Mundus 4 Page 2

"The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him." A sentiment attributed in various forms to Caspar David Friedrich(1774-1840), the nineteenth century German romantic painter.

Contents

1908 AD / ca. ۱۳۲۵ - ۱۳۲۶ ھ. A global perspective.
The visual arts
The cherry trees. A poem by Edward Thomas.

Selected events of1908 AD / ca. ۱۳۲۵ - ۱۳۲۶ ھ.from around the world.

January 4 - Sultan Abdul Aziz,( 1878-1943), - عبد العزيز الرابع-, is unseated by the ulema (علماء,'Ulamā', the learned) of Fez, the dignitaries of the country and replaced by his half-brother Abd al Hafiz,(? -1937) - عبد الحفيظ. The new Sultan calls for resistance against French troops stationed in the country since August 1907.
January 9 - Death of the poet and painter Wilhelm Busch, (1832-1908), in Mechthausen.
January 24 - Robert Baden-Powell begins the Boy Scout movement.
February - 1 King Carlos I, (1862-1908), of Portugal, and Infante Luis Filipe, were murdered in Lisbon by Republicans. Portugal's claim of sovereignty over the land between Angola and Mozambique, in which are situated the countries of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the 'Mappa cor de rosa' territories, was surrendered in the face of British opposition during his reign, leading to serious loss of image for the Portuguese monarchy.
February - 12 Thousands of show enthusiasts lined up in Times Square, New York, for the first around-the-world car race, to finish in Paris. In the169 day race, the American Thomas Flyer arrived in Paris on July 30, 1908 to win. The Germans arrived in Paris four days earlier, but were penalized a total of 30 days for missing Alaska, and for shipping their car part of the way by rail.

The Thomas Flyer	1908 Olympic Games	The first fatal aircrash

February - 18 Japanese immigration to the U.S.A. is forbidden.
March - 1 Seven social revolutionaries allegedly involved in an attack on Stolypin, (1862-1911), the Prime Minister of Russia, are executed. From 1906 -1909, over 3,000 suspects were speedily convicted and executed by special courts set up by him to deal with revolutionary unrest.
March - 27 The German Reichstag adopted an amendment at third reading of the naval bill, which allows for four instead of two battleships of the 'Dreadnought' class annually, until 1911, to be built. This exacerbates, again, the arms race between the German Reich and Great Britain.
March 9 - The Internazionale Football Club is founded in Milan, Italy.
April 3 - British Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, (1836-1908), steps back because of health reasons. He was to die in Downing Street on 22nd of April, uttering his final words, "This is not the end of me". The former Chancellor, Herbert H. Asquith, becomes the new Head of Government.
April 27 - The opening ceremony of the London Olympics is held and will involve 2,035 athletes from 22 participating countries in 22 sports.
May - 26 The first major commercial oil discovery in the Middle East is made at Masjed Soleiman ( مسجد سلیمان ), in present day Iran. The rights are immediately acquired by the British through the Anglo-Bakhtiari Oil Company.
June - 9 King Edward VII visits Tsar Nicholas II at Reval (now Tallinn), and 'unconstitutionally' bestows the rank of honorary admiral of the fleet on Nicholas II. The strengthening of ties between the two increases anxiety in Berlin about being encircled.
June - 21 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, (1844-1908), the Russian composer, dies in Ljubensk at Luga
June - 21 London experiences the largest demonstration for women's suffrage. At the "Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), organized in Hyde Park, 250,000 people take part.
July - 21 Bernhard Dernburg, colonial minister, inaugurates a new railway line in German South West Africa. It commences at the port city, Lüderitzbucht, a town near Angra Pequena, which is Portuguese for "small cove", where the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias anchored in 1487, but it was made into a trading station by the German, Adolf Lüderitz, in 1883, having concluded treaties with neighbouring chiefs, although islands off the coast of Angra Pequena, rich in guano deposits, were annexed by Great Britain in 1867 and added to Cape Colony in 1874.The railway line ends at Keetmanshoop On.

Sultan Abd Al Hamid II	The 'LZ 4' airship disaster.	Messina earthquake

July - 24The Ottoman Sultan, Abd Al Hamid II (عبد الحميد ثانی ), (1842-1918), under pressure from the army and the Young Turks brings back into force the liberal constitution from 1876. At the same time, the autocrat announces the release of all political prisoners, the lifting of censorship, and the abolition of the secret police.
July - 31As part of the festivities for 350 year existence of the University of Jena (now renamed the Friedrich Schiller University), a new university building and the Phyletic museum founded by Ernst Haeckel are inaugurated.
August - 5 The airship "LZ 4" makes an intermediate landing, after a 24-hour trip, in Echterdingen near Stuttgart but is destroyed by a sudden storm. The "LZ 4", developed and built by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was 135 m in long and 13 m in diameter, the largest German airship built so far. It temporarily exhausts his financial resources.
August - 25 The death of French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel in Le Croisic.
September - 1 In Dresden, there opened a new exhibition of the "Die Brücke" group of artists .
September - 17 During a flight demonstration at Ft. Myer, Virginia, Thomas Selfridge, First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, becomes is the first person to die from an airplane crash. The pilot, Orville Wright, is severely injured with several fractures in the same crash, but recovers.
October - 5/6 Austria-Hungary declares the annexation of the Balkan countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied since 1878, formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, and thus aggravate the conflict with the Kingdom of Serbia, which is based on the support of Russia. On the same day Prince Ferdinand, (1861-1948), proclaims Bulgaria's independence and calls himself the Tsar. In the wake of the declaration of independence by Bulgaria, the island of Crete also dissolves its ties to the Ottoman Empire and announces its connection to Greece.
October - 28 The interview of Kaiser Wilhelm II,(1859-1941) with the British newspaper, the 'Daily Telegraph', arouses fierce criticism in Germany and abroad, above all for his condescending and overbearing comments on the English character, and the conduct of Germany towards Britain in the Boer War.
November - 1 Russia does not recognise the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary.
November - 14 The Chinese Emperor Guangxu, (1871-1908), dies in Beijing, a day before Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908). She names a two-year nephew, Pu Yi, (1906-1967), as his successor. He is the last emperor of China.
December - 28 A devastating earthquake on the island of Sicily, destroys the cities of Messina and Reggio di Calabria and over 100,000 people die.

Other events of 1908

The passing of the Irish Universities Act, 1908 created the National University of Ireland at Dublin and the Queen's University of Belfast.
Although the green pigment found in plants had been named by Pelletier and Caventou in 1819, without isolating the pigment, it was not until 1908 that Willstatter and Benz, by extracting 'crystalline' chlorophyll with cold alcohol, were able to show that it contains magnesium.
'My African Journey' by Winston Churchill was published by the firm of Hodder and Stoughton at a price of 5s.
Ernest Rutherford, (1871 - 1937), later Lord, was born in New Zealand, where his parents had come to settle, from Britain. It seems curious that Rutherford should have won the Nobel Prize of 1908 in Chemistry, rather than Physics, for research conducted in the nature of radioactivity. However, his studies on radioactive materials were brilliant and remarkable, and followed soon after Roentgen's first experiements reported a new kind of ray ('Über eine neue Art von Strahlen') to the Wurzburg Physico-Medical Society in December, 1895. The French physicist, Henri Becquerel, then published, in a rather terse report of 1896, the persistent ray emitting power of the fluorescent compound, potassium uranyl sulfate ('Sur les radiations invisibles émises par les corps phosphorescents'), the effect of which, like X-rays, could be demonstrated in a photograph. His researches earned him the Nobel Prize of 1903 in Physics, shared with Pierre and Marie Curie. Rutherford, meanwhile, in a series of experiments in 1898, using the electrical discharging effect of uranium also shown by Becquerel to be a property of the radiation emitted, discovered that the radiation when passed through aluminium foil could be differentiated into two distinct types, one with low, and another with high penetrating power, which he designated as α and β rays, respectively. Moreover, except when the photographic plate was close to the uranium surface, the photographic action was principally due to the β radiation. He also considered many other influences, including differences arising from the materials used to impede progress of the rays, that of heat on the radiation, and the identitical nature of uranium radiation to rays produced in ionisation of a gas by Roentgen rays (see 'Uranium radiation and the electrical conduction produced by it'; Philos. Mag. 47, 109. 1899). Most importantly, he showed, then, and later, the self sustaining character of the reaction in uranium, its long duration, and the large amount of energy yielded by it, leading the way to the development of the first nuclear weapons, and the generation of energy for social consumption using nuclear reactors. His claim to fame must include other important work, such as the presence of a dense central nucleus in atoms, and the transmutation of elements, for all of which he has been universally and severally honoured. Becquerel, to whom he owed some of the initial impulse, died a few months before Rutherford collected his Nobel Prize. A detailed biography can be read at Chemistry Laureates - Rutherford
The 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared between two people, both involved in different ways with the nature of immunity in living organisms, Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, (1845-1916), a Russian, and Paul Ehrlich, (1854-1915), a German. It is possible to portray their efforts as opposed to each other, but they have far too much in common. Both were deeply involved with the processes that united all living things, and which maintained them in a state of health when faced with harmful agents, and both did their research on an understanding of the cell, after Schwann, as an autonomous unit, aggregating to give rise to different life forms . Metchnikoff developed a passion in youth for the natural sciences, and armed with a microscope, was moved for taxonomic reasons at first, to study the comparative anatomy and embryology of organisms, invertebrate life forms which had eluded classification. Indeed, the phylum Gastrotrich, comprising a kind of microscopic, aquatic, ciliated creature, owes its existence to his studies completed in 1864, although he ascribed to it the rank of a class. His research floursihed after working with other famous names of his time such as Leuckart, and in Heligoland, but especially with his compatriot, Aleksander Kovalevski(1840-1901), who first established the stage of gastrulation in the embryo, when the two collaborated in Naples and studied embryonic layers of the rich Mediterranean fauna, despite interruptions from periodic epidemics of cholera. These early homologies that were seen to exist in all metazoans inspired more comparative studies, including those on arthropods and cephalopods, all of which appeared to show a correspondence with embryological development in vertebrates. For the purpose at hand, he noted, in the course of his observations on multicellular organisms, such as sponges and medusae, the presence of flagellated cells migrating between layers, which transformed themselves into amoeboid cells, lacking flagellae, and endowed with the power of intracellular digestion. It served to focus his mind on cells of this type, and led him to the sequence that took place when he inserted a thorn into the transparent larva of the star fish, Bipinnaria, which, on the following day, was surrounded and was being attacked by mobile cells in the absence of a vascular or nervous system in that organism. From this, and from other observations in Daphnia, where a similar reaction occured to microbial spores, he realised its validity in inflammatory reactions of higher organisms. The cell was termed the 'phagocyte' (by Claus) and was to lay the essential foundations of the reticulo-endothelial system as we know it today. Metchnikov also made other contributions, inoculating apes successfully with the organism of syphilis, and studying intestinal flora, and animal parasites like the muscardine fungus, all of which encouraged him to consider control of harmful insects and intestinal toxins by biological means. He was given to bouts of depression, and attempted suicide at times, even drinking a potion of the causative agent of relapsing fever, and also suffered from ocular problems, but overcame these in later life, and developed a healthier optimism. If the work of Metchnikov was a testimony of observation with a microscope, based on solid material, the work of Ehrlich was on invisible cellular processes, the biochemical and humoral alterations of which occur in disease, and the manipulation of which has a role in its treatment. Both were obliged to Behring, the first Nobel Prize winner, who laid the foundation of antiserum therapy. For Ehrlich, who had begun, early on, with studies on toxins such as abrin and ricin, the apparent similarity of tolerance produced in animals to plant toxins, and to immunity from infection, was to be crucial. He is now most known for his side chain theory, accounting for the specificity of protein action, and for his contribution to the chemotherapy of infectious diseases. His views are summarised in the article published a year before his Nobel Prize, Biolo gische Therapie / Biological therapy (1907) which, at the link provided, can be read in the original German, or in an English translation. His biographical details can be read at Paul Ehrlich
Rudolf Eucken, (1846-1926), a German philosopher, won the Nobel Prize in Literature of 1908. He was steeped in classicism, and in his numerous publications, there are several philosophical works, especially on Aristotle and on ethics. His emphasis was on the need for man to transcend naturalism, and his reduction to nature, which as a "way of life has outgrown its origins", and to reach out for the inner process of life in the ideal and the spiritual. In conclusion, he offered the verse from Friedrich von Schiller:

'Du musst glauben, du musst wagen,
Denn die Götter leihn kein Pfand;
Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen
In das schöne Wunderland.'

[You must think it, you must venture,
For the Gods offer no surety.
Only a spell can take you over
Into that beautiful wonderland.]
The Nobel Prize in Physics for 1908 was received by Gabriel Lippmann, (1845-1921), a French doctor, for his contribution to colour photography. In an outstanding application of his understanding of the wave theory of light, he used the phenomenon of wave interference, which depends on the the wavelength. Using a coat of mercury to reflect light from a luminous source, he was able to perfect an albuminoid medium which was sensitive to the interference fringes set up by the reflected light, fringes which varied depending on the wavelength, and which therefore created the varied colours sensed by the eye in a photograph. His work, although strikingly innovative and painstaking, did not satisfy commercial interests and was left aside, as the trichromatic 'pigment' medium of the Lumière process was easier to exploit. Nevertheless, as a chapter in the history of photography, it will always hold interest, not least because the method allowed reproduction colours of the visible spectrum in complexity of tone and precision of form.

Another early
Lippmann photo
lippmannfoto

Illustrations :

Becquerel plate
showing a Maltese cross
imaged using
uranium emission
becquerelplate

E. Rutherford

I. Mechnikov

Bipinnaria, larval form of starfish

Daphnia,
infected with the bacterium,
Pasteuria ramosa
daphnia

P. Ehrlich
ehrlich

R. Eucken
eucken

Lippmann
interferential photo
'Flowers'
lippmannfoto

G. Lippmann

The visual arts

At the end of the previous century, German artists, like those in France, had openly begun to rebel against, and to criticise the stance adopted by the established academic institutions of art. In France, this movement was early, and flashed brilliantly in the work of impressionists and the artists who succeeded them. Many of their ideas which found ready acceptance amongst younger artists were transmitted to many other countries in Europe. In Germany, conservativism kept a firm hold for much longer, and artists tried to find new means of representation mainly in landscape, which had always had strong roots in the historical development of German art, and in the neo-romantic currents present at the time. The immediate influence on German artists, as also on many English artists in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was of the Barbizon school, founded, amongst others, by Théodore Rousseau, although the artists of that school had always considered the landscapes of Constable to be the most important influence in their own portrayal of landscape. In Germany, even this trend, by no means as radical as what followed in the space of a few years, was frowned upon by the salons, and rejected by authority.

rousseaupainting
'Les chênes d'Apremont',Théodore Rousseau, 1852

liebermannpainting
'Badende Jungen' by Max Liebermann, First President of the Berlin Secession, 1900.

corinthpainting
'Salome', Lovis Corinth, 1889

The effect of such repression was certainly felt by individuals like Hugo von Tschudi, (1851-1911), who was appointed Director of the National Gallery in Berlin in 1896. He brought back many contemorary paintings from France, and tried to hang them in a favourable position, while giving less privileged exposure to the academicians at the gallery. The Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and the man who taught him painting, Anton von Werner, were not at all pleased by seeing these academic paintings relegated to the storerooms, and forced Tschudi to retract. Tschudi restored some of his favour by purchasing works of the Barbizon artists. All the same, in 1898, the rejection from the Great Art Exhibition of the painting, 'Grunewaldsee', by Walter Leistikow, (1865-1908), depicting a forest landscape near Berlin, because the scene had irritated the Kaiser, Wilhelm II,* had led to the formation of the Berlin Secession, a group of disaffected artists who had been holding their own annual shows. A similar group was also formed in Munich.
[*'Seine Majestät belehrte ihn sehr ungnädig, daß in diesem Bilde nicht die geringste Naturwahrheit wäre: "Er kenne den Grunewald und außerdem wäre Er Jägerr".' - from Corinth, Lovis; 'Das Leben Walter Leistikows', Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1910]

leistikowpainting
Walter Leistikow, 'Grunewaldsee',1895, Staatliche Museum, Berlin.

corinthpainting
'Walter Leistikow', Lovis Corinth, 1893

The authorities ranged against the newer trends were to prevail, however, and with continuous intrigues, Tschudi was forced away on annual leave in 1908, never to return to the Berlin Gallery. At the same time younger artists, such as those who had formed 'Die Brücke' (The Bridge), inspired by the work of artists like Emil Nolde, and the techniques used by the French Fauvistes, had already crossed over into entirely new territory, and were painting debauched outcasts with a raw, biting edge, full of melancholy, and landscapes executed in brilliant streaks of pure vibrant colours. If this last, and other movements, developed as a reaction against the late romantic paintings of the previous century, the increasing use of photography must also have played a prominent part in this negation of painterly realism, for the photographic image was all too easily reproducible, by now, from the photographic plate, and offered vistas not previously imagined in the fine arts. Examples of both are reproduced below.

Two memebers of 'Die Brücke'
kirchnerpainting
'Marzella', Ludwig Kirchner,1909-10.

heckelpainting
'White House in Dangast', E. Heckel, 1893

stieglitzfoto
'The Hand of Man', Alfred Steiglitz, 1902.

corinthpainting
'Winter in Berlin', Alfred Stieglitz, 1887.

Poetry:'The cherry trees'

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.

Poem by Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917).

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