title: Babylonia

text: The Chaldean tribe had lost control of Babylonia decades before the end of the era that sometimes bears their name, and they appear to have blended into the general populace of Babylonia even before this (for example, Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar II and their successors always referred to themselves as "Shar Akkad" and never as "Shar Kaldu" on inscriptions), and during the Persian Achaemenid Empire the term "Chaldean" ceased to refer to a race of people, and instead specifically to a social class of priests educated in classical Babylonian literature, particularly Astronomy and Astrology. By the mid Seleucid Empire (312–150 BC) period this term too had fallen from use.


title: Babylonia

text: Babylonia was absorbed into the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC, becoming the satrapy of Babirush ( "Bābiruš").


title: Babylonia

text: A year before Cyrus' death, in 529 BC, he elevated his son Cambyses II in the government, making him king of Babylon, while he reserved for himself the fuller title of "king of the (other) provinces" of the empire. It was only when Darius I acquired the Persian throne and ruled it as a representative of the Zoroastrian religion, that the old tradition was broken and the claim of Babylon to confer legitimacy on the rulers of western Asia ceased to be acknowledged.


title: Babylonia

text: Immediately after Darius seized Persia, Babylonia briefly recovered its independence under a native ruler, Nidinta-Bel, who took the name of Nebuchadnezzar III, and reigned from October 522 BC to August 520 BC, when Darius took the city by storm, during this period Assyria to the north also rebelled. A few years later, probably 514 BC, Babylon again revolted under the Urartian king Nebuchadnezzar IV; on this occasion, after its capture by the Persians, the walls were partly destroyed. The Esagila, the great temple of Bel, however, still continued to be kept in repair and to be a center of Babylonian religious feelings.


title: Babylonia

text: Alexander the Great conquered Babylon in 333 BC for the Greeks, and died there in 323 BC. Babylonia and Assyria then became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire. It has long been maintained that the foundation of Seleucia diverted the population to the new capital of southern Mesopotamia, and that the ruins of the old city became a quarry for the builders of the new seat of government, but the recent publication of the "Babylonian Chronicles" has shown that urban life was still very much the same well into the Parthian Empire (150 BC to 226 AD). The Parthian king Mithridates conquered the region into the Parthian Empire in 150 BC, and the region became something of a battleground between Greeks and Parthians.


title: Babylonia

text: There was a brief interlude of Roman conquest (the provinces of Assyria and Mesopotamia; 116–118 AD) under Trajan, after which the Parthians reasserted control.


title: Babylonia

text: The satrapy of Babylonia was absorbed into Asōristān (meaning "The land of the Assyrians" in Middle Persian) in the Sasanian Empire, which began in 226 AD, and by this time East Syriac Rite Syriac Christianity (which emerged in Assyria and Upper Mesopotamia the first century AD) had become the dominant religion among the native Assyrian-Babylonian populace, who had never adopted the Zoroastrianism or Hellenic religions and languages of their rulers.


title: Babylonia

text: Apart from the small 2nd century BC to 3rd century AD independent Neo-Assyrian states of Adiabene, Osroene, Assur, Beth Garmai, Beth Nuhadra and Hatra in the north, Mesopotamia remained under largely Persian control until the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century AD. Asōristān was dissolved as a geopolitical entity in 637 AD, and the native Eastern Aramaic-speaking and largely Christian populace of southern and central Mesopotamia (with the exception of the Mandeans) gradually underwent Arabization and Islamization in contrast to northern Mesopotamia where an Assyrian continuity endures to the present day.


title: Babylonia

text: Bronze Age to Early Iron Age Mesopotamian culture is sometimes summarized as "Assyro-Babylonian", because of the close ethnic, linguistic and cultural interdependence of the two political centers. The term "Babylonia", especially in writings from around the early 20th century, was formerly used to also include Southern Mesopotamia's earliest "pre-Babylonian" history, and not only in reference to the later city-state of Babylon proper. This geographic usage of the name "Babylonia" has generally been replaced by the more accurate term "Sumer" or "Sumero-Akkadian" in more recent writing, referring to the pre-Assyro-Babylonian Mesopotamian civilization.


title: Babylonia

text: In Babylonia, an abundance of clay, and lack of stone, led to greater use of mudbrick; Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian temples were massive structures of crude brick which were supported by buttresses, the rain being carried off by drains. One such drain at Ur was made of lead. The use of brick led to the early development of the pilaster and column, and of frescoes and enameled tiles. The walls were brilliantly coloured, and sometimes plated with zinc or gold, as well as with tiles. Painted terracotta cones for torches were also embedded in the plaster. In Babylonia, in place of the relief, there was greater use of three-dimensional figures—the earliest examples being the Statues of Gudea, that are realistic if somewhat clumsy. The paucity of stone in Babylonia made every pebble precious, and led to a high perfection in the art of gem-cutting.


title: Babylonia

text: Tablets dating back to the Old Babylonian period document the application of mathematics to the variation in the length of daylight over a solar year. Centuries of Babylonian observations of celestial phenomena are recorded in the series of cuneiform script tablets known as the 'Enūma Anu Enlil'. The oldest significant astronomical text that we possess is Tablet 63 of 'Enūma Anu Enlil', the Venus tablet of Ammi-Saduqa, which lists the first and last visible risings of Venus over a period of about 21 years and is the earliest evidence that the phenomena of a planet were recognized as periodic. The oldest rectangular astrolabe dates back to Babylonia c. 1100 BC. The MUL.APIN, contains catalogues of stars and constellations as well as schemes for predicting heliacal risings and the settings of the planets, lengths of daylight measured by a water clock, gnomon, shadows, and intercalations. The Babylonian GU text arranges stars in 'strings' that lie along declination circles and thus measure right-ascensions or time-intervals, and also employs the stars of the zenith, which are also separated by given right-ascensional differences.


title: Babylonia

text: The oldest "Babylonian" (i.e., Akkadian) texts on medicine date back to the First Babylonian dynasty in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC although the earliest medical prescriptions appear in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur period. The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the "Diagnostic Handbook" written by the "ummânū", or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa, during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina (1069–1046 BC).


title: Babylonia

text: Along with contemporary ancient Egyptian medicine, the Babylonians introduced the concepts of diagnosis, prognosis, physical examination, and prescriptions. In addition, the "Diagnostic Handbook" introduced the methods of therapy and aetiology and the use of empiricism, logic and rationality in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. The text contains a list of medical symptoms and often detailed empirical observations along with logical rules used in combining observed symptoms on the body of a patient with its diagnosis and prognosis.


title: Babylonia

text: The symptoms and diseases of a patient were treated through therapeutic means such as bandages, creams and pills. If a patient could not be cured physically, the Babylonian physicians often relied on exorcism to cleanse the patient from any curses. Esagil-kin-apli's "Diagnostic Handbook" was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including the modern view that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, it is possible to determine the patient's disease, its aetiology and future development, and the chances of the patient's recovery.


title: Babylonia

text: Esagil-kin-apli discovered a variety of illnesses and diseases and described their symptoms in his "Diagnostic Handbook". These include the symptoms for many varieties of epilepsy and related ailments along with their diagnosis and prognosis. Later Babylonian medicine resembles early Greek medicine in many ways. In particular, the early treatises of the Hippocratic Corpus show the influence of late Babylonian medicine in terms of both content and form.


title: Babylonia

text: There were libraries in most towns and temples; an old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn". Women as well as men learned to read and write, and in Semitic times, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and a complicated and extensive syllabary.


title: Babylonia

text: A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be written in the old agglutinative language of Sumer. Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists of them were drawn up.


title: Babylonia

text: There are many Babylonian literary works whose titles have come down to us. One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, in twelve books, translated from the original Sumerian by a certain Sin-liqi-unninni, and arranged upon an astronomical principle. Each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh. The whole story is a composite product, and it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure.


title: Babylonia

text: The brief resurgence of Babylonian culture in the 7th to 6th centuries BC was accompanied by a number of important cultural developments.


title: Babylonia

text: Among the sciences, astronomy and astrology still occupied a conspicuous place in Babylonian society. Astronomy was of old standing in Babylonia. The zodiac was a Babylonian invention of great antiquity; and eclipses of the sun and moon could be foretold. There are dozens of cuneiform records of original Mesopotamian eclipse observations.


title: Babylonia

text: Babylonian astronomy was the basis for much of what was done in ancient Greek astronomy, in classical, in Sasanian, Byzantine and Syrian astronomy, astronomy in the medieval Islamic world, and in Central Asian and Western European astronomy. Neo-Babylonian astronomy can thus be considered the direct predecessor of much of ancient Greek mathematics and astronomy, which in turn is the historical predecessor of the European (Western) scientific revolution.


title: Babylonia

text: During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new approach to astronomy. They began studying philosophy dealing with the ideal nature of the early universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science and some scholars have thus referred to this new approach as the first scientific revolution. This new approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy.


title: Babylonia

text: In Seleucid and Parthian times, the astronomical reports were of a thoroughly scientific character; how much earlier their advanced knowledge and methods were developed is uncertain. The Babylonian development of methods for predicting the motions of the planets is considered to be a major episode in the history of astronomy.


title: Babylonia

text: The only Babylonian astronomer known to have supported a heliocentric model of planetary motion was Seleucus of Seleucia (b. 190 BC). Seleucus is known from the writings of Plutarch. He supported the heliocentric theory where the Earth rotated around its own axis which in turn revolved around the Sun. According to Plutarch, Seleucus even proved the heliocentric system, but it is not known what arguments he used.


title: Babylonia

text: Babylonian mathematical texts are plentiful and well edited. In respect of time they fall in two distinct groups: one from the First Babylonian dynasty period (1830–1531 BC), the other mainly Seleucid from the last three or four centuries BC. In respect of content there is scarcely any difference between the two groups of texts. Thus Babylonian mathematics remained stale in character and content, with very little progress or innovation, for nearly two millennia.


title: Babylonia

text: The Babylonian system of mathematics was sexagesimal, or a base 60 numeral system. From this we derive the modern-day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 × 6) degrees in a circle. The Babylonians were able to make great advances in mathematics for two reasons. First, the number 60 has many divisors (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30), making calculations easier. Additionally, unlike the Egyptians and Romans, the Babylonians had a true place-value system, where digits written in the left column represented larger values (much as in our base-ten system: 734 = 7×100 + 3×10 + 4×1). Among the Babylonians' mathematical accomplishments were the determination of the square root of two correctly to seven places (YBC 7289). They also demonstrated knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem well before Pythagoras, as evidenced by this tablet translated by Dennis Ramsey and dating to c. 1900 BC:


title: Babylonia

text: The "ner" of 600 and the "sar" of 3600 were formed from the unit of 60, corresponding with a degree of the equator. Tablets of squares and cubes, calculated from 1 to 60, have been found at Senkera, and a people acquainted with the sun-dial, the clepsydra, the lever and the pulley, must have had no mean knowledge of mechanics. A crystal lens, turned on the lathe, was discovered by Austen Henry Layard at Nimrud along with glass vases bearing the name of Sargon; this could explain the excessive minuteness of some of the writing on the Assyrian tablets, and a lens may also have been used in the observation of the heavens.


title: Babylonia

text: The Babylonians might have been familiar with the general rules for measuring the areas. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be correct if π were estimated as 3. The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the base and the height, however, the volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the sum of the bases. Also, there was a recent discovery in which a tablet used π as 3 and 1/8. The Babylonians are also known for the Babylonian mile, which was a measure of distance equal to about 11 kilometres (7 mi) today. This measurement for distances eventually was converted to a time-mile used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time. (Eves, Chapter 2) The Babylonians used also space time graphs to calculate the velocity of Jupiter. This is an idea that is considered highly modern, traced to the 14th century England and France and anticipating integral calculus.


title: Babylonia

text: The origins of Babylonian philosophy can be traced back to early Mesopotamian wisdom literature, which embodied certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics, in the forms of dialectic, dialogs, epic poetry, folklore, hymns, lyrics, prose, and proverbs. Babylonian reasoning and rationality developed beyond empirical observation.


title: Babylonia

text: It is possible that Babylonian philosophy had an influence on Greek philosophy, particularly Hellenistic philosophy. The Babylonian text "Dialogue of Pessimism" contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the sophists, the Heraclitean doctrine of contrasts, and the dialogs of Plato, as well as a precursor to the maieutic Socratic method of Socrates. The Milesian philosopher Thales is also known to have studied philosophy in Mesopotamia.


title: Babylonia

text: Babylonia, and particularly its capital city Babylon, has long held a place in the Abrahamic religions as a symbol of excess and dissolute power. Many references are made to Babylon in the Bible, both literally (historical) and allegorically. The mentions in the Tanakh tend to be historical or prophetic, while New Testament apocalyptic references to the Whore of Babylon are more likely figurative, or cryptic references possibly to pagan Rome, or some other archetype. The legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Tower of Babel are seen as symbols of luxurious and arrogant power respectively.


title: Babylonia

text: Early Christians sometimes referred to Rome as Babylon: The apostle Peter ends his first letter with this advice: "She who is in Babylon [Rome], chosen together with you, sends you her greetings, and so does my son Mark." ().


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: Don't Breathe 2 is a 2021 American horror thriller film directed by Rodo Sayagues in his directorial debut, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Fede Álvarez. The sequel to 2016's "Don't Breathe", it was produced by Álvarez, Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert. The film stars Stephen Lang, reprising his role as Norman Nordstrom / "The Blind Man", with Brendan Sexton III and Madelyn Grace in supporting roles.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: After the critical and commercial success of the first film, talks for a sequel began in November 2016, with Álvarez then set to return as the film's director. In January 2020, the project was green-lit by the studio, with Sayagues replacing Álvarez as director and Lang reprising his role. Principal photography began on August 7, 2020, in Belgrade, Serbia, and wrapped on October 8, 2020.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: "Don't Breathe 2" was theatrically released in the United States on August 13, 2021, by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film grossed $53 million worldwide, making it a moderate success, and received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for Lang's performance, but criticism for the screenplay. A third film is in development.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: Eight years after the events of the first film, blind Navy SEAL veteran Norman Nordstrom lives with 11-year-old Phoenix and his Rottweiler, Shadow, in a Detroit suburb. Norman tells Phoenix that her birth mother died in a fire in their old house.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: Hernandez, Norman's only connection with society and a veteran Army Ranger, convinces Norman to let Phoenix accompany her on an errand in town to have some time out of the house. A gangster attempts to abduct Phoenix but is scared away by Shadow. His gang follows Hernandez's van back to Norman's where they wait for Hernandez to drop Phoenix off, then kill her when she leaves. They lure Shadow away and kill him. When Norman goes outside to look for Shadow the gang breaks in to kidnap Phoenix. A struggle ensues between Norman and the gang, when the gang leader, Raylan, tells Phoenix that he is her real father, confirming it by showing they both have a streak of white hair.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: It is revealed that Phoenix's house burned down after a meth lab explosion in the basement, and Raylan had been jailed for eight years. Norman found Phoenix unconscious in the wreckage and took her home to take the place of his dead daughter. Upon release, Raylan saw Phoenix alive when she left flowers at her mother's memorial. Phoenix is chloroformed by a gangster. Raylan sets his own dog to kill Norman, who traps the animal in the attic. The gang sets the house on fire and leaves with Phoenix. Norman befriends the dog as they escape together and the dog leads him to the gang's hotel hideout.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: At the hotel, Raylan reveals Phoenix's real name is Tara and introduces her to her mother, who is alive but terminally ill. She explains that she triggered the explosion while cooking meth resulting in the poisoning of her internal organs. Tara's parents have abducted her in order to transplant her compatible organs for Tara's mother. Due to a lack of drugs and facilities, Tara will be conscious while her heart is removed. A power blackout prevents the procedure and Raylan's men are ambushed by Norman, who exploits the dark to pick them off one by one. Norman kills the surgeon and a stray gunshot kills Tara's mother. Norman gouges out Raylan's eyes and leaves him for dead.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: A badly wounded Norman confirms to Tara that her father was telling the truth. He confesses his crimes, including murder and rape, and tells her to flee to safety. Raylan appears and stabs Norman, only to be fatally stabbed by Tara. Tara attempts to help Norman, claiming she can save him, to which he replies she already has, before apparently succumbing to his wounds. Tara leaves and heads to a children's home she had seen earlier. She approaches a group of children playing and introduces herself as Phoenix.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: In a mid-credits scene, Raylan's dog licks Norman's fingers which twitch slightly, indicating that he is alive.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: In November 2016, writer Fede Álvarez announced that a sequel to "Don't Breathe" was in the works, and that he was set to return as director. Producer Sam Raimi called it "only the greatest idea for a sequel I've ever heard. I'm not kidding." In November 2018, Álvarez discussed sequels to both his "Don't Breathe" and "Evil Dead", saying, "They're just ideas right now. Nothing to announce officially. We do have a script for "Don't Breathe 2". That's the only difference. We don't have a script for "Evil Dead 2". But we do have a script for "Don't Breathe 2" that we wrote." He also said, "When I tweeted that I was interested in seeing what people prefer. We were having some internal debates about what people would be interested in most. Unfortunately, "Evil Dead 2" won. Which, I guess I would have preferred "Don't Breathe 2" to win because it's one of my own creations. Obviously "Evil Dead" has the bigger following."


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: In January 2020, Álvarez was replaced as director by Rodo Sayagues, the co-writer of both "Don't Breathe" films, making his directorial debut. In a March 2021 interview, Stephen Lang stated that in preparation for reprising the role of Norman Nordstrom, he worked with The Northeastern Association for the Blind in Albany, New York to accurately depict the mannerisms of someone afflicted with being blind.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: Principal photography began on August 7, 2020, in Belgrade, Serbia, with Pedro Luque serving as cinematographer, returning from the previous film. Production was previously set to begin in April 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In July 2020, prior to filming, Stephen Lang quarantined himself for ten days after arriving in Serbia. Lang revealed that filming wrapped on October 8, 2020. By March 2021, post-production on the film was said to be finished, according to Álvarez, who "watched it not too long ago," calling it "fantastic," and later stating he thinks it's better than the first film. In May 2021, Roque Baños was revealed to have composed the score for "Don't Breathe 2", having returned from the first film. During post-production, Jan Kovac served as lead editor.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: "Don't Breathe 2" was theatrically released in the United States on the Friday the 13th of August 2021, by Sony Pictures Releasing.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: The film was released on video-on-demand on September 3, 2021, and selected on rent and digital download on October 12, 2021, while 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on October 26, 2021, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Special features include a filmmaker audio commentary, a never-before-seen alternate ending, three featurettes of a Friends & Filmmakers, a Bad Man and Designing Deception.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: The alternate ending shows Tara being dropped off by Raul, one of Raylan's former thugs, at a children's home.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: "Don't Breathe 2" grossed $32.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $14.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $47.2 million.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: In the United States and Canada, "Don't Breathe 2" was released alongside "Free Guy" and "Respect", and was projected to gross $8–12 million from 3,005 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $4.4 million on its first day, including $965,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $10.6 million, finishing in second place behind "Free Guy". The film made $5.1 million in its second weekend (a drop of 51%), finishing fourth, then $2.8 million in its third weekend.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 44% based on 78 reviews, with an average rating of 4.90/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Stephen Lang remains a thrillingly imposing presence in "Don't Breathe 2", but this sequel's story strains to find a sensible way forward for his character." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale (down from the "B+" earned by its predecessor), while PostTrak reported 73% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 55% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote: "Where the first film offered genuine scares, this one is suspenseful at best, snicker-worthy at worst, and will beg viewers to recall the time Fonzie got on water skis and tried not to get eaten by a shark." Benjamin Lee of "The Guardian" gave the film a score of 1/5 stars, praising Lang as "an effectively imposing physical presence", but described the film as "an unforgivably dull piece of product that should never have breathed in the first place", and said that the antagonists were "made as cartoonishly awful as possible", adding: "their ultimate plan for the girl [is] so laughably repulsive that suddenly, problematically, Nordstrom is made to seem like the better option." William Bibbiani of "TheWrap" praised Lang and Grace's performances, but described the film as "a clunky home-invasion thriller", adding: "it seems more like the filmmakers wanted to purge their creation of its wickedness than tell a story about that wickedness which makes sense."


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: Jesse Hassenger of "The A.V. Club" was more positive in his review of the film, giving it a grade of B−. He wrote: ""Don't Breathe 2" is more effective—maybe even a little mischievously insidious—in its attempted villain rehab when it sticks to smaller gestures, like Norman's already established affinity for cuddly canine sidekicks." Christy Lemire, writing for "RogerEbert.com", gave the film a score of 2.5/4 stars, praising Lang's performance and writing: "the most daring feat of all in "Don't Breathe 2" is its attempt to completely rehabilitate Norman. It's admirable and even unusual that a studio movie would offer such moral ambiguity in its horror hero—and that's definitely what he is here, comparatively—but the cause for his torment lingers until the end."


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: In August 2021, Alvarez and Sayagues expressed interest in developing a sequel, acknowledging that Rocky from the first movie may appear in a future film. The filmmakers elaborated that there are plans to explore additional characters from the first movie stating that by the end of "Don't Breathe", the stories of Norman Nordstrom / "The Blind Man" and Jane Levy's Roxanne "Rocky" were intentionally left open-ended; while both characters got away with different illegal activities. The pair stated that they intend to explore the consequences that both characters face for their criminal actions, with each of their pasts catching up to them in different movies. Sayagues stated that they intend to continue Roxanne's story in the future. That same month in a number of interviews, Lang expressed interest in reprising his role in additional movies.


title: Don't Breathe 2

text: By August of 2022, it was reported that a third film was officially in development. In October 2022, Lang confirmed that he is currently preparing to reprise his role in a third film.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas (born 7 September 1949) is a German-Colombian former drug lord who was co-founder of the Medellín Cartel. He was released from prison in the United States after 33 years in 2020. Born in Armenia, Colombia, Lehder eventually ran a cocaine transport empire on Norman's Cay island, off the Florida coast in the central Bahamas.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Lehder was one of the founding members of Muerte a Secuestradores ("MAS"), a paramilitary group whose focus was to retaliate against the kidnappings of cartel members and their families by the guerrillas.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: His motivation to join the MAS was to retaliate against the M-19 guerrilla movement, which, in November 1981, attempted to kidnap him for a ransom; Lehder managed to escape from the kidnappers, though he was shot in the leg.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: He was one of the most important MAS and Medellin Cartel operators, and is considered to be one of the most important Colombian drug kingpins to have been successfully prosecuted in the United States.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Additionally, Lehder founded "a neo-Nazi political party", the National Latin Movement, whose main function, police said, appeared to be to force Colombia to abrogate its extradition treaty with the United States.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Carlos Lehder is of mixed German-Colombian descent. His father, Klaus Wilhelm Lehder, was an engineer who emigrated from Germany to Armenia, Colombia in 1928, where he participated in the construction of several buildings which had elevators, a rather modern and unusual characteristic at that place and time. When he married Helena Rivas, the daughter of a jeweller from Manizales, Caldas, he changed his name to Guillermo Lehder. Guillermo and Helena had four sons, with Carlos Enrique, born on 7 September 1949, being the third.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: In Armenia, Colombia, the family owned a small inn called "Pensión Alemana" (which would later inspire Carlos to have his own luxurious "Posada Alemana" hotel), where German immigrants would regularly meet. They also ran a small business producing vegetable oils and importing luxury goods such as wine and canned foods. In 1943, following intelligence reports from the United States, the Lehders, along with many Germans in Colombia, were suspected of ideological links with the Nazis and were investigated. The "Pensión Alemana" was alleged to have been a place where Nazis gathered intelligence.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Carlos grew up in Armenia, Colombia until his parents divorced when he was 15, after which he emigrated with his mother to New York in the United States.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Lehder started out selling stolen cars and marijuana, as well as smuggling stolen cars between the U.S. and Canada. While serving a sentence for car theft in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, Lehder decided that, upon his release, he would take advantage of the burgeoning market for cocaine in the United States. To that end, he enlisted his prison bunkmate, former marijuana dealer George Jung, as a future partner. Jung had experience flying marijuana to the U.S. from Mexico in small aircraft, staying below radar level, and landing on dry lake beds. Inspired by the idea, Lehder decided to apply the principle to cocaine transport and formed a partnership with Jung. While in prison, Lehder set out to learn as much information as possible that could be useful to him in the cocaine business. He would sometimes even spend hours questioning fellow inmates about money laundering and smuggling. Jung allegedly said that Lehder kept countless files and constantly took notes. Lehder's ultimate scheme was to revolutionize the cocaine trade by transporting the drug to the United States using small aircraft.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: After Lehder and Jung were released (both were paroled), they built up a small revenue stream through simple, traditional drug smuggling. Specifically, they enlisted two young women who were US citizens to take a vacation to Antigua, receive cocaine, and carry it back with them to the U.S. in their suitcases. Repeating this process several times, Lehder and Jung soon had enough money for an airplane.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Using a small stolen plane and a professional pilot, the pair began to fly cocaine into the United States via the Bahamas, in the process increasing their financial resources and building connections and trust with Colombian suppliers, while spreading money around among Bahamian government officials for political and judicial protection. Their unconventional method of drug-smuggling began to gain credibility.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: In the late 1970s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania and his secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as an all-purpose headquarters for his operations.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: That island was Norman's Cay, which at that point consisted of a marina, a yacht club, approximately 100 private homes, and an airstrip. In 1978, Lehder began buying up property and harassing and threatening the island's residents; at one point, a yacht was found drifting off the coast with the corpse of one of its owners aboard. Lehder is estimated to have spent $4.5 million on the island in total.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: As Lehder paid or forced the local population to leave, and began to assume total control of the island, Norman's Cay became his lawless private fiefdom. By this time, he had forced Jung out of the operation, and international criminal financier Robert Vesco had allegedly become a partner. Jung used his prior connections to take up a more modest line of independent smuggling for Pablo Escobar and stayed out of Lehder's way.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: From 1978 through 1982, the Cay was the Caribbean's main drug-smuggling hub, and a tropical hideaway and playground for Lehder and associates. They flew cocaine in from Colombia on all sorts of aircraft able to land fully loaded on the airstrip, reloaded it into various small aircraft, and then distributed it to locations in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. Lehder was believed to have kept one kilo out of every four that was transported through Norman's Cay.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Lehder expanded a runway to , protected by radar, bodyguards, and Doberman attack dogs for the fleet of aircraft under his command. At the height of his operation, 300 kilograms of cocaine would arrive on the island daily, and Lehder's wealth mounted into the billions. He accumulated such staggering wealth that on two occasions he offered to pay the Colombian external debt. In 1978, he made an offer to do so to President Alfonso López Michelsen, in exchange for a free space for drug trafficking. In 1982, through Pablo Escobar, who was a Colombian Congressman at the time, Lehder did so again, this time in an attempt to prevent his extradition.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Their government's approval of the extradition of Colombians encouraged Escobar and Lehder to participate in politics. Lehder founded the National Latino Movement ("Movimiento Latino Nacional", in Spanish), which managed three congressional seats, and popularized itself by making speeches against extradition.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: The April 30, 1984 assassination of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the Colombian Minister of Justice, initiated the beginning of the end for Lehder and the Medellín Cartel. Lara had campaigned against the cartel's activities, and his murder marked a change in Colombian politics. President Belisario Betancur, who had previously opposed extraditing any Colombian drug lords to the United States, announced that he was now willing to extradite. Lehder was a leading individual on the crackdown list.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Other major Medellín Cartel associates fled to the protection of Manuel Noriega in Panama, but when Pablo Escobar discovered Noriega was plotting to betray him to the U.S. in return for amnesty, the cartel associates then fled to Nicaragua to seek the assistance of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. Escobar had paid some of Noriega's closest colonels to inform him of Noriega's intentions.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Lehder's downfall was assisted by his blatant bribing of Bahamian officials, and the attention the activities on Norman's Cay were attracting.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: After Brian Ross's September 5, 1983 report, on the U.S. television network NBC, made public the corruption of Bahamian government leaders, Lehder could not return to Norman's Cay. The government had frozen all his bank accounts and taken over his property and possessions, and he went from being a billionaire to nearly bankrupt. While on the run in the jungle, he got sick with a fever. Escobar sent a helicopter for Lehder and brought him back to Medellín, where he received medical attention to save his life. Even so, he was left very weak. When Lehder recovered, Escobar hired him as a bodyguard.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Eventually, Lehder wanted to rebuild his fortune, but he was captured at a farm he had just established in Colombia, when a new employee of his informed the police of his location. Another hypothesis supported by Jhon Jairo Velásquez, better known as "Popeye", the head assassin of Pablo Escobar, is that fellow members of the Medellín Cartel wanted him out of the picture due to his radical military-like behavior, which they believed would jeopardize their cocaine empire, and so Escobar himself provided Lehder's whereabouts to the police, leading to Lehder's capture.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Having captured one of the Cartel's most powerful members, the U.S. government used him as a source of information about the details of the Cartel's secret empire, which later proved useful in assisting the Colombian government to dismantle the Cartel. In 1987, Lehder was extradited to the United States, where he was tried and sentenced to life without parole, plus an additional 135 years. Now all of the other cartel leaders knew what would happen if they were extradited, and soon afterward, the Medellín Cartel organizations split up. These smaller organizations, especially Escobar's, were later attacked by the Cali Cartel, the Colombian police/army, and soon by the U.S. government, as well. A violent war began as the Medellín Cartel leaders tried to protect themselves by fighting back.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: In 1992, in exchange for Lehder's agreement to testify against Manuel Noriega, his sentence was reduced to a total of 55 years. Three years after that, Lehder wrote a letter to a federal district judge, complaining that the government had reneged on a deal to transfer him to a German prison. The letter was construed as a threat against the judge.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Within weeks of sending that letter in the fall of 1995, Lehder was whisked away into the night, according to several protected witnesses at the Mesa Unit in Arizona. According to journalist and author Tamara S. Inscoe-Johnson, who worked on the Lehder defense during the time in question, Lehder was simply transferred to another prison and continued to be held in WITSEC, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' version of the federal Witness Protection Program. Inscoe-Johnson argued that Lehder had not been released, despite Internet rumors to the contrary. Inscoe-Johnson also believed Lehder would never be released: allegedly, he would be privy to secret information regarding the CIA's and his own involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: On July 22, 2005, he appeared in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to contest his sentence. Lehder appeared "pro se", arguing that the United States failed to carry out its obligations under a cooperation agreement he had entered into with the United States Attorney's Office, after he held up his end of the deal. ("United States v. Lehder-Rivas", 136 Fed. Appx. 324; 2005).


title: Carlos Lehder

text: In May 2007, Lehder requested the Supreme Court of Colombia and the Colombian government to intervene in order to comply with the extradition agreement established between Colombia and the US, which stated that a maximum sentence of 30 years would be applied to any extradited Colombian citizen. Lehder argued that, having already served 20 years in prison, which corresponded to two-thirds of the 30-year maximum time stated in the treaty, he had completed his legal sentence and should therefore be released.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: In May 2008, Lehder's lawyer declared to "El Tiempo" that a "habeas corpus" petition had been filed, alleging that Lehder's cooperation agreement had been violated and that "a court in Washington" had less than 30 days to respond to the notice.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: According to his lawyer, Lehder was transferred to a minimum security prison in Florida. He was visited regularly by family members and had access to TV and a computer with only email access. An article published by "Cronica Del Quindio" in January 2015 reported that Lehder could be released and extradited to Germany at any time.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: On June 24, 2015, Lehder wrote a letter to then-President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, in which he requested mediation with the United States to be allowed to return to Colombia.


title: Carlos Lehder

text: Lehder was released from prison on June 15, 2020, and escorted to Germany by two US officials on a regular passenger flight from New York to Frankfurt and handed over to German authorities. According to declarations made by his daughter, a reason for his release is a relapse of prostate cancer, which had been diagnosed years earlier. A charity in Germany has agreed to pay for treatment.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist science-fiction drama film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou in collaboration with Lang from von Harbou's 1925 novel of the same name. Intentionally written as a treatment, it stars Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Brigitte Helm. Erich Pommer produced it in the Babelsberg Studios for Universum Film A.G. (UFA). The silent film is regarded as a pioneering science-fiction movie, being among the first feature-length movies of that genre. Filming took place over 17 months in 1925–26 at a cost of more than five million Reichsmarks, or the equivalent of about € million.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Made in Germany during the Weimar period, "Metropolis" is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city master, and Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes in their city and bring the workers together with Joh Fredersen, the city master. The film's message is encompassed in the final inter-title: "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart".


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: "Metropolis" met a mixed reception upon release. Critics found it visually beautiful and powerful – the film's art direction by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, and Karl Vollbrecht draws influence from opera, Bauhaus, Cubist, and Futurist design, along with touches of the Gothic in the scenes in the catacombs, the cathedral and Rotwang's house – and lauded its complex special effects, but accused its story of being naive. H. G. Wells described the film as "silly", and "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" calls the story "trite" and its politics "ludicrously simplistic". Its alleged Communist message was also criticized.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The film's long running time also came in for criticism. It was cut substantially after its German premiere. Many attempts have been made since the 1970s to restore the film. In 1984, Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder released a truncated version with a soundtrack by rock artists including Freddie Mercury, Loverboy, and Adam Ant. In 2001, a new reconstruction of "Metropolis" was shown at the Berlin Film Festival. In 2008, a damaged print of Lang's original cut of the film was found in a museum in Argentina. Per the opening explanation: "...The material was heavily damaged and, because it had been printed on 16mm film stock, does not have the full-aperture silent picture ratio. ...In order to maintain the scale of the restored footage, the missing portion of the frame appears black. Black frames indicate points at which footage is still lost." After a long restoration process that required additional materials provided by a print from New Zealand, the film was 95% restored and shown on large screens in Berlin and Frankfurt simultaneously on 12 February 2010.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: "Metropolis" is now widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, ranking 35th in "Sight & Sound"s 2012 critics' poll. In 2001, the film was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, the first film thus distinguished.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In the future, wealthy industrialists and business magnates and their top employees reign over the city of Metropolis from colossal skyscrapers, while underground-dwelling workers toil to operate the great machines that power it. Joh Fredersen is the city's master. His son, Freder, idles away his time at sports and in a pleasure garden, but is interrupted by the arrival of a young woman named Maria, who has brought a group of workers' children to witness the lifestyle of their rich "brothers". Maria and the children are ushered away, but Freder becomes fascinated by her and goes to the lower levels to find her. In the machine halls, he witnesses the explosion of a huge machine that kills and injures numerous workers. Freder has a hallucination that the machine is a temple of Moloch and the workers are being fed to it. When the hallucination ends, and he sees the dead workers being carried away on stretchers, he hurries to tell his father about the accident.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Grot, foreman of the Heart Machine, brings Fredersen secret maps found on the dead workers. Fredersen fires his assistant Josaphat for not being the first to bring him details about the explosion or the maps. After seeing his father's cold indifference towards the harsh conditions faced by the workers, Freder secretly rebels against him by deciding to help the workers. He enlists Josaphat's assistance and returns to the machine halls, where he trades places with a worker who has collapsed from exhaustion.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Fredersen takes the maps to the inventor Rotwang to learn their meaning. Rotwang had been in love with a woman named Hel, who left him to marry Fredersen and later died giving birth to Freder. Rotwang shows Fredersen a robot he has built to "resurrect" Hel. The maps show a network of catacombs beneath Metropolis, and the two men go to investigate. They eavesdrop on a gathering of workers, including Freder. Maria addresses them, prophesying the arrival of a mediator who can bring the working and ruling classes together. Freder believes he can fill the role and declares his love for Maria. Fredersen orders Rotwang to give Maria's likeness to the robot so that it can discredit her among the workers, but is unaware that Rotwang plans to use the robot to destroy Metropolis and ruin both Fredersen and Freder. Rotwang kidnaps Maria, transfers her likeness to the robot and sends her to Fredersen. Freder finds the two embracing and, believing it is the real Maria, falls into a prolonged delirium. Intercut with his hallucinations, the false Maria unleashes chaos throughout Metropolis, driving men to murder and stirring dissent among the workers.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Freder recovers and returns to the catacombs, accompanied by Josaphat. Finding the false Maria urging the workers to rise up and destroy the machines, he accuses her of not being the real Maria. The workers follow the false Maria from their city to the machine halls, leaving their children behind. They destroy the machines, triggering a flood in their city deeper underground. The real Maria, having escaped from Rotwang's house, rescues the children with help from Freder and Josaphat. Grot berates the celebrating workers for abandoning their children in the flooded city. Believing their children to be dead, the hysterical workers capture the false Maria and burn her at the stake. A horrified Freder watches, not understanding the deception, until the fire reveals her to be a robot. Rotwang becomes delusional, seeing the real Maria as his lost Hel, and chases her to the roof of the cathedral, pursued by Freder. The two men fight as Fredersen and the workers watch from the street, and Rotwang falls to his death. Freder fulfills his role as mediator by linking the hands of Fredersen and Grot to bring them together.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: "Metropolis" features a range of elaborate special effects and set designs, ranging from a huge gothic cathedral to a futuristic cityscape. In an interview, Fritz Lang reported that "the film was born from my first sight of the skyscrapers in New York in October 1924". He had visited New York City for the first time and remarked "I looked into the streets—the glaring lights and the tall buildings—and there I conceived "Metropolis"," although in actuality Lang and Harbou had been at work on the idea for over a year. Describing his first impressions of the city, Lang said that "the buildings seemed to be a vertical sail, scintillating and very light, a luxurious backdrop, suspended in the dark sky to dazzle, distract and hypnotize". He added "The sight of Neuyork [sic] alone should be enough to turn this beacon of beauty into the center of a film..."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The appearance of the city in "Metropolis" is strongly informed by the Art Deco movement; however, it also incorporates elements from other traditions. Ingeborg Hoesterey described the architecture featured in "Metropolis" as eclectic, writing how its locales represent both "functionalist modernism [and] art deco" whilst also featuring "the scientist's archaic little house with its high-powered laboratory, the catacombs [and] the Gothic cathedral". The film's use of art deco architecture was highly influential, and has been reported to have contributed to the style's subsequent popularity in Europe and America. The New Babel Tower, for instance, has been inspired by Upper Silesian Tower in Poznań fairgrounds, which was recognized in Germany as a masterpiece of architecture.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Lang's visit to several Hollywood studios in the same 1924 trip also influenced the film in another way: Lang and producer Erich Pommer realized that to compete with the vertical integration of Hollywood, their next film would have to be bigger, broader, and better made than anything they had made before. Despite UFA's growing debt, Lang announced that "Metropolis" would be "the costliest and most ambitious picture ever."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The film drew heavily on biblical sources for several of its key set-pieces. During her first talk to the workers, Maria uses the story of the Tower of Babel to highlight the discord between the intellectuals and the workers. Additionally, a delusional Freder imagines the false-Maria as the Whore of Babylon, riding on the back of a many-headed dragon.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Much of the plot line of "Metropolis" stems from the First World War and the culture of the Weimar Republic in Germany. Lang explores the themes of industrialization and mass production in his film; two developments that played a large role in the war. Other post-World War I themes that Lang includes in "Metropolis" include the Weimar view of American modernity, fascism, and communism.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: "Metropolis"'s screenplay was written by Thea von Harbou, a popular writer in Weimar Germany, jointly with Lang, her then-husband. The film's plot originated from a novel of the same title written by Harbou for the sole purpose of being made into a film. The novel in turn drew inspiration from H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's works and other German dramas. The novel featured strongly in the film's marketing campaign, and was serialized in the journal "Illustriertes Blatt" in the run-up to its release. Harbou and Lang collaborated on the screenplay derived from the novel, and several plot points and thematic elements—including most of the references to magic and occultism present in the novel—were dropped.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The screenplay itself went through many rewrites, and at one point featured an ending where Freder flew to the stars; this plot element later became the basis for Lang's "Woman in the Moon". The time setting of "Metropolis" is open to interpretation. The 2010 re-release and reconstruction, which incorporated the original title cards written by Thea von Harbou, do not specify a year. Before the reconstruction, Lotte Eisner and Paul M. Jensen placed the events happening around the year 2000. Giorgio Moroder's re-scored version included a title card placing the film in 2026, while Paramount's original US release said the film takes place in 3000. A note in one edition of Harbou's novel says that the story does not take place at any particular place or time, in the past or the future. Meanwhile, the 1963 Ace Books edition which reprints the 1927 English edition specifies the setting as "The World of 2026 A.D."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: "Metropolis" began principal photography on 22 May 1925 with an initial budget of . Lang cast two unknowns with little film experience in the lead roles. Gustav Fröhlich (Freder) had worked in vaudeville and was originally employed as an extra on "Metropolis" before Thea von Harbou recommended him to Lang. Brigitte Helm (Maria) had been given a screen test by Lang after he met her on the set of "Die Nibelungen", but would make her feature film debut with "Metropolis". In the role of Joh Fredersen, Lang cast Alfred Abel, a noted stage and screen actor whom he had worked with on "Dr. Mabuse the Gambler". Lang also cast his frequent collaborator Rudolph Klein-Rogge in the role of Rotwang. This was Klein-Rogge's fourth film with Lang, after "Destiny", "Dr. Mabuse the Gambler", and "Die Nibelungen".


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Shooting of the film was a draining experience for the actors involved due to the demands that Lang placed on them. For the scene where the workers' city was flooded, Helm and 500 children from the poorest districts of Berlin had to work for 14 days in a pool of water that Lang intentionally kept at a low temperature. Lang would frequently demand numerous re-takes, and took two days to shoot a simple scene where Freder collapses at Maria's feet; by the time Lang was satisfied with the footage he had shot, actor Gustav Fröhlich found he could barely stand. Other anecdotes involve Lang's insistence on using real fire for the climactic scene where the false Maria is burnt at the stake (which resulted in Helm's dress catching fire), and his ordering extras to throw themselves towards powerful jets of water when filming the flooding of the workers' city.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Helm recalled her experiences of shooting the film in a contemporary interview, saying that "the night shots lasted three weeks, and even if they did lead to the greatest dramatic moments—even if we did follow Fritz Lang's directions as though in a trance, enthusiastic and enraptured at the same time—I can't forget the incredible strain that they put us under. The work wasn't easy, and the authenticity in the portrayal ended up testing our nerves now and then. For instance, it wasn't fun at all when Grot drags me by the hair, to have me burned at the stake. Once I even fainted: during the transformation scene, Maria, as the android, is clamped in a kind of wooden armament, and because the shot took so long, I didn't get enough air."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: But it wasn't just suffering. In Metropolis Magazine (1927), Thea von Harbou says it was a kind of paradise and treat for the many malnourished children. Something they had dreamed about.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: But most importantly, there was always plenty to eat for them. Four times a day, there was a hot meal for them. "No film ever had more enthusiastic and willing collaborators than these little children"."Always willing to dash into the chily water"."like perfect actors".


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: UFA invited several trade journal representatives and several film critics to see the film's shooting as parts of its promotion campaign.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Shooting lasted 17 months, with 310 shooting days and 60 shooting nights, and was finally completed on 30 October 1926. By the time shooting finished, the film's budget leapt to 5.3 million Reichsmarks, or over three and a half times the original budget. Producer Erich Pommer had been fired during production.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The effects expert Eugen Schüfftan created pioneering visual effects for "Metropolis". Among the effects used are miniatures of the city, a camera on a swing, and most notably, the Schüfftan process, in which mirrors are used to create the illusion that actors are occupying miniature sets. This new technique was seen again just two years later in Alfred Hitchcock's film "Blackmail" (1929).


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The "Maschinenmensch" – the robot built by Rotwang to resurrect his lost love Hel – was created by sculptor Walter Schulze-Mittendorff. A whole-body plaster cast was taken of actress Brigitte Helm, and the costume was then constructed around it. A chance discovery of a sample of "plastic wood" (a pliable substance designed as wood-filler) allowed Schulze-Mittendorff to build a costume that would both appear metallic and allow a small amount of free movement. Helm sustained cuts and bruises while in character as the robot, as the costume was rigid and uncomfortable.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Gottfried Huppertz composed the film's score for a large orchestra. He drew inspiration from Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, and combined a classical orchestral style with mild modernist touches to portray the film's massive industrial city of workers. Nestled within the original score were quotations of Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle's "La Marseillaise" and the traditional "Dies Irae", the latter of which was matched to the film's apocalyptic imagery. Huppertz's music played a prominent role during the film's production; the composer often played piano on Lang's set to inform the actors' performances. Huppertz's score only accompanied the film once, at its original premiere. Sections of the score were recorded and released by the record label Vox.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The full score was not recorded until 2001, for the film's first comprehensive restoration, with Berndt Heller conducting the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken. It was released internationally on various DVD editions beginning in 2003.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In 2007, Huppertz's score was also played live by the VCS Radio Symphony, which accompanied the restored version of the film at Brenden Theatres in Vacaville, California. The score was also produced in a salon orchestration, which was performed for the first time in the United States in August 2007 by The Bijou Orchestra under the direction of Leo Najar as part of a German Expressionist film festival in Bay City, Michigan. The same forces also performed the work at the Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan in August 2009.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: For the film's 2010 "complete" restoration premiere, Huppertz's score was performed live and subsequently re-recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frank Strobel. This version was released internationally on various DVD and Blu-ray editions beginning in 2010.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: "Metropolis" was distributed by Parufamet, a company formed in December 1925 by the American film studios Paramount Pictures and Metro Goldwyn Mayer to loan $4 million (US) to UFA. The film had its world premiere at the UFA-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on 10 January 1927, where the audience, including a critic from the "Berliner Morgenpost", reacted to several of the film's most spectacular scenes with "spontaneous applause". However, others have suggested the premiere was met with muted applause interspersed with boos and hisses.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: At the time of its German premiere, "Metropolis" had a length of 4,189 metres, which is approximately 153 minutes at 24 frames per second (fps). UFA's distribution deal with Paramount and MGM "entitled [them] to make any change [to films produced by UFA] they found appropriate to ensure profitability". Considering that "Metropolis" was too long and unwieldy, Parufamet commissioned American playwright Channing Pollock to write a simpler version of the film that could be assembled using the existing material. Pollock shortened the film dramatically, altered its inter-titles and removed all references to the character of Hel, because the name sounded too similar to the English word Hell, thereby removing Rotwang's original motivation for creating his robot. Pollock said about the original film that it was "symbolism run such riot that people who saw it couldn't tell what the picture was about. ... I have given it my meaning." Lang's response to the re-editing of the film was to say "I love films, so I shall never go to America. Their experts have slashed my best film, "Metropolis", so cruelly that I dare not see it while I am in England." The Hel storyline would be partially restored in Giorgio Moroder's 1984 version, and subsequent versions completely restored it.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In Pollock's cut, the film ran for 3,170 metres, or approximately 116 minutes—although a contemporary review in "Variety" of a showing in Los Angeles gave the running time as 107 minutes, and another source lists it at 105 minutes. This version of "Metropolis" premiered in the United States in March 1927, and was released, in a slightly different and longer version (128 minutes) in the United Kingdom around the same time with different title cards.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Alfred Hugenberg, a German nationalist businessman, cancelled UFA's debt to Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after taking charge of the company in April 1927, and chose to halt distribution in German cinemas of "Metropolis" in its original form. Hugenberg had the film cut down to a length of 3,241 metres (about 118 minutes), broadly along the lines of Pollock's edit, removing the film's perceived "inappropriate" communist subtext and religious imagery. Hugenberg's cut of the film was released in German cinemas in August 1927. Later, after demands for more cuts by Nazi censors, UFA distributed a still shorter version of the film (2,530 metres, 91 minutes) in 1936, and an English version of this cut was archived in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) film library in the 1930s. It was this version which was the basis of all versions of "Metropolis" until the recent restorations. In 1986 it was recopied and returned to Germany to be the basis of the 1987 Munich Archive restoration.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Despite the film's later reputation, some contemporary critics panned it. Critic Mordaunt Hall of "The New York Times" called it a "technical marvel with feet of clay". A review by H. G. Wells dated 17 April 1927 accused it of "foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general". He faulted "Metropolis" for its premise that automation created drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who was buying the machines' output if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley's "Frankenstein", Karel Čapek's "R.U.R.", and his own "The Sleeper Awakes". Wells called "Metropolis" "quite the silliest film", but the "New York Herald Tribune" called it "a weird and fascinating picture".


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In "The New Yorker" Oliver Claxton called "Metropolis" "unconvincing and overlong", faulting much of the plot as "laid on with a terrible Teutonic heaviness, and an unnecessary amount of philosophizing in the beginning" that made the film "as soulless as the city of its tale". He also called the acting "uninspired with the exception of Brigitte Helm". Nevertheless, Claxton wrote that "the setting, the use of people and their movement, and various bits of action stand out as extraordinary and make it nearly an obligatory picture." Other critics considered the film a remarkable achievement that surpassed even its high expectations, praising its visual splendour and ambitious production values.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels was impressed with the film's message of social justice. In a 1928 speech he said, "the political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labor, to begin their historical mission". Shortly after the Nazis came to power, Goebbels told Lang that, on the basis of their seeing "Metropolis" together years before, Hitler had said that he wanted Lang to make Nazi films.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: German cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer later wrote of "Metropolis", "The Americans relished its technical excellence; the English remained aloof; the French were stirred by a film which seemed to them a blend of [composer] Wagner and [armaments manufacturer] Krupp, and on the whole an alarming sign of Germany's vitality."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Lang later expressed dissatisfaction with the film. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich in "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors", published in 1998, he expressed his reservations:


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In his profile of Lang, which introduced the interview, Bogdanovich suggested that Lang's distaste for his film also stemmed from the Nazi Party's fascination with it. Von Harbou became a member of the Party in 1933. She and Lang divorced the following year. Lang later moved to the United States to escape the Nazis, while Harbou stayed in Germany and continued to write state-approved films.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: According to Roger Ebert, ""Metropolis" is one of the great achievements of the silent era, a work so audacious in its vision and so angry in its message that it is, if anything, more powerful today than when it was made." Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide's entry on the film reads, "Heavy going at times but startling set design and special effects command attention throughout."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Colin Greenland reviewed "Metropolis" for "Imagine" magazine, and stated that "It's a measure of the sheer power of Lang's vision that it survives this heavy-handed cosmetic modernizing quite intact. Inspired by his first sight of Manhattan, Metropolis is a dark dream of the city of 2026, where the idle rich live in penthouses and play in rooftop pleasure gardens while the faceless workers toil in the machine caverns far, far below."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The film has an approval rating of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 126 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A visually awe-inspiring science fiction classic from the silent era." In Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 98 out of 100 based on 14 critics, Indicating "universal acclaim." It also ranked 12th in "Empire" magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. The 2002 version was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Awards "Special Award" for the restoration. In 2012, in correspondence with the "Sight & Sound" Poll, the British Film Institute called "Metropolis" the 35th-greatest film of all time.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Lane Roth in "Film Quarterly" called it a "seminal film" because of its concerns with "profound impact technological progress has on man's social and spiritual progress" and concluded that "ascendancy of artifact over nature is depicted not as liberating man, but as subjugating and corrupting him". Martin Scorsese included it on a list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker."


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Exploring the dramatic production background and historical importance of the film's complex political context in "The American Conservative", film historian Cristobal Catalan suggests "Metropolis is a passionate call, and equally a passionate caution, for social change". Peter Bradshaw noted that The "Maschinenmensch" based on Maria is "a brilliant eroticisation and fetishisation of modern technology".


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The original premiere cut of "Metropolis" has been lost, and for decades the film could be seen only in heavily truncated edits that lacked nearly a quarter of the original length. But over the years, various elements of footage have been rediscovered. This was the case even though cinematographer Karl Freund followed the usual practice of the time of securing three printable takes of each shot in order to create three camera negatives which could be edited for striking prints. Two of these negatives were destroyed when Paramount reedited the film for the US market and the UK market. UFA itself cut the third negative for the August 1927 release.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Between 1968 and 1972, the Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR, with the help of film archives from around the world, put together a version of "Metropolis" which restored some scenes and footage, but the effort was hobbled by a lack of a guide, such as an original script, to determine what, exactly, was in the original version.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In 1984, a new restoration and edit of the film, running 83 minutes, was made by Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder, who paid $200,000 for the rights, outbidding his "Cat People" collaborator David Bowie. Although Moroder initially intended only to create a new soundtrack, he was surprised by the lack of a definitive print, and expanded his project to a major reconstruction. Moroder's version, which was made in consultation with the Munich Film Archive and their archivist, Enno Patalas, was tinted to emphasise the different moods and locations in the film. It also featured additional special effects, replaced intertitles of character dialogue with subtitles and incorporated a soundtrack featuring songs Moroder composed, produced and recorded with popular artists such as Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Pat Benatar, Adam Ant and Jon Anderson. It was the first serious attempt made at restoring "Metropolis" to Lang's original vision, and until the restorations in 2001 and 2010, it was the most complete version of the film commercially available. The shorter run time was due to the extensive use of subtitles for spoken lines instead of title cards, a faster frame rate than the original, and the fact that large amounts of footage were still missing at the time.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Moroder's version of "Metropolis" generally received poor reviews. Moroder responded to the critics who lambasted his production for not being faithful to the original in "The New York Times": "I didn't touch the original because there is no original." The film was nominated for two Raspberry Awards, Worst Original Song for "Love Kills" and Worst Musical Score for Moroder. However, Bonnie Tyler was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance at the 27th Grammy Awards for "Here She Comes".


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In August 2011, after years of the Moroder version being unavailable on video in any format due to music licensing problems, it was announced that Kino International had managed to resolve the situation, and the film was to be released on Blu-ray and DVD in November. In addition, the film enjoyed a limited theatrical re-release.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In 2012, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films gave "Giorgio Moroder Presents Metropolis" a Saturn Award for Best DVD/Blu-Ray Special Edition Release.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The moderate commercial success of the Moroder version inspired Enno Patalas, the archivist of the Munich Film Archive, to make an exhaustive attempt to restore the movie in 1986. Starting from the version in the Museum of Modern Art collection, this version took advantage of new acquisitions and newly discovered German censorship records of the original inter-titles, as well as the musical score and other materials from the estate of composer Gottfried Huppertz. The Munich restoration also utilized newly rediscovered still photographs to represent scenes that were still missing from the film. The Munich version was 9,840 feet, or 109 minutes long.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In 1998, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung commissioned film preservationist Martin Koerber to create a "definitive" restoration of "Metropolis" by expanding on the Munich version. Previously unknown sections of the film were discovered in film museums and archives around the world, including a nitrate original camera negative from the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, as well as nitrate prints from the George Eastman House, the British Film Institute and the Cineteca Italiana. These original film elements, digitally cleaned and repaired to remove defects, were used to assemble the film. Newly written intertitles were used to explain missing scenes.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The 2001 restoration premiered on 15 February 2001 at the Berlin Film Festival, with a new score by Bernd Schultheis, performed live by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. For theatrical and DVD release, it featured a new recording of Huppertz's original score performed by a 65-piece orchestra. The running time is 124 minutes at 24 fps, and it was released internationally on various DVD editions beginning in 2003.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: On 1 July 2008, film experts in Berlin announced that a 16 mm reduction negative of the original cut had been discovered in the archives of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The negative was a safety reduction made in the 1960s or 1970s from a 35 mm positive of Lang's original version, which an Argentinian film distributor had obtained in advance of arranging theatrical engagements in South America. The safety reduction was intended to safeguard the contents in case the original's flammable nitrate film stock was destroyed. The negative was passed to a private collector, an art foundation and finally the Museo del Cine.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The print was investigated by the Argentinian film collector/historian and TV presenter , along with Paula Felix-Didier, the head of the museum, after Peña heard an anecdote from a cinema club manager expressing surprise at the length of a print of "Metropolis" he had viewed. The print was indeed Lang's full original, with about 25 minutes of footage, around one-fifth of the film, that had not been seen since 1927.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: Under the auspices of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Berlin's Deutsche Kinemathek and Museo del Cine, a group of experts, including Anke Wilkening, Martin Koerber, and Frank Strobel began combining the newly discovered footage with the existing footage from the 2001 restoration. A major problem was that the Argentinian footage was in poor condition and had many scratches, streaks, and changes in brightness. Some of this they were able to overcome with digital technology, which would not have been possible in 2001. The reconstruction of the film with the new footage was once again accompanied by the original music score, including Huppertz's handwritten notes, which acted as the key resource in determining the places in which the restored footage would go. Since the Argentinian print was a complete version of the original, some scenes from the 2001 restoration were put in different places than previously, and the tempo of the original editing was restored.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: In 2005, Australian historian and politician Michael Organ had examined a print of the film in the National Film Archive of New Zealand. Organ discovered that the print contained scenes missing from other copies of the film. After hearing of the discovery of the Argentine print of the film and the restoration project, Organ contacted the German restorers; the New Zealand print contained 11 missing scenes and featured some brief pieces of footage that were used to restore damaged sections of the Argentine print. It is believed that the New Zealand and Argentine prints were all sourced from the same master. The newly discovered footage was used in the restoration project. The Argentine print was in poor condition and required considerable restoration before it was re-premiered in February 2010. Two short sequences, depicting a monk preaching and a fight between Rotwang and Fredersen, were damaged beyond repair. Title cards describing the action were inserted by the restorers to compensate. The Argentine print revealed new scenes that enriched the film's narrative complexity. The characters of Josaphat, the Thin Man, and 11811 appear throughout the film and the character Hel is reintroduced.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The 2010 restoration was premiered on 12 February 2010 at the Berlin Friedrichstadtpalast. Huppertz's score was performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frank Strobel, who also re-recorded it for theatrical and home video release. The performance was a gala screening as part of the 60th Berlinale and had several simultaneous screenings. It was also shown on an outdoor screen at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, as well as at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt am Main. The Brandenburg Gate screening was also telecast live by the Arte network. The North American premiere took place at the 2010 TCM Classic Film Festival in Mann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on 25 April 2010.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The restoration has a running time of 148 minutes (or nearly 2.5 hours) and was released internationally on various DVD and Blu-ray editions beginning in 2010.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The American copyright for "Metropolis" lapsed in 1953, which led to a proliferation of versions being released on video. Along with other foreign-made works, the film's U.S. copyright was restored in 1996 by the Uruguay Round Agreements Act; the constitutionality of this copyright extension was challenged, but was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012's "Golan v. Holder". This had the effect of restoring the copyright in the work as of 1 January 1996.


title: Metropolis (1927 film)

text: The film will remain under copyright in Germany and the rest of the European Union until the end of 2046, 70 years after Fritz Lang's death. Under current U.S. copyright law, "Metropolis" will be copyrighted there only until 31 December 2022; the U.S. copyright limit for films of its age is 95 years from publication per the Copyright Term Extension Act.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Sjögren syndrome or Sjögren's syndrome (SjS, SS) is a long-term autoimmune disease that affects the body's moisture-producing (lacrimal and salivary) glands, and often seriously affects other organ systems, such as the lungs, kidneys, and nervous system. Primary symptoms are dryness (dry mouth and dry eyes), pain and fatigue. Other symptoms can include dry skin, vaginal dryness, a chronic cough, numbness in the arms and legs, feeling tired, muscle and joint pains, and thyroid problems. Those affected are also at an increased risk (15%) of lymphoma.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: While the exact cause is unclear, it is believed to involve a combination of genetics and an environmental trigger such as exposure to a virus or bacterium. It can occur independently of other health problems (primary Sjögren's syndrome) or as a result of another connective tissue disorder (secondary Sjögren's syndrome). Sjögren's syndrome may be associated with other autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) or systemic sclerosis. The inflammation that results progressively damages the glands. Diagnosis is by biopsy of moisture-producing glands and blood tests for specific antibodies. On biopsy there are typically lymphocytes within the glands.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: While Sjögren's syndrome is one of the most common auto-immune diseases, it has no specific and non-invasive diagnostic tests and treatment is directed at managing the person's symptoms. For dry eyes, artificial tears, medications to reduce inflammation, punctal plugs, or surgery to shut the tear ducts may be tried. For a dry mouth, chewing gum (preferably sugar-free), sipping water, or a saliva substitute may be used. In those with joint or muscle pain, ibuprofen may be used. Medications that can cause dryness, such as antihistamines, may also be stopped. The most specific extant diagnostic test requires lip biopsy.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: The disease was described in 1933 by Henrik Sjögren, after whom it is named; however, a number of earlier descriptions of people with the symptoms exist. Between 0.2 and 1.2% of the population is affected, with half having the primary form and half the secondary form. Females are affected about 10 times as often as are males. Though the disease commonly begins in middle age, anyone can be affected. Among those without other autoimmune disorders, life expectancy is unchanged.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: The hallmark symptom of Sjögren syndrome is dry mouth and keratoconjunctivitis sicca (dry eyes). Vaginal dryness, dry skin, and dry nose may also occur. Other organs of the body may also be affected, including the kidneys, blood vessels, lungs, liver, pancreas, and brain.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Skin dryness in some people with SS may be the result of lymphocytic infiltration into skin glands. The symptoms may develop insidiously, with the diagnosis often not considered for several years because sicca may be attributed to medications, a dry environment, or aging, or may be regarded as not of a severity warranting the level of investigation necessary to establish the presence of the underlying autoimmune disorder.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Sjögren's syndrome can damage vital organs, with symptoms that may plateau or worsen, or go into remission, as with other autoimmune diseases. Some people may experience only the mild symptoms of dry eyes and mouth, while others have symptoms of severe disease. Many patients can treat problems symptomatically. Others experience blurred vision, constant eye discomfort, recurrent mouth infections, swollen parotid glands, dysphonia (vocal disorders including hoarseness), and difficulty in swallowing and eating. Debilitating fatigue and joint pain can seriously impair quality of life. Some patients can develop kidney involvement (autoimmune tubulointerstitial nephritis) leading to proteinuria (excess protein in urine), urinary concentrating defect, and distal renal tubular acidosis.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Among the complications discussed above, women with anti-Ro/SS-A and anti-La/SS-B antibodies who become pregnant have an increased rate of neonatal lupus erythematosus with congenital heart block requiring a pacemaker. Type I cryoglobulinemia is a known complication of Sjögren's syndrome.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Sjögren's syndrome can affect such organs as the liver, pancreas, kidneys, lungs, and central nervous system.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Sjögren's syndrome is associated with a number of other medical conditions, many of which are autoimmune or rheumatic disorders, such as celiac disease, fibromyalgia, SLE (lupus), autoimmune thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis and spondyloarthropathy, and several malignancies, principally non-Hodgkin lymphoma.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: The cause of Sjögren's syndrome is unknown, but it may be the influence of a combination of genetic, environmental, and other factors, as is the case with many other autoimmune disorders. Around 20 autoantibodies could be involved.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: The observation of high rates of autoimmune disorders in families with a history of Sjögren's syndrome is linked with a genetic predisposition to the syndrome. Studies on the polymorphisms of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR and HLA-DQ gene regions in Sjögren's patients show differential susceptibility to the syndrome as the result of different types of the resulting autoantibody production.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Since Sjögren's syndrome is associated with a high prevalence in women, sex hormones, especially estrogen, are believed to affect humoral and cell-mediated immune responses affecting susceptibility to the syndrome. Androgens are generally considered to prevent autoimmunity. Studies on mice models suggest estrogen deficiency stimulates presentation of autoantigens, inducing Sjögren's-like symptoms.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Microchimerism of fetal cells (offspring lymphoid cells in maternal circulation) may generate autoimmunity in women who have previously been pregnant. Generation of an autoimmune potential via microchimerism may lead to a switch from a silent form of autoimmunity with age-dependent decrease in self-tolerance.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Viral proteins, engulfed molecules, or degraded self-structures may initiate autoimmunity by molecular mimicry and increase the chances of Sjögren's syndrome development. Epstein–Barr virus, hepatitis C, and human T-cell leukemia virus-1 are among the most studied infectious agents in Sjögren's syndrome. To date, no direct causes and effect relationship has been identified between these pathogens and the development of Sjögren's syndrome. Damaged self-structures targeted for apoptosis may be mistakenly exposed to the immune system, triggering autoimmunity in exocrine glands, which are often prone to autoimmune responses.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: The pathogenetic mechanisms of Sjögren's syndrome have not been fully elucidated, resulting in the lack of pathophysiology knowledge of the management of this autoimmune exocrinopathy. Although the numerous factors contributing to the progression of this disease have made discovering the exact origin and cause difficult, major advances over the past decade have contributed to a proposed set of pathogenic events that occur prior to the diagnosis of Sjögren's syndrome.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Sjögren's syndrome was originally proposed as a specific, self-perpetuating, immune system-mediated loss of exocrine glands, specifically acinar and ductal cells. Although this explains the more obvious symptoms (such as the lack of saliva and lacrimal fluid), it does not explain the more widespread systemic effects seen in the progression of the disease.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: In the presence of a susceptible genetic background, both environmental and hormonal factors are thought capable of triggering the infiltration of lymphocytes, specifically CD4+ T cells, B cells, and plasma cells, causing glandular dysfunction in the salivary and lacrimal glands.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Sjögren's syndrome is associated with increased levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of IL-1RA, an interleukin 1 antagonist. This suggests that the disease begins with increased activity in the interleukin 1 system, followed by an autoregulatory upregulation of IL-1RA to reduce the successful binding of interleukin 1 to its receptors. Interleukin 1 likely is the marker for fatigue, but increased IL-1RA is observed in the CSF and is associated with increased fatigue through cytokine-induced sickness behavior. However, Sjögren's syndrome is characterized by decreased levels of IL-1ra in saliva, which could be responsible for mouth inflammation and dryness. Patients with secondary Sjögren's syndrome also often exhibit signs and symptoms of their primary rheumatic disorders, such as systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, or systemic sclerosis.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: The genetic locus most significantly associated with primary SS is the major histocompatibility complex/human leukocyte antigen (MHC/HLA) region, as demonstrated by the preliminary results of the first genome-wide association study. This study included data from a discovery cohort of 395 patients of European ancestry with primary Sjögren's syndrome, and 1,975 healthy control individuals, and from a replication study that comprised 1,234 cases and 4,779 healthy controls. Associations with polymorphisms located at six independent loci were also detected; "IRF5, STAT4, BLK, IL12A, TNIP1," and "CXCR5". This also suggested the activation of the innate immune system, notably through the IFN system, B-cell activation through "CXCR5"-directed recruitment to lymphoid follicles and B-cell receptor (BCR) activation involving" BLK", and T-cell activation owing to HLA susceptibility and the IL-12-IFN-γ-axis.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Patients of different ethnic origin carry different HLA-susceptibility alleles, of which HLA-DR and HLA-DQ are involved in the pathogenesis of Sjögren's syndrome. For example, patients from Northern and Western Europe and from North America show a high prevalence of "B8, DRw52," and "DR3" genes. HLA class II alleles are associated with the presence of specific subsets of autoantibodies, rather than with the disease itself. Autoantibodies refer to the loss of B-cell tolerance leading to production of antibodies directed against diverse organ-specific and organ nonspecific antigens. Association between HLA and SS is restricted to patients with anti-SSA/Ro or anti-SSB/La antibodies. Seropositivity for anti-Ro and anti-La is associated with greater severity and longer duration of disease, and findings of their high abundance from the salivary glands of Sjögren's patients suggests their imperative role in the pathogenesis of SS.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Beyond genetics, epigenetic abnormality related to DNA methylation, histone acetylation, or microRNA expression probably has a key role in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, including Sjögren's syndrome, though research in this area is very limited.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Environmental factors, such as glandular viral infection, could prompt epithelial cells to activate the HLA-independent innate immune system through toll-like receptors. Although a number of infectious, exogenous agents have been implicated in the pathogenesis of Sjögren's syndrome, such as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), human T-lymphotropic virus 1, and hepatitis C virus, their association with Sjögren's syndrome appears weak. While EBV is present in the salivary glands of normal individuals, a high incidence of EBV reactivation in Sjögren's patients has been reported with increased levels of EBV DNA. This indicates viral reactivation and inability of lymphoid infiltrates to control EBV replication in Sjögren's syndrome, leading to the initiation or perpetuation of an immune response in target organs. Nonetheless, exactly how reactivation of EBV is induced in lesions of patients with Sjögren's syndrome, and which specific molecular mechanisms are involved in the process of viral reactivation, remain to be clarified.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Epithelial cells in Sjögren's syndrome lesions are active participants in the induction and perpetuation of the inflammatory process. Environmental and hormonal factors, in concert with an appropriate genetic background, are believed to trigger Sjögren's syndrome, which dysregulates epithelial cells and allows aberrant homing and activation of dendritic cells (DCs), T cells, and B cells. Dendritic cells are antigen-presenting cells that process antigen material and present it to other T cells. Following the migration of lymphocytes into the glands in response to chemokines and specific adhesion molecules, T cells interact with epithelial cells. Epithelial cells are further activated by proinflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IFN-γ, and TNF), which are produced by adjacent T cells. The early accumulation of plasmacytoid dendritic cells in the target tissues, which produce high levels of type 1 IFNs, seems important, as these cells can further dysregulate the immune response through abnormal retention of lymphocytes in the tissues and their subsequent activation. IFN-α stimulates the production of B-cell activating factor (BAFF) by epithelial cells, DCs, and T cells. BAFF stimulates aberrant B-cell maturation, leading to the emergence of self-reactive B cells, which locally produce autoantibodies, in a germinal centre-like structure (GC-like), which is also the location of lymphomagenesis (origin of lymphoma).


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Dysregulation of apoptosis (programmed cell death) is believed to play a role in the pathogenesis of a variety of autoimmune diseases, though its role in Sjögren's syndrome is controversial. Both the Fas and Fas ligand proteins are overexpressed in primary Sjögren's patients, while expression of BCL-1, which is known to downregulate apoptosis, was found significantly reduced in acinar and ductal epithelial cells of Sjögren's patients compared to healthy people. "In situ" studies did not show increased apoptosis among glandular epithelial cells, but did show reduced apoptosis among infiltrating mononuclear cells. Reduced apoptosis was also implicated in the accumulation of autoreactive B-cells found in the glands. The relationship of autoantibodies expressed in Sjögren's syndrome with apoptosis is still being researched.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Sex hormones seem to influence humoral and cell-mediated immune response, with estrogen being considered one of the biggest factors responsible for sex-immunologic dimorphism. Estrogen deficiency appears to play a role in development of Sjögren's syndrome. It has been hypothesized that androgen administration to the ocular surface may serve as an effective therapy for dry eyes.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Diagnosing Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is complicated by the range of symptoms that a patient may manifest, and the similarity between symptoms of Sjögren's syndrome and those of other conditions. Also, patients with SS symptoms approach different specialities for treatment, which can make diagnosis difficult. Since dry eyes and dry mouth are very common symptoms, and frequently occur in people over 40, affected people may believe that the symptoms are age-related, so ignore them. Some medications can cause symptoms similar to those of Sjögren's syndrome. The combination of several tests, which can be done in a series, can eventually diagnose Sjögren's syndrome.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Blood tests can be done to determine if a patient has high levels of antibodies that are indicative of the condition, such as antinuclear antibody (ANA) and rheumatoid factor (because Sjögren's syndrome frequently occurs secondary to rheumatoid arthritis), which are associated with autoimmune diseases. Typical SS ANA patterns are SSA/Ro and SSB/La, of which anti-SSB/La is far more specific; anti-SSA/Ro is associated with numerous other autoimmune conditions, but is often present in SS, but aAnti-SSA and anti-SSB tests are frequently not positive in SS.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: The rose bengal test uses a stain that measures state and function of the lacrimal glands. This test involves placing the nontoxic dye rose bengal on the eyes. The dye's distinctive colour helps in determining the state and functioning of tear film and the rate of tear evaporation. Any distinctive colour change can indicate SS, but confirming the condition requires many related diagnostic tools.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Schirmer's test measures the production of tears: a strip of filter paper is held inside the lower eyelid for five minutes, and its wetness is then measured with a ruler. Producing less than of liquid is usually indicative of SS. This measurement analysis varies among people depending on other eye-related conditions and medications in use when the test is taken. A slit-lamp examination can reveal dryness on the surface of the eye.


title: Sjögren syndrome

text: Symptoms of dry mouth and dryness in the oral cavity are caused by the reduced production of saliva from the salivary glands (parotid gland, submandibular gland, and sublingual gland). To check the status of salivary glands and the production of saliva, a salivary flow-rate test is performed, in which the person is asked to spit as much as they can into a cup, and the resulting saliva sample is collected and weighed. This test's results can determine whether the salivary glands are functioning adequately. Not enough saliva produced could mean the person has SS. An alternative test is nonstimulated whole saliva flow collection, in which the person spits into a test tube every minute for 15 minutes. A resultant collection of less than is considered a positive result.