title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Great Northern War was the first major conflict in which the Kingdom of Prussia was involved. Starting in 1700, the Great Northern War involved a coalition led by Tsarist Russia against the dominant North European power at the time, the Swedish Empire. Frederick William tried in 1705 to get Prussia involved in the war, stating "best Prussia has her own army and makes her own decisions." His views, however, were not considered acceptable by those in power, and was not until 1713 that Frederick William gained full royal powers. Therefore, in 1715, Prussia, led by Frederick William, joined the coalition for various reasons, including the danger of being attacked from both her rear and the sea; her claims on Pomerania; and the fact that if she stood aside and Sweden lost, she would not get a share of the territory. Prussia only participated in one battle, the Battle of Stresow on the island of Rügen, as the war had already been practically decided in the 1709 Battle of Poltava. In the Treaty of Stockholm Prussia gained all of Swedish Pomerania east of the river Oder. Sweden would however keep Vorpommern until 1815. The Great Northern War not only marked the end of the Swedish Empire but also elevated Prussia and Russia at the expense of the demising Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as new powers in Europe.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Great Elector had incorporated the Junkers, the landed aristocracy, into the empire's bureaucracy and military machine, giving them a vested interest in the Prussian Army and compulsory education. King Frederick William I inaugurated the Prussian compulsory system in 1717.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: In 1740 King Frederick II (Frederick the Great) came to the throne. Using the pretext of a 1537 treaty (vetoed by Emperor Ferdinand I) by which parts of Silesia were to pass to Brandenburg after the extinction of its ruling Piast dynasty, Frederick invaded Silesia, thereby beginning the War of the Austrian Succession. After rapidly occupying Silesia, Frederick offered to protect Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria if the province were turned over to him. The offer was rejected, but Austria faced several other opponents, and Frederick was eventually able to gain formal cession with the Treaty of Berlin in 1742.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: To the surprise of many, Austria managed to renew the war successfully. In 1744 Frederick invaded again to forestall reprisals and to claim, this time, the province of Bohemia. He failed, but French pressure on Austria's ally Great Britain led to a series of treaties and compromises, culminating in the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that restored peace and left Prussia in possession of most of Silesia.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Humiliated by the cession of Silesia, Austria worked to secure an alliance with France and Russia (the "Diplomatic Revolution"), while Prussia drifted into Great Britain's camp forming the Anglo-Prussian Alliance. When Frederick preemptively invaded Saxony and Bohemia over the course of a few months in 1756–1757, he began a Third Silesian War and initiated the Seven Years' War.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: This war was a desperate struggle for the Prussian Army, and the fact that it managed to fight much of Europe to a draw bears witness to Frederick's military skills. Facing Austria, Russia, France, and Sweden simultaneously, and with only Hanover (and the non-continental British) as notable allies, Frederick managed to prevent serious invasion until October 1760, when the Russian army briefly occupied Berlin and Königsberg. The situation became progressively grimmer, however, until the death in 1762 of Empress Elizabeth of Russia (Miracle of the House of Brandenburg). The accession of the Prussophile Peter III relieved the pressure on the eastern front. Sweden also exited the war at about the same time.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Defeating the Austrian army at the Battle of Burkersdorf and relying on continuing British success against France in the war's colonial theatres, Prussia was finally able to force a "status quo ante bellum" on the continent. This result confirmed Prussia's major role within the German states and established the country as a European great power. Frederick, appalled by the near-defeat of Prussia, lived out his days as a much more peaceable ruler.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: To the east and south of Prussia, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had gradually weakened during the 18th century. Alarmed by increasing Russian influences in Polish affairs and by a possible expansion of the Russian Empire, Frederick was instrumental in initiating the first of the Partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1772 to maintain a balance of power. The Kingdom of Prussia annexed most of the Polish province of Royal Prussia, including Warmia, allowing Frederick to finally adopt the title of the King "of" Prussia; the annexed land was organised the following year into the Province of West Prussia. The new territory connected the Province of East Prussia (the territory previously known as the Duchy of Prussia) with the Province of Pomerania, uniting the kingdom's eastern territories.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: After Frederick died in 1786, his nephew Fredrick William II continued the partitions, gaining a large part of western Poland in 1793.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: In 1787, Prussia invaded Holland to restore the Orangist stadtholderate against the increasingly rebellious Patriots, who sought to overthrow House of Orange-Nassau and establish a democratic republic. The direct cause of the invasion was the Arrest at Goejanverwellesluis, where Frederick William II's sister Wilhelmina of Prussia, also stadtholder William V of Orange's wife, was stopped by a band of Patriots who denied her passage to The Hague to reclaim her husband's position.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: In 1795, the Kingdom of Poland ceased to exist and a large area (including Warsaw) to the south of East Prussia became part of Prussia. These new territories were organised into the Provinces of New Silesia, South Prussia, and New East Prussia.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Partitions were facilitated by the fact that they occurred just before the 19th-century rise of nationalism in Europe, and the national self-awareness was yet to be developed in most European peoples, especially among commoners. The Kingdom of Prussia was perceived in Poland more as nationality-neutral personal holding of the ruling House of Hohenzollern, rather than a German nation-state, and any anxiety concerned predominantly freedom to practice religion rather than rights to maintain national identity. The onset of Germanisation in the following decades, later joined by the Kulturkampf, changed quickly this benign picture and alienated Poles from the Prussian state, ultimately boosting their national self-awareness and eliciting their national resistance against Prussian rule.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Treaty of Basel (1795) ended the War of the First Coalition against France. In it, the First French Republic and Prussia had stipulated that the latter would ensure the Holy Roman Empire's neutrality in all the latter's territories north of the demarcation line of the river Main, including the British continental dominions of the Electorate of Hanover and the Duchies of Bremen-Verden. To this end, Hanover (including Bremen-Verden) also had to provide troops for the so-called "demarcation army" maintaining this state of "armed neutrality".


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: In the course of the War of the Second Coalition against France (1799–1802) Napoleon Bonaparte urged Prussia to occupy the continental British dominions. In 1801, twenty-four thousand Prussian soldiers invaded, surprising Hanover, which surrendered without a fight. In April 1801 the Prussian troops arrived in Bremen-Verden's capital Stade and stayed there until October of the same year. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland first ignored Prussia's hostility, but when it joined the pro-French coalition of armed "neutral" powers such as Denmark–Norway and Russia, Britain started to capture Prussian sea vessels. After the battle of Copenhagen the coalition fell apart and Prussia again withdrew its troops.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: At Napoleon's instigation, Prussia recaptured British Hanover and Bremen-Verden in early 1806. On August 6 of the same year, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved as a result of Napoleon's victories over Austria. The title of "Kurfürst" (Prince-elector) of Brandenburg became meaningless, and was dropped. Nonetheless, Frederick William III was now "de jure" as well as "de facto" sovereign of all of the Hohenzollern domains. Before this time, the Hohenzollern sovereign had held many titles and crowns, from Supreme Governor of the Protestant Churches ("summus episcopus") to King, Elector, Grand Duke, Duke for the various regions and realms under his rule. After 1806 he was simply King of Prussia and "summus episcopus".


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: But when Prussia, after it turned against the French Empire, was defeated in the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt (October 14, 1806), Frederick William III was forced to temporarily flee to remote Memel. After the Treaties of Tilsit in 1807, Prussia lost about half of its territory, including the land gained from the Second and Third Partitions of Poland (which now fell to the Duchy of Warsaw) and all land west of the Elbe River. France recaptured Prussian-occupied Hanover, including Bremen-Verden. The remainder of the kingdom was occupied by French troops (at Prussia's expense) and the king was obliged to make an alliance with France and join the Continental System.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Prussian reforms were a reaction to the Prussian defeat in 1806 and the Treaties of Tilsit. It describes a series of constitutional, administrative, social and economic reforms of the kingdom of Prussia. They are sometimes known as the "Stein-Hardenberg Reforms" after Karl Freiherr vom Stein and Karl August Fürst von Hardenberg, their main instigators.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: After the defeat of Napoleon in Russia in 1812, Prussia quit the alliance and took part in the Sixth Coalition during the "Wars of Liberation" ("Befreiungskriege") against the French occupation. Prussian troops under Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher contributed crucially in the Battle of Waterloo of 1815 to the final victory over Napoleon.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Prussia's reward for its part in France's defeat came at the Congress of Vienna. It regained most of its pre-1806 territory. Notable exceptions included part of the territory annexed in the Second and Third Partitions of Poland, which became Congress Poland under Russian rule (though it did retain Danzig, acquired in the Second Partition). It also did not regain several of its former towns in the south. However, as compensation it picked up some new territory, including 40% of the Kingdom of Saxony and much of Westphalia and the Rhineland. Prussia now stretched uninterrupted from the Niemen in the east to the Elbe in the west, and possessed a chain of disconnected territories west of the Elbe. This left Prussia as the only great power with a predominantly German-speaking population.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: With these gains in territory, the kingdom was reorganized into 10 provinces. Most of the kingdom, aside from the Provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, and the autonomous Grand Duchy of Posen but including the formerly Polish Lauenburg and Bütow Land and the Draheim territory, became part of the new German Confederation, a confederacy of 39 sovereign states (including Austria and Bohemia) replacing the defunct Holy Roman Empire.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Frederick William III submitted Prussia to a number of administrative reforms, among others reorganising the government by way of ministries, which remained formative for the following hundred years.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: As to religion, reformed Calvinist Frederick William III—as "Supreme Governor of the Protestant Churches"—asserted his long-cherished project (started in 1798) to unite the Lutheran and the Reformed Church in 1817, (see Prussian Union). The Calvinist minority, strongly supported by its co-religionist Frederick William III, and the partially reluctant Lutheran majority formed the united Protestant Evangelical Church in Prussia. However, ensuing quarrels causing a permanent schism among the Lutherans into united and Old Lutherans by 1830.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: As a consequence of the Revolutions of 1848, the Principalities of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Hohenzollern-Hechingen (ruled by a Catholic cadet branch of the House of Hohenzollern) were annexed by Prussia in 1850, later united as Province of Hohenzollern.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: During the half-century that followed the Congress of Vienna a conflict of ideals took place within the German Confederation between the formation of a single German nation and the conservation of the current collection of smaller German states and kingdoms. The main debate centered around whether Prussia or the Austrian Empire should be the leading member of any unified Germany. Those advocating for Prussian leadership contended that Austria had far too many non-German interests to work for the greater good of Germany. They argued that Prussia, as by far the most powerful state with a majority of German-speakers, was best suited to lead the new nation.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The establishment of the German Customs Union (Zollverein) in 1834, which excluded Austria, increased Prussian influence over the member states. In the wake of the Revolutions of 1848, the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849 offered King Frederick William IV of Prussia the crown of a united Germany. Frederick William refused the offer on the grounds that revolutionary assemblies could not grant royal titles. But he also refused for two other reasons: to do so would have done little to end the internal power-struggle between Austria and Prussia, and all Prussian kings (up to and including William I) feared that the formation of a German Empire would mean the end of Prussia's independence within the German states.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: In 1848 actions taken by Denmark towards the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein led to the First War of Schleswig (1848–51) between Denmark and the German Confederation, resulting in a Danish victory.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Frederick William issued Prussia's first constitution by his own authority in 1848. This document—moderate by the standards of the time but conservative by today's standards—provided for a two-chamber parliament, the "Landtag". The lower house, later known as the "Abgeordnetenhaus", was elected by all taxpayers, who were divided into three classes whose votes were weighted according to the amount of taxes paid. Women and those who paid no taxes had no vote. This allowed just over one-third of the voters to choose 85% of the legislature, all but assuring dominance by the more well-to-do men of the population. The upper house, later renamed the "Herrenhaus" ("House of Lords"), was appointed by the king. He retained full executive authority and ministers were responsible only to him. As a result, the grip of the landowning classes, the Junkers, remained unbroken, especially in the eastern provinces.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Frederick William suffered a stroke in 1857, and his younger brother, Prince William, became regent. William pursued a considerably more moderate policy. Upon Frederick William IV's death in 1861 he succeeded to the Prussian throne as William I. However, shortly after becoming king, he faced a dispute with his parliament over the size of the army. The parliament, dominated by the liberals, balked at William's desire to increase the number of regiments and withheld approval of the budget to pay for its cost. A deadlock ensued, and William seriously considered abdicating in favour of his son, Crown Prince Frederick William. Ultimately, he decided to appoint as prime minister Otto von Bismarck, at that time the Prussian ambassador to France. Bismarck took office on September 23, 1862.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Although Bismarck had a reputation as an unyielding conservative, he initially inclined to seek a compromise over the budget issue. However, William refused to consider it; he viewed defence issues as the crown's personal province. Forced into a policy of confrontation, Bismarck came up with a novel theory. Under the constitution, the king and the parliament were responsible for agreeing on the budget. Bismarck argued that since they had failed to come to an agreement, there was a "hole" in the constitution, and the government had to continue to collect taxes and disburse funds in accordance with the old budget in order to keep functioning. The government thus operated without a new budget from 1862 to 1866, allowing Bismarck to implement William's military reforms.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The liberals violently denounced Bismarck for what they saw as his disregard for the fundamental law of the kingdom. However, Bismarck's real plan was an accommodation with liberalism. Although he had opposed German unification earlier in his career, he had now come to believe it inevitable. To his mind, the conservative forces had to take the lead in the drive toward creating a unified nation in order to keep from being eclipsed. He also believed that the middle-class liberals wanted a unified Germany more than they wanted to break the grip of the traditional forces over society. He thus embarked on a drive to form a united Germany under Prussian leadership, and guided Prussia through three wars which ultimately achieved this goal.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The first of these wars was the Second War of Schleswig (1864), which Prussia initiated and succeeded in, and in which it gained the assistance of Austria. Denmark was soundly defeated and surrendered both Schleswig and Holstein, to Prussia and Austria respectively.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The divided administration of Schleswig and Holstein then became the trigger for the Austro-Prussian War of 1866—also known as the Seven Weeks' War. Prussia, allied with the Kingdom of Italy and various northern German states, declared war on the Austrian Empire. The Austrian-led coalition was crushed, and Prussia annexed four of its smaller allies—the Kingdom of Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse, the Duchy of Nassau and the Free City of Frankfurt. Prussia also annexed Schleswig and Holstein, and also effectively annexed Saxe-Lauenburg by forcing it into a personal union with Prussia (which was turned into a full union in 1876). King William initially wanted to take territory from Austria itself, but Bismarck persuaded him to abandon the idea. While Bismarck wanted Austria to play no future role in German affairs, he foresaw that Austria could be a valuable future ally. With these gains in territory, the Prussian possessions in the Rhineland and Westphalia became geographically connected to the rest of the kingdom for the first time. Counting the "de facto" annexation of Saxe-Lauenburg, Prussia now stretched uninterrupted across the northern two-thirds of Germany. It would remain at this size until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1918.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Bismarck used this opportunity to end the budget dispute with parliament. He proposed a bill of indemnity granting him retroactive approval for governing without a legal budget. He guessed, correctly as it turned out, that this would lead to a split between his liberal adversaries. While some of them argued that there could be no compromise with the principle of constitutional government, most of the liberals decided to support the bill in hopes of winning more freedom in the future.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The German Confederation was dissolved as part of the war. In its place, Prussia cajoled the 21 states north of the Main into forming the North German Confederation in 1866. Prussia entered the Confederation as a whole (including the East Prussian cradle of its statehood, as well as its share of dismembered Poland consisting of Province of Posen and West Prussia), thus becoming the dominant state in this new entity, with four-fifths of its territory and population—more than the other members of the confederation combined. Its near-total control was cemented in a constitution written by Bismarck. Executive power was vested in a president—a hereditary office of the rulers of Prussia. He was assisted by a chancellor responsible only to the president. There was also a bicameral parliament. The lower house, or Reichstag (Diet), was elected by universal male suffrage. The upper house, or Bundesrat (Federal Council) was appointed by the state governments. The Bundesrat was, in practice, the stronger chamber. Prussia had 17 of 43 votes and could easily control proceedings through alliances with the other states. For all intents and purposes, Bismarck dominated the new grouping. He served as his own foreign minister for virtually his entire tenure as prime minister of Prussia, and in that capacity was able to instruct the Prussian delegates to the Bundesrat.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The southern German states (except Austria) were forced to accept military alliances with Prussia, and Prussia began steps to merge them with the North German Confederation. Bismarck's planned "Kleindeutschland" unification of Germany had come considerably closer to realisation.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The final act came with the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), where Bismarck maneuvered Emperor Napoleon III of France into declaring war on Prussia. Activating the German alliances put in place after the Austro-Prussian War, the German states, aside from Austria, came together and swiftly defeated France, even managing to take Napoleon prisoner (2 September 1870). Even before then, Bismarck was able to complete the work of unifying Germany under Prussian leadership. The patriotic fervour aroused by the war against France overwhelmed the remaining opponents of a unified "Kleindeutschland" nation, and on 18 January 1871 (the 170th anniversary of the coronation of the first Prussian king, Frederick I), the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles outside of Paris, while the French capital was still under siege. King William became the first emperor ("Kaiser") of a unified Germany. However, the titles of Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia were to be borne by the same man until the end of the monarchy.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Bismarck's new empire was the most powerful state on the Continent. Prussia's dominance over the new empire was almost as absolute as it was with the North German Confederation. It included two-thirds of the empire's territory and three-fifths of its population. The imperial crown was a hereditary office of the House of Hohenzollern. Prussia also had a large plurality of seats in the Bundesrat, with 17 votes out of 58 (17 out of 61 after 1911); no other state had more than six votes. As before, it could effectively control the proceedings with the support of its allies in the secondary states. As mentioned above, Bismarck served as foreign minister of Prussia for almost his entire career, and in that role instructed the Prussian deputies to the Bundesrat. The Imperial Army was essentially an enlarged Prussian army, and the embassies of the new empire were mostly old Prussian embassies. The constitution of the German Empire was essentially an amended version of the constitution of the North German Confederation.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: However, the seeds for future problems lay in a gross disparity between the imperial and Prussian systems. The empire granted the vote to all men over 25. However, Prussia retained its restrictive three-class voting system, in which the well-to-do had 17½ times the voting power of the rest of the population. Since the imperial chancellor was, except for two periods (January–November 1873 and 1892–94) also prime minister of Prussia, this meant that for most of the empire's existence, the king/emperor and prime minister/chancellor had to seek majorities from legislatures elected by two completely different franchises.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: At the time of the empire's creation, both Prussia and Germany were roughly two-thirds rural. Within 20 years, the situation was reversed; the cities and towns accounted for two-thirds of the population. However, in both the kingdom and the empire, the constituencies were never redrawn to reflect the growing population and influence of the cities and towns. This meant that rural areas were grossly overrepresented from the 1890s onward.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Bismarck realized that the rest of Europe was skeptical of his powerful new Reich, and turned his attention to preserving peace with such acts as the Congress of Berlin. The new German Empire improved its already-strong relations with Britain. The ties between London and Berlin had already been sealed with a golden braid in 1858, when Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia married Princess Victoria of Britain.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: William I died in 1888, and the Crown Prince succeeded to the throne as Frederick III. The new emperor, a decided Anglophile, planned to transform Prussia and the empire into a more liberal and democratic monarchy based on the British model. However, Frederick was already ill with inoperable throat cancer, and died after only 99 days on the throne. He was succeeded by his 29-year-old son, William II. As a boy, William had rebelled against his parents' efforts to mould him as a liberal, and had become thoroughly Prussianized under Bismarck's tutelage.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The new Kaiser Wiliam rapidly soured relations with the British and Russian royal families (despite being closely related to them), becoming their rival and ultimately their enemy. Before and during World War I (1914–1918), Prussia supplied significant numbers of soldiers and sailors in the German military, and Prussian Junkers dominated the higher ranks. In addition, portions of the Eastern Front were fought on Prussian soil. Prussia – along with Germany as a whole – experienced increasing troubles with revolutionaries during the war. The Great War ended by armistice on 11 November 1918.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Uprisings in Berlin and other centres began the civil conflict of the German Revolution of 1918–19 (German: "Novemberrevolution"). By late 1918, the Prussian House of Representatives was controlled by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which advocated Marxism. William knew that he had lost his imperial crown for good, but still hoped to retain his Prussian crown; he believed that as ruler of two-thirds of Germany, he could remain a major figure in any successor regime. However, William discovered this was impossible under the imperial constitution. Although he believed he ruled the empire in personal union with Prussia, the imperial constitution stipulated that the imperial crown was tied to the Prussian crown. In any event, he had lost support of the military who might have fought for him. William's abdication as both king of Prussia and German emperor was announced on 9 November 1918, and he went into exile in the Netherlands the next day. With armed revolts, mass strikes, and street fighting in Berlin, the Prussian state government declared a state of siege and appealed for imperial military aid. The "Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division", commanded by Waldemar Pabst, moved against the strikers in Berlin. By the end of the fighting on 16 March, they had killed approximately 1,200 people, many of them unarmed and uninvolved. The revolutionary period lasted from November 1918 until the establishment in August 1919 of a republic that later became known as the Weimar Republic.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Prussia was incorporated as a state in the Weimar Republic. Under the republic, undemocratic public institutions were abolished, including the disappearance "of the Prussian Upper House, [and] the former Prussian Lower House that had been elected in accordance with the three-class suffrage".


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The republican Free State of Prussia proved stable and democratic in the post war years when compared with other federated states of the German Weimar Republic, being governed throughout most of its existence prior to 1932 by Otto Braun of the Social Democratic Party as Minister President of the state, from 1920 to April 1921, then again from November 1921 to February 1925 and again from April 1925 to 1932 when he was forced out by Franz von Papen, an ally of Adolf Hitler in a coup (Preußenschlag). After the Nazis gained power in 1933 they dissolved the Landtag of Prussia and stripped the Free State of any real power which was transferred instead in 1934 to the "Reichsgaue", the newly formed territorial units matching the structure of the Nazi Party. Hermann Göring continued until the end of war as the nominal head of government in the now mostly ceremonial Free State of Prussia as well as acted as its Reichsstatthalter, representing in the latter capacity Hitler who nominally held the position himself. The Province and Reichsgsu of East Prussia was in turn ruled by its Gauleiter and Oberpräsident Erich Koch.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: After World War II Otto Braun consulted with the allies about restoring Prussia but was turned down as many allied leaders viewed the legacy of Prussia as the root of German extremism and militarism. The Potsdam Agreement awarded majority of the state's territories to Poland and the Soviet Union. The final abolition of Prussia as a political entity occurred on 25 February 1947 through a decree of the Allied Control Council, marking the official end of one of Europe's most influential statehoods.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The joint authority, feudal and bureaucratic, on which Prussian absolute monarchy was based, saw its interests laid in suppression of the drive for personal freedom and democratic rights. It therefore had to recourse on police methods. The "police state", as Otto Hintze described it, replaced the older system with its feudal squirearchy run in the interests of the ruling class, but which in its rudimentary form was a constitutional state.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Kingdom of Prussia was an absolute monarchy until the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, after which Prussia became a constitutional monarchy and Adolf Heinrich von Arnim-Boitzenburg was appointed as Prussia's first prime minister. Following Prussia's first constitution, a two-house parliament was formed. The lower house, or "Landtag" was elected by all taxpayers, who were divided into three classes according to the amount of taxes paid. This allowed just over 25% of the voters to choose 85% of the legislature, all but assuring dominance by the more well-to-do elements of the population. The upper house, which was later renamed the Prussian House of Lords, was appointed by the king. He retained full executive authority and ministers were responsible only to him. As a result, the grip of the landowning classes, the Prussian Junkers, remained unbroken, especially in the eastern provinces. Prussian Secret Police, formed in response to the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, aided the conservative government.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: There were two constitutions during the kingdom's existence, the 1848 and 1850. The constitution of 1848 was enacted and set into effect on 5 December 1848, by Frederick William IV. This was set out in response to the revolutions of 1848. The second constitution was enacted on 31 January 1850 and was continually amended in the following years.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Constitution of 1848 occurred under the rule of Frederick William IV who took power from his father after his death in the year 1840. After taking power, William set an appointment of committees to confer on points of various questions. With this the king believed that he could give a sense of unity without revolution. The government was then cautiously brought together, all members of the eight provincial assemblies, and split into two houses, a house of lords and a second house that enveloped the three estates of the knights, the burgesses and the peasants. Although they had no real power and the king did not consult them or allow them to veto or argue the legislatures that were being made, it was a step towards a constitutional state. Known as the "March Days", radical changes began to occur. When the king refused to add the United Diets into an actual representative institution, the people began to rebel. On 18 March, the king made the decision to agree to some concessions. However, there were multiple stand-offs with soldiers as he had not been able to stop them from attacking even peaceful crowds. In March, the king agreed to demands issued by the people and made a number of concessions. At the 22 May 1848, convention he put out the sketch of the new constitution. The people submitted a revised draft on 26 July 1848. When all discussions were finished, Frederick dissolved the convention and the constitution was officially put in place on 5 December 1848.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The constitution was separated into 105 different articles headed under eight separate headings. The nine headings are titled The Territory of the State, The Rights of the Prussians, The King, The Ministers, The Chambers, The Judicial Power, Public Officials Not Belonging to the Judicial Class, The Finances and The Communes, Circuits, Districts, and Provincial Bodies. Each of these groups varies in numbers of articles with the seventh and ninth sections having only one article each and the second section having forty separate articles. There have also been fourteen provisions divided into General Provisions and Temporary Provisions.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The Prussian constitution of 1850 allowed for the freedom of conscience, the freedom of public and private worship and the freedom of association onto religious bodies. It stated that all churches and other religious associations should administer everything independently and privately from the state and that no part of the government may affect the Church. The constitution also stated that all children should be taught their religion from people of their own religion and not by someone else.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: According to a census taken in the early or mid 1800s, around the 1830s there was a division of six religions: this was, per million inhabitants, 609,427.0 practising Protestants, 376,177.1 practising Catholics, 13,348.8 practising Jews, 925.1 Mennonites, 121.4 Greek Orthodox and 0.6 Muslims. At this time the total population was 14,098,125 people, meaning there were approximately 8,591,778 practising Protestants, 5,303,392 practising Catholics, 188,193 practising Jews, 13,042 Mennonites, 1,712 Greek Orthodox, and 8 Muslims.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Although dominated by Protestant Lutherans (along with some Calvinist), it contained millions of Catholics in the west and in Poland. There were numerous Catholic populations in the Rhineland and parts of Westphalia. In addition, West Prussia, Warmia, Silesia, and the Province of Posen had predominantly Catholic Polish-speaking populations. East Prussia's southern region of Masuria was mostly made up of Germanised Protestant Masurs.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: The original core regions of the Kingdom of Prussia were the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia which together formed Brandenburg-Prussia. A Further Pomeranian province had been held by Prussia since 1653. Combined with Swedish Pomerania, gained from Sweden in 1720 and 1815, this region formed the Province of Pomerania. Prussian gains in the Silesian Wars led to the formation of the Province of Silesia in 1740.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the newly annexed Royal Prussia and Warmia became the Province of West Prussia, while the Duchy of Prussia (along with part of Warmia) became the Province of East Prussia. Other annexations along the Noteć (Netze) River became the Netze District. Following the second and third partitions (1793–1795), the new Prussian annexations became the Provinces of New Silesia, South Prussia, and New East Prussia, with the Netze District redivided between West and South Prussia. All the acquired Polish lands remained outside of the Holy Roman Empire, and the latter three provinces were disentangled from Prussia following the Treaties of Tilsit to be included in the Napoleonic Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1806, and were ultimately lost to Congress Poland after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, except for the western part of South Prussia, which would form part of the Grand Duchy of Posen, the latter however also remained outside of German Confederation, the successor of the dissolved Holy Roman Empire, as did the Province of East Prussia and the Province of West Prussia.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: Following the major western gains made by Prussia after the Vienna Congress, a total of ten provinces were established, each one subdivided further into smaller administrative regions known as Regierungsbezirke. The provinces were:


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: In 1822 the provinces of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and the Lower Rhine were merged to form the Rhine Province. In 1829, the Provinces of East and West Prussia merged to form the Province of Prussia, but the separate provinces were reformed in 1878. The principalities of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Hohenzollern-Hechingen were annexed in 1850 to form the Province of Hohenzollern.


title: Kingdom of Prussia

text: After Prussia's victory in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, territories annexed by Prussia were reorganised into three new provinces:


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: The Sex Lives of College Girls is an American teen comedy-drama streaming television series created by Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble that premiered on HBO Max on November 18, 2021. In December 2021, the series was renewed for a second season which premiered on November 17, 2022. In December 2022, the series was renewed for a third season.


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: The series follows the lives of four 18-year-old freshmen roommates at the fictional Essex College in Vermont, covering their sexually active lifestyle as they deal with the struggles and hardships of college and adulthood.


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: The series was first announced at the HBO Max presentation in October 2019, under the working title "College Girls". It was given a straight-to-series order of 13 half-hour episodes with Mindy Kaling announced to create, write and executive produce the series under her overall deal with Warner Bros. Television. In May 2020, the series was confirmed to be launching in 2021, under the new title "The Sex Lives of College Girls". In October 2020, it was announced that the first episode would be co-written by Kaling and "Never Have I Ever"s Justin Noble, with Noble joining the series as executive producer. On December 7, 2021, HBO Max renewed the series for a second season. On December 14, 2022. HBO Max renewed the series for a third season.


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: On October 14, 2020, the lead cast, made up of Pauline Chalamet, Amrit Kaur, Reneé Rapp and Alyah Chanelle Scott, was announced. Dylan Sprouse joined the main cast in December 2020, but was replaced by Gavin Leatherwood on March 12, 2021, who was cast alongside Midori Francis, Chris Meyer, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, Lolo Spencer, and Renika Williams in starring roles. On May 19, 2021, Sherri Shepherd, Maya Rose, Rob Huebel, Nicole Sullivan, Conor Donnally, Sierra Katow, Mekki Leeper, and James Morosini joined the cast in recurring capacities. On August 16, 2021, Izzy Roland, Kavi Ladnier, Stephen Guarino, Matt Maloy, Donielle Nash, and Najee Muhammad joined the cast in recurring capacities. On June 3, 2022, Mitchell Slaggert was cast as a new series regular for the second season. On August 15, 2022, Charlie Hall joined the cast in an undisclosed capacity for the second season.


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: The series began filming on November 20, 2020, in Los Angeles. Filming also took place at Vassar College in mid-2021. On June 19, 2021, recurring cast member Sherri Shepherd posted a behind-the-scenes video of her character in costume and revealed that the series was scheduled to premiere in late 2021. Filming for the second season began in late April 2022, some of which took place on the University of Washington's Seattle campus.


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: "The Sex Lives of College Girls" premiered on November 18, 2021, with the first two episodes available immediately, followed by three new episodes on November 25 and December 2, and the final two episodes of the first season on December 9 on HBO Max. The second season was released on November 17, 2022, with two episodes available immediately and two more episodes available weekly on Thursdays until the season finale on December 15.


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: From July 5, 2022, it is available on the RTÉ Player in the Republic of Ireland with some episodes airing on RTÉ2. The whole first season is available in the United Kingdom on ITV X. In Belgium the show can be watched via Streamz.


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: For the first season, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 97% approval rating with an average rating of 7.6/10, based on 30 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "While "The Sex Lives of College Girls" doesn't rewrite the syllabus for Anthropology 101, it succeeds gracefully as a warm-hearted romp on campus." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 72 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: Saloni Gajjar of "The A.V. Club" gave the first season a B+ and wrote, "The way the show tackles how teens cope with sudden freedom is both funny and truthful." Angie Han of "The Hollywood Reporter", said that it is "nothing novel or fancy [but] warm and gooey enough to satisfy."


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season holds an approval rating of 90% with an average rating of 5.5/10, based on 10 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus states, "Bawdy and sweet as ever, "The Sex Lives of College Girls" continues to excel as a refreshing twist on youthful indiscretions." On Metacritic, it has received a score of 79 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Sex Lives of College Girls

text: "The Sex Lives of College Girls" was nominated for the Outstanding New TV Series category for the 33rd GLAAD Media Awards in 2022. For its casting department (Elizabeth Barnes and Jennifer Euston), the series was nominated for an Artios Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy Pilot Casting. The series is set to be awarded the "Seal of Female Empowerment in Entertainment" (SOFEE) by the Women's Committee of the Critics Choice Association, for its outstanding work in "[illuminating] the female experience and perspective through authentically told female-driven stories."


title: Angkor Wat

text: Angkor Wat (; , "City/Capital of Temples") is a temple complex in Cambodia and is the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring . Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire by King Suryavarman II, it was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century; as such, it is also described as a "Hindu-Buddhist" temple.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (, present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat more than 5 kilometres (3 mi) long and an outer wall long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The modern name Angkor Wat, alternatively Nokor Wat, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples" in Khmer. "Angkor" ( ) meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word "nokor" ( ), which comes from the Sanskrit/Pali word "nagara" (Devanāgarī: नगर). "Wat" ( ) is the word for "temple grounds", also derived from Sanskrit/Pali "vāṭa" (Devanāgarī: वाट), meaning "enclosure".


title: Angkor Wat

text: The original name of the temple was Vrah Viṣṇuloka or Parama Viṣṇuloka meaning "the sacred dwelling of Vishnu."


title: Angkor Wat

text: Angkor Wat lies north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centred at Baphuon. In an area of Cambodia where there is an essential group of ancient structures, it is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The construction of Angkor Wat took place over a period of 28 years from 1122 – 1150 CE during the reign of King Suryavarman II (ruled 1113 – ). A brahmin by the name of Divākarapaṇḍita (1040 – ) was responsible for urging Suryavarman II to construct the temple. All of the original religious motifs at Angkor Wat derived from Hinduism. Breaking from the Shaiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. It was built as the king's state temple and capital city. As neither the foundation stela nor any contemporary inscriptions referring to the temple have been found, its original name is unknown, but it may have been known as "Varah Vishnu-lok" after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished. The term "Vrah Viṣṇuloka" or "Parama Viṣṇuloka" literally means "The king who has gone to the supreme world of Vishnu", which refer to Suryavarman II posthumously and intend to venerate his glory and memory.


title: Angkor Wat

text: In 1177, approximately 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer. Thereafter the empire was restored by a new king, Jayavarman VII, who established a new capital and state temple (Angkor Thom and the Bayon, respectively), a few kilometers north, dedicated to Buddhism, because the king believed that the Hindu gods had failed him. Angkor Wat was therefore also gradually converted into a Buddhist site, and many Hindu sculptures were replaced by Buddhist art.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Towards the end of the 12th century, Angkor Wat gradually transformed from a Hindu centre of worship to Buddhism, which continues to the present day. Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was largely neglected after the 16th century, it was never completely abandoned. Fourteen inscriptions dated from the 17th century, discovered in the Angkor area, testify to Japanese Buddhist pilgrims that had established small settlements alongside Khmer locals. At that time, the temple was thought by the Japanese visitors to be the famed Jetavana garden of the Buddha, which was originally located in the kingdom of Magadha, India. The best-known inscription tells of Ukondayu Kazufusa, who celebrated the Khmer New Year at Angkor Wat in 1632.


title: Angkor Wat

text: One of the first Western visitors to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese friar who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of."


title: Angkor Wat

text: In 1622, "The Poem of Angkor Wat" composed in Khmer verse describes the beauty of Angkor Wat and creates a legend around the construction of the complex, supposedly a divine castle built for legendary Khmer king Preah Ket Mealea by Hindu god Preah Pisnukar (or Braḥ Bisṇukār, Vishvakarman), as Suryavarman II had already vanished from people's minds.


title: Angkor Wat

text: In 1860, with the help of French missionary Father Charles-Émile Bouillevaux, the temple was effectively rediscovered by the French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot, who popularised the site in the West through the publication of travel notes, in which he wrote:


title: Angkor Wat

text: In 1861 German anthropologist Adolf Bastian undertook a four-year trip to Southeast Asia and his account of this trip, "The People of East Asia" ran to six volumes. When Bastian finally published the studies and observations during his "Journey through Cambodia to Cochinchina" in Germany in 1868 - told in detail but uninspiredly, above all without a single one of his drawings of the Angkorian sites - this work hardly made an impression, while everyone was talking about Henri Mouhot's posthumous work with vivid descriptions of Angkor, "Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, Siam, Cambodia and Laos", published in 1864 through the Royal Geographical Society.


title: Angkor Wat

text: There were no ordinary dwellings or houses or other signs of settlement, including cooking utensils, weapons, or items of clothing usually found at ancient sites. Instead, there is only evidence of the monuments themselves.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins. This quickly led to Cambodia reclaiming lands in the northwestern corner of the country such as the areas of Siem Reap, Battambang and Sisophon which were under Siamese rule from 1795 to 1907.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Angkor Wat's aesthetics were on display in the plaster cast museum of Louis Delaporte called "musée Indo-chinois" which existed in the Parisian Trocadero Palace from c.1880 to the mid-1920s.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The 20th century saw a considerable restoration of Angkor Wat. Gradually teams of laborers and archeologists pushed back the jungle and exposed the expanses of stone, permitting the sun to once again illuminate the dark corners of the temple. Angkor Wat caught the attention and imagination of a wider audience in Europe when the pavilion of French protectorate of Cambodia, as part of French Indochina, recreated the life-size replica of Angkor Wat during Paris Colonial Exposition in 1931.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and has controlled Angkor Wat since that time. It is safe to say that from the colonial period onwards until the site's nomination as UNESCO World Heritage in 1992, this specific temple of Angkor Wat was instrumental in the formation of the modern and gradually globalised concept of built cultural heritage.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Restoration work was interrupted by the Cambodian Civil War and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period. Camping Khmer Rouge forces used whatever wood remained in the building structures for firewood, and a shoot-out between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces put a few bullet holes in a bas relief. Far more damage was done after the wars, by art thieves working out of Thailand, which, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, claimed almost every head that could be lopped off the structures, including reconstructions.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia, and is a source of great national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic relations with France, the United States, and its neighbour Thailand. A depiction of Angkor Wat has been a part of Cambodian national flags since the introduction of the first version circa 1863. From a larger historical and even transcultural perspective, however, the temple of Angkor Wat did not become a symbol of national pride "sui generis" but had been inscribed into a larger politico-cultural process of French-colonial heritage production in which the original temple site was presented in French colonial and universal exhibitions in Paris and Marseille between 1889 and 1937.


title: Angkor Wat

text: In December 2015, it was announced that a research team from University of Sydney had found a previously unseen ensemble of buried towers built and demolished during the construction of Angkor Wat, as well as a massive structure of unknown purpose on its south side and wooden fortifications. The findings also include evidence of low-density residential occupation in the region, with a road grid, ponds, and mounds. These indicate that the temple precinct, bounded by moat and wall, may not have been used exclusively by the priestly elite, as was previously thought. The team used LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar and targeted excavation to map Angkor Wat.


title: Angkor Wat

text: According to a myth, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to serve as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea. According to the 13th-century Chinese traveller Zhou Daguan, some believed that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Angkor Wat is a unique combination of the temple mountain (the standard design for the empire's state temples) and the later plan of concentric galleries, most of which were derived from religious beliefs of Hinduism originally. The construction of Angkor Wat also suggests that there was a celestial significance with certain features of the temple. This is observed in the temple's east–west orientation, and lines of sight from terraces within the temple that show specific towers to be at the precise location of the sunrise on a solstice. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods according to Hindu mythology: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat symbolize the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean. Access to the upper areas of the temple was progressively more exclusive, with the laity being admitted only to the lowest level.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The Angkor Wat temple's main tower aligns to the morning sun of the spring equinox. Unlike most Khmer temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west rather than the east. This has led many (including Maurice Glaize and George Coedès) to conclude that Suryavarman intended it to serve as his funerary temple. Further evidence for this view is provided by the bas-reliefs, which proceed in a counter-clockwise direction—"prasavya" in Hindu terminology—as this is the reverse of the normal order. Rituals take place in reverse order during Brahminic funeral services.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container which may have been a funerary jar which was recovered from the central tower. It has been nominated by some as the greatest expenditure of energy on the disposal of a corpse. Freeman and Jacques, however, note that several other temples of Angkor depart from the typical eastern orientation, and suggest that Angkor Wat's alignment was due to its dedication to Vishnu, who was associated with the west.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, researcher Eleanor Mannikka argues that the structure represents a claimed new era of peace under King Suryavarman II: "as the measurements of solar and lunar time cycles were built into the sacred space of Angkor Wat, this divine mandate to rule was anchored to consecrated chambers and corridors meant to perpetuate the king's power and to honour and placate the deities manifest in the heavens above." Mannikka's suggestions have been received with a mixture of interest and scepticism in academic circles. She distances herself from the speculations of others, such as Graham Hancock, that Angkor Wat is part of a representation of the constellation Draco.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The oldest surviving plan of Angkor Wat dates to 1715 and is credited to Fujiwara Tadayoshi. The plan is stored in the Suifu Meitoku-kai Shokokan Museum in Mito, Japan.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Angkor Wat is the prime example of the classical style of Khmer architecture—the Angkor Wat style—to which it has given its name. By the 12th century, Khmer architects had become skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite) as the main building material. Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its design. According to Maurice Glaize, a mid-20th-century conservator of Angkor, the temple "attains a classic perfection by the restrained monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise arrangement of its proportions. It is a work of power, unity, and style."


title: Angkor Wat

text: Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: the ogival, redented towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting enclosures; and the cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple. Typical decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, and on pediments extensive garlands and narrative scenes. The statuary of Angkor Wat is considered conservative, being more static and less graceful than earlier work. Other elements of the design have been destroyed by looting and the passage of time, including gilded stucco on the towers, gilding on some figures on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Architect Jacques Dumarçay believes the layout of Angkor Wat borrows Chinese influence in its system of galleries which join at right angles to form courtyards. However, the axial pattern embedded in the plan of Angkor Wat may be derived from Southeast Asian cosmology in combination with the mandala represented by the main temple.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The outer wall, by and high, is surrounded by a apron of open ground and a moat wide and over 5 kilometres (3 mi) in perimeter. The moat extends 1.5 kilometres from east to west and 1.3 kilometres from north to south. Access to the temple is by an earth bank to the east and a sandstone causeway to the west; the latter, the main entrance, is a later addition, possibly replacing a wooden bridge. There are gopuras at each of the cardinal points; the western is by far the largest and has three ruined towers. Glaize notes that this gopura both hides and echoes the form of the temple proper.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Under the southern tower is a statue known as "Ta Reach", originally an eight-armed statue of Vishnu may have occupied the temple's central shrine. Galleries run between the towers and as far as two further entrances on either side of the gopura often referred to as "elephant gates", as they are large enough to admit those animals. These galleries have square pillars on the outer (west) side and a closed wall on the inner (east) side. The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus rosettes; the west face of the wall with dancing figures; and the east face of the wall with balustered windows, dancing male figures on prancing animals, and devatas, including (south of the entrance) the only one in the temple to be showing her teeth.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The outer wall encloses a space of 820,000 square metres (203 acres), which besides the temple proper was originally occupied by the city and, to the north of the temple, the royal palace. Like all secular buildings of Angkor, these were built of perishable materials rather than of stone, so nothing remains of them except the outlines of some of the streets. Most of the area is now covered by forest. A causeway connects the western gopura to the temple proper, with naga balustrades and six sets of steps leading down to the city on either side. Each side also features a library with entrances at each cardinal point, in front of the third set of stairs from the entrance, and a pond between the library and the temple itself. The ponds are later additions to the design, as is the cruciform terrace guarded by lions connecting the causeway to the central structure.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The temple stands on a terrace raised higher than the city. It is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last. The two inner galleries each have four large towers at their ordinal corners (that is, NW, NE, SE and SW) surrounding a higher fifth tower. This pattern is sometimes called a quincunx and represents the mountains of Meru. Because the temple faces west, the features are all set back towards the east, leaving more space to be filled in each enclosure and gallery on the west side; for the same reason the west-facing steps are shallower than those on the other sides.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Mannikka interprets the galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu. Each gallery has a gopura at each of the points. The outer gallery measures by , with pavilions rather than towers at the corners. The gallery is open to the outside of the temple, with columned half-galleries extending and buttressing the structure. Connecting the outer gallery to the second enclosure on the west side is a cruciform cloister called "Preah Poan" (meaning "The Thousand Buddhas" Gallery). Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating the good deeds of pilgrims, most written in Khmer but others in Burmese and Japanese. The four small courtyards marked out by the cloister may originally have been filled with water. North and south of the cloister are libraries.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Beyond, the second and inner galleries are connected to each other and to two flanking libraries by another cruciform terrace, again a later addition. From the second level upwards, devatas abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up to four. The second-level enclosure is by , and may originally have been flooded to represent the ocean around Mount Meru. Three sets of steps on each side lead up to the corner towers and gopuras of the inner gallery. The very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. This inner gallery, called the "Bakan", is a square with axial galleries connecting each gopura with the central shrine, and subsidiary shrines located below the corner towers.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas. Carved lintels and pediments decorate the entrances to the galleries and to the shrines. The tower above the central shrine rises to a height of above the ground; unlike those of previous temple mountains, the central tower is raised above the surrounding four. The shrine itself, originally occupied by a statue of Vishnu and open on each side, was walled in when the temple was converted to Theravada Buddhism, the new walls featuring standing Buddhas. In 1934, the conservator George Trouvé excavated the pit beneath the central shrine: filled with sand and water it had already been robbed of its treasure, but he did find a sacred foundation deposit of gold leaf two metres above ground level.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Integrated with the architecture of the building, and one of the causes for its fame is Angkor Wat's extensive decoration, which predominantly takes the form of bas-relief friezes. The inner walls of the outer gallery bear a series of large-scale scenes mainly depicting episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Higham has called these "the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving". From the north-west corner anti-clockwise, the western gallery shows the Battle of Lanka (from the Ramayana, in which Rama defeats Ravana) and the Battle of Kurukshetra (from the Mahabharata, showing the mutual annihilation of the Kaurava and Pandava clans). On the southern gallery follow the only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II, then the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hinduism.


title: Angkor Wat

text: On the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, showing 92 asuras and 88 devas using the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction (Mannikka counts only 91 asuras, and explains the asymmetrical numbers as representing the number of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and from the equinox to the summer solstice). It is followed by Vishnu defeating asuras (a 16th-century addition). The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana (where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst").


title: Angkor Wat

text: Angkor Wat is decorated with depictions of apsaras and devata; there are more than 1,796 depictions of devata in the present research inventory. Angkor Wat architects employed small apsara images () as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately ) more prominently at every level of the temple from the entry pavilion to the tops of the high towers. In 1927, Sappho Marchal published a study cataloging the remarkable diversity of their hair, headdresses, garments, stance, jewellery and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The monument was made out of five to ten million sandstone blocks with a maximum weight of 1.5 tons each. The entire city of Angkor used far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids combined and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris. Moreover, unlike the Egyptian pyramids, which use limestone quarried away, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried (or more) away. This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately northeast.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The route has been suggested to span along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another crossing the lake, and finally against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of . However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan have discovered in 2011 a shorter canal connecting Mount Kulen and Angkor Wat using satellite imagery. The two believe that the Khmer used this route instead.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels, and even roofs are carved. There are kilometres of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots as well as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader and celestial dancing girls with elaborate hairstyles. The gallery wall alone is decorated with almost of bas reliefs. Holes on some of the Angkor walls indicate that they may have been decorated with bronze sheets. These were highly prized in ancient times and were a prime target for robbers.


title: Angkor Wat

text: While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under , this took about 60 days to carve. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of stone. The labour force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much sandstone must have run into the thousands including many highly skilled artisans. The skills required to carve these sculptures were developed hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artefacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.


title: Angkor Wat

text: As with most other ancient temples in Cambodia, Angkor Wat has faced extensive damage and deterioration by a combination of plant overgrowth, fungi, ground movements, war damage and theft. The war damage to Angkor Wat's temples however has been very limited, compared to the rest of Cambodia's temple ruins, and it has also received the most attentive restoration.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The restoration of Angkor Wat in the modern era began with the establishment of the Conservation d'Angkor (Angkor Conservancy) by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in 1908; before that date, activities at the site were primarily concerned with exploration. The Conservation d'Angkor was responsible for the research, conservation, and restoration activities carried out at Angkor until the early 1970s, and a major restoration of Angkor was undertaken in the 1960s.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Work on Angkor was abandoned during the Khmer Rouge era and the Conservation d'Angkor was disbanded in 1975. Between 1986 and 1992, the Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple, as France did not recognise the Cambodian government at the time. Criticisms have been raised about both the early French restoration attempts and particularly the later Indian work, with concerns over damage done to the stone surface by the use of chemicals and cement.


title: Angkor Wat

text: In 1992, following an appeal for help by Norodom Sihanouk, Angkor Wat was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger (later removed in 2004) and World Heritage Site together with an appeal by UNESCO to the international community to save Angkor. Zoning of the area was set up to protect the Angkor site in 1994, APSARA was established in 1995 to protect and manage the area, and a law to protect Cambodian heritage was passed in 1996.


title: Angkor Wat

text: A number of countries such as France, Japan and China are currently involved in various Angkor Wat conservation projects. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas, and other bas-reliefs which decorate the temple, from damage. The organisation's survey found that around 20% of the devatas were in very poor condition, mainly because of natural erosion and deterioration of the stone but in part also due to earlier restoration efforts. Other work involves the repair of collapsed sections of the structure, and prevention of further collapse: the west facade of the upper level, for example, has been buttressed by scaffolding since 2002, while a Japanese team completed restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Microbial biofilms have been found degrading sandstone at Angkor Wat, Preah Khan, and the Bayon and West Prasat in Angkor. The dehydration- and radiation-resistant filamentous cyanobacteria can produce organic acids that degrade the stone. A dark filamentous fungus was found in internal and external Preah Khan samples, while the alga "Trentepohlia" was found only in samples taken from external, pink-stained stone at Preah Khan. Replicas have been made to replace some of the lost or damaged sculptures.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 1993, there were only 7,650 visitors to the site; by 2004, government figures show that 561,000 foreign visitors had arrived in Siem Reap province that year, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia. The number reached over a million in 2007, and over two million by 2012. Most visited Angkor Wat, which received over two million foreign tourists in 2013, and 2.6 million by 2018.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The site was managed by the private SOKIMEX group between 1990 and 2016, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively. Tourism has also provided some additional funds for maintenance—as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket revenues across the whole Angkor site was spent on the temples—although most work is carried out by teams sponsored by foreign governments rather than by the Cambodian authorities.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Since Angkor Wat has seen significant growth in tourism throughout the years, UNESCO and its International Co-ordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC), in association with representatives from the Royal Government and APSARA, organised seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism". Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasised the importance of providing high-quality accommodation and services in order for the Cambodian government to benefit economically, while also incorporating the richness of Cambodian culture. In 2001, this incentive resulted in the concept of the "Angkor Tourist City" which would be developed with regard to traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large numbers of tourists.


title: Angkor Wat

text: The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction regulations and more of these projects have the potential to damage landscape features. Also, the large scale of these projects have begun to threaten the quality of the nearby town's water, sewage, and electricity systems. It has been noted that such high frequency of tourism and growing demand for quality accommodations in the area, such as the development of a large highway, has had a direct effect on the underground water table, subsequently straining the structural stability of the temples at Angkor Wat.


title: Angkor Wat

text: Locals of Siem Reap have also voiced concern that the charm and atmosphere of their town have been compromised in order to entertain tourism. Since this local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, the local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture.


title: Angkor Wat

text: At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, it was agreed that Borobudur and Angkor Wat would become sister sites and the provinces sister provinces.


title: Angkor Wat

text: In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to travel restrictions being introduced across the world, which had a severe impact on Cambodia's tourism sector. As a result, visitors to Angkor Wat plummeted, leaving the usually crowded complex almost deserted.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Wednesday is an American coming-of-age supernatural mystery comedy horror streaming television series based on the character Wednesday Addams by Charles Addams. Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, it stars Jenna Ortega as the titular character, with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán, Isaac Ordonez, Gwendoline Christie, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Fred Armisen, and Christina Ricci appearing in supporting roles. Four out of the eight episodes are directed by Tim Burton, who also serves as executive producer. It revolves around Wednesday Addams, who attempts to solve a monster mystery at her school.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Burton was previously involved with a cancelled stop-motion animated "The Addams Family" film. In October 2020, he was reported to be helming a television series, which was later given a series order by Netflix. Ortega was cast in part to represent the character's Latina heritage. Ricci, who had played the titular character in the 1991 film and its 1993 sequel, was asked by Burton to join the series in a supporting role. Filming took place in Romania between September 2021 and March 2022.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: "Wednesday" premiered on November 16, 2022, and was released on Netflix on November 23 to predominantly positive reviews from critics, who praised Ortega's performance. Within three weeks of release, it became the second-most watched English-language Netflix series. It received two Golden Globe nominations: Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy and Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for Ortega.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Wednesday Addams is expelled from her school after dumping live piranhas into the school's pool in retaliation for the boys' water polo team bullying her brother, Pugsley. Consequently, her parents, Gomez and Morticia Addams, enroll her at their high school alma mater, Nevermore Academy, in the town of Jericho, Vermont, a private school for monstrous outcasts. Wednesday's cold, emotionless personality and her defiant nature make it difficult for her to connect with her schoolmates and cause her to run afoul of the school's principal. However, she discovers she has inherited her mother's psychic abilities which allow her to solve a local murder mystery.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: During pre-production on the 1991 film, Tim Burton was approached to direct, but ended up passing on it due to scheduling conflicts with "Batman" and "Batman Returns", resulting in Barry Sonnenfeld taking the job. In March 2010, it was announced that Illumination Entertainment had acquired the underlying rights to the Addams Family drawings. The film was planned to be a stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams's original drawings. Burton was set to co-write, co-produce, and possibly direct the film. In July 2013, it was reported that the film was cancelled, which, according to Burton, was due to the studio favoring a computer-animated approach over the stop-motion technique.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough started developing story ideas in 2019. They subsequently acquired the rights to the intellectual property before writing a pilot script, which they sent to Burton. To their surprise, Burton immediately became interested upon receiving the script. Commenting about his decision to join the project, Burton stated that he could relate to the titular character's worldview and that the script "spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person. It gave the Addams Family a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination." Millar stated that it was "very important" to the creative team not to emulate the prior films and 1964 television series. Millar and Gough decided to make the juxtaposition of "outcasts" and "normies" as well as criticism of colonial Americans major themes in the series.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: In October 2020, "Wednesday" was initially announced as an unnamed "Addams Family" project being helmed by Burton. The series's production would be handled by MGM Television, with Burton as director. Gough and Millar would serve as showrunners, while Gough, Millar, and Burton would also be executive producers alongside Gail Berman, Jon Glickman, and Andrew Mittman. In February 2021, Netflix gave the production a series order consisting of eight episodes. In August 2021, Kayla Alpert was added as an executive producer and 1.21, Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, and Glickmania were also producing the series. Deemed his "first real foray into television", Burton directed four out of the eight episodes, with Gandja Monteiro and James Marshall directing the remaining episodes. Burton brought on regular collaborator Colleen Atwood as costume designer.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: The creative team sought a Latina to play the role of Wednesday Addams in order to align with character Gomez Addams's heritage, an aspect of the character that was already worked into the series's script. In May 2021, Jenna Ortega, who is of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, was cast in the role. Millar stated that, upon their first Zoom call together, the creative team knew that "nobody else on this planet" was better suited to portray the character. Ortega said that she was initially hesitant about joining the project due to her past work in teen-oriented Disney Channel shows. In the beginning of August of that year, Luis Guzmán was cast to guest-star as Gomez Addams, and Catherine Zeta-Jones was cast as Morticia Addams in an undisclosed capacity. Later that month, Thora Birch, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Hunter Doohan, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Emma Myers, Naomi J. Ogawa, Joy Sunday, and Percy Hynes White were announced to be cast as series regulars. Myers initially auditioned for the titular role before she was cast as Wednesday's roommate Enid.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: In September, Gwendoline Christie and Victor Dorobantu were added to the cast in starring roles while Isaac Ordonez, George Burcea, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Iman Marson, William Houston, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, Oliver Watson, Calum Ross, and Johnna Dias Watson were cast in recurring roles. In December 2021, Birch left the series, leaving the status of her character, dorm mother Tamara Novak, unclear. In March 2022, it was announced that Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday Addams in the 1991 film and its 1993 sequel, was cast as a series regular, replacing Birch in a similar role. Commenting on her casting, Ricci stated, "I was really flattered to be asked and to be asked by Tim [Burton]", with whom she had previously collaborated on the 1999 film "Sleepy Hollow". Ricci was almost unable to accept the role due to possible scheduling conflicts with Showtime series "Yellowjackets". In October, a trailer revealed Fred Armisen to be portraying Uncle Fester, and Ricci's role was confirmed as Marilyn Thornhill.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Filming took place between September 2021 and March 2022 in the Southern Carpathian town of Bușteni, Romania. Filming locations included Cantacuzino Castle, serving as the setting for the fictional Nevermore Academy, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Sinaia railway station, the Bucharest Botanical Garden, Monteoru House, and the historic Olga Greceanu Mansion in Dâmbovița County, standing in for the Gates mansion. Exterior shots of Cantacuzino Castle were supplemented with CGI. Other settings, including the entire town of Jericho, were constructed at Buftea Studios. Production designer Mark Scruton based his set design primarily on Charles Addams's original cartoons and drew inspiration from Burton-directed films such as "Beetlejuice" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Ortega called her work on the series "very stressful and confusing" and "the most overwhelming job I've ever had" due to the production's fast-tracked shooting schedule.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: To prepare for her role, Ortega learned to play cello and took canoeing, fencing, archery, and German lessons. According to actress Joy Sunday, the canoeing lessons were especially strenuous, involving the entire cast and some dozen stuntmen racing each other for an hour daily, with days starting as early as 5:30 am. Ortega avoided talking to Ricci about playing the character during filming in order to achieve her own unique rendition of the role. She choreographed her dance to the Cramps' "Goo Goo Muck" herself, taking inspiration from Siouxsie Sioux, Bob Fosse, and goth dance club footage from the 1980s. Scenes featuring Thing, played by Romanian magician Victor Dorobantu, were achieved using a mixture of practical and special effects; Dorobantu wore a blue chroma-key bodysuit that would be edited out in post-production, leaving only his hand exposed. To create the illusion of a severed hand, a prosthetic stump was applied to Dorobantu's hand.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: In December 2021, it was reported that longtime Burton-collaborator Danny Elfman joined the series to compose the original theme and co-compose its score with Chris Bacon. The score features a selection of the series's original score composed by Elfman and Bacon as well as several pop songs, including cello renditions of "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones, "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, and "Physical" by Dua Lipa. The score also incorporates a number of classical works, including "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, "The Carnival of the Animals" by Camille Saint-Saëns, "Gnossienne" No. 1 by Erik Satie, and "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Led by two singles, "Devious Plan" and "Wednesday on the Case", "Wednesday"s 48-track soundtrack was released by Lakeshore Records on November 23, 2022, and a four-track extended play featuring covers of classical and pop songs were released on November 30. In his review of the series, Tony Sokol of "Den of Geek" called the score "a major character, not only thematically, but as an emotional delivery system", making "the chills creepier, the jokes funnier, and the tingles tangible". Linda Codega of "Gizmodo" called the cello segments "memorable" and the score "occasionally-magnificent". Writing for "IGN", Amelia Emberwing described the combination of Elfman's score with Burton's material as "[going] together like peanut butter and jelly" and the score overall as "a stunner".


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: A first teaser trailer for "Wednesday" was released on August 17, 2022, followed by a full trailer on October 9 and the unveiling of the series's opening sequence on November 8. "Wednesday" premiered on November 16, 2022, at Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles. Its eight episodes were released on Netflix on November 23, 2022. In December 2022, Netflix released a promotional video to its Twitter account depicting Thing, a sentient disembodied hand appearing in the series, roaming the streets of New York City and capturing passersby's reactions.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: According to data from users of TV Time collected by Whip Media, "Wednesday" had the second-most pre-release followers of any Netflix original series on the platform, behind only "The Witcher"; it ultimately debuted at number one on Netflix in 83 countries. The series holds the record of most hours viewed in a week for an English-language Netflix series with a total 341.2 million hours watched in its first week of release, amounting to more than 50 million households, and passing prior record holder "Stranger Things 4"s 335.01 million hours. Three weeks after its release, it became the second-most watched English-language Netflix series in the history of the platform, reaching an estimated 150 million households and totaling 1.02 billion viewing hours. Jacob Stolworthy of "The Independent" called the series's popularity "unprecedented" and suggested that it could jumpstart development of several other spin-off television series.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 72% approval rating and an average rating of 6.8/10, based on 87 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, ""Wednesday" isn't exactly full of woe for viewers, but without Jenna Ortega in the lead, this "Addams Family"-adjacent series might as well be another CW drama." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 66 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Ed Power of "The Daily Telegraph" gave "Wednesday" four out of five stars and called it "an addictively rococo romp that unfolds like a cross between "Euphoria" and "Hotel Transylvania"". John Anderson of "The Wall Street Journal" commended Ortega's "charismatic performance" and called the series "often delightful, despite its deliberate darkness". In his "B"-review for "The Detroit News", Tom Long deemed the series visually appealing and described Ortega's deadpan as "just as elastic as it needed to be" and her performance overall as "consistently [pushing] outside the caricature enough to keep things lively". Writing for "RogerEbert.com", Cristina Escobar similarly praised Ortega's deadpan humor and commended the series's "satisfactory" ending. While finding that the series would not be "what real fans of Charles Addams and his characters are looking for", Mike Hale of "The New York Times" called the series "tolerable" despite "satisfying only on the level of formulaic teenage romance and mystery" and compared it to the "Harry Potter" franchise. Commenting on its tone, Jesse Hassenger of "TheWrap" described the four episodes directed by Burton as feeling more like "Veronica Mars" than "Sleepy Hollow". Nick Hilton of "The Independent" gave the series two out of five stars and criticized the series's tone as "relentlessly quippy Gen Z" and its performances as "more two-dimensional than the "New Yorker" comic strip in which the characters first appeared".


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: "Wednesday" was ranked the seventh best TV show of 2022 by "PopBuzz". "BuzzFeed News" included the series in its unranked list of "16 Great TV Shows From 2022". Meanwhile, "Collider" named it one of the best new TV shows of the year.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: On possible future seasons, Gough and Millar commented in an interview with "Variety", "when we sit down to create a show, it’s looking at multiple seasons, ideally. That's never expected, but that's the anticipation that hopefully the show is successful." They further stated that they had "a pretty clear runway" of how future seasons could unfold. Preparation for a second season commenced in December 2022, following Amazon's acquisition of MGM.


title: Wednesday (TV series)

text: Following the release of "Wednesday", Wednesday Addams's dance from the series and its fan recreations to Lady Gaga's song "Bloody Mary" went viral on video sharing service TikTok, with Kim Kardashian, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Marina Diamandis, and Gaga herself also participating in the trend. This resulted in a large increase in plays of the song on Spotify and on-demand streams in the United States, surging by 415 percent in the week after the series's release. In December 2022, "Bloody Mary" was sent to French radio as a single, 11 years after the release of "Born This Way", the album it was featured on. The 1981 song "Goo Goo Muck" by the Cramps, which plays during the original dance scene in the fourth episode of the series, also saw a surge in popularity. According to "Billboard", on-demand streams of the song in the United States increased from 2,500 to over 134,000, and Spotify streams increased by 9,500 percent since the series was released. Janelle Zara of "The Guardian" stated that the viral dance trend "may have single-handedly revived Gothic subculture for Gen Z".


title: Karen Carpenter

text: Karen Anne Carpenter (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983) was an American singer and drummer who with her older brother Richard performed as the duo the Carpenters who were one of the biggest-selling American pop groups of all time. With a distinctive three-octave contralto range, she was praised by her peers for her vocal skills. Her struggle with and eventual death of heart failure related to her years-long struggle with anorexia would later raise awareness of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and their possible causes.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: Carpenter was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and moved to Downey, California in 1963 with her family. She began to study the drums in high school and joined the Long Beach State choir after graduating. After several years of touring and recording, the Carpenters were signed to A&M Records in 1969, achieving enormous commercial and critical success throughout the 1970s. Initially, Carpenter was the band's full-time drummer, but she gradually took the role of frontwoman as her drumming was reduced to a handful of live showcases or tracks on albums. From then on she found her appearance under constant scrutiny and developed anorexia as a way to cope with the massive pressure to look slim on stage.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: At the age of 32, Carpenter died of heart failure due to complications from anorexia nervosa, which was little-known outside celebrity circles at the time, and her death led to increased visibility and awareness of eating disorders. Interest in her life and death has spawned numerous documentaries and movies. Her work continues to attract praise, including appearing on "Rolling Stone"s 2010 list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: Karen Anne Carpenter was born on March 2, 1950, at Grace New Haven Hospital (now called Yale New Haven Hospital) in New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of Agnes Reuwer (née Tatum, March 5, 1915 – November 10, 1996) and Harold Bertram Carpenter (November 8, 1908 – October 15, 1988). Harold was born in Wuzhou, China, where his parents were missionaries. He was educated at boarding schools in England before finding work in the printing business.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: Carpenter's only sibling, Richard, the elder by three years, developed an interest in music at an early age, becoming a piano prodigy. Karen's first words were "bye-bye" and "stop it", the latter spoken in response to Richard. She enjoyed dancing and by age four was enrolled in tap dancing and ballet classes, later on she liked to play softball on the street.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: The family moved in June 1963 to the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, after Harold was offered a job there by a former business associate. Carpenter entered Downey High School in 1964 at age 14 and was a year younger than her classmates. She joined the school marching band, initially to avoid exercising for gym classes. Bruce Gifford, the conductor (who had previously taught her elder brother), gave her the glockenspiel, an instrument she disliked, and after admiring the performance of her friend and classmate, drummer Frankie Chavez (who had been playing from an early age and idolized jazz drummer Buddy Rich), she asked if she could play those instead. Carpenter wanted a Ludwig drum set because it was used by her favorite drummers, Joe Morello and Ringo Starr. Chavez persuaded her family to buy her a $300 (the equivalent of $ in ) Ludwig kit, and he began to show her how to play. Her enthusiasm for drumming led to teaching herself how to play complicated lines and studying stick control, drum styles, playing technique and grips like traditional and matched grip. She was talented, rehearsed every day and within a year, she could play in complex time signatures, such as the in Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". Carpenter began to study drum trechnique with Bill Douglas, a well respected jazz drummer with Benny Goodman and Art Tatum and soon after she became a professional drum kit.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: Carpenter was initially nervous about performing in public, but said she "was too involved in the music to worry about it". She graduated from Downey High School in the spring of 1967, receiving the John Philip Sousa Band Award, and enrolled as a music major at Long Beach State, where she performed in the college choir with Richard. Karen subsequently became more confident in singing and began to take lessons with Frank Pooler, the choir's director. She worked with him on developing the upper register so she would have a full three-octave range and he taught her a mixture of classical and pop singing. Pooler later said "Karen was a born pop singer". By seventeen years of age, her voice was a remarkable instrument.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: The first public performance of Karen and Richard was in a local production of Frank Loesser's musical "Guys and Dolls". Carpenter's first band was Two Plus Two, an all-girl trio formed with friends from Downey High. They split up after one of the mothers refused to give her daughter permission to attend their first gig. In 1965, Karen, Richard, and his college friend Wes Jacobs, a bassist and tuba player, formed the Dick Carpenter Trio. The band rehearsed daily, played jazz in nightclubs, Richard later told he was impressed with his sister's musical talent, saying that she would "speedily maneuver the sticks as if she had been born in a drum factory". She did not sing at this point; instead, singer Margaret Shanor guested on some numbers. The trio signed a contract with RCA Records and recorded two instrumentals, but they were not released.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: In April 1966, the Carpenters were invited to audition at a session with bassist Joe Osborn, well known for being part of the studio-musician collective the Wrecking Crew. Though she was initially expected to just be the drummer, Karen tried singing and impressed everyone there with her distinctive voice. Osborn signed a recording contract with her for his label, Magic Lamp Records; he was not particularly interested in Richard's involvement.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: In 1967, Jacobs left the trio to study at the Juilliard School, and the Carpenter siblings were keen to try out other musical styles. Along with other musicians, including Gary Sims and John Bettis, the siblings formed the group Spectrum, which focused on a harmonious vocal sound and recorded many demo tapes in Osborn's garage studio, working out how to overdub voices onto multitrack tape. Many of those tapes were rejected by record companies. The group had difficulty attracting a live following, as their sound was too dissimilar from the hard rock and psychedelic rock then popular in clubs.


title: Karen Carpenter

text: In 1968, the Dick Carpenter Trio also appeared on the TV talent show "Your All American College Show", performing "Dancing in the Street" with Carpenter playing the drums and singing. The Trio did win the finals that year.