
A clear hierarchy leads to an efficient organization, comprising of a legitimate and strong relationship between the followers and leaders.
The philosopher and sociologist Max Weber discerns the three types of authorities- Traditional, Legal-Rational, and Charismatic; each of which correspond to a form of leadership that operate in a contemporary society. The one thing which is common in all the three authorities is “legitimacy.” A legitimate authority is justified by both the ruler and the ruled.
Traditional authority can be defined as the power legitimized by respect for long-established cultural patterns. It comes from unwritten rules that are maintained over time. Leaders in traditional authority are people who depend on an established order or tradition. This leader is a dominant personality and the existing order in the society entrusts him the mandate to rule.
Charismatic authority can be defined as the power legitimized by exceptional, unusual, and extraordinary personal abilities which inspire devotion and obedience. Weber identified this extraordinary attribute as ‘Charisma’ whereas Robert Bierstadt called it leadership. Charismatic leaders are seen as people who are inspired by God or by lofty unsocial principles. The charisma of these leaders is enough and adequate to inspire their followers and make their authority seem legitimate. Charismatic authority is inherently unstable and mostly short lived.
Legal authority can be defined as a bureaucratic authority, where power is legitimized by legally enacted rules and regulations such as governments. This form of authority is the one that is grounded and clearly defines laws with explicit procedures that define the obligations and rights. This is largely respected due to the competence and legitimacy that laws and procedures bestow upon the people in the authoritative position.
Contemporary societies depend on this form of authority; as the complexities require the emergence of bureaucracy that embodies systematization and order. Authoritarians can exercise power only within the legally defined boundaries.
According to Weber, “Legal authority rests in the enactment and its pure type is best represented by bureaucracy”. The basic idea is that laws can be changed and enacted by formally correct procedures. The governing body here is either appointed or elected.
A principal founder of modern sociology, Max Weber Jr. was born 21 April 1864, to a prominent Prussian lawyer/politician and a pious mother, in Erfurt.
Yam Daisy or Murnong was the only Australian plant recommended for development as a crop by the prominent 19th Century botanist Ferdinand von Mueller. Major Thomas Mitchell, in 1836, recorded that, east of the Grampians, the “vastextent of open downs” was “quite yellow with Murnong“, furthering the belief that it was a widespread, abundant species. One European settler described “millions of murnong over the plain”.
The small sweet tubers are produced each year in early spring, and harvested in summer (about November). Hundreds of women spread across the plains at harvest time, all digging for these nutritious roots. The digging sticks used by the women loosed the soil to provide good growth conditions for the smaller tubers, which they left in the soil.
The plants die back to their underground roots in March, and begin putting up new rosettes of fresh leaves in Autumn. The grasslands where the murnong grew were burned off during this dormancy period. The burning was controlled with some patches burned each year. The whole growing area was burned every 3 years. This controlled the growth of larger plants, which would otherwise have shaded out this valuable food crop.
The buds droop until the flowers open. The flowers open and stay upright for one day to attract pollinating insects.
They droop again as the seeds form. When the seeds are ripe, the stems elongate and straighten, holding the seeds up to the wind, for distribution.
The flower is a yellow head of florets, reminiscent of a dandelion.
Count Günther VII of Schwarzburg founded a Cistercian monastery in 1275 on the site of today’s Stadtilm Town Hall. The first abbess was Irmengard, a daughter of Günther VII.
Günther was in Jerusalem with Emperor Frederick II around 1228/29. He succeeded his father as Count of Schwarzburg-Blankenburg in 1236 and, after the death of his brother Henry III, became Count of Schwarzburg in 1259.
As a result of the Reformation, Stadtilm became Protestant in 1533, and the monastery was secularized in 1540. The property went to the Schwarzburg counts. The last abbess, Countess Margaret of Schwarzburg, left the city.
From 1628, the sons of Count Albrecht VII converted the building into Stadtilm Castle.
During the great fire of August 1, 1780, the castle built after 1628 (with the exception of the crypt and the tower) also fell victim to the flames.
in the space of ten years he was largely responsible for what The Times described as a revolution in British glass design
Designed by Frank Thrower in 1971, ‘Sharon’ champagne flute was included in a V & A exhibition called ‘100 Best Ever Products’.
Frank Thrower was the creator and chief designer of Dartington Glass.
In the mid 1960s, when Dartington Hall was looking at the possibilities of starting a rural industry in North Devon, they consulted Euan Cooper-Willis, the founder of Portmeirion Pottery, whose children were at Dartington Hall School.
Euan put the Trustees in touch with Frank Thrower who was working for Portmeirion and, almost as a sideline, designing glassware made for the company in Sweden. Thus began one of Dartington’s most celebrated commercial enterprises. Frank Thrower and Dartington Glass became synonymous.
On Frank’s recommendation, Dartington’s Trustees recruited Eskil Vilhelmsson, a Swedish master glass blower. Eskil brought with him to North Devon seventeen glass blowers to work and to train local men at the new factory in Torrington.
Frank’s designs for the glassware were fresh, clean and simple – the antithesis of glassware made in Britain at that time – but for the first four years the products proved hard to sell.
In 1971 the company and the Dartington Trustees decided to invest in a dynamic advertising campaign and Dartington Glass never looked back.
Dartington is not just a beautiful place to visit. It attracts people with big ideas who want to change the world.
