Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Longing for Myth in Germany\u3c/i\u3e by George S. Williamson.

Williamson has written a superb work of scholarship, examining trends in German cultural thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the death of Nietzsche in 1900. He has also provided an insightful Epilogue, recapitulating what preceded in the body of his book and extrapolating on the longing for myth into the twentieth century. The book’s greatest value lies in the background Williamson provides for the best known (to English-speaking readers, at least) manifestations of myth in both aesthetic and intellectual life, specifically in the work of Wagner and Nietzsche

Foreign-Language Comedy Production in the Third Reich

The two most frequently performed non-German comic playwrights on German-language stages from 1933 to 1944 were Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) and Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), whose plays served the purposes of cultural transmission both by the theatre establishment and the political regime in power at the time. Goethe had seen Goldoni productions in Venice during his Italian Journeys between 1786 and 1788, and he reported that never in his life had he heard such laughter and bellowing at a theatre. It remains unclear whether he meant laughing and bellowing on the part of audiences or the actors, but since his other remarks on the experience were fairly charitable, Goldoni\u27s status rose accordingly. Goethe himself enjoyed the exalted status of cultural arbiter with unimpeachable judgement, so Goldoni remained a solid fixture in German theatre repertoires throughout the Third Reich. Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, had been an emblem of urbane sophistication and aphoristic refinement in Germany since the premieres of his plays in the 1890s. His plays enjoyed almost cult status among sophisticated elites in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, especially Bunbury, the German title for The Importance of Being Earnest. Productions of that play outnumbered all others in the Wildean œuvre from 1919 to 1933--but after 1933, Bunbury\u27s status changed considerably, reflecting the changes within German theatre as a whole. The change in the German theatre was predicated on establishing a new set of aesthetics standards, based on a triumph of the will over reason, applicable to all matters cultural in German public life. The subsequent amplification, or at least exaggeration, of the will to a standard of aesthetic judgement among National Socialists has been a subject of excessive concern in the twentieth century, and one may discern expressions of this particular Nazi cultural doctrine in selected Goldoni and Wilde productions. They are the ones discussed in this essay, productions which would today qualify as somewhat bizarre yet diverse manifestations of cultural transmission

Hitler\u27s Whiff of Champagne : Curt Goetz and Celebrity in the Third Reich

Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers\u27 Party were obsessed with keeping the German theatre tradition vital and maintaining Berlin as a cultural metropolis after Hitler\u27s appointment as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Upholding a dynamic and energetic cultural life for the nation was a task for which National Socialism, as a political movement embodying the will of the people, felt itself eminently well qualified. The Nazis, therefore, began almost as soon as they took over the reins of government in Germany to support theatre as an art form and theatres as institutions to an extent unprecedented in German history. Though they had condemned much of the comedy prevalent in the Weimar Republic as decadent and perverse, they had no desire to remove comedy from German stages, but rather to reform it completely; indeed, they assigned comedy an important role in the task of re-awakening the spirit of the people because comedy came from the heart. It sprang from the depths of the peoples\u27 roots as a nation, and it unites us as a people, according to one cultural panjandrum in a 1936 treatise titled Culture in Service to the Nation, by Wilhelm Westecker. Westecker went on to demand that German comedy of the future should resemble that of either Hans Sachs in sixteenth-century Nuremberg or Ferdinand Raimund in nineteenth- century Vienna. The new Germany, he said, needed a new kind of comedy, one distinct from the civilized filth of comedies popular in the Weimar Republic. That kind of comedy (one based on improbable situations and distinguished by witty dialogue) was not only filthy, another critic remarked; it had occasioned enormous damage to the integrity of the German people because it exposed life-sustaining values to cheap, easy laughter

Rev. of \u3ci\u3eMoissi: Triest, Berlin, New York: eine Schauspielerlegende\u3c/i\u3e by Rüdiger Schaper. A biography of the legendary actor Alexander Moissi.

Unlike most of the great German actors before him, Alexander Moissi was not a native German speaker. He was born in Albania and grew up speaking Greek and Italian--yet he had a forty-year career in German that earned him millions of dollars in performances all over the world. In none of those performances did Moissi lose the Mediterranean inflections in the language of Goethe and Schiller. But that did not diminish his stature; it enhanced it

Ersatz Comedy in the Third Reich

The idea performing comedy, and performing a lot of comedy, during one the most systematic reigns of terror the world has ever known may at first blush seem somewhat degraded. The perception of most people, especially in the English-speaking world, is that “German comedy” in the first place is an oxymoron. The fact is, however, that 42,000 productions were staged between 1933 and 1944 in the Third Reich, and the majority of them were comedies. The most frequently performed were plays by the now forgotten likes of August Hinrichs, Maximilian Böttcher, and Fritz Peter Buch, Jochen Huth, and Charlotte Rissmann. Who were these playwrights

“Forum: Humour”

An intellectual roundtable published by Oxford University Press on behalf of German History Society, with colleagues Profs. Peter Burke (Cambridge University, England), Martina Kessel (University of Bielefeld, Germany), Joanathan Waterlow Oxford University, England)

Integrated genomics and proteomics define huntingtin CAG length-dependent networks in mice.

To gain insight into how mutant huntingtin (mHtt) CAG repeat length modifies Huntington's disease (HD) pathogenesis, we profiled mRNA in over 600 brain and peripheral tissue samples from HD knock-in mice with increasing CAG repeat lengths. We found repeat length-dependent transcriptional signatures to be prominent in the striatum, less so in cortex, and minimal in the liver. Coexpression network analyses revealed 13 striatal and 5 cortical modules that correlated highly with CAG length and age, and that were preserved in HD models and sometimes in patients. Top striatal modules implicated mHtt CAG length and age in graded impairment in the expression of identity genes for striatal medium spiny neurons and in dysregulation of cyclic AMP signaling, cell death and protocadherin genes. We used proteomics to confirm 790 genes and 5 striatal modules with CAG length-dependent dysregulation at the protein level, and validated 22 striatal module genes as modifiers of mHtt toxicities in vivo

Ultrasonication-assisted synthesis of 2D porous MoS2/GO nanocomposite catalysts as high-performance hydrodesulfurization catalysts of vacuum gasoil: Experimental and DFT study

In this study, a novel, simple, high yield, and scalable method is proposed to synthesize highly porous MoS2/graphene oxide (M−GO) nanocomposites by reacting the GO and co-exfoliation of bulky MoS2 in the presence of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) under different condition of ultrasonication. Also, the effect of ultrasonic output power on the particle size distribution of metal cluster on the surface of nanocatalysts is studied. It is found that the use of the ultrasonication method can reduce the particle size and increase the specific surface area of M−GO nanocomposite catalysts which leads to HDS activity is increased. These nanocomposite catalysts are characterized by XRD, Raman spectroscopy, SEM, STEM, HR-TEM, AFM, XPS, ICP, BET surface, TPR and TPD techniques. The effects of physicochemical properties of the M−GO nanocomposites on the hydrodesulfurization (HDS) reactions of vacuum gas oil (VGO) has been also studied. Catalytic activities of MoS2-GO nanocomposite are investigated by different operating conditions. M9-GO nanocatalyst with high surface area (324 m2/g) and large pore size (110.3 Å), have the best catalytic performance (99.95%) compared with Co-Mo/γAl2O3 (97.91%). Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were also used to elucidate the HDS mechanism over the M−GO catalyst. It is found that the GO substrate can stabilize MoS2 layers through weak van der Waals interactions between carbon atoms of the GO and S atoms of MoS2. At both Mo- and S-edges, the direct desulfurization (DDS) is found as the main reaction pathway for the hydrodesulfurization of DBT molecules

Heightened Vulnerability to MDR-TB Epidemics after Controlling Drug-Susceptible TB

Prior infection with one strain TB has been linked with diminished likelihood of re-infection by a new strain. This paper attempts to determine the role of declining prevalence of drug-susceptible TB in enabling future epidemics of MDR-TB.A computer simulation of MDR-TB epidemics was developed using an agent-based model platform programmed in NetLogo (See http://mdr.tbtools.org/). Eighty-one scenarios were created, varying levels of treatment quality, diagnostic accuracy, microbial fitness cost, and the degree of immunogenicity elicited by drug-susceptible TB. Outcome measures were the number of independent MDR-TB cases per trial and the proportion of trials resulting in MDR-TB epidemics for a 500 year period after drug therapy for TB is introduced.MDR-TB epidemics propagated more extensively after TB prevalence had fallen. At a case detection rate of 75%, improving therapeutic compliance from 50% to 75% can reduce the probability of an epidemic from 45% to 15%. Paradoxically, improving the case-detection rate from 50% to 75% when compliance with DOT is constant at 75% increases the probability of MDR-TB epidemics from 3% to 45%.The ability of MDR-TB to spread depends on the prevalence of drug-susceptible TB. Immunologic protection conferred by exposure to drug-susceptible TB can be a crucial factor that prevents MDR-TB epidemics when TB treatment is poor. Any single population that successfully reduces its burden of drug-susceptible TB will have reduced herd immunity to externally or internally introduced strains of MDR-TB and can experience heightened vulnerability to an epidemic. Since countries with good TB control may be more vulnerable, their self interest dictates greater promotion of case detection and DOTS implementation in countries with poor control to control their risk of MDR-TB