title: Wernher von Braun

text: Upon investigation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation on 1 May 1961 advised that “there was no record of an arrest in their respective files” suggesting that Von Braun’s imprisonment was wiped from German prison records at a point after his conditional release or after the Nazi regime had fallen.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: The Soviet Army was about from Peenemünde in early 1945 when von Braun assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Unwilling to go to the Soviets, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender to the Americans. Kammler had ordered relocation of his team to central Germany; however, a conflicting order from an army chief ordered them to join the army and fight. Deciding that Kammler's order was their best bet to defect to the Americans, von Braun fabricated documents and transported 500 of his affiliates to the area around Mittelwerk, where they resumed their work in Bleicherode and surrounding towns after the middle of February 1945. For fear of their documents being destroyed by the SS, von Braun ordered the blueprints to be hidden in an abandoned iron mine in the Harz mountain range near Goslar. The US Counterintelligence Corps managed to unveil the location after lengthy interrogations of von Braun, Walter Dornberger, Bernhard Tessmann and Dieter Huzel and recovered 14 tons of V-2 documents by 15 May 1945, from the British Occupation Zone.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: While on an official trip in March, von Braun suffered a complicated fracture of his left arm and shoulder in a car accident after his driver fell asleep at the wheel. His injuries were serious, but he insisted that his arm be set in a cast so he could leave the hospital. Due to this neglect of the injury he had to be hospitalized again a month later when his bones had to be rebroken and realigned.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In early April, as the Allied forces advanced deeper into Germany, Kammler ordered the engineering team, around 450 specialists, to be moved by train into the town of Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps, where they were closely guarded by the SS with orders to execute the team if they were about to fall into enemy hands. However, von Braun managed to convince SS Major Kummer to order the dispersal of the group into nearby villages so that they would not be an easy target for U.S. bombers. On 29 April 1945, Oberammergau was captured by the Allied forces who seized the majority of the engineering team.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Nearing the end of the war, Hitler had instructed SS troops to gas all technical men concerned with rocket development. Upon hearing this, Von Braun commandeered a train, and fled with other “technical men” to a location in the mountains of South Germany. After some time, Von Braun and many of the others who made it to the mountains left their location to flee to advancing American lines in Austria.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun and several members of the engineering team, including Dornberger, made it to Austria. On 2 May 1945, upon finding an American private from the U.S. 44th Infantry Division, von Braun's brother and fellow rocket engineer, Magnus, approached the soldier on a bicycle, calling out in broken English: "My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender." After the surrender, Wernher von Braun spoke to the press:


title: Wernher von Braun

text: We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided not by the laws of materialism but by Christianity and humanity could such an assurance to the world be best secured.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: The American high command was well aware of how important their catch was: von Braun had been at the top of the "Black List", the code name for the list of German scientists and engineers targeted for immediate interrogation by U.S. military experts. On 9 June 1945, two days before the originally scheduled handover of the Nordhausen and Bleicherode area in Thuringia to the Soviets, U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in London, and Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Williams took von Braun and his department chiefs by Jeep from Garmisch to Munich, from where they were flown to Nordhausen. In the following days, a larger group of rocket engineers, among them Helmut Gröttrup, was evacuated from Bleicherode southwest to Witzenhausen, a small town in the American Zone.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun was briefly detained at the "Dustbin" interrogation center at Kransberg Castle, where the elite of Nazi Germany's economic, scientific and technological sectors were debriefed by U.S. and British intelligence officials. Initially, he was recruited to the U.S. under a program called Operation Overcast, subsequently known as Operation Paperclip. There is evidence, however, that British intelligence and scientists were the first to interview him in depth, eager to gain information that they knew U.S. officials would deny them. The team included the young L.S. Snell, then the leading British rocket engineer, later chief designer of Rolls-Royce Limited and inventor of the Concorde's engines. The specific information the British gleaned remained top secret, both from the Americans and from the other allies.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: On 20 June 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to the United States as one of his last acts in office; however, this was not announced to the public until 1 October 1945.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: The first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Field, just south of Wilmington, Delaware, on 20 September 1945. They were then flown to Boston, Massachusetts, and taken by boat to the Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents, enabling the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde staff (see List of German rocket scientists in the United States) were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, a large Army installation just north of El Paso, Texas. Von Braun later wrote that he found it hard to develop a "genuine emotional attachment" to his new surroundings. His chief design engineer Walther Reidel became the subject of a December 1946 article "German Scientist Says American Cooking Tasteless; Dislikes Rubberized Chicken", exposing the presence of von Braun's team in the country and drawing criticism from Albert Einstein and John Dingell. Requests to improve their living conditions such as laying linoleum over their cracked wood flooring were rejected. Von Braun was hypercritical of the slowness of the United States development of guided missiles. His lab was never able to get sufficient funds to go on with their programs. Von Braun remarked, "at Peenemünde we had been coddled, here you were counting pennies". Whereas von Braun had thousands of engineers who answered to him at Peenemünde, he was now subordinate to "pimply" 26-year-old Jim Hamill, an Army major who possessed only an undergraduate degree in engineering. His loyal Germans still addressed him as "Herr Professor," but Hamill addressed him as "Wernher" and never responded to von Braun's request for more materials. Every proposal for new rocket ideas was dismissed.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: While at Fort Bliss, they trained military, industrial, and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles. As part of the Hermes project, they helped refurbish, assemble, and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from Allied-occupied Germany to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. They also continued to study the future potential of rockets for military and research applications. Since they were not permitted to leave Fort Bliss without military escort, von Braun and his colleagues began to refer to themselves only half-jokingly as "PoPs" – "Prisoners of Peace".


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In 1950, at the start of the Korean War, von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama, his home for the next 20 years. Between 1952 and 1956, von Braun led the Army's rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal, resulting in the Redstone rocket, which was used for the first live nuclear ballistic missile tests conducted by the United States. He personally witnessed this historic launch and detonation. Work on the Redstone led to development of the first high-precision inertial guidance system on the Redstone rocket.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: As director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, von Braun, with his team, then developed the Jupiter-C, a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter-C was the basis for the Juno I rocket that successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1, on 31 January 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Repeating the pattern he had established during his earlier career in Germany, von Braun – while directing military rocket development in the real world – continued to entertain his engineer-scientist's dream of a future in which rockets would be used for space exploration. However, he was no longer at risk of being fired. As American public opinion of Germans began to recover, von Braun found himself increasingly in a position to popularize his ideas. The 14 May 1950 headline of "The Huntsville Times" ("Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon") might have marked the beginning of these efforts. Von Braun's ideas rode a publicity wave that was created by science fiction movies and stories.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In 1952, von Braun first published his concept of a crewed space station in a "Collier's Weekly" magazine series of articles titled "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!". These articles were illustrated by the space artist Chesley Bonestell and were influential in spreading his ideas. Frequently, von Braun worked with fellow German-born space advocate and science writer Willy Ley to publish his concepts, which, unsurprisingly, were heavy on the engineering side and anticipated many technical aspects of space flight that later became reality.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: The space station (to be constructed using rockets with recoverable and reusable ascent stages) would be a toroid structure, with a diameter of ; this built on the concept of a rotating wheel-shaped station introduced in 1929 by Herman Potočnik in his book "The Problem of Space Travel – The Rocket Motor". The space station would spin around a central docking nave to provide artificial gravity, and would be assembled in a two-hour, high-inclination Earth orbit allowing observation of essentially every point on Earth on at least a daily basis. The ultimate purpose of the space station would be to provide an assembly platform for crewed lunar expeditions. More than a decade later, the movie version of would draw heavily on the design concept in its visualization of an orbital space station.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun envisioned these expeditions as very large-scale undertakings, with a total of 50 astronauts traveling in three huge spacecraft (two for crew, one primarily for cargo), each long and in diameter and driven by a rectangular array of 30 rocket propulsion engines. Upon arrival, astronauts would establish a permanent lunar base in the Sinus Roris region by using the emptied cargo holds of their craft as shelters, and would explore their surroundings for eight weeks. This would include a expedition in pressurized rovers to the crater Harpalus and the Mare Imbrium foothills.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: At this time, von Braun also worked out preliminary concepts for a human mission to Mars that used the space station as a staging point. His initial plans, published in "The Mars Project" (1952), had envisaged a fleet of 10 spacecraft (each with a mass of 3,720 metric tonnes), three of them uncrewed and each carrying one 200-tonne winged lander in addition to cargo, and nine crew vehicles transporting a total of 70 astronauts. The engineering and astronautical parameters of this gigantic mission were thoroughly calculated. A later project was much more modest, using only one purely orbital cargo ship and one crewed craft. In each case, the expedition would use minimum-energy Hohmann transfer orbits for its trips to Mars and back to Earth.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Before technically formalizing his thoughts on human spaceflight to Mars, von Braun had written a science fiction novel on the subject, set in the year 1980. However, the manuscript was rejected by no fewer than 18 publishers. Von Braun later published small portions of this opus in magazines, to illustrate selected aspects of his Mars project popularizations. The complete manuscript, titled "", did not appear as a printed book until December 2006.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In the hope that its involvement would bring about greater public interest in the future of the space program, von Braun also began working with Walt Disney and the Disney studios as a technical director, initially for three television films about space exploration. The initial broadcast devoted to space exploration was "Man in Space", which first went on air on 9 March 1955, drawing 40 million viewers.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Later (in 1959) von Braun published a short booklet, condensed from episodes that had appeared in "This Week Magazine" before—describing his updated concept of the first crewed lunar landing. The scenario included only a single and relatively small spacecraft—a winged lander with a crew of only two experienced pilots who had already circumnavigated the Moon on an earlier mission. The brute-force direct ascent flight schedule used a rocket design with five sequential stages, loosely based on the Nova designs that were under discussion at this time. After a night launch from a Pacific island, the first three stages would bring the spacecraft (with the two remaining upper stages attached) to terrestrial escape velocity, with each burn creating an acceleration of 8–9 times standard gravity. Residual propellant in the third stage would be used for the deceleration intended to commence only a few hundred kilometers above the landing site in a crater near the lunar north pole. The fourth stage provided acceleration to lunar escape velocity, while the fifth stage would be responsible for a deceleration during return to the Earth to a residual speed that allows aerocapture of the spacecraft ending in a runway landing, much in the way of the Space Shuttle. One remarkable feature of this technical tale is that the engineer von Braun anticipated a medical phenomenon that would become apparent only years later: being a veteran astronaut with no history of serious adverse reactions to weightlessness offers no protection against becoming unexpectedly and violently spacesick.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In the first half of his life, von Braun was a nonpracticing, "perfunctory" Lutheran, whose affiliation was nominal and not taken seriously. As described by Ernst Stuhlinger and Frederick I. Ordway III: "Throughout his younger years, von Braun did not show signs of religious devotion, or even an interest in things related to the church or to biblical teachings. In fact, he was known to his friends as a 'merry heathen' ("fröhlicher Heide")." Nevertheless, in 1945 he explained his decision to surrender to the Western Allies, rather than Russians, as being influenced by a desire to share rocket technology with people who followed the Bible. In 1946, he attended church in El Paso, El Paso County, Texas, and underwent a religious conversion to Evangelical Christianity. In an unnamed religious magazine he stated:


title: Wernher von Braun

text: On the motives behind this conversion, Michael J. Neufeld is of the opinion that he turned to religion "to pacify his own conscience", whereas University of Southampton scholar Kendrick Oliver said that von Braun was presumably moved "by a desire to find a new direction for his life after the moral chaos of his service for the Third Reich". Having "concluded one bad bargain with the Devil, perhaps now he felt a need to have God securely at his side".


title: Wernher von Braun

text: At a Gideons conference in 2004, W. Albert Wilson, a former pilot and NASA employee, claimed that he had talked with von Braun about the Christian faith while von Braun was working for NASA, and believed that conversation had been instrumental in von Braun's conversion.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Later in life, he joined an Episcopal congregation, and became increasingly religious. He publicly spoke and wrote about the complementarity of science and religion, the afterlife of the soul, and his belief in God. He stated, "Through science man strives to learn more of the mysteries of creation. Through religion he seeks to know the Creator." He was interviewed by the Assemblies of God pastor C. M. Ward and stated that "The farther we probe into space, the greater my faith." In addition, he met privately with evangelist Billy Graham and with the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun developed and published his space station concept during the time of the Cold War when the U.S. government put the containment of the Soviet Union above everything else. The fact that his space station – if armed with missiles that could be easily adapted from those already available at this time – would give the United States space superiority in both orbital and orbit-to-ground warfare did not escape him. In his popular writings, von Braun elaborated on them in several of his books and articles, but he took care to qualify such military applications as "particularly dreadful". This much-less-peaceful aspect of von Braun's "drive for space" has been reviewed by Michael J. Neufeld from the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: The U.S. Navy had been tasked with building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the resulting Vanguard rocket launch system was unreliable. In 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1, a belief grew within the United States that it lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging Space Race. American authorities then chose to use von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle. Von Braun had originally proposed such an idea in 1954, but it was denied at the time.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: NASA was established by law on 29 July 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack I. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. In a face-to-face meeting with Herb York at the Pentagon, von Braun made it clear he would go to NASA only if development of the Saturn were allowed to continue. Von Braun became the center's first director on 1 July 1960 and held the position until 27 January 1970.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun's early years at NASA included a failed "four-inch flight" during which the first uncrewed Mercury-Redstone rocket only rose a few inches before settling back onto the launch pad. The launch failure was later determined to be the result of a "power plug with one prong shorter than the other because a worker filed it to make it fit". Because of the difference in the length of one prong, the launch system detected the difference in the power disconnection as a "cut-off signal to the engine". The system stopped the launch, and the incident created a "nadir of morale in Project Mercury".


title: Wernher von Braun

text: After the flight of Mercury-Redstone 2 in January 1961 experienced a string of problems, von Braun insisted on one more test before the Redstone could be deemed man-rated. His overly cautious nature brought about clashes with other people involved in the program, who argued that MR-2's technical issues were simple and had been resolved shortly after the flight. He overruled them, so a test mission involving a Redstone on a boilerplate capsule was flown successfully in March. Von Braun's stubbornness was blamed for the inability of the U.S. to launch a crewed space mission before the Soviet Union, which ended up putting the first man in space the following month. Three weeks later on 5 May, von Braun's team successfully launched Alan Shepard into space. He named his Mercury-Redstone 3 Freedom 7.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of Saturn rockets to carry heavy payloads into and beyond Earth orbit. From this, the Apollo program for crewed Moon flights was developed. Von Braun initially pushed for a flight engineering concept that called for an Earth orbit rendezvous technique (the approach he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962, he converted to the lunar orbit rendezvous concept that was subsequently realized. During Apollo, he worked closely with former Peenemünde teammate, Kurt H. Debus, the first director of the Kennedy Space Center. His dream to help mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality on 16 July 1969, when a Marshall-developed Saturn V rocket launched the crew of Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: During the late 1960s, von Braun was instrumental in the development of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry in the space race remains on display there. He also was instrumental in the launching of the experimental Applications Technology Satellite. He traveled to India and hoped that the program would be helpful for bringing a massive educational television project to help the poorest people in that country.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: During the local summer of 1966–67, von Braun participated in a field trip to Antarctica, organized for him and several other members of top NASA management. The goal of the field trip was to determine whether the experience gained by U.S. scientific and technological community during the exploration of Antarctic wastelands would be useful for the crewed exploration of space. Von Braun was mainly interested in management of the scientific effort on Antarctic research stations, logistics, habitation, and life support, and in using the barren Antarctic terrain like the glacial dry valleys to test the equipment that one day would be used to look for signs of life on Mars and other worlds.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In an internal memo dated 16 January 1969, von Braun had confirmed to his staff that he would stay on as a center director at Huntsville to head the Apollo Applications Program. He referred to this time as a moment in his life when he felt the strong need to pray, stating "I certainly prayed a lot before and during the crucial Apollo flights". A few months later, on occasion of the first Moon landing, he publicly expressed his optimism that the Saturn V carrier system would continue to be developed, advocating human missions to Mars in the 1980s.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Nonetheless, on 1 March 1970, von Braun and his family relocated to Washington, DC, when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. After a series of conflicts associated with the truncation of the Apollo program, and facing severe budget constraints, von Braun retired from NASA on 26 May 1972. Not only had it become evident by this time that NASA and his visions for future U.S. space flight projects were incompatible, but also it was perhaps even more frustrating for him to see popular support for a continued presence of man in space wane dramatically once the goal to reach the Moon had been accomplished.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun also developed the idea of a Space Camp that would train children in fields of science and space technologies, as well as help their mental development much the same way sports camps aim at improving physical development.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: After leaving NASA, von Braun moved to the Washington, D.C. area and became Vice President for Engineering and Development at the aerospace company Fairchild Industries in Germantown, Montgomery County, Maryland, on 1 July 1972.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In 1973, during a routine physical examination, von Braun was diagnosed with kidney cancer, which could not be controlled with the medical techniques available at the time.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun helped establish and promote the National Space Institute, a precursor of the present-day National Space Society, in 1975, and became its first president and chairman. In 1976, he became scientific consultant to , the CEO of OTRAG, and a member of the Daimler-Benz board of directors. However, his deteriorating health forced him to retire from Fairchild on 31 December 1976. When the 1975 National Medal of Science was awarded to him in early 1977, he was hospitalized, and unable to attend the White House ceremony.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun's insistence on further tests after Mercury-Redstone 2 flew higher than planned has been identified as contributing to the Soviet Union's success in launching the first human in space. The Mercury-Redstone BD flight was successful, but took up the launch slot that might have put Alan Shepard into space three weeks ahead of Yuri Gagarin. His Soviet counterpart Sergei Korolev insisted on two successful flights with dogs before risking Gagarin's life on a crewed attempt. The second test flight took place one day after the Mercury-Redstone BD mission.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun took a very conservative approach to engineering, designing with ample safety factors and redundant structure. This became a point of contention with other engineers, who struggled to keep vehicle weight down so that payload could be maximized. As noted above, his excessive caution likely led to the U.S. losing the race to put a man into space with the Soviets. Krafft Ehricke likened von Braun's approach to building the Brooklyn Bridge. Many at NASA headquarters jokingly referred to Marshall as the "Chicago Bridge and Iron Works", but acknowledged that the designs worked. The conservative approach paid off when a fifth engine was added to the Saturn C-4, producing the Saturn V. The C-4 design had a large crossbeam that could easily absorb the thrust of an additional engine.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun did not indicate interest in politics or political philosophy during his onboarding working for the US army. He was primarily focused on his work in guided missiles for the purpose of furthering science and technology. According to FBI background checks, “any political activity he may have engaged in was a means to an end to provide him with the necessary freedom to conduct his experiments.” This included time spent in the Nazi party during World War 2.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun had a charismatic personality and was known as a ladies' man. As a student in Berlin, he would often be seen in the evenings in the company of two girlfriends at once. He later had a succession of affairs within the secretarial and computer pool at Peenemünde.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In January 1943, von Braun became engaged to Dorothee Brill, a physical education teacher in Berlin, and he sought permission to marry from the SS Race and Settlement Main Office. However, the engagement was broken due to his mother's opposition. Later in 1943, he had an affair with a French woman while in Paris preparing V-2 launch sites in northeastern France. She was imprisoned for collaboration after the war and became destitute.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: During his stay at Fort Bliss, von Braun proposed marriage to Maria Luise von Quistorp, his maternal first cousin, in a letter to his father. He married her in a Lutheran church in Landshut, Bavaria, on 1 March 1947, having received permission to go back to Germany and return with his bride. He was 35 and his new bride was 18. Shortly after, he converted to Evangelicalism. He returned to Manhattan on 26 March 1947, with his wife, father, and mother. On 8 December 1948, the von Brauns' first daughter together, Iris Careen, was born at Fort Bliss Army Hospital. The couple had two more children: Margrit Cécile, born in 1952, and Peter Constantine, born in 1960.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: In 1973, von Braun was diagnosed with kidney cancer during a routine medical examination. However, he continued to work unrestrained for a number of years. In January 1977, then very ill, he resigned from Fairchild Industries. Later in 1977, President Gerald R. Ford awarded him the country's highest science honor, the National Medal of Science in Engineering. He was, however, too ill to attend the White House ceremony.


title: Wernher von Braun

text: Von Braun died on 16 June 1977 of pancreatic cancer in Alexandria, Virginia, at age 65. He is buried on Valley Road at the Ivy Hill Cemetery. His gravestone cites Psalm 19:1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork" (KJV).


title: Predator (film)

text: Predator is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by John McTiernan and written by brothers Jim and John Thomas. It is the first installment in the "Predator" franchise. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the leader of an elite paramilitary rescue team on a mission to save hostages in guerrilla-held territory in a Central American rainforest, who encounter the deadly Predator (Kevin Peter Hall), a skilled, technologically advanced alien who stalks and hunts them down.


title: Predator (film)

text: "Predator" was written in 1984 under the working title of "Hunter". Filming ran from March to June 1986 with creature effects devised by Stan Winston; the budget was around $15 million. 20th Century Fox released the film on June 12, 1987, in the United States, and it grossed $98 million worldwide. Initial reviews were mixed, but the film has since been considered a classic of the action and science fiction genres and one of the best films of the 1980s.


title: Predator (film)

text: The success of "Predator" launched a media franchise of films, novels, comic books, video games, and toys. It spawned four sequels: "Predator 2" (1990), "Predators" (2010), "The Predator" (2018), and "Prey" (2022). A crossover with the "Alien" franchise produced the "Alien vs. Predator" films, which include "Alien vs. Predator" (2004) and "" (2007).


title: Predator (film)

text: An alien spacecraft deploys a shuttle to Earth, where Vietnam War veteran Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer and his military rescue team, consisting of Mac, Poncho, Blain, Billy, and Hawkins, are tasked with rescuing a foreign cabinet minister and his aide from insurgents. CIA officer Al Dillon, a Vietnam War buddy of Dutch's, is assigned to accompany the team over Dutch's objections. En route, the team discovers the wreckage of a helicopter and three skinned corpses. Dutch identifies them as Green Berets that he knew and becomes suspicious of Dillon's intentions. The team reaches the guerilla camp and witnesses the execution of a hostage. They mount an attack, killing most of the rebels and several Soviet intelligence officers. Dutch confronts Dillon, who reveals their true mission was to stop a planned Soviet-backed invasion and that the CIA sent the Green Berets weeks earlier for the same mission.


title: Predator (film)

text: The only surviving guerilla, Anna, is captured. Learning that more rebels are coming, the team chooses to trek to the extraction point. They are followed by an entity employing a cloaking device and thermal imaging technology, but a spooked Billy glimpses it while Anna attempts an escape. Hawkins catches her, but the creature attacks and kills him while sparing Anna. Dutch organizes a search party, but Blain is killed by the creature's plasma cannon. Enraged, Mac provokes everyone to blindly fire their weapons into the jungle, unknowingly wounding the creature. As the creature administers first-aid, the commandos regroup and realize they are being hunted. Dillon believes two or three guerrillas are responsible, but Billy is adamant that their pursuer is not human. They make camp for the night and set traps, which are triggered by a wild boar. In the confusion, Mac kills it while the creature steals Blain's body.


title: Predator (film)

text: Dutch later realizes that their enemy uses the trees to travel and frees Anna, who states that her people had seen similarly mutilated bodies before. The next day, the group constructs a net trap and captures the creature, but it frees itself and Poncho is injured. Mac and Dillon pursue it but are outmaneuvered and killed. As the survivors flee, Billy stays behind to fight the creature. The creature kills Billy before following the survivors and killing Poncho. Realizing it does not attack unarmed individuals, Dutch tells the unarmed Anna to head to the extraction point. Dutch attempts to distract the creature by fleeing but is followed to a muddy riverbank and covered in mud. The creature fails to see him and leaves to collect trophies from the others. Dutch realizes the cool mud provided camouflage for his body heat. He crafts makeshift traps and weapons and lures the creature out at night with a war cry and torch.


title: Predator (film)

text: Dutch lightly injures the creature and disables its cloaking device as the creature fires wildly into the forest, and tries to escape, but accidentally falls into the river, where the water dissolves his muddy camouflage. As the creature corners Dutch, it removes its mask and plasma cannon to fight him hand-to-hand, having deemed him a worthy opponent. Despite being overpowered and outsmarted, Dutch attempts to goad the creature into a booby trap. It goes around, but Dutch triggers the trap anyway, crushing the creature with the trap's counterweight. With the alien mortally wounded, he asks it, "What the hell are you?" The creature repeats the question to him and activates its self-destruct device, maniacally laughing as it counts down. Realizing what it has done, Dutch runs for cover and survives the explosion. He is then rescued by the extraction helicopter, with Anna already safely onboard, though he is left traumatized by the experience.


title: Predator (film)

text: Following the release of "Rocky IV", a joke circulated in Hollywood that since Rocky Balboa had run out of earthly opponents, he would have to fight an alien if a fifth film were to be made. Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas took the inspiration from the joke and wrote a screenplay based on it. The Thomas script for "Predator" was originally titled "Hunter". The original concept, centered on a plot of "what it is to be hunted," concerned a band of alien hunters of various species seeking various targets; that concept was eventually streamlined to one extraterrestrial hunting the most dangerous species, humans, and the "most dangerous man," a combat soldier. Additionally, the setting was chosen as Central America for having constant special forces operations during that period.


title: Predator (film)

text: As the Thomas brothers were first time screenwriters with little credibility in Hollywood, they struggled to attract attention for their proposed film, and eventually resorted to slipping the script under the door of 20th Century Fox producer Michael Levy (who would go on to serve as executive producer on the film's sequel, "Predator 2"). Levy then brought the screenplay to producer Joel Silver who, based on his experience with "Commando", decided to turn the science-fiction pulp story line into a big-budget film. Silver enlisted his former boss Lawrence Gordon as co-producer and John McTiernan was hired as director for his first studio film. At one point, New Zealand director Geoff Murphy was also considered to direct.


title: Predator (film)

text: He had previously starred in "Commando", on which Silver had served as producer. To play the elite band of soldiers, both Silver and Gordon, with co-producer John Davis, searched for other larger-than-life men of action. Carl Weathers, who had been memorable as boxer Apollo Creed in the "Rocky" films, was their first choice to play Dillon while professional wrestler and former Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura was hired for his formidable physique as Blain, co-starring with Schwarzenegger the same year in "The Running Man". Also cast were Sonny Landham, Richard Chaves, and Bill Duke, who costarred alongside Schwarzenegger in "Commando".


title: Predator (film)

text: Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast as the Predator with the intent that the physical action star would use his martial arts skills to make the Predator an agile, ninja-like hunter. But when the 5'9" Van Damme was compared to Schwarzenegger, Weathers, and Ventura — actors over 6 feet tall and known for their bodybuilding regimens — it became apparent a more physically imposing man was needed to make the creature appear threatening. Additionally, it was reported that Van Damme constantly complained about the monster suit being too hot and causing him to pass out. He allegedly had also repeatedly voiced reservations about only appearing on camera in the suit. Additionally, the original design for the Predator was felt to be too cumbersome and difficult to manage in the jungle and, even with a more imposing actor, did not provoke enough fear. Van Damme was removed from the film and replaced by the 7'2" Kevin Peter Hall, who had just finished work as a sasquatch in "Harry and the Hendersons".


title: Predator (film)

text: Commitments by Schwarzenegger delayed the start of filming by several months. The delay gave Silver enough time to secure a minor rewrite from screenwriter David Peoples. Principal photography eventually began in the jungles of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, during the last week of March 1986, but of the film was shot in Mismaloya, Mexico. Much of the material dealing with the unit's deployment in the jungle was completed in a few short weeks and both Silver and Gordon were pleased by the dailies provided by McTiernan. On Friday, April 25, production halted so that Schwarzenegger could get to his wedding on time, flying to Hyannis Port in a Learjet chartered by Silver. Schwarzenegger was married on April 26, 1986, to Maria Shriver, and honeymooned for only three days while the second unit completed additional filming. The production resumed filming on May 12 and ended in late June 1986.


title: Predator (film)

text: Both McTiernan and Schwarzenegger lost 25 pounds during the film. Schwarzenegger's weight loss was a professional choice while McTiernan lost the weight because he avoided the food in Mexico due to health concerns. Unlike McTiernan, most of the cast and crew suffered from Montezuma's Revenge since the Mexican hotel in which they were living had problems with its water purification. In an interview, Carl Weathers said the actors would secretly wake up as early as 3:00 a.m. to work out before the day's shooting. Weathers also stated that he would act as if his physique was naturally given to him and would work out only after the other actors were nowhere to be seen.


title: Predator (film)

text: According to Schwarzenegger, filming was physically demanding. The actor—and former bodybuilder—shipped gym equipment to Mexico and trained intensively every day before shooting began, usually with his co-stars. Screenwriter Jim Thomas was impressed with the training regimen and said: "I think that phrase 'manly men' was coined [during the production of "Predator"]". Among other tasks, Schwarzenegger had to swim in very cold water and spent three weeks covered in mud for the climactic battle with the alien. In addition, cast and crew endured very cold temperatures in the Mexican jungle that required heat lamps to be on all of the time. Cast and crew filmed on rough terrain that, according to the actor, was never flat, "always on a hill. We stood all day long on a hill, one leg down, one leg up. It was terrible." Schwarzenegger also faced the challenge of working with Kevin Peter Hall, who could not see in the Predator suit. The actor recalled that "when he's supposed to slap me around and stay far from my face, all of a sudden, "whap!" There is this hand with claws on it!" Hall stated in an interview that his experience on the film "wasn't a movie, it was a survival story for all of us." For example, in the scene where the Predator chases Dutch, the water was foul, stagnant and full of leeches. Hall could not see out of the mask and had to rehearse his scenes with it off and memorize where everything was. The outfit was difficult to wear because it was heavy and affected his balance.


title: Predator (film)

text: The original Predator creature was created by Richard Edlund of Boss Film Studios and was a disproportionate, ungainly creature with large yellow eyes and a dog-like head, and nowhere near as agile as necessary for what the filmmakers had intended. After a call was put out for a new alien creature costume, creature effects artist Rick Baker put in a bid, but ultimately McTiernan consulted Stan Winston. Winston had previously worked with Schwarzenegger as a visual effects artist on the 1984 film "The Terminator". While on a plane ride to Fox studios alongside "Aliens" director James Cameron, Winston sketched monster ideas. Cameron suggested he had always wanted to see a creature with mandibles, which became part of the Predator's iconic look.


title: Predator (film)

text: R/Greenberg Associates created the film's optical effects, including the alien's ability to become invisible, its thermal vision point of view, its glowing blood, and the electrical spark effects.


title: Predator (film)

text: The invisibility effect was achieved by having someone wearing a bright red suit (because it was the farthest opposite of the green of the jungle and the blue of the sky) the size of the Predator. The red was removed with chroma key techniques, leaving an empty area. The take was then repeated without the actors using a 30% wider lens on the camera. When the two takes were combined optically, the jungle from the second take filled in the empty area. Because the second take was filmed with a wider lens, a vague outline of the alien could be seen with the background scenery bending around its shape.


title: Predator (film)

text: For thermal vision, infrared film could not be used because it did not register in the range of body temperature wavelengths. The filmmakers used an Inframetrics thermal video scanner because it gave good heat images of objects and people. The glowing blood was achieved by green liquid from glow sticks mixed with personal lubricant for texture. The electrical sparks were rotoscoped animation using white paper pins registered on portable light tables to black-and-white prints of the film frames. The drawings were composited by the optical crew for the finished effects. Additional visual effects, mainly for the opening title sequence of the Predator arriving on Earth, were supplied by Dream Quest Images (later Oscar-winners for their work on "The Abyss" and "Total Recall"). The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.


title: Predator (film)

text: The score was composed by Alan Silvestri, who was coming off the huge success of "Back to the Future" in 1985. "Predator" was his first major action movie and the score is full of his familiar genre characteristics: heavy horn blasts, staccato string rhythms, and undulating timpani rolls that highlight the action and suspense. Little Richard's song "Long Tall Sally" is featured in the helicopter en route to the jungle. Mac also recites a few lines from the song as he's chasing the Predator after it escapes from their booby trap. Silvestri returned for the sequel, making him the only composer to have scored more than one film in either the "Alien" or "Predator" series.


title: Predator (film)

text: In 2003, Varèse Sarabande released the soundtrack album as part of its limited release CD Club collection; the album also includes the Elliot Goldenthal arrangement of the 20th Century Fox fanfare used on "Alien 3".


title: Predator (film)

text: In 2007, Brian Tyler adapted and composed some of Silvestri's themes used in the score of the film "".


title: Predator (film)

text: In 2010, the same year "Predators" featured an adaptation of Silvestri's score by John Debney, Intrada Records released the album in a 3000-copy limited edition with remastered sound, many cues combined and renamed, and most notably (as with Intrada's release of Basil Poledouris's score for "RoboCop") presenting the original end credits music as recorded (the film versions are mixed differently). This release is notable for having sold out within a day.


title: Predator (film)

text: In 2018, Henry Jackman adapted and composed Silvestri's themes in the score of the film, "The Predator".


title: Predator (film)

text: "Predator" was first released on VHS on January 21, 1988. It was later released on DVD on December 26, 2000. The film was later released on Blu-ray on April 15, 2008. It was released on Blu-ray 3D on December 17, 2013, and on Ultra HD Blu-ray on August 7, 2018.


title: Predator (film)

text: According to the streaming aggregator JustWatch, "Predator" was the 9th most streamed film across all platforms in the United States, during the week ending August 1, 2022, and the 10th during the week ending August 14, 2022.


title: Predator (film)

text: Released on June 12, 1987, "Predator" was No. 1 at the US box office in its opening weekend with a gross of $12 million, which was second to only "Beverly Hills Cop II" for the calendar year 1987. The film grossed $98,267,558, of which $59,735,548 was from the US & Canadian box office. $38,532,010 was made in other countries.


title: Predator (film)

text: From contemporary reviews, Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" described the film as "grisly and dull, with few surprises." Dean Lamanna wrote in "Cinefantastique" that "the militarized monster movie tires under its own derivative weight." Michael Wilmington of the "Los Angeles Times" proclaimed it "arguably one of the emptiest, feeblest, most derivative scripts ever made as a major studio movie." "Variety" wrote that the film was a "slightly above-average actioner that tries to compensate for tissue-thin-plot with ever-more-grisly death sequences and impressive special effects." Adam Barker of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" found that "unfortunately, special effects have also been substituted for suspense" and that "the early appearance of the Predator makes the final gladiatorial conflict predictable, and the monster's multiple transformations also exhaust interest in its final appearance."


title: Predator (film)

text: Though finding the creature's motivations poorly explained, critic Roger Ebert was more complimentary of the film. He wrote: ""Predator" moves at a breakneck pace, it has strong and simple characterizations, it has good location photography and terrific special effects, and it supplies what it claims to supply: an effective action movie." "The Hollywood Reporter"s Duane Byrge felt the Predator's weaponized attacks relied too heavily on special effects, but allowed that the film is a "well-made, old-style assault movie" and a "full-assault" visual experience.


title: Predator (film)

text: In a retrospective review, Film4 called the movie a "fast paced, high testosterone, edge-of-the-seat experience", and the titular character a "masterful creation". Chris Hewitt of "Empire" wrote: ""Predator" has gradually become a sci-fi and action classic. It's not difficult to see why. John McTiernan's direction is claustrophobic, fluid and assured, staging the action with aplomb but concentrating just as much on tension and atmosphere... A thumping piece of powerhouse cinema." Peter Suderman of "Reason magazine" noted that "over the last 30-odd years, it has come to be regarded a classic of '80s action cinema". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Predator (film)

text: "Predator" has appeared on a number of "best of" lists. In 2007, C. Robert Cargill of RealNetworks resource, Film.com (now merged into MTV Movies), ranked "Predator" as the seventh best film of 1987, calling it "one of the great science fiction horror films, often imitated, but never properly duplicated, not even by its own sequel." "Entertainment Weekly" named it the 22nd greatest action movie of all time in 2007, and the 14th among "The Best Rock-'em, Sock-'em Movies of the Past 25 Years" in 2009, saying "Arnold Schwarzenegger has never been as manly as he was in this alien-hunting testosterone-fest." In 2012, "IGN" proclaimed it the 13th greatest action movie of all time. In 2008, "Empire" magazine ranked it 366th on their list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". "Predator" was ranked 4th in a 2015 "Rolling Stone" reader poll of the all-time best action films; it was described by reporter Andy Greene as "freakin' awesome". In a 2018 review for "IGN", William Bibbiani called "Predator", "The most subversive action movie of the 1980s" and cites examples from the film of satire of the action film genre as a whole. In his review, he writes, ""Predator" may be a big, macho action movie, but it's also highly critical of the kinds of characters you'd normally find in big, macho action movies, and the superficial, unquestioningly heroic stories they appear in."


title: Predator (film)

text: The line "Get to the choppa" was subsequently associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger, especially when Schwarzenegger said the line again in some of his later appearances, including "The New Celebrity Apprentice" and advertisements for the mobile video game "Mobile Strike". Lieutenant Andrew Pierce – Christian Boeving's leading hero from the 2003 action film "When Eagles Strike" – was based on Schwarzenegger's image in the film. In 2013, NECA released action figure collectables of Major Dutch and the Predator. That same year, "Predator" was converted into 3D for a Blu-ray release.


title: Predator (film)

text: The Predator makes an appearance in "", in a bonus mission called "The Hunt". In 2021, the Predator was featured in the video game "Fortnite" as a cosmetic outfit for the character and a hidden enemy in the game, the first of which gave players the associated abilities such as invisibility and the shoulder cannon.


title: Predator (film)

text: The success of "Predator" led 20th Century Fox to finance three direct sequels over the next thirty-one years, each by different directors, starting with "Predator 2" released in 1990. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not reprised his role as Dutch Schaefer in the subsequent sequels; he had been made offers to return but declined on all of these occasions. in 2007. The third sequel, "Predators", was released in 2010, with "The Predator" released in 2018.


title: Predator (film)

text: A number of these began appearing under the "Alien vs. Predator" title, which brought the Predator creatures together with the creatures of the "Alien" films, and a film series followed with "Alien vs. Predator" in 2004 and "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem"


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Olaf Scholz (; born ) is a German politician who has served as the chancellor of Germany since 8 December 2021. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice Chancellor under Angela Merkel and as Federal Minister of Finance from 2018 to 2021. He was also First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018 and deputy leader of the SPD from 2009 to 2019.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz began his career as a lawyer specialising in labour and employment law. He became a member of the SPD in the 1970s and was a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2011. Scholz served in the Hamburg Government under First Mayor Ortwin Runde in 2001, before his election as General Secretary of the SPD in 2002, serving alongside SPD leader and then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He became his party's Chief Whip in the Bundestag, later entering the First Merkel Government in 2007 as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs. After the SPD quit the government following the 2009 election, Scholz returned to lead the SPD in Hamburg, and was elected Deputy Leader of the SPD. He led his party to victory in the 2011 Hamburg state election, and became First Mayor, holding that position until 2018.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: After the Social Democratic Party entered the Fourth Merkel Government in 2018, Scholz was appointed as both Minister of Finance and Vice Chancellor of Germany. In 2020, he was nominated as the SPD's candidate for Chancellor of Germany for the 2021 federal election. The party won a plurality of seats in the Bundestag and formed a "traffic light coalition" with Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party. On 8 December 2021, Scholz was elected and sworn in as Chancellor by the Bundestag.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: As Chancellor, Scholz oversees Germany's response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite having a much more restrained and cautious response than that of other Western countries, Scholz oversaw an increase in the German defense budget, weapons shipments to Ukraine, and a discontinuance of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Scholz set out the principles of a new German defence policy in his Zeitenwende speech.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz was born on 14 June 1958, in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, but grew up in Hamburg's Rahlstedt district. His parents worked in the textile industry. He has two younger brothers, Jens Scholz, an anesthesiologist and CEO of the University Medical Center Schleswig Holstein; and Ingo Scholz, a tech entrepreneur. Olaf Scholz attended the Bekassinenau elementary school in Oldenfelde but then switched to the Großlohering elementary school in Großlohe. After graduating from high school in 1977, he began studying law at the University of Hamburg in 1978 as part of a one-stage legal training course. He later found employment as a lawyer specialising in labour and employment law, working at the law firm Zimmermann, Scholz und Partner. Scholz joined the Social Democratic Party at the age of 17.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz's family is traditionally Lutheran and he was baptized in the Evangelical Church in Germany; he holds largely secular views and left the Church in adulthood, but has called for appreciation of the country's Christian heritage and culture.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz joined the SPD in 1975 as a student, where he got involved with the Jusos, the youth organization of the SPD. From 1982 to 1988, he was Deputy Federal Juso Chairman, and from 1987 to 1989 also Vice President of the International Union of Socialist Youth. He supported the Freudenberger Kreis, the Marxist wing of the Juso university groups, promoting "overcoming the capitalist economy" in articles. In it, Scholz criticized the "aggressive-imperialist NATO", the Federal Republic as the "European stronghold of big business" and the social-liberal coalition, which puts the "bare maintenance of power above any form of substantive dispute". On 4 January 1984, Scholz and other Juso leaders met in the GDR with Egon Krenz, the secretary of the Central Committee of the SED and member of the Politburo of the SED-Central Committee, Herbert Häber. In 1987, Scholz crossed the inner-German border again and stood up for disarmament agreements as Juso-Vice at an FDJ peace rally in Wittenberg.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: A former vice president of the International Union of Socialist Youth, Scholz was first elected to represent Hamburg-Altona in the Bundestag in 1998, aged 40. Scholz served on the Committee for Labor and Social Matters. In the committee of inquiry into the visa affair of the Bundestag, he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Scholz resigned his mandate on 6 June 2001, to take office as Senator. Because his seat was an overhang seat, it was not filled until the 2002 German federal election.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 30 May 2001, Scholz succeeded Senator for the Interior of Hamburg, Hartmuth Wrocklage, in the Senate of Hamburg led by Mayor Ortwin Runde. Wrocklage had resigned due to allegations of nepotism. He also followed Wrocklage as Deputy Member of the Bundesrat.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: During his brief time as Senator, he controversially approved the forced use of emetics to gather evidence from suspected drug dealers. The Hamburg Medical Chamber expressed disapproval of this practice due to potential health risks.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: He left office in October 2001, after the defeat of his party at the 2001 Hamburg state election and the election of Ole von Beust as First Mayor. His successor was Ronald Schill, who had won on a Law and order platform, with an emphasis on harsh penalties for drug dealers.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz was elected again to the Bundestag in the 2002 German federal election. From 2002 to 2004, Scholz also served as General Secretary of the SPD; he resigned from that office when party leader and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, facing disaffection within his own party and hampered by persistently low public approval ratings, announced he would step down as Leader of the Social Democratic Party.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz was one of a series of politicians who sparked debate over the German journalistic norm of allowing interviewees to "authorize" and amend quotes before publication, after his press team insisted on heavily rewriting an interview with "Die Tageszeitung" in 2003. Editor Bascha Mika condemned the behavior as a "betrayal of the claim to a free press" and the newspaper ultimately published the interview with Scholz's answers blacked out.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz served as the SPD spokesperson on the inquiry committee investigating the German Visa Affair in 2005. Following the federal election later that year, he served as First Parliamentary Secretary of the SPD Bundestag Group, becoming Chief Whip of the Social Democratic Party. In this capacity, he worked closely with the CDU Chief Whip Norbert Röttgen to manage and defend the grand coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag. He also served as a member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel, which provides parliamentary oversight of the German intelligence services; the BND, MAD and BfV.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz resigned from his Bundestag mandate on 10 March 2011, three days after he had been elected as First Mayor of Hamburg.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In 2007, Scholz joined the Merkel Government, succeeding Franz Müntefering as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Following the 2009 federal election, when the SPD left the Government, Scholz was elected as Deputy Leader of the SPD, replacing Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Between 2009 and 2011, he was also a member of the SPD group's Afghanistan/Pakistan Task Force. In 2010, he participated in the annual Bilderberg Meeting in Sitges, Spain.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In 2011, Scholz was the lead SPD candidate at the Hamburg state election, which the SPD won with 48.3 per cent of the votes, taking 62 of 121 seats in the Hamburg Parliament. Scholz resigned as a Member of the Bundestag on 11 March 2011, days after his formal election as First Mayor of Hamburg; Dorothee Stapelfeldt, also a Social Democrat, was appointed his Deputy First Mayor.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In his capacity as First Mayor, Scholz represented Hamburg and Germany internationally. On 7 June 2011, Scholz attended the state dinner hosted by President Barack Obama in honor of Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House. As host of Hamburg's annual St. Matthias' Day banquet for the city's civic and business leaders, he invited several high-ranking guests of honour to the city, including Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault of France (2013), Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom (2016), and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada (2017). From 2015 until 2018, he also served as Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Germany for Cultural Affairs under the Treaty on Franco-German Cooperation.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In 2013, Scholz opposed a public initiative aiming at a complete buyback of energy grids that the city of Hamburg had sold to utilities Vattenfall Europe AG and E.ON decades before; he argued this would overburden the city, whose debt stood at more than 20 billion euros at the time.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz was asked to participate in exploratory talks between the CDU, CSU and SPD parties to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal election. In the subsequent negotiations, he led the SPD delegation in the financial policy working group; his co-chair from the CDU/CSU was Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Alongside fellow Social Democrats Jörg Asmussen and Thomas Oppermann, Scholz was reported in the media to be a possible successor to Schäuble in the post of Finance Minister at the time; whilst Schäuble remained in post, the talks to form a coalition were ultimately successful.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In a paper compiled in late 2014, Scholz and Schäuble proposed redirecting revenue from the so-called solidarity surcharge on income and corporate tax ("Solidaritätszuschlag") to subsidize the federal states’ interest payments.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Under Scholz's leadership, the Social Democrats won the 2015 state election in Hamburg, receiving around 47 per cent of the vote. He formed a coalition government with the Green Party, with Green leader Katharina Fegebank serving as Deputy First Mayor.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In 2015, Scholz led Hamburg's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics with an estimated budget of 11.2 billion euros ($12.6 billion), competing against Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, and Budapest; the citizens of Hamburg, however, later rejected the city's candidacy in a referendum, with more than half voting against the project. Later that year, Scholz – alongside Minister-President Torsten Albig of Schleswig-Holstein – negotiated a debt-restructuring deal with the European Commission that allowed the German regional lender HSH Nordbank to offload 6.2 billion euros in troubled assets – mainly non-performing ship loans – onto its government majority owners and avoid being shut down, saving around 2,500 jobs.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In 2017, Scholz received criticism over his handling of riots that took place during the G20 summit in Hamburg.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz has been criticized in November and December 2021 for emerging details about his handling of the CumEx tax fraud at M. M. Warburg & Co. when he was the mayor of Hamburg.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: After a lengthy period of government formation following the 2017 federal election, during which the CDU, CSU and SPD agreed to continue in coalition, Scholz was accepted by all parties as Federal Minister of Finance. Scholz was sworn in alongside the rest of the Government on 14 March 2018, also taking the role of Vice Chancellor of Germany under Angela Merkel. Within his first months in office, Scholz became one of Germany's most popular politicians, reaching an approval rating of 50 per cent.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, Scholz drafted a series of unprecedented rescue packages for the country's economy, including a 130 billion euro stimulus package in June 2020, which thanks to generous lifelines for businesses and freelancers, as well as a decision to keep factories open, avoided mass layoffs and weathered the crisis better than neighbours such as Italy and France. Scholz also oversaw the implementation of the Next Generation EU, the European Union's 750 billion euro recovery fund to support member states hit by the pandemic, including the decision to spend 90 per cent of the 28 billion euros for Germany on climate protection and digitalization.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: With France, Scholz drove efforts to introduce a global corporate minimum tax and new tax rules for tech giants.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: At the G7 summit in June 2021, the G7 agreed on a worldwide minimum tax proposed by Scholz of at least 15 per cent for multinational companies. The main reason why all G7 member states were in favour was that Scholz was able to convince US President Joe Biden, unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, of the minimum taxation. Also in June 2021, Scholz had the Federal Central Tax Office purchase information about potential tax evaders from Dubai. It is data from millions of German taxpayers and contains information on assets hidden from the tax authorities in Dubai. The data should serve to uncover cross-border tax offenses on a significant scale.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz is criticized in the context of the bankruptcy of the payment service provider Wirecard, as there have been serious misconduct by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). Critics complain that the Federal Ministry of Finance is responsible for monitoring BaFin. During Scholz's time in office, the Ministry of Finance was one of the subjects of parliamentary inquiry into the so-called Wirecard scandal, in the process of which Scholz denied any responsibility but replaced regulator BaFin's president Felix Hufeld and vowed to strengthen financial market supervision.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In June 2019, Scholz initially ruled out a candidacy for the party co-leadership following the resignation of Andrea Nahles. He explained that a simultaneous activity as Federal Minister of Finance and leader was "not possible in terms of time". In August Scholz announced that he wanted to run for party chairmanship in a duo with Klara Geywitz. He justified this with the fact that many of those he considered suitable did not run for office and a resulting responsibility. The team of Klara Geywitz and Olaf Scholz received after the first round of the membership decision on 26 October 2019, with 22.7 percent, the highest share of the six candidate duos standing for election. It qualified for the runoff election with the second-placed team Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, which received 21.0 percent of the vote.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 30 November 2019, it was announced that Esken and Walter-Borjans had received 53.1 percent of the vote in the runoff election, Geywitz and Scholz only 45.3 percent. This was seen as an upset victory for the left-wing of the SPD, including skeptics of the grand coalition with the CDU. Esken and Walter-Borjans were little-known to the public at large, Esken being a backbencher in the Bundestag and Walter-Borjans being the former Minister of Finance of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2010 to 2017. Scholz on the other hand had the backing of much of the party establishment.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 10 August 2020, the SPD party executive agreed that it would nominate Scholz to be the party's candidate for Chancellor of Germany at the 2021 federal election. Scholz belongs to the centrist wing of the SPD, and his nomination was seen by "Die Tageszeitung" as marking the decline of the party's left.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz led the SPD to a narrow victory in the election, winning 25.8 per cent of the vote and 206 seats in the Bundestag. Following this victory, he was widely considered to be the most likely next Chancellor of Germany in a so-called traffic light coalition with The Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 24 November, the SPD, Green and FDP reached a coalition agreement with Scholz as the new German chancellor.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz was elected Chancellor by the Bundestag on 8 December 2021, with 395 votes in favour and 303 against. His new government was appointed on the same day by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. At of age, Scholz is the oldest person to become Chancellor of Germany since Ludwig Erhard who was old when he assumed office on 17 October 1963.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz came to Warsaw in December 2021 for talks with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. They discussed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany bypassing Poland, and Poland's dispute with the EU over the rule of law and the primacy of European Union law. Scholz backed Poland's efforts to stop the flow of migrants seeking entry from Belarus.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz extended into 2022 the suspension of the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. The decision was made to "no longer approve any export sales to countries as long as they are directly involved" in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. In September 2022, Scholz visited the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, seeking to deepen ties with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and find alternative sources of energy. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman received Scholz in Jeddah. Scholz's government approved new arms export deals to Saudi Arabia, despite a ban imposed as a result of the Saudi war in Yemen and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 22 February 2022, Scholz announced that Germany would be halting its approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in response to Russia's recognition of two self-declared separatist republics within Ukraine. Scholz spoke against allowing the EU to cut Russia off from the SWIFT global interbank payment system. In an emergency meeting of Parliament on 27 February, Scholz made an historic speech announcing a complete reversal of German military and foreign policy, including shipping weapons to Ukraine and dramatically increasing Germany's defense budget.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In June 2022, Scholz said that his government remains committed to phasing out nuclear power despite rising energy prices and Germany's dependence on energy imports from Russia. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel committed Germany to a nuclear power phase-out after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Energy-intensive German industry and German exporters were hit particularly hard by the 2021–present global energy crisis. Scholz said: "Of course we knew, and we know, that our solidarity with Ukraine will have consequences." On 29 September 2022, Germany presented a €200 billion plan to support industry and households.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Within the SPD, Scholz is widely viewed as being from the moderate wing of the party. Because of his consistent and mechanical-sounding choice of words in press conferences and interviews, Scholz was nicknamed as "the Scholzomat" by the media. In 2013 he said that he found the attribution "very appropriate".


title: Olaf Scholz

text: After the 2017 federal election, Scholz was publicly critical of party leader Martin Schulz’s strategy and messaging, releasing a paper titled "No excuses! Answer new questions for the future! Clear principles!" With his proposals for reforming the party, he was widely interpreted to position himself as a potential challenger or successor to Schulz within the SPD. In the weeks after his party first started weighing a return to government, Scholz urged compromise and was one of the SPD members more inclined toward another grand coalition.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In January 2019, Scholz had primarily seen China as an economic partner. He tried to persuade Chinese Vice Premier Liu He that China should be more open to German firms. Scholz supported the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment between the EU and China. In September 2022, he condemned the treatment of ethnic Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In October 2019, Scholz condemned the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish-controlled northeastern areas of Syria, otherwise known as Rojava.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz has been campaigning for a financial transaction tax for several years. Experts criticized parts of his plans because they believed that it would primarily affect small shareholders. In December 2019, he pushed the introduction of this tax at European Union level. According to the draft, share purchases should be taxed when it comes to shares in companies that are worth at least one billion euros. Journalist Hermann-Josef Tenhagen criticized this version of the transaction tax because the underlying idea of taxing the wealthy more heavily was in fact turned into the opposite. A report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy commissioned by the Federal Government in 2020 certified the same deficiencies in the tax concept that Tenhagen had already pointed out.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Since taking office as minister of finance, Scholz has been committed to a continued goal of no new debt and limited public spending. In 2018, he suggested the creation of a European Union-wide unemployment insurance system to make the Eurozone more resilient to future economic shocks.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In September 2019, Scholz negotiated the climate package in a key role for the SPD. To this he said: "What we have presented is a great achievement", whereas climate scientists almost unanimously criticized the result as insufficient.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In August 2020, Scholz held a phone call with US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, discussing a lift of US sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. In exchange, Scholz offered 1 billion euros in subsidies to liquid gas terminals in northern Germany for US liquid gas imports. The move has sparked controversy about the SPD's stance towards renewable energy.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: The revised Climate Protection Act introduced by Olaf Scholz's cabinet as Mayor of Hamburg provides for a 65 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, an 88 per cent reduction by 2040 and climate neutrality by 2045.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz called for the expansion of renewable energy to replace fossil fuels. In May 2021, Scholz proposed the establishment of an international climate club, which should serve to develop common minimum standards for climate policy measures and a coordinated approach. In addition, uniform rules for the carbon accounting of goods should apply among members.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: As part of the coalition agreement that led to Scholz becoming chancellor, the Social Democrats, Free Democrats, and Green parties agreed to accelerate Germany's phaseout of coal to the year 2030, in line with the target set by the Powering Past Coal Alliance. The country's previous target had been to end the use of coal by 2038. In addition, the agreement set a phaseout of power generation from natural gas by 2040. The agreement also included provisions for the prohibition on natural gas heating in new buildings and replacement of natural gas systems in existing buildings. An end to the sale of combustion vehicles would come in 2035, in line with the target set by the European Commission.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: During his campaign in the 2021 election, Scholz opposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Since late November 2021, he has expressed support for mandatory vaccination for adults, scheduled to be voted during the first months of 2022 by the federal parliament, and for the closure of non-essential retail stores to unvaccinated adults, based on the so-called 2G-Regel, decreed by state governments in December 2021.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 13 January 2022, Scholz told lawmakers in the Bundestag, Germany should make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for all adults. Later in the same month, he warned people the coronavirus would not "miraculously" disappear. He said Germany would not be able to get out of the pandemic without compulsory vaccinations. The opposition Christian Democratic Union criticized the government for not taking a firm decision on a vaccine mandate. The far-right Alternative for Germany party wants Scholz's government to ban vaccine mandates.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In December 2019, Scholz criticized the US legislation imposing sanctions on Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, saying: "Such sanctions are a serious interference in the internal affairs of Germany and Europe and their sovereignty."


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In regards to the relationship with the United States, Scholz agrees with a longstanding agreement that allows American tactical nuclear weapons to be stored and manned on American bases in Germany.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz called the US "Europe's closest and most important partner". Upon assuming the chancellorship in December 2021, he stated he would soon be meeting with President Joe Biden, saying: "It is now clear what binds us together."


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In January 2022, "The New York Times" reported intensifying concerns from the US and other NATO allies about the Scholz government's "evident hesitation to take forceful measures" against Russia in the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis. The Scholz government initially refused to send weapons to Ukraine, citing existing German financial support for the Eastern European country. On 26 February, following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Scholz reversed his decision and pledged a supply of anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles to Ukraine.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In December 2021, Scholz rejected the Polish government's claim for further World War II reparations. According to the German government, there is no legal basis for further compensation payments. In a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki Scholz said: "We have concluded treaties that are valid and have settled the past issues and the compensation". Scholz also pointed out that Germany "continues to be willing to pay very, very high contributions to the EU budget", from which Poland has benefited considerably since its accession to the EU. As a consequence of aggression by Nazi Germany, Poland lost about a fifth of its population and much of Poland was subjected to enormous destruction of its industry and infrastructure.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 6 February 2022, Scholz rejected Ukraine's demands for weapons deliveries, saying Germany "has for many years taken the clear stance that we do not deliver to crisis regions."


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Scholz greatly altered German spending on defense. On 26 February 2022, Scholz was one of several EU leaders who opposed kicking Russia out of the SWIFT international payment system. On 27 February, Scholz announced the creation of a one-off 100 billion euro fund for the German military. This represents a major shift in German foreign policy, as Germany had long refused to meet the required spending of 2% of its GDP on defense, as is required by NATO. In addition to increasing defense protections for his own country, in an address to Germany's parliament on 23 March, Scholz emphasized support for aiding Ukraine in its resistance to Russian invasion. In this same address, Scholz claimed that Germany would "try everything we can until peace prevails again on our continent" including taking hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees across German borders. While the chancellor avowed that Germany would provide Ukraine with necessary resources, he insisted that NATO will not engage in direct military conflict with Russia.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Amid pressure to prohibit Russian gas imports across Europe, Scholz refused to end German imports of Russian gas. However, in April 2022, Scholz said Germany is working on ending the import of Russian energy. Scholz announced plans to build two new LNG terminals. Scholz's government said it had sealed a long-term agreement with Qatar, one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas. Scholz also opposed a reversal of Germany's scheduled end to nuclear power, saying the technical challenges are too great.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: In April, despite the agreement between Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Scholz was yet to take the decision on sending tanks to Ukraine.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 9 May 2022, Scholz said that Russians and Ukrainians once fought together during World War II against Nazi Germany's "murderous National Socialist regime," but now "Putin wants to overthrow Ukraine and destroy its culture and identity... [and] even regards his barbaric war of aggression as being on a par with the fight against National Socialism. That is a falsification of history and a disgraceful distortion."


title: Olaf Scholz

text: On 16 June 2022, Scholz visited the Ukrainian Capital, Kyiv, alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They talked about various issues such as the war in Ukraine and Ukraine's membership into the EU. This comes as a reverse of his previous stance to not visit Ukraine, after Zelensky rebuked the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier over his contribution to stronger Moscow-Berlin ties.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Olaf Scholz is married to fellow SPD politician Britta Ernst. The couple lived in Hamburg's Altona district before moving to Potsdam in 2018.


title: Olaf Scholz

text: Scholz was raised in the mainstream Protestant Evangelical Church in Germany, but he later left it. At his inauguration as Chancellor in 2021, Scholz took the oath of office without a reference to God (the second Chancellor to do so after Gerhard Schröder) and is the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany to not belong to a Church.


title: Chinese language

text: Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world's population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.


title: Chinese language

text: Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered separate languages in a family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (with about 800 million speakers, or 66%), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with the other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwest Mandarin, Xuanzhou Wu with Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan (though these are unintelligible with mainstream Hakka). All varieties of Chinese are tonal to at least some degree, and are largely analytic.


title: Chinese language

text: The earliest Chinese written records are Shang dynasty-era oracle bone inscriptions, which can be dated to 1250 BCE. The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern dynasties period, Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. "Qieyun", a rime dictionary, recorded a compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language (Guanhua) based on Nanjing dialect of Lower Yangtze Mandarin.


title: Chinese language

text: Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin), based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, was adopted in the 1930s and is now an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore, and one of the six official languages of the United Nations. The written form, using the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of mutually unintelligible dialects. Since the 1950s, simplified Chinese characters have been promoted for use by the government of the People's Republic of China, while Singapore officially adopted simplified characters in 1976. Traditional characters remain in use in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and other countries with significant overseas Chinese speaking communities such as Malaysia (which although adopted simplified characters as the "de facto" standard in the 1980s, traditional characters still remain in widespread use).


title: Chinese language

text: Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, together with Burmese, Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif. Although the relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated.


title: Chinese language

text: The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty. As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate a unified standard.


title: Chinese language

text: The earliest examples of Chinese (Old Chinese) are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty. The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts of the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the "Classic of Poetry" and portions of the "Book of Documents" and "I Ching". Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the "Classic of Poetry" and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles.


title: Chinese language

text: Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (6th through 10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the "Qieyun" rime book (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the "Yunjing" constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the "Qieyun" system. These works define phonological categories, but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese, borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics.


title: Chinese language

text: The relationship between spoken and written Chinese is rather complex ("diglossia"). Its spoken varieties have evolved at different rates, while written Chinese itself has changed much less. Classical Chinese literature began in the Spring and Autumn period.


title: Chinese language

text: After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jin (Jurchen) and Yuan (Mongol) dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital.


title: Chinese language

text: The "Zhongyuan Yinyun" (1324) was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new "sanqu" verse form in this language.


title: Chinese language

text: Together with the slightly later "Menggu Ziyun", this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects.


title: Chinese language

text: Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as "Guānhuà" (/, literally "language of officials").


title: Chinese language

text: For most of this period, this language was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect.


title: Chinese language

text: By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court.


title: Chinese language

text: In the 1930s, a standard national language, "Guóyǔ" (/ ; "national language") was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation, the National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it "pǔtōnghuà" (/; "common speech"). The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both Mainland China and Taiwan. Because of their colonial and linguistic history, the language used in education, the media, formal speech, and everyday life in Hong Kong and Macau is the local Cantonese, although the standard language, Mandarin, has become very influential and is being taught in schools.


title: Chinese language

text: Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han empire in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for a millennium. The Four Commanderies were established in northern Korea in the first century BCE, but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later Korea, Japan, and Vietnam developed strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions, with Literary Chinese as the language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese.


title: Chinese language

text: Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud, the so-called Sino-Xenic pronunciations. Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into the Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean.


title: Chinese language

text: Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in a similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half the words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines.


title: Chinese language

text: Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters, but later replaced with the "hangul" alphabet for Korean and supplemented with "kana" syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex "chữ nôm" script. However, these were limited to popular literature until the late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters ("kanji") and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea (although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters - "hanja" - is still required), and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of former French colonization, Vietnamese switched to a Latin-based alphabet.


title: Chinese language

text: Examples of loan words in English include "tea", from Hokkien (Min Nan) (), "dim sum", from Cantonese "dim sam" () and "kumquat", from Cantonese "gamgwat" ().


title: Chinese language

text: Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though the rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain. In parts of South China, a major city's dialect may only be marginally intelligible to close neighbors. For instance, Wuzhou is about upstream from Guangzhou, but the Yue variety spoken there is more like that of Guangzhou than is that of Taishan, southwest of Guangzhou and separated from it by several rivers. In parts of Fujian the speech of neighboring counties or even villages may be mutually unintelligible.


title: Chinese language

text: Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects are spoken.


title: Chinese language

text: The vast majority of Chinese immigrants to North America up to the mid-20th century spoke the Taishan dialect, from a small coastal area southwest of Guangzhou.


title: Chinese language

text: Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely on the basis of the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials:


title: Chinese language

text: The classification of Li Rong, which is used in the "Language Atlas of China" (1987), distinguishes three further groups:


title: Chinese language

text: Some varieties remain unclassified, including Danzhou dialect (spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island), Waxianghua (spoken in western Hunan) and Shaozhou Tuhua (spoken in northern Guangdong).


title: Chinese language

text: Standard Chinese, often called Mandarin, is the official standard language of China, de facto official language of Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it is called "Huáyŭ" / or Chinese). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect, the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools.


title: Chinese language

text: In China and Taiwan, diglossia has been a common feature. For example, in addition to Standard Chinese, a resident of Shanghai might speak Shanghainese; and, if they grew up elsewhere, then they are also likely to be fluent in the particular dialect of that local area. A native of Guangzhou may speak both Cantonese and Standard Chinese. In addition to Mandarin, most Taiwanese also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (commonly "Taiwanese" ), Hakka, or an Austronesian language. A Taiwanese may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Mandarin and other Taiwanese languages, and this mixture is considered normal in daily or informal speech.


title: Chinese language

text: Due to their traditional cultural ties to Guangdong province and colonial histories, Cantonese is used as the standard variant of Chinese in Hong Kong and Macau instead.