(should have clarified this, the ages they are all at the time of 1960, or the time they died. so grace, gil, delta, sinclair are not as old as i think they would be by the time bioshock 2 takes place.)
On America's first modern dance company and its many collaborators, with reproductions of costumes, sets, ephemera and more
Ruth St Denis (1879–1968) and Ted Shawn (1891–1972) pioneered modern dance in the US with their company Denishawn, founded in 1914. Incorporating elements from ancient, non-Western and Native American sources, Denishawn became the first important American dance company. A generation of dancers and choreographers, including Martha Graham, trained and performed with the company, and many artists, including Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell, collaborated with them.
This catalog reproduces artwork, sets, ephemera and especially costumes, many of which have not been seen since the 1930s. Some of the materials and costumes, as well as the choreography, borrow from East and South Asian and Native American cultures, and the publication interrogates the legacy of cultural appropriation in dance. The materials also demonstrate St. Denis and Shawn’s stylistic and personal connections to American and European modernists, broadening an understanding of American dance in early modernism.
I never wish to be easily defined. I'd rather float over other people's minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.
01/07/92.) So, as our database got retrofitted this year, we're transferring all our physical files to digital, for an easier-to-edit and more accessible information hub. I've been put in charge of our physical anomalies, since I'm working on the Arbor perdita case. Well, I was, but this pays better than our current global crisis.
03/07/92.) I've decided Case 17 will be Anomalous Entity 577892- Stalking Blind Humanoid. For levities sake, I'm gonna just nickname it "Glass Tapper" so everyone understands. Maybe I should send this out to the team, get them to understand the naming schema I've been using.
04/07/92.) They got back to me, and they're on-board with not using a bunch of numbers and classifications for the case file names, so Cases will have the unofficial names given to them by the cataloguers. Neat! Should move onto Case 44. Maybe "Thinking Forest"? Cause the whole thing is sentient? I don't know.
19/07/92.) I've been looking at the older files, from the 20s and such. Well, I say "looking at", but I'm really "looking at the lack of". We were established in 1914, but our oldest files are from 1952. Hundreds of anomalies in one year, but afterwards they spread out afterwards. I'm going to inquire to the department head about this. Seems weird.
23/07/92.) They responded. With nothing.
24/07/92.) We are Site 13. That means at the very least, there are 12 other sites. So... why aren't they mentioned in correspondence? It's always within the site, no communication with others. What even is our organisations name?
27/07/92.) I did something stupid.
27/07/92 (2).) To clarify, I stole my department head's credentials. Quick bypass to the system, but I took them. I searched through their correspondence until I came across my inquiry. They had forwarded it to the Board. They emailed back telling him to "not engage". What? Not engage with the fact we might have never existed until the 1950s? Where we had just popped up out of nowhere with 40 years of experience under our belt? What is happening?
14/11/94.) The new database was completed.
17/11/94.) Yesterday the president announced a state of emergency, introduced our organisation, and announced all operations investigating Arbor perdita is going to be undertaken by our 13th site. However, he didn't mention our organisation by name, or any of the other sites, and the press didn't question any of this.
21/11/94.) Referring to my entry yesterday, I think I found a way. It's risky, but the elevator can reach them if I input the right key.
30/03/95.) I got the key. Hello answers.
31/03/95 (AUDIO TRANSCRIPT)
B:
R-331: That's right.
B:
R-331: Are there other Sites?
B:
R-331: Then why do we-
B:
R-331: I guess not.
B:
R-331: Well... when did we actually begin operation?
B:
R-331: Can- can you repeat that?
B:
R-331: Fuck.
B:
R-331: [SILENCE]
B:
R-331: What is Site 13?
B:
07/05/95.) It was a mistake to get answers. They told me everything. More than everything. I think it's gonna kill me. I can't handle it. I can't even put it into words like they did. Or did they?
01/01/00.) We just lost.
END OF FILE.
SITE 13
"Cogito, ergo sum."
Tale of Tales | episode: 1.03 “In A Dark, Dark House”
Once there was a house with something sinister inside it...
In this episode of Tale of Tales, we'll explore the ghosts of our folkloric past, the insecurities that surround new places and new responsibilities, and how best to survive dismembered body parts falling down your chimney (spoiler: it involves more bowling than you might expect).
“In A Dark, Dark Wood”, retold from memory from common variants (0:00:00-0:02:02)
Alvin Schwartz, “The Guests”, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, adapted from a report in Louis C Jones’ Things That Go Bump in the Night (0:03:35-0:05:55)
Alvin Schwartz, “What Do You Come For?” Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (0:08:33-0:09:48)
Alvin Schwartz, “Sounds”, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (0:12:36-0:15:52)
Alvin Schwartz, “Me Tie Doughty Walker”, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, adapted from Herbert Halpert’s transcription of “The Rash Dog and the Bloody Head” (0:19:23-0:23:10)
Alvin Schwartz, “The Haunted House”, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, adapted from a tale reported in Richard Chase’s American Folk Tales and Songs (0:23:44-0:30:17)
Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm, “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”, Children’s and Household Tales (0:32:14-0:52:11)
Alvin Schwartz, “Is Something Wrong?”, Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones, adapted from a tale reported in Louis C Jones, “The Ghosts of New York” (0:53:51-0:55:22)
Alvin Schwartz, “Footsteps”, Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones, adapted from a Canadian tale reported in Helen Creighton’s Bluenose Ghosts (0:57:54-1:00:12)
“Reflection”, retold from several online variants (1:01:43-1:04:36)
All Music Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Track Listing:
“The Dread” by Kevin MacLeod (0:00:01-0:01:41, 0:47:42-0:50:48)
“Return of Lazarus” by Kevin MacLeod (0:02:15-0:03:11, 0:03:36-0:05:55, 0:08:30-0:09:46, 0:41:50-0:47:30)
“The House of Leaves” by Kevin MacLeod (0:13:18-0:15:49)
“Gathering Darkness” by Kevin MacLeod (0:19:24-0:23:03)
“Spider Eyes” by Kevin MacLeod (0:23:44-0:30:18, 1:01:43-1:04:36)
“Danse of Questionable Tuning” by Kevin MacLeod (0:32:14-0:34:17, 0:35:04-0:37:08)
“Wanderer” by Alexander Nakarada (0:38:28-0:41:34)
“Arcadia” by Kevin MacLeod (0:51:23-0:52:11)
“Unease” by Kevin MacLeod (0:53:51-0:55:20)
Show Extras: Poltergeists
This episode contains by far the most stories of all the episodes I've planned so far for the podcast's first few months of existence, but there were still a few that I wasn't able to include. Some of them will probably appear in future episodes, but this comedic extra from Alvin Schwartz's collection is probably too contained to this episode's subject matter to fit with any future ones. In his second book, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Schwartz tells a story he calls "Thumpity-Thump", told from the perspective of a family that moves from Schoharie to Schenectady and rents a house "awful cheap 'cause it was spooked", though they themselves "didn't take no stock in spooks." Similar to in "The Haunted House" and Pliny the Younger's tale, they hear a commotion their first night there and investigate, following the sound down into their cellar. The story breaks tradition a bit in that in this case the noise turns out to be a chair hopping up and down on top of one particular spot on the floor. When they dig up the floor there they find a box containing "the body of a man all smooched with blood." The family, believing suspicion will be placed on them if they report the find, rebury the body and pack up to leave -- all while the chair, "awful mad", keeps hopping up and down insistently. The family reports being happier back in Schoharie, "where chairs stay where they're put and don't go rarin' and rampagin' roun', scarin' folks out of their wits, pointin' out murders and goodness knows what!"
In his notes, Schwartz explains that he adapted the tale from Emelyn E. Gardner, who reported the story in her book Folklore from the Schoharie Hills, New York as it was told to her by a New York woman in 1914. Schwartz identifies the haunting in this tale as a "poltergeist", or "noise ghost", an invisible entity that makes its presence known by moving things around and making noise, sometimes neutrally but also sometimes malevolently, smashing dishes, setting fires, and ripping clothing. Schwartz documents another poltergeist story, "The Trouble", in his third book -- this one far more harrowing, as Schwartz claims it is based on true events that may have themselves been inspiration for the eventual feature film named after the frightful spirits themselves: Poltergeist.
Michael A. Peters, Wittgenstein and the ethics of suicide: Homosexuality and Jewish self-hatred in fin de siècle Vienna, 51 Edu Phil & Theory 981 (2019)
If suicide is allowed, then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed, then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it is like investigating mercury vapours in order to investigate the nature of vapours. —Wittgenstein, L. Notebooks 1914–1916, Tr. G.E.M. Anscombe. Harper: New York, 1961, p. 91
Introduction
One of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s cousins and three of his four brothers committed suicide. Hans committed suicide most likely throwing himself from a boat in Chesapeake Bay in May 1902, having run away from home. Rudi committed suicide in a Berlin bar, administering himself cyanide poisoning in 1904, most probably because of homosexuality that he referred to as ‘perverted disposition’ in a suicide note. Kurt shot himself in 1918 at the end of the war when his troops deserted en masse.
The profound influences upon young Ludwig were the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann who committed suicide in 1906 and Otto Weininger, author of Sex and Character, who committed suicide in 1903. For the most part, these suicides were committed before Ludwig had turned 15. Young Ludwig was also profoundly influenced by Schopenhauer who he read while still at school. Schopenhauer denied that suicide was immoral and instead saw it as the last supreme act of freedom and assertion of the will in ending one’s life. In ‘On Suicide’ in Studies in Pessimism, Schopenhauer writes that none of the Jewish religions ‘look upon suicide as a crime’. Yet, these religious thinkers:
tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every mail has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.1 https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/chapter3.html
Schopenhauer remarks ‘the inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suffering – the Cross – is the real end and object of life. Hence Christianity condemns suicide as thwarting this end ... ’ As Jacquette (2000) notes, despite his profound pessimism Schopenhauer rejects suicide ‘as an unworthy affirmation of the will to life by those who seek to escape rather than seek nondiscursive knowledge of Will in suffering’ (p. 43). Young Ludwig while of Jewish origins was baptised a Catholic. It is well known that Wittgenstein loses his faith while still at school.
Wittgenstein entertained thoughts of suicide from his early teenage years throughout his life. This suicidal ideation came to the fore even more intensely, if we are to judge from his letters to Paul Englemann, during the years he spent as an elementary school teacher in the mountain villages of Austria. In the period 1919 when he trained as a teacher until 1926 when he abruptly resigned after hitting a boy who fell unconscious as a result, Wittgenstein suffered intense bouts of depression (Peters, 2017).
This essay is devoted to the question: in view of his suffering and the Jewish cult of suicide in fin de siecle Vienna why did Wittgenstein not take his own life? I investigate this question focusing on Wittgenstein’s sources of suffering around what I call his ‘double identity crisis’ caused by his homosexuality and his Jewish self-hatred.
Identity crisis; suicide in Vienna
Under the heading ‘Suicide Squad’ Jim Holt (2009) reviewing Alexander Waugh’s The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War begins rather sensationally with the following:
“A tense and peculiar family, the Oedipuses,” a wag once observed. Well, when it comes to dysfunction, the Wittgensteins of Vienna could give the Oedipuses a run for their money. The tyrannical family patriarch was Karl Wittgenstein (1847-1913), a steel, banking and arms magnate. He and his timorous wife, Leopoldine, brought nine children into the world. Of the five boys, three certainly or probably committed suicide and two were plagued by suicidal impulses throughout their lives. Of the three daughters who survived into adulthood, two got married; both husbands ended up insane and one died by his own hand. Even by the morbid standards of late Hapsburg Vienna these are impressive numbers. But tense and peculiar as the Wittgensteins were, the family also had a strain of genius. Of the two sons who didn’t kill themselves, one, Paul (1887-1961), managed to become an internationally celebrated concert pianist despite the loss of his right arm in World War I. The other, Ludwig (1889-1951), was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Holt-t.html
At the end of World War I, troops under the command of Wittgenstein’s second oldest brother, Kurt, rebelled against his orders, and Kurt became the third brother to commit suicide. This is how Waugh describes the suicide of Rudi, a 22-year-old chemistry student at the Berlin Academy:
At 9.45 on the evening of May 2, 1904, Rudi walked into a restaurant-bar on Berlin’s Brandenburgstrasse, ordered two glasses of milk and some food, which he ate in a state of noticeable agitation. When he had finished, he asked the waiter to send a bottle of mineral water to the pianist with instructions for him to play the popular Thomas Koschat number, Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich. As the music wafted across the room, Rudolf took from his pocket a sachet of clear crystal compound and dissolved the contents into one of his glasses of milk. The effects of potassium cyanide when ingested are instant and agonising: a tightening of the chest, a terrible burning sensation in the throat, immediate discoloration of the skin, nausea, coughing and convulsions. Within two minutes Rudolf was slumped back on his chair unconscious. The landlord sent customers out in search of doctors. Three of them arrived, but too late for their ministrations to take effect. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3559463/The-Wittgensteins-Viennese-whirl.html
His father forbade any mention of Rudolf in the Wittgenstein household, a decision that caused a rift between parents and children. Johannes ‘Hans’ the eldest son had died in a canoe- ing incident in America. As Waugh (2010: 29) writes: ‘the most likely scenario is that he did indeed commit suicide somewhere outside Austria, that the family had prior intimations, or direct warnings, of his suicidal intent, and that the spur that induced them to declare openly that he had taken his life was the very public death in Vienna, on October 4, 1903, of a 23-year-old philosopher called Otto Weininger. Weininger’s suicide caused a significant stir in Viennese society. The newspapers ran pages of commentary about him, and his reputation rose from that of obscure controversialist to national celebrity in a matter of days. All the Wittgensteins read his book.’
Weininger (1903/2005) had a profound influence on Wittgenstein through his notorious Sex and Character that he wrote and published in 1903. The book argues that all people are fundamentally bisexual and all individuals are composed of a mixture - the male aspect is active, productive, conscious and moral/logical, while the female aspect is passive, unproductive, unconscious, amoral and alogical. While emancipation is only possible for ‘masculine women’ it is the duty of the male to strive to become, a genius forging sexuality for the abstract love of God in which he can find himself. He was a Jewish convert to Christianity, and Weininger analysed Jewishness in terms of feminine qualities, later used by the Nazis. Weininger was a tormented soul who became a cult figure influencing a wide range of people. His genius was acknowledged by ‘Ford Maddox Ford, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Charlotte Perkins- Gilman, Gertrude Stein, and August Strindberg’ as well as William Carlos Williams, Freud and Hitler (Stern & Szabados, 2004). He was a deep misogynist, an anti-Semite and self-loather (Rider, 2013). He also deeply influenced Wittgenstein, who writes:
I think there is some truth in my idea that I am really only reproductive in my thinking. I think I have never invented a line of thinking but that it was always provided for me by someone else & I have done no more than passionately take it up for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann Hertz Schopenhauer Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos Weininger Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me. (CV, 16)
Engaging the work of Otto Weininger (1880–1903), one of the most widely discussed authors of fin-de-siece Vienna, can help illuminate this sense of a ‘crisis of the subject’ and its relation- ship to the world that informed so much of Vienna’s cultural production and debate at the time. Of all the books Wittgenstein read in his adolescence Weininger’s Sex and Character has the greatest influence (Monk 1990, p. 25). Achinger (2013, p. 121) reads Weininger through the lens of Critical Theory to suggest ‘viewing “the Woman” and “the Jew” as outward projections of different, but related contradictions within the constitution of the modern subject itself.’ She goes on to argue:
More specifically, “Woman” comes to embody the threat to the (masculine) bourgeois individual emanating from its own embodied existence, from “nature” and libidinal impulses. “The Jew,” on the other hand, comes to stand for historical developments of modern society that make themselves more keenly felt towards the end of the nineteenth century and threaten to undermine the very forms of individuality and independence that had previously been produced by this society. Such a reading of Geschlecht und Charakter not only can help illuminate the crisis of the bourgeois individual at the turn of the twentieth century, but also could contribute to ongoing discussions on why modern society, although based on seemingly universalist conceptions of subjectivity, continues to produce difference and exclusion along the lines of gender and race.
Certainly, such a critical interpretation coheres with the reading of a ‘double identity crisis’ facing the younger Wittgenstein growing up in fin d’siecle Vienna. Le Rider (1990) argues ‘The crisis of the individual, experienced as an identity crisis, is at the heart of all questions we find in literature and the humane sciences’ (p. 1) and remarks that ‘Viennese modernism can be interpreted as an anticipation of certain important ‘postmodern’ themes’ (p. 6). He has in mind, for instance, the way in which Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language ‘deconstructs the subject as author and judge of his own semantic intentions’ (p. 28). He remarks in terms of the crisis of identity how Wittgenstein, ‘like all assimilated Jewish intellectuals, found his Jewish identity a problem’ and the problem of his Jewish identity was coupled with a crisis of sexual identity, when at least at some periods of his life he sought refuge from his homosexual tendencies in a kind of Tolstoyan asceticism (p. 295). He suggests:
Wittgenstein, who ... looked back nostalgically on a well-ordered world where everyone had his place, found modernity uncultured because it had lost its power to integrate, and left individuals in a state of confusion. The only ones who can keep their balance and personal creativity are those whom Nietzsche calls the strong men, that is the most moderate, who need neither convictions nor religion, who are able not only to endure, but to accept a fair amount of chance and absurdity, and are capable of thinking in a broadly disillusioned and negative way without feeling either diminished or discouraged. (p. 296)
He argues that the consequences of this double crisis of identity, much more than is commonly accepted, are intimately tied up with the fundamentals of his thought and with a number of his intellectual preoccupations: his interest in Weininger and in psychoanalysis, his mystical tendencies, but also his reflections on genius, on the self, and on ethics^ı (p. 296). The importance that Le Rider(1993) places upon Nietzsche as part of the cultural fabric of Viennese modernism exericised upon a young Wittgenstein is borne out by other scholars of fin-de-siecle Vienna.
There is a kind of Wittgensteinian hagiography that for years has prevented the investigation of these questions which is of itself an interesting question in the anthropology of philosophy, especially that form of analysis that insists on a sharp separation between the man and the work. This line of argument suggests that the realm of ideas properly belongs to that of the mind that can be discussed dispassionately and in a technical way that pays attention to the space of arguments and the structure of argumentation; while the realm of biography belongs to that of the body, to the temporal dimension of existence emphasising its finitude. Thus, the mind-body dualism lives on and also prevents the influence of arguments and observations of psychobiography on philosophy per se.
Viennese Modernism has attracted much scholarly and public interest in recent decades, in part because some of the most enduring works of art, literature, and philosophy produced in Vienna around the turn of the last century question key concepts of liberalism and Enlightenment – such as the notions of progress, of the coherent and rational subject, and of a stable and unproblematic relationship between subject and world in which language is nothing but a neutral and transparent mediator – in ways that seem to prefigure contemporary debates. There are many stories of Jewish artists and philosophers who wrestled with identity issues in a hostile social and intellectual environment of Vienna sometimes internalising aspects of anti- Semitic ideology that no doubt propelled many to seek a new Christianised identity to help mask the transition. How Gustav Mahler, a Bohemian-Jewish artist of genius, responds to the challenges of a German culture that he has appropriated completely but into which he is never fully accepted is the subject of Niekerk’s (2013) Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. Mahler was a frequent visitor to the Wittgenstein mansion when Wittgenstein was a boy. Mahler’s own artistic endeavours are determined by the complex responses to Goethe, the Romantics, Wagner, and, above all, Nietzsche and to rewrite German Romanticism at a time when German cultural history was dominated by Wagner’s anti-Semitic views. Another example is Fritz Waerndorfer who wanted to ‘His House for an Art Lover’ to ‘establish himself as an important participant in the Viennese avant-garde scene but also to promote a new artistic agenda’ and wished ‘to establish a new identity for himself as an assimilated Jew through the modernist redesign’ (Shapira, 2006).
Jewish self-hatred and homosexuality
The question of Jewish self-hatred has been an enduring issue for many years. Paul Reitter (2009: 359), author of The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (2008) indicates
The tendency not to lean too heavily on anyone else’s theory of Jewish self-hatred has no doubt helped a fairly small discussion produce a wide range of interpretive strategies: social psychological (Lewin), psychoanalytic (Gay), psycho-historical (Liebenberg), intellectual historical (Hallie), “topological” (Gilman), and cultural historical (Edelman and Volker).
He refers to Gilman’s (1986) Jewish Self-Hatred that ‘it is only natural, that where some measure of integration is a desideratum, and there is also bigotry in the ‘majority culture’, minority self-loathing will occur’ (Reitter, 2009: 360). He argues Gilman, like W.E. B. Du Bois before him, attempts to explain how ‘German Jews came to ‘accept’ and ‘internalize’ a distorted, decidedly negative image of their own group.’ Du Bois, as Reitter (2009: 360) reports, writes: ‘But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate’ (cited in Reiter, 2009). He quotes from Endelman, who as he remarks is an eminent historian of European Jewry:
Self-hating Jews were converts, secessionists, and radical assimilationists who, not content with disaffiliation from the community, felt compelled to articulate how far they had travelled from their origins by echoing anti-Semitic views, by proclaiming their distaste for those from whom they wished to dissociate them- selves. What set them apart from other radical assimilationists was that, having cut their ties, they were unable to move on and forget their Jewishness. (cited in Reitter, 2009: 366).
Reitter (2009) wants to retrace the evolution of the term ‘Jewish self-hatred’ as a more polite concept than ‘Jewish antisemitism’ with redemptive possibilities. The question is complex and the hypothesis that Jews who harboured such a negative self-image and possessed such a strong desire to be accepted in a society that was covertly and residually hostile to Jews’ might be true but it risks becoming ‘a rhetorical weapon to critics of assimilation’, as Janik (2013 Janich (2013, p.143) suggests in a review of Rietter. He refers to David Sorkin and Steven Beller, who ‘have provided us with accounts of how vigorous Jewish criticism of Jewish life, Socratic self-criticism, was part and parcel of a self-consciously Jewish ‘enlightenment’ (haskalah) from the time of Moses Mendelssohn.’
Wittgenstein’s Jewish self-loathing is a complex affair. David Stern (2001: 237) asks:
Did Ludwig Wittgenstein consider himself a Jew? Should we? Wittgenstein repeatedly wrote about Jews and Judaism in the 1930s (Wittgenstein 1980/1998, 1997) and the biographical studies of Wittgenstein by Brian McGuinness (1988), Ray Monk (1990), and Szabados (1992, 1995, 1997, 1999) make it clear that this writing about Jewishness was a way in which he thought about the kind of person he was and the nature of his philosophical work.
He answers his own question by reference to Brian McGuinness’ Young Ludwig (1889-1921) – ‘First, Wittgenstein did, on occasion, speak of himself as a Jew’ especially in relation to Weininger’s writings on Jewish character in a series of now famous remarks made in the 1930s recorded in Culture and Value. Second, ‘Wittgenstein did, on occasion, deny his Jewishness, and this was a charged matter for him’ (p. 239), in particular in his confessions to family and friends in 1936 and 1937 when he refers to his misrepresentation of his Jewish ancestry. Stern later comments: ‘Is there a connection between Wittgenstein’s writing on Jews and his philosophy? What did he mean when he spoke of himself as a “Jewish thinker” in 1931?’ (p. 265) and concludes
Wittgenstein’s problematic Jewishness is as much a product of our problematic concerns as his. There is no doubt that Wittgenstein was of Jewish descent; it is equally clear that he was not a practicing Jew. Insofar as he thought of himself as Jewish, he did so in terms of the anti-Semitic prejudices of his time (p. 269).
Wittgenstein’s sexuality also caused him much anguish and led to bouts of homosexual self- loathing. In Austria and the United Kingdom homosexuality was still outlawed and considered not only a crime but also a psychiatric treatable condition. There were many risks associated with homosexuality and even with writing about in as late as the 1970s. William W. Bartley III (1973) published his book on Wittgenstein that included references to Wittgenstein being gay, much to the dismay of the philosophical establishment that tried to ban such discussion and to deny that there was any link at all between his work and his sexuality and the feelings it generated. Barley made a few off-hand remarks about Wittgenstein’s promiscuous homosexuality while he was training to be a teacher in Vienna. The evidence for this claim has never been established (Monk, 2018).
Wittgenstein had relationships with David Pinsent in 1912, with Francis Skinner in the 1930s and Ben Richards in the late 1940s. The first was purely Platonic or unconsummated and it is unclear to what extent the other two relationships involved physical expressions of love. It has been a major problem in Wittgenstein studies to address and analyse his sexuality and homo- sexuality as though somehow Wittgenstein’s sexual feelings tainted the ascetic moral ideal that had been built around him as a philosopher. It is interesting the extent to which perspectives have changed – not only societal values and the embrace of gay and transsexual rights but also the legitimacy of sexual autobiography in relation to questions of philosophy. The fact that Michel Foucault was gay by contrast is considered strongly to influence his outlook and his work, and he is celebrated because of it. It was a very significant part of his work in his genealogical studies of the history of sexuality and coloured his view of women’s sexuality. For Wittgenstein, a generation older, the societal reaction was quite vicious and Wittgenstein agonised over his sexuality, without ever addressing it, even though there was an underground acceptance of homosexuality at Cambridge.
There is little doubt of Wittgenstein’s homosexuality or its importance in understanding the man. The more difficult question is the effects of his homosexuality on his philosophy and on his relationships when he was a teacher. Psychoanalytically, much could be made of this personal secrecy and the need to preserve confessional material from prying eyes that might be very damaging. The question is fundamental yet there is no extant work that risks analysis in relation to Wittgenstein to my knowledge. Sex and language as a particular focus of a wider debate on the issue of gender and language now seems almost commonplace. Wittgenstein may have taken some relief from Freud’s analysis of the bisexual nature of human beings where everyone is attracted to both sexes yet Freud’s determinism in ascribing biological and psycho- logical factors on the basis of deep libidinal sexual drives making it difficult to change would have raised questions for Wittgenstein at the point he was trying to change.
Gay male culture began to flourish in the late nineteenth century in 1920s Vienna (sodomy was still an imprisonable offence) and sexologists like Krafft-Ebing and Freud had begun to codify homosexual identity and to see it as a ‘perversion’. There were still very strong taboos in place when Wittgenstein was a teacher. It was not until the 1970s after the ‘Gay Holocaust’ that gay and lesbian activism saw a resurgence. Had Wittgenstein’s homosexuality been known at this time it would almost certainly would have led to his vilification. This anti-gay environment in general society and in teaching forced Wittgenstein’s sexual identity ruminations underground. Derek Jarman’s (1993) witty depiction of the gay ‘Wittgenstein’ is a path-breaking dramatic analysis of Wittgenstein’s opening up as a gay man.2
Wittgenstein on suicide
‘The Ethics of Suicide Digital Archive’ is an exhaustive work accompanying the book prepared by the philosopher Margaret Pabst Battin from the University of Utah3 that begins:
Is suicide wrong, always wrong, or profoundly morally wrong? Or is it almost always wrong but excusable in a few cases? Or is it sometimes morally permissible? Is it not intrinsically wrong at all, though perhaps often imprudent? Is it sick? Is it a matter of mental illness? Is it a private or a social act? Is it something the family, community, or society should always try to prevent, or could ever expect of a person? Could it sometimes be a “noble duty”? Or is it solely a personal matter, perhaps a matter of right based in individual liberties, or even a fundamental human right? https://ethicsofsuicide.lib.utah.edu/introduction/
The Digital Archive acts as comprehensive sourcebook, providing a collection of primary texts on the ethics of suicide in both the Western and non-Western traditions, with an archive based on Wittgenstein’s Notebooks 1914–16 and Letters. The introduction to these texts is prefaced by a note on Wittgenstein’s feelings about suicide during the years 1912–13 when how spent time with David Hume Pinsent, a friend, collaborator and Plantonic lover of Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein friend and collaborator David Hume Pinsent, with whom he traveled on holidays together, describes Wittgenstein’s frequent thoughts of suicide at numerous places in his own diary. In Pinsent’s entry for June 1, 1912, he notes that Wittgenstein told him that he had suffered from terrific loneliness for the past nine years, that he had thought of suicide then, and that he felt ashamed of never daring to kill himself; according to Pinsent, Wittgenstein thought that he had had “a hint that he was de trop in this world.” In his entry for September 4, 1913, when they were traveling in Norway, Pinsent describes Wittgenstein as “really in an awful neurotic state: this evening he blamed himself violently and expressed the most piteous disgust with himself ... it is obvious he is quite incapable of helping these fits. I only hope that an out of doors life here will make him better: at present it is no exaggeration to say he is as bad–(in that nervous sensibility)–as people like Beethoven were. He even talks of having at times contemplated suicide.” In his entry for September 25, 1913, Pinsent reports that “This evening we got talking together about suicide–not that Ludwig was depressed or anything of the sort–he was quite cheerful all today. But he told me that all his life there had hardly been a day, in which he had not at one time or other thought of suicide as a possibility. He was really surprised when I said I never thought of suicide like that–and that given the chance I would not mind living my life so far–over again! He would not for anything.” (Italics in origin, https://ethicsofsuicide.lib.utah.edu/selections/wittgenstein/).
Pinsent (1891–918) was a descendent of Hume who gained a first class honours at Cambridge University in mathematics. Wittgenstein had only arrived at Cambridge to talk with Russell about whether he should take up philosophy in October 1911. During the Christmas vacation Wittgenstein comes to the end of a deep depression. He meets David Pinsent in Russell’s rooms and they quickly became friends, taking tea together, attending concerts, and making music. Within a month of meeting Wittgenstein proposed to Pinsent that they go on holiday together to Iceland in September 1912. They took a second holiday together at the same time in 1913 and were to meet in August 1914 before WWI intervened. As Preston (2018) has reported Wittgenstein received letters which he described as ‘sensuous’. Their relationship was fated when on May 8 1918 Pinsent is killed in an air accident while flying a de Havilland bi-plane. Preston writes:
In the immediate aftermath of Pinsent’s death, Wittgenstein was depressed to the point of planning to kill himself somewhere in the mountains in Austria. But at a railway station near Salzburg he bumped into his uncle Paul, who found him in a state of anguish, but saved him from the suicide he was planning. Wittgenstein kept in contact with Pinsent’s family at least until mid-1919, and probably beyond that. https://theconversation.com/how-ludwig-wittgensteins-secret-boyfriend-helped-deliver-the-philosophers-seminal-work-96557
Pinsent supported Wittgenstein and admired him. It seems clear that Wittgenstein was in love with Pinsent. He dedicated the Tractatus to him when it was published in 1921. Many of the reports on Wittgenstein’s depressed and suicidal state of mind during this period come from Wittgenstein’s letters and Pinsent’s diary.4
It is during this period that Wittgenstein (1961) comes to a resolution about suicide when he writes in what we know as the Notebooks 1914–1916
If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it it is like investigating mercury vapours in order to investigate the nature of vapours.
For Wittgenstein suicide is the paradigmatic case for ethics and while he seems to have entertained suicide as an idea from when he was a boy he steadfastly refuses to give into his despair. Suicide is an evasion of life and God’s will demands that we should come to terms with the facts as a moral task despite the sheer enormity of it and the difficulties of confronting one’s own nature. To his friend Paul Englemann (‘Mr E’ who edits the Letters) on May 30, 1920 he expresses how desperate he has become:
I feel like completely emptying myself again; I have had a most miserable time lately. Of course, only as a result of my own baseness and rottenness. I have continually thought of taking my own life, and the idea still haunts me sometimes. I have sunk to the lowest point.
And writing again to Mr E. he confesses that he is sinking more deeply into depression, that he is contemplating suicide but cannot will himself to take his own life:
I am beyond any outside help. – In fact I am in a state of mind that is terrible to me. I have been through it several times before: it is the state of not being able to get over a particular fact.... I know that to kill oneself is always a dirty thing to do. Surely one cannot will one’s own destruction, and anybody who has visualized what is in practice involved in the act of suicide knows that suicide is always a rushing of one’s own defenses. But nothing is worse than to be forced to take oneself by surprise.
One wonders about the state of mind of a man suffering from continual torment and living daily with the threat of suicide and his capacity to teach children under such circumstances. He writes to Keynes in October 18, 1925 just before the so-called Haibauer incident (hitting the boy):
I have resolved to remain a teacher as long as I feel that the difficulties I am experiencing might be doing me some good. When you have a toothache, the pain from the toothache is reduced by putting a hot water bottle to your face. But that works only as long as the heat hurts your face. I will throw away the bottle as soon as I notice that it no longer provides that special pain that does my character good.
Suicide could not be the answer for Wittgenstein. He had decided to learn to live with it as a test of his moral character. Paul Engelmann (1974) in a brief memoir writes:
Wittgenstein experienced the world as filled with ‘vile’ and ‘disgusting’ people, not exempting himself. He told David Pinsent, the close companion of his prewar years in Cambridge, that he felt he had ‘no right to live in an antipathetic world ... where he perpetually finds himself feeling contempt for others, and irritating others by his nervous temperament without some justification for that contempt etc. such as being a really great man and having done really great work.’ He began to think of suicide at the age of 10 or 11; a decade or so later he told Pinsent he ‘felt ashamed of never daring to kill himself,’ and in 1918 we find him ‘on his way to commit suicide somewhere.’ ....Though Wittgenstein eventually died of natural causes, he was clearly a tormented figure. His search for decency and honesty not only led him to give his entire fortune away but often took the form of browbeating others ... .
In The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus (1942/1997) declares ‘There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide’ (Il n’y a qu’un probl eme philosophique vraiment s erieux: c’est le suicide), a very similar definitive statement by Wittgenstein some forty years earlier: ‘Suicide is the elementary sin’. According to Schopenhauer, moral freedom – the highest ethical aim – is to be obtained only by a denial of the will to live. ‘When life is so burdensome, death has become for man a sought-after refuge’. Schopenhauer affirmed: ‘They tell us that suicide is the greatest act of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person’. Schopenhauer has a significant influence on Wittgenstein, especially in his the early period. Schroeder (2012, p. 367) notes that Schopenhauer influences his early thinking on ethics and the meaning of life:
His 1916 Notebook (NB 71–91) and the final pages of the Tractatus contain a number of echoes of Schopenhauer. Like him he describes aesthetic contemplation using Spinoza’s expression “sub specie aeterni[tatis]”; he repeats Schopenhauer’s criticism of the categorical imperative: that every imperative calls forth the question “And what if I do not do it?” (TLP 6.422); he also agrees with Schopenhauer (and Kant) that the good action should not be motivated by its consequences (TLP 6.422); like Schopenhauer he thinks that science cannot answer questions of value; like him he places “the solution of the riddle of life” outside space and time (TLP 6.4312), and like him he thinks that “what is higher” cannot ultimately be expressed in words. (TLP 6.432, 6.522)
Schroeder (2012) suggests that of greater philosophical importance are Schopenhauer’s thoughts on idealism and especially ‘world as idea’ (p. 368) and the notion that ‘the subject is ... a presupposition of [the world’s] existence’ (NB 79: 2.8.16) and the attendant idea that the metaphysical subject ‘cannot be encountered in experience’ but ‘must be identified with its experiences’ (p. 369). Wittgenstein came to identify both solipsism and idealism as errors, on the basis of early thinking for the private language argument. It seems the case that Schopenhauer did influence the early Wittgenstein’s thinking on suicide but this thought did not remain with him. Schroeder (2012, p. 380) writes:
As a young man, in times of crisis, trying to formulate his ethics and attitude towards life, he remembered and adopted various thoughts from Schopenhauer, some of which he tacked on to his logical-philosophical treatise; but they have very little to do with his philosophical achievements. His real debt to Schopenhauer lies elsewhere. For one thing, the young Wittgenstein was persuaded by Schopenhauer’s idealism (minus its transcendental side), and that proved extremely fruitful for his own thinking all through his life.
In ‘Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer and the metaphysics of suicide’ Modesto Gomez (2018) suggests,
the problems that Wittgenstein raised and the views that he emphatically endorsed are in keeping with his overarching transcendental conception of the metaphysical I, the fundamental character of ethics (NB, p. 79), the meaning of life, and the I as “the bearer of ethics” (NB, p. 80), as it is extensively advanced in the Notebooks 1914-1916 and tersely expressed in the Tractatus. Far from demanding further development, what Wittgenstein’s views on suicide would require is an appropriate background. Such considerations naturally stemmed from the core of the metaphysical picture that permeates Wittgenstein’s early writings. This picture is, in its essentials, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the Will (p. 299).
I think this is correct and there is no doubt that Schopenhauer was decisive in Wittgenstein’s early view of suicide but, at the same time, this ought not to detract from the biographical and autobiographical in explaining Wittgenstein ethics of suicide. Here, it is difficult to deny that Wittgenstein’s own experiences did not have an effect on his existential philosophy.
Notes
Schopenhauer writes that suicide is accounted a crime in England which is “followed by an ignominious burial and the seizure of the man’s property” and most often occasions a verdict of insanity.
Achinger, C. (2013). Allegories of destruction: “Woman” and “the Jew” in Otto Weininger’s sex and character. The Germanic Review, 88(2),121–149. 2013
Camus, A. (1942). The myth of Sisyphus (O’Brien, Justin, Trans.). London: Penguin Group. (First published by Gallimard)
Engelmann, Paul (1974) Letters From Ludwig Wittgenstein. With A Memoir. New York, Horizon.
Gilman, Sander (1986) Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP
Jacquette, D. (2000). Schopenhauer on the ethics of suicide. Continental Philosophy Review, 33(1),43–58.
Janik, Alan (2013) On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred by Paul Reitter (review) HYPERLINK "https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/181" Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, HYPERLINK "https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/29179" Volume 32, Number 1, Fall 2013, pp. 142-145.
Jamison, K. R. (2000). Night falls fast: Understanding suicide. New York: Vintage.
Le Rider, J. (1990). ‘Between modernism and postmodernism: The Viennese identity crisis’ (R. Manheim, trans.). In E. Timms & R. Robertson (eds.) Vienna 1900: from Altenberg to Wittgenstein, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Le Rider, J. (1993). Modernity and the crises of identity: Culture and society in Fin-de-Si ecle Vienna (R. Morris, trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Le Rider, J. (2013). Otto Weininger: A Misogynist, anti-Semite, and Self-loather as Wagnerite. Wagnerspectrum, 9 (1),2013, 89–93.
McGuinness, B. (1988). Wittgenstein: A life. Young Ludwig (1889–1921). Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Modesto Gomez, A. (2018). Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer and the metaphysics of suicide. Rev. Filos., Aurora, Curitiba, 30(49), 299–321.
Monk, R. (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The duty of genius. London: Jonathan Cape.
Monk, R. (2018). Bartley’s Wittgenstein and the coded remarks. In: Flowers, F. A., III (ed. and preface); Ground, Ian (ed. and preface); Portraits of Wittgenstein (pp.129–134). London; Bloomsbury Academic; 2018. (xiii, 489 pp.)
Niekerk, C. (2013). Reading Mahler: German culture and Jewish identity in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. (Studies in German literature, linguistics and culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House.
Peters, M A. (2017). Les proc es et l’enseignement de Wittgenstein, et la « figure de l’enfant » romantique chez Cavell. A contrario, 25(2), 13-37. https://www.cairn.info/revue-a-contrario-2017-2-page-13.htm.
Preston, John (2018) How Ludwig Wittgenstein’s secret boyfriend helped deliver the philosopher’s seminal work, https://theconversation.com/how-ludwig-wittgensteins-secret-boyfriend-helped-deliver-the-philosophers- seminal-work-96557
Reitter, P. (2009). The Jewish self-hatred octopus. The German Quarterly, 82(3),356–372. 82.3 (Summer)
Schroeder, S. (2012). Schopenhauer’s influence on Wittgenstein, pp.367–384. In Ed. Bart Vandenabeele, A Companion to Schopenhauer, Oxford, Blackwell.
Shapira, E. (2006). Modernism and Jewish identity in early twentieth-century Vienna: Fritz Waerndorfer and his house for an art lover. Studies in the Decorative Arts, 13(2), 52–92. Vol. No. SPRING-SUMMER (2006).
Stern, D. (2001). Was Wittgenstein a Jew? In J. Klagge (Ed.), Wittgenstein: Biography and philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stern, David and Szabados, Bela, (eds.) (2004). Wittgenstein reads Weininger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 206pp., $24.99 (pbk), ISBN 0521532604
Szabados, B. (1992). Autobiography after Wittgenstein. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 50(1), 1–12.
Szabados, B. (1995). Autobiography and philosophy: Variations on a theme of Wittgenstein. Metaphilosophy, 26(1/2), 63–80.
Szabados, B. (1997). Wittgenstein’s women: The philosophical significance of Wittgenstein’s misogyny. Journal of Philosophical Research, 22, 483–508.
Szabados, B. (1999). Was Wittgenstein an anti-Semite? The significance of AntiSemitism for Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 29(1), 1–28.
Weininger (1903/2005) Sex and Character. An Investigation of Fundamental Principles Otto Weininger, edited by Daniel Steuer and Laura Marcus, translated by Ladislaus Lob, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
Waugh, Alexander (2010) The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War. New York, Anchor.
Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Culture and value, edited by G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman , trans. P. Winch, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L. (1980/1998). Culture and value. First published as Vennischte Bemerkungen, German text only, G. H. von Wright & Heikki Nyman (ed.). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977: Amended 2nd ed., traps. P. Winch. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980; rev. 2nd ed., German text only, edited by G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, with revisions by Alois Pichler. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1994, rev. 2nd ed., new traps. P. Winch. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1998. (References will give the pagination for the 1980 and 1998 editions of the book; translations are taken from the 1998 edition.)
Wittgenstein, L. (1997). Denkbewegungen: Tagebiicher 1930–1932 1936–1937 (MS 183) ed. Use Somavilla. Innsbruck, Austria: Haymon Verlag.
Alice Ball, a chemist best known for developing one of the first and most effective cures for leprosy, was born in Seattle to a family of photographers. This is thought to be the reason she took up chemistry, as she grew up learning about the various chemicals used to develop film.
After earning two bachelor's degrees from the University of Washington (one in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912 and the other in pharmacy in 1914), Alice went on to receive a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Hawaii in 1915, the first woman and first African-American to do so. She then also became the first woman and first African-American to be hired as a chemistry teacher by the university. It was during this time that she began her research into a cure for leprosy.
Leprosy, a disease which causes skin lesions and nerve damage, was quite common at the time and yet had no known cure; the best solution was to exile all infected people with no hope for them to return. The only known treatment was chaulmoogra oil, extracted from the seeds of the Hydnocarpus wightianus tree. However this oil was very viscous and not soluble in water, so it could not be injected in the body; it could not be ingested either as it caused nausea.
Teaching during the day and working on her research at night, Alice, aged 23 at the time, figured out a way to isolate the fatty acids contained in chaulmoogra oil, and hydrolyse them into their respective ethyl esters which maintained the plant’s therapeutic properties and could then be made into a water-soluble and injectable oil to use to treat leprosy. Her method, known as the Ball method, was used as the main cure for the disease until the development of antibiotics in the 1940s.
Unfortunately, Alice died aged 24, most likely from chlorine poisoning after inhaling chlorine gas in the lab, before she could publish her results. They were published shortly after by a fellow chemist at the university, Dr Arthur Dean – who did not credit her for her findings and instead named her method the Dean method, after himself. Her accomplishments were not recognised until several years after her death.
In 2008 a plaque in her honour was unveiled at the University of Hawaii on a chaulmoogra tree. She is also celebrated every four years on the 29th of February.
[Image description: photo of the plaque which reads “Chaulmoogra (Hydnocarpus) Tree. Oil from the seed was used to relieve symptoms of leprosy. Alice A. Ball — African American, College of Hawaii instructor, research chemist, and the first woman to receive a master’s degree from the College of Hawaii (class of 1915) — extracted the oil’s active ingredient in the 1910’s. Based on Ball’s research, University of Hawaii President Arthur L. Dean and others later refined the chaulmoogra extract into a partially effective treatment for leprosy. In the 1940’s the sulfones were discovered as a more effective remedy.”]
Sources:
Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World, by Rachel Ignotofsky, published in 2016
African American Women Chemists, by Jeannette Brown, published in 2011
Alice Ball and the Fight against Leprosy, article written in 2016 by Ellen Pasternack for Bluestocking Oxford
Alice August Ball, article written in 2007 by Miles Jackson for BlackPast
Alice Augusta Ball: Chemical Drug Pioneer, article written in 2016 by Sibrina Nichelle Collins for Undark
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by Ricklepore Wed Apr 29, 2020 5:07 am (Page 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
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by Ricklepore
Game 276: October 11 2019 The Initials Game 6
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Game 276: October 11 2019 The Initials Game On
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Another big game from Justin Fields helped No. 3 Ohio State win at No. 18 Penn State, 38-25 and take control of the Big Ten East. The star quarterback had 318 passing yards and four touchdowns as.
Ich habe mich dazu entschlossen einen Beitrag zu verfassen, der aus zwei Teilen besteht. Alex (ich) möchte unsere Mitmenschen anregen, in die Eigenverantwortung zu kommen und nicht alles leichtgläubig hinzunehmen, sondern auch mal anfangen zu hinterfragen und sich selbst zu belesen. Unsere momentane Lage ist sehr aufregend und turbulent. Verschiedene Lager, verschiedene Meinungen, unterschiedlicher Wissenstand und verschiedene Lösungsansätze. Bis zu einem gewissen Punkt sind sich alle einig, hier ist was faul, Corona ist ein Fake, wir werden verarscht und das satanische System muss weg. Das war es dann aber auch schon und viele kennen den vermeintlichen Weg aus der Krise. Es wird gegen andere geschossen, denunziert, beleidigt und gespalten. Warum nutzt man nicht den Punkt der Übereinstimmung, um ins Gespräch zu kommen und gemeinsam die Wahrheit zu ergründen. In unterschiedlichen Thematiken gibt es Menschen mit einem hohen Wissensstand, wenn man dieses Wissen bündelt, haben wir eine Einigkeit geschaffen. Womit ich nun zum Teil I komme.
Teil I
Die Apokalypse oder auch die Johannes-Offenbarung ist noch voll im Gange. Immer mehr Menschen stellen sich ins Licht, auch Menschen die für tolle Beiträge und super Aufklärung meinen Respekt verdienten. Menschen, durch die ich viel lernen durfte, driften immer weiter ab. Ich weiß nicht, was diese Menschen dazu veranlasst, den Kurs zu wechseln und sich mit dem Wind zu drehen. Ich bin Schöpfer und trage mit Gottes Willen das Licht im Herzen, nichts kann mich von der Wahrheit abbringen.
Wann beginnt die eigene Souveränität? Sie beginnt nicht mit der Abgabe des Personalausweises oder die Erstellung einer Lebenderklärung. Die Souveränität beginnt mit der Eigen- und Selbstverantwortung im Kopf. Selber denken, sich ein eigenes Bild machen und sich Wissen aneignen. Nachdem ich den ersten Schritt in die Souveränität, mit dem eigenständigen Denken getan habe, wird der zweite Schritt folgen, ich werde einige Kanäle verlassen und ihnen meine wertvolle Energie entziehen.
Doch nun zum Eigentlichen. Warum ist es für einige Menschen so schwer unsere Deutsche Sprache zu verstehen, sie ist sehr genau und präzise. Mit langsamen Lesen und ein wenig Logik, ist sie klar und deutlich. Wenn dieses jeder tun würde, hätte niemand die Möglichkeit, unsere Sprache zu interpretieren und ihr eine andere Bedeutung zu geben. Ich möchte dies mit folgenden Beispiel erklären (original Zitat RuStaG 1913):
„Deutscher ist, wer die Staatsangehörigkeit in einem Bundesstaat (§§ 3 bis 32) oder die unmittelbare Reichsangehörigkeit (§§ 3 bis 35) besitzt.“
Ich bin Deutscher, wenn ich die Staatsangehörigkeit einer der Bundesstaaten habe. Um „Deutscher“ zu sein, muss ich Preuße, Bayer, Badener, Würtenberger etc. sein oder in einem Gebiet, welches unter dem Schutz des DR stand (Schutzgebiet, heute sagt man Kolonie), angehören. Deutscher kann nur ein Mensch sein, juristische Personen vermögen nicht die Reichs- oder eine Staatsangehörigkeit zu erwerben (Quelle: Jellinek, Staatslehre). Deutscher ist die Zugehörigkeit zu einem Volk. Ein Volk besteht aus Staatsangehörigen und Reichsangehörigen. Ich hoffe, dass das jetzt verstanden wurde.
Es ist beschämend mit anzusehen, wie unsere Deutsche Sprache verdreht und missbraucht wird, unter anderem auch von den „Erwachten“ und/ oder „Patrioten“. Wortspielereien, falsche Interpretationen und kaum einer ist in der Lage, sinnerfassend zu lesen, um es letztendlich auch selber zu verstehen. Nun muss man auch leider zu dem Schluss kommen, dass ein Patriot nicht gleich ein Patriot ist. Man stellt auch unweigerlich fest, ihr kommt von ganz alleine ans Licht. Meine Botschaft an euch, fangt an selber zu denken und macht den ersten Schritt in eure eigene Souveränität.
Alex, [27.05.21 23:03]
[Weitergeleitet von Alex]
Teil II
Es gibt ja Patrioten, die meinen alles besser zu wissen, daher werde ich folgend eine Liste von Tatsachen erstellen, die man selber und leicht nachprüfen kann. Bitte macht es auch und lest es langsam. Die Deutsche Sprache ist deutlich und präzise! Bitte achtet dabei auch auf Begrifflichkeiten und die im Kontext stehenden Details.
RV 1871
Seine Majestät der König von Preußen im Namen des Norddeutschen Bundes, Seine Majestät der König von Bayern, Seine Majestät der König von Württemberg, Seine Königliche Hoheit der Großherzog von Baden und Seine Königliche Hoheit der Großherzog von Hessen und bei Rhein für die südlich vom Main gelegenen Theile des Großherzogtums Hessen, schließen einen ewigen Bund zum Schutze des Bundesgebietes und des innerhalb desselben gültigen Rechtes, sowie zur Pflege der Wohlfahrt des Deutschen Volkes. Dieser Bund wird den Namen Deutsches Reich führen und wird nachstehende Verfassung haben.
Artikel 2.
Innerhalb dieses Bundesgebietes übt das Reich das Recht der Gesetzgebung nach Maßgabe des Inhalts dieser Verfassung und mit der Wirkung aus, daß die Reichsgesetze den Landesgesetzen vorgehen. Die Reichsgesetze erhalten ihre verbindliche Kraft durch ihre Verkündigung von Reichswegen, welche vermittelst eines Reichsgesetzblattes geschieht. Sofern nicht in dem publizirten Gesetze ein anderer Anfangstermin seiner verbindlichen Kraft bestimmt ist, beginnt die letztere mit dem vierzehnten Tage nach dem Ablauf desjenigen Tages, an welchem das betreffende Stück des Reichsgesetzblattes in Berlin ausgegeben worden ist.
Die Verfassung gilt nur mit Ihrem Inhalt über den Landesverfassungen und Reichsgesetze gehen den Landesgesetzen vor.
Artikel 78.
Veränderungen der Verfassung erfolgen im Wege der Gesetzgebung. Sie gelten als abgelehnt, wenn sie im Bundesrathe 14 Stimmen gegen sich haben.
Diejenigen Vorschriften der Reichsverfassung, durch welche bestimmte Rechte einzelner Bundesstaaten in deren Verhältniß zur Gesammtheit festgestellt sind, können nur mit Zustimmung des berechtigten Bundesstaates abgeändert werden.
Mit diesem Artikel wurde den einzelnen Bundesstaaten, größtmögliche Souveränität zugesprochen.
BGB 1896 (1900)
Erster Titel.
Natürliche Personen
§1 Die Rechtsfähigkeit des Menschen beginnt mit der Vollendung der Geburt.
Hier wurde also festgelegt, dass die natürliche Person der Mensch ist.
Wie wir allen wissen, kennt die Kirche Roms keine Menschen, sondern nur Personen (eher Sklaven).
Zweiter Titel
Juristische Personen
I. Vereine und 2.eingetragene Vereine
II. Stiftungen
III. Körperschaften
Zweiter Abschnitt
Sachen
§90 Sachen im Sinne des Gesetzes sind nur körperliche Gegenstände
Von §91 - §103 wird die Sache oder der Gegenstand, genauer beschrieben.
Nach dem BGB, konnte eine natürliche Person(Mensch) weder eine juristische Person noch eine Sache sein.
StGB 26.02.1876
§130a Kanzelparagraph
Ein Geistlicher oder anderer Religionsdiener, welcher in Ausübung oder in Veranlassung der Ausübung seines Berufes öffentlich vor einer Menschenmenge, oder welcher in einer Kirche oder an einem anderen zu religiösen Versammlungen bestimmten Orte vor Mehreren Angelegenheiten des Staats in einer den öffentlichen Frieden gefährdenden Weise zum Gegenstande einer Verkündigung oder Erörterung macht, wird mit Gefängniß oder Festungshaft bis zu zwei Jahren bestraft.
Gleiche Strafe trifft denjenigen Geistlichen oder anderen Religionsdiener, welcher in Ausübung oder in Veranlassung der Ausübung seines Berufes Schriftstücke ausgibt oder verbreitet, in welchen Angelegenheiten des Staats in einer den öffentlichen Frieden gefährdenden Weise zum Gegenstande einer Verkündigung oder Erörterung gemacht sind.
Mit diesem Paragraphen hat man verhindert, dass die Kirche gegen den Staat bzw. einen eigenen Kirchenstaat im Gebiet des Deutschen Reichs gründet.
Das Handelsgesetzbuch vom 10.05.1897 war unter Ausschluss des Seerechts und auf der Grundlage des Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches, sowie es nur den Handelsgeschäften mit Waren und Güter diente. Das Seehandelsrecht war wie das Handelsgesetzbuch auf Grundlage des BGB entstanden
Alex, [27.05.21 23:03]
[Weitergeleitet von Alex]
mit einem extra Zusatz, es durfte auf Land nicht angewendet werden. Jeder, der sich ein wenig mit dem Kollateral beschäftigt hat, weiß, dass mit dem Reichskonkordat und der Geburtsurkunde 1933, die Menschen mit ihren Strohmannkonten, an der Börse gehandelt wurde. Dazu hatte ich ebenfalls schon einige Beiträge geschrieben.
Jetzt werde ich wissenschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Aspekte vom Deutschen Reich gegenüber anderen Ländern bis 1914 aufzeigen.
Jährliche Leistungen der Sozialversicherung
Deutsches Reich= 425,6 Millionen Mark – England= 0 Mark – Frankreich= 24 Millionen Mark
DR= 878 Millionen Mark – England= 384 Millionen Mark – Frankreich= 261 Millionen Mark
Büchererzeugung in Stück
DR= 34800 – England= 12100 – Frankreich= 9600
Nobelpreise
DR= 14 – England= 3 – Frankreich= 3
Patente
DR= 7194 – England= 1681 – Frankreich= 1196
Getreide Ernte in Millionen Tonnen
DR= 25,8 – England= 6 – Frankreich= 16,6
Kartoffel Ernte in Millionen Tonnen
DR= 54 – England= 6,8 – Frankreich= 16,7
Zucker Produktion in Millionen Tonnen
DR= 2,44 – England= 0 – Frankreich= 0,88
Außenhandel in Europa (Ausfuhr in Milliarden Mark)
DR= 7,68 – England=4,78 – Frankreich=3,84
Kohlenlager in Milliarden Tonnen
DR= 423 – England= 189 – Frankreich= 18
Eisenerzlager in Milliarden Tonnen
DR= 3,9 – England= 1,3 – Frankreich= 3,3
Roheisengewinnung in Millionen Tonnen
DR= 17,9 – England= 9,7 – Frankreich= 4,9
Volksvermögen in Milliarden Mark
DR= 375 – England= 345 – Frankreich= 245
Jährliches Einkommen in Milliarden Mark
DR= 43 – England= 35 – Frankreich= 25
Militarismus bis 1914
Kriege von 1700 – 1914
Preußen= 13 - England= 49 – Frankreich= 35
Ausgaben für Flotte und Herr von 1881- 1910 in Milliarden Mark
DR= 21,9 – England= 33,1 – Frankreich= 29,7
Pro Kopf der Bevölkerung 1903 – 1914
DR= 202 Mark – England= 305 Mark – Frankreich= 259 Mark
Wenn man sich die oben aufgeführten Zahlen betrachtet, so verwundert es nicht, dass Deutschland vernichtet werden musste. Das Wirtschaftswachstum und die Volkswohlfahrt, die es von 1871 – 1914 gab, hat es in der deutschen Geschichte nie mehr gegeben. Wer sich die Rechtsgrundlagen, die Gesetze und den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg betrachtet und das verinnerlicht, was damals entstanden ist, der hat den Weg in die Freiheit verstanden. Der versteht dann auch, warum mit allen Mitteln versucht wird, uns davon abzuhalten, das große Erbe von 1871 anzutreten. Die Personen, die das Kaiserreich als Handelsrecht oder als Unrechtstaat hinstellen, denen sei folgendes gesagt, schämt euch! Ihr spuckt auf unsere Vergangenheit, ihr verleugnet unsere und auch eure Ahnen. Vergesst nicht, auch ihr seid im Herzen Germanen und auch eure Vorfahren haben das einst so mächtige Land aufgebaut, was wir unsere Heimath nennen. Ich weiß nicht was „Freiheit“ ist aber ich möchte es gerne erleben. Besinnt euch und entfacht das Feuer und wiederbelebt euren Geist.
«Woman's Day» negli Stati Uniti (1908-1909) Clara Zetkin Nel VII Congresso della II Internazionale socialista, tenuto a Stoccarda dal 18 al 24 agosto 1907, nel quale erano presenti 884 delegati di 25 nazioni - tra i quali i maggiori dirigenti marxisti del tempo, come i tedeschi Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, August Bebel, i russi Lenin e Martov, il francese Jean Jaurès - vennero discusse tesi sull'atteggiamento da tenere in caso di una guerra europea, sul colonialismo, sulla questione femminile e sulla rivendicazione del voto alle donne. Su quest'ultimo argomento il Congresso votò una risoluzione nella quale si impegnavano i partiti socialisti a «lottare energicamente per l'introduzione del suffragio universale delle donne», senza «allearsi con le femministe borghesi che reclamavano il diritto di suffragio, ma con i partiti socialisti che lottano per il suffragio delle donne». Due giorni dopo, dal 26 al 27 agosto, fu tenuta una Conferenza internazionale delle donne socialiste, alla presenza di 58 delegate di 13 paesi, nella quale si decise la creazione di un Ufficio di informazione delle donne socialiste: Clara Zetkin fu eletta segretaria e la rivista da lei redatta, Die Gleichheit (L'uguaglianza), divenne l'organo dell'Internazionale delle donne socialiste. Sciopero delle camiciaie di New York Non tutti condivisero la decisione di escludere ogni alleanza con le «femministe borghesi»: negli Stati Uniti, la socialista Corinne Brown scrisse, nel febbraio del 1908 sulla rivista The Socialist Woman, che il Congresso non avrebbe avuto «alcun diritto di dettare alle donne socialiste come e con chi lavorare per la propria liberazione». Fu la stessa Corinne Brown a presiedere, il 3 maggio 1908[1], causa l'assenza dell'oratore ufficiale designato, la conferenza tenuta ogni domenica dal Partito socialista di Chicago nel Garrick Theater: quella conferenza, a cui tutte le donne erano invitate, fu chiamata «Woman's Day», il giorno della donna. Si discusse infatti dello sfruttamento operato dai datori di lavoro ai danni delle operaie in termini di basso salario e di orario di lavoro, delle discriminazioni sessuali e del diritto di voto alle donne. Quell'iniziativa non ebbe un seguito immediato, ma alla fine dell'anno il Partito socialista americano raccomandò a tutte le sezioni locali «di riservare l'ultima domenica di febbraio 1909 all'organizzazione di una manifestazione in favore del diritto di voto femminile». Fu così che negli Stati Uniti la prima e ufficiale giornata della donna fu celebrata il 23 febbraio 1909.[2] Verso la fine dell'anno, il 22 novembre, si vide a New York iniziare un grande sciopero di ventimila camiciaie, che durò fino al 15 febbraio 1910.[3] Il successivo 27 febbraio, domenica, alla Carnegie Hall, tremila donne celebrarono ancora il Woman's Day.[4] La Conferenza di Copenaghen (1910) Aleksandra Kollontaj Il Woman's Day tenuto a New York il successivo 28 febbraio venne impostato come manifestazione che unisse le rivendicazioni sindacali a quelle politiche relative al riconoscimento del diritto di voto femminile. Le delegate socialiste americane, forti dell'ormai consolidata manifestazione della giornata della donna, proposero alla seconda Conferenza internazionale delle donne socialiste, tenutasi nella Folkets Hus (Casa del popolo) di Copenaghen dal 26 al 27 agosto 1910 - due giorni prima dell'apertura dell'VIII Congresso dell'Internazionale socialista - di istituire una comune giornata dedicata alla rivendicazione dei diritti delle donne. Manifesto tedesco relativo alle locali manifestazioni della Giornata della Donna dell'8 marzo 1914, la cui richiesta principale era il diritto di voto[1] Negli ordini del giorno dei lavori e nelle risoluzioni approvate in quella Conferenza non risulta che le 100 donne presenti in rappresentanza di 17 paesi abbiano istituito una giornata dedicata ai diritti delle donne: risulta però nel Die Gleichheit, redatto da Clara Zetkin, che una mozione per l'istituzione della Giornata internazionale della donna fosse «stata assunta come risoluzione». Mentre negli Stati Uniti continuò a tenersi l'ultima domenica di febbraio, in alcuni paesi europei - Germania, Austria, Svizzera e Danimarca - la giornata della donna si tenne per la prima volta domenica 19 marzo 1911[5] su scelta del Segretariato internazionale delle donne socialiste. Secondo la testimonianza di Aleksandra Kollontaj, quella data fu scelta perché, in Germania, «il 19 marzo 1848, durante la rivoluzione, il re di Prussia dovette per la prima volta riconoscere la potenza di un popolo armato e cedere davanti alla minaccia di una rivolta proletaria. Tra le molte promesse che fece allora e che in seguito dimenticò, figurava il riconoscimento del diritto di voto alle donne». In Francia la manifestazione si tenne il 18 marzo 1911, data in cui cadeva il quarantennale della Comune di Parigi[6], così come a Vienna, dove alcune manifestanti portarono con sé delle bandiere rosse (simbolo della Comune) per commemorare i caduti di quell'insurrezione.[7] In Svezia si svolse il 1º maggio 1911, in concomitanza con le manifestazioni per la Giornata del lavoro[1]. La manifestazione non fu ripetuta tutti gli anni, né celebrata in tutti i paesi: in Russia si tenne per la prima volta a San Pietroburgo solo nel 1913, il 3 marzo, su iniziativa del Partito bolscevico, con una manifestazione nella Borsa Kalašaikovskij, e fu interrotta dalla polizia zarista che operò numerosi arresti; l'anno seguente gli organizzatori vennero arrestati, impedendo di fatto l'organizzazione dell'evento[1]. In Germania, dopo la celebrazione del 1911, fu ripetuta per la prima volta l'8 marzo 1914, giorno d'inizio di una «settimana rossa» di agitazioni proclamata dai socialisti tedeschi, mentre in Francia si tenne con una manifestazione organizzata dal Partito socialista a Parigi il 9 marzo. L'8 marzo 1917 Le celebrazioni furono interrotte dalla prima guerra mondiale in tutti i paesi belligeranti, finché a San Pietroburgo, l'8 marzo 1917 (il 23 febbraio secondo il calendario giuliano allora in vigore in Russia) le donne della capitale guidarono una grande manifestazione che rivendicava la fine della guerra[8]: la fiacca reazione dei cosacchi inviati a reprimere la protesta incoraggiò successive manifestazioni che portarono al crollo dello zarismo ormai completamente screditato e privo anche dell'appoggio delle forze armate, così che l'8 marzo 1917 è rimasto nella storia a indicare l'inizio della Rivoluzione russa di febbraio. Per questo motivo, e in modo da fissare un giorno comune a tutti i Paesi, il 14 giugno 1921 la Seconda conferenza internazionale delle donne comuniste, tenuta a Mosca una settimana prima dell'apertura del III congresso dell'Internazionale comunista, fissò all'8 marzo la «Giornata internazionale dell'operaia». In Italia la Giornata internazionale della donna fu tenuta per la prima volta soltanto nel 1922, per iniziativa del Partito comunista d'Italia, che la celebrò il 12 marzo, prima domenica successiva all'ormai fatidico 8 marzo. In quei giorni fu fondato il periodico quindicinale Compagna, che il 1º marzo 1925 riportò un articolo di Lenin, scomparso l'anno precedente, che ricordava l'otto marzo come Giornata internazionale della donna, la quale aveva avuto una parte attiva nelle lotte sociali e nel rovesciamento dello zarismo. La confusione sulle origini della ricorrenza e l'ufficializzazione dell'ONU Modifica La connotazione fortemente politica della Giornata della donna, l'isolamento politico della Russia e del movimento comunista e, infine, le vicende della seconda guerra mondiale, contribuirono alla perdita della memoria storica delle reali origini della manifestazione. Così, nel secondo dopoguerra, cominciarono a circolare fantasiose versioni, secondo le quali l'8 marzo avrebbe ricordato la morte di centinaia di operaie nel rogo di una inesistente fabbrica di camicie Cotton o Cottons avvenuto nel 1908 a New York[9][10], facendo probabilmente confusione con una tragedia realmente verificatasi in quella città il 25 marzo 1911, l'incendio della fabbrica Triangle, nella quale morirono 146 lavoratori (123 donne e 23 uomini[11], in gran parte giovani immigrate di origine italiana ed ebraica[12]). Altre versioni citavano la violenta repressione poliziesca di una presunta manifestazione sindacale di operaie tessili tenutasi a New York nel 1857[13], mentre altre ancora riferivano di scioperi o incidenti avvenuti a Chicago, a Boston o a New York. Nonostante le ricerche effettuate da diverse femministe tra la fine degli anni settanta e gli ottanta abbiano dimostrato l'erroneità di queste ricostruzioni, le stesse sono ancora diffuse sia tra i mass media che nella propaganda delle organizzazioni sindacali.[7][14][15][16] Con la risoluzione 3010 (XXVII) del 18 dicembre 1972[17], ricordando i 25 anni trascorsi dalla prima sessione della Commissione sulla condizione delle Donne (svolta a Lake Success, nella Contea di Nassau, tra il 10 ed il 24 febbraio 1947), l'ONU proclamò il 1975 "Anno Internazionale delle Donne". Questo venne seguito, il 15 dicembre 1975, dalla proclamazione del "Decennio delle Nazioni Unite per le donne: equità, sviluppo e pace" ("United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace", 1976-1985), tramite la risoluzione 3520 (XXX)[18]. Il 16 dicembre 1977, con la risoluzione 32/142 [19] l'Assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite propose ad ogni paese, nel rispetto delle tradizioni storiche e dei costumi locali, di dichiarare un giorno all'anno "Giornata delle Nazioni Unite per i diritti delle Donne e per la pace internazionale" ("United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace") e di comunicare la decisione presa al Segretario generale. Adottando questa risoluzione, l'Assemblea riconobbe il ruolo della donna negli sforzi di pace e riconobbe l'urgenza di porre fine a ogni discriminazione e di aumentare gli appoggi a una piena e paritaria partecipazione delle donne alla vita civile e sociale del loro paese. L'8 marzo, che già veniva festeggiato in diversi paesi, divenne la data ufficiale di molte nazioni. In Italia Manifestazione femminista italiana del 1977 Nel settembre del 1944, si creò a Roma l'UDI, Unione Donne in Italia, per iniziativa di donne appartenenti al PCI, al PSI, al Partito d'Azione, alla Sinistra Cristiana e alla Democrazia del Lavoro e fu l'UDI a prendere l'iniziativa di celebrare, l'8 marzo 1945, la prima giornata della donna nelle zone dell'Italia libera, mentre a Londra veniva approvata e inviata all'ONU una Carta della donna contenente richieste di parità di diritti e di lavoro. Con la fine della guerra, l'8 marzo 1946 fu celebrato in tutta l'Italia e vide la prima comparsa del suo simbolo, la mimosa, che fiorisce proprio nei primi giorni di marzo, secondo un'idea di Teresa Noce,[20] di Rita Montagnana e di Teresa Mattei.[21] Carica di polizia contro un corteo femminista Nei primi anni cinquanta, anni di guerra fredda e del ministero Scelba, distribuire in quel giorno la mimosa o diffondere Noi donne, il mensile dell'Unione Donne Italiane (UDI), divenne un gesto «atto a turbare l'ordine pubblico», mentre tenere un banchetto per strada diveniva «occupazione abusiva di suolo pubblico».[22] Nel 1959 le senatrici Luisa Balboni, comunista, Giuseppina Palumbo e Giuliana Nenni, socialiste, presentarono una proposta di legge per rendere la giornata della donna una festa nazionale, ma l'iniziativa cadde nel vuoto. Il clima politico migliorò nel decennio successivo, ma la ricorrenza continuò a non ottenere udienza nell'opinione pubblica finché, con gli anni settanta, in Italia apparve un fenomeno nuovo: il movimento femminista. Femminismo. L'8 marzo 1972 la manifestazione della giornata della donna a Roma si tenne in piazza Campo de' Fiori: vi partecipò anche l'attrice statunitense Jane Fonda, che pronunciò un breve discorso di adesione, mentre un folto reparto di polizia era schierato intorno alla piazza nella quale poche decine di donne manifestanti inalberavano cartelli con scritte inconsuete e «scandalose»: «Legalizzazione dell'aborto», «Liberazione omosessuale», «Matrimonio = prostituzione legalizzata», e veniva fatto circolare un volantino che chiedeva che non fossero «lo Stato e la Chiesa ma la donna ad avere il diritto di amministrare l'intero processo della maternità». Quelle scritte sembrarono intollerabili, così che la polizia,senza il consueto e di legge squillo di tromba e caricò, manganellò e disperse le pacifiche manifestanti.[23] -in molte città d'Italia sono state intitolati a 8 Marzo strade e giardini.