Career.

Early years.

Connors grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, and was raised Catholic. During his childhood he was coached and trained by his mother and grandmother. He played in his first U.S. Championship, the U.S. boys' 11-and-under of 1961, when he was nine years old. Connors' mother, Gloria, took him to Southern California to be coached by Pancho Segura, starting at age 16, in 1968. He and his brother, John "Johnny" Connors, attended St. Phillip's grade school.  Connors won the Junior Orange Bowl in both the 12- and the 14-year categories, and is one of only nine tennis players to win the Junior Orange Bowl championship twice in its 70-year history, which list includes Andy Murray, Jennifer Capriati, Monica Seles, and Yshai Oliel. In 1970, Connors recorded his first victory in the first round of the Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles, defeating Roy Emerson. In 1971, Connors won the NCAA singles title as a Freshman while attending UCLA and attained All-American status.  He turned professional in 1972 and won his first tournament, the Jacksonville Open. Connors was acquiring a reputation as a maverick in 1972 when he refused to join the newly formed Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the union that was embraced by most male professional players, in order to play in and dominate a series of smaller tournaments organized by Bill Riordan, his manager. However, Connors played in other tournaments and won the 1973 U.S. Pro Singles, his first significant title, toppling Arthur Ashe in a five-set final, 6–3, 4–6, 6–4, 3–6, 6–2.

Peak years.

Connors won eight Grand Slam singles championships: five US Opens, two Wimbledons, and one Australian Open. He did not participate in the French Open during his peak years (1974–78), as he was banned from playing by the event in 1974 due to his association with World Team Tennis (WTT). and in the other four years was either banned or chose not to participate. He only played in two Australian Opens in his entire career, winning it in 1974 and reaching the final in 1975. Few highly ranked players, aside from Australians, travelled to Australia for that event up until the mid-1980s.  In 1974, Connors was the dominant player and held the ATP No. 1 ranking at the end of the year. He had a 99–4 record that year and won 15 tournaments of the 21 he entered, including three of the four Grand Slam singles titles. As noted, the French Open did not allow Connors to participate due to his association with World Team Tennis (WTT), but he won the Australian Open, which began in late December 1973 and concluded on January 1, 1974, defeating Phil Dent in four sets, and beat Ken Rosewall in straight sets in the finals of both Wimbledon and the US Open losing only 6 and 2 games, respectively, in those finals. His exclusion from the French Open denied him the opportunity to become the second male player of the Open Era, after Rod Laver, to win all four Major singles titles in a calendar year. He chose not to participate in the season-ending Masters Cup between the top eight players of the world and was not eligible for the World Championship Tennis (WCT) finals because he did not compete in the WCT's regular tournaments.  In the open era, Connors is one of only six men to win three or more Grand Slam singles titles in a calendar year. The others are: Rod Laver who won the Grand Slam in 1969; Mats Wilander won the Australian, French and US Open in 1988; Roger Federer won the Australian, Wimbledon and US Open in 2004, 2006 and 2007; Rafael Nadal won the French, Wimbledon, and US Open in 2010; and Novak Djokovic won the Australian, Wimbledon, and US Open in 2011 and 2015.  Connors reached the final of the US Open in five straight years from 1974 through 1978, winning three times with each win being on a different surface (1974 on grass, 1976 on clay and 1978 on hard). He reached the final of Wimbledon four out of five years during his peak (1974, 1975, 1977 and 1978). Despite not being allowed to play or choosing not to participate in the French Open from 1974 to 1978, he was still able to reach the semifinals four times in the later years of his career.  In 1975, Connors reached the finals of Wimbledon, the US Open and Australia, he but did not win any of them, although his loss to John Newcombe was close as Connors lost 9-7 in a fourth set tiebreak. He won nine of the tournaments he entered achieving an 82–8 record. While he achieved enough points to retain the ATP No. 1 ranking the entire year, most tennis authorities, including the ATP, named Arthur Ashe, who solidly defeated Connors at Wimbledon, as the Player of the Year. He once again did not participate in the Masters Cup or the WCT Finals.  In 1976, Connors captured the US Open once again (defeating Björn Borg) while losing in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon. While winning 12 events, including the U.S. Pro Indoor in Philadelphia, Palm Springs and Las Vegas, he achieved a record of 90–8 and defeated Borg all four times they played. He was ranked No. 1 by the ATP for the entire year and was named the player of the year by most tennis sources, but not by the ATP, which named Björn Borg as its player of the year.  In 1977, Connors lost in the Wimbledon finals to Borg 6-4 in the fifth set and in the US Open finals to Guillermo Vilas, but Connors captured both the Masters, beating Borg, and the WCT Finals. While holding onto the ATP No. 1 ranking, the World Tennis Magazine and most tennis authorities ranked Borg or Vilas No. 1 with Connors rated as No. 3 behind Borg.  In 1978, Borg defeated Connors in the Wimbledon final, but Connors defeated Borg at the US Open (played on hard court for the inaugural time) with both of their victories being dominating. Connors also won the U.S. Pro Indoor. While he retained the ATP No. 1 ranking at the end of the year, the ATP and most tennis authorities rated Borg, who also won the French Open, as the player of the year.  Connors reached the ATP world No. 1 ranking on July 29, 1974 and held it for 160 consecutive weeks, a record until it was surpassed by Roger Federer on February 26, 2007. He was the ATP year-end no. 1 player from 1974 through 1978 and held the No. 1 ranking for a total of 268 weeks during his career.  In 1979 through 1981, Connors generally reached the semi-finals of the three top Grand Slam events and the Masters each year, but he did win the WCT Finals in 1980. He was generally ranked third in the world those years.  In 1982 Connors experienced a resurgence as he defeated John McEnroe in five close sets to win Wimbledon and Ivan Lendl to win the US Open after which he reclaimed the ATP No. 1 ranking. He also reached the semi-final of the Masters Cup and won five other tournaments. After trading the No. 1 ranking with back and forth with McEnroe, he finished the year ranked No. 2 in points earned, but he was named Player of the Year by the ATP and most other authorities due to his victories at Wimbledon and the US Open.  In 1983, Connors, McEnroe and Lendl traded the No. 1 ranking several times with Connors winning the US Open for a record fifth time (beating Lendl in the final) and finishing the year as the No. 3 ranked player.

Contemporaries and rivalries.

Prominent contemporary players with Connors included Phil Dent, Brian Gottfried, Raul Ramírez, Harold Solomon, Dick Stockton, Roscoe Tanner, and Guillermo Vilas. His older rivals included Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, Ilie Năstase, John Newcombe, Manuel Orantes, Ken Rosewall, and Stan Smith. His prominent younger opponents included Björn Borg, Vitas Gerulaitis, Ivan Lendl, and John McEnroe.

Björn Borg.

During his best years of 1974 through 1978, Connors was challenged the most by Borg, with twelve matches on tour during that time frame. Borg won only four of those meetings, but two of those wins were in the Wimbledon finals of 1977 and 1978. Connors lost his stranglehold on the top ranking to Borg in early 1979 and wound up with an official tour record of 8–15 against Borg as Borg is four years younger and won the last ten times they met. Head to head in major championship finals, they split their four meetings, Borg winning two Wimbledons (1977 & 1978) and Connors winning two US Opens (1976 & 1978).

Ilie Năstase.

Nastase was another rival in Connors' prime. Though six years older than Connors, Nastase won ten of their first eleven meetings. However, Connors won 11 of their final 14 meetings. The two would team up to win the doubles championships at the 1973 Wimbledon and the 1975 US Open.

Manuel Orantes and Guillermo Vilas.

Orantes upset Connors in the final of the 1975 US Open, but Connors was 11–3 overall against Orantes in tour events. On the other hand, Vilas wore down Connors in the final of the 1977 US Open and was much more competitive in all of their meetings. Connors was only able to manage a 5–4 record against Vilas in tour events.

Rod Laver and John Newcombe.

In 1975, Connors won two highly touted "Challenge Matches", both arranged by the Riordan company and televised nationally by CBS Sports from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first match, in February and billed as $100,000 ($ today) winner-takes-all, was against Laver. Connors won that match, 6–4, 6–2, 3–6, 7–5. In April, Connors met Newcombe in a match billed as a $250,000 winner-takes-all. Connors won the match, 6–3, 4–6, 6–2, 6–4. Connors ended his business relationship with Riordan later in 1975.  Connors played Newcombe in four tour events, with Newcombe winning the first two meetings on grass (1973 US Open quarterfinal and 1975 Australian Open final) and Connors winning the last two on hard courts (1978 Sydney Indoor quarterfinal and 1979 Hong Kong round of 16). Connors won all three meetings with Rod Laver in tour events.

Later years.

In 1984 Connors had made both the finals of Wimbledon and the WCT finals with semifinal appearances at the French Open, the US Open, and the Masters Cup. He finished the year as the No. 2 ranked player after McEnroe. In 1985 he made the semi-finals of the big 4 four events and finished number No. 4 for the year, a ranking he would again obtain in 1987 at the age of 35.  Connors had shining moments against John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl, both of whom rose to prominence after Connors peaked in the mid-1970s. He would continue to compete against much younger players and had one of the most remarkable comebacks for any athlete when he reached the semifinals of the 1991 US Open at the age of 39.

John McEnroe.

In the 1980 WCT Finals, Connors defeated the defending champion, John McEnroe. McEnroe and Borg were battling for the top spot in that year, while Connors played the role of the spoiler. However, in 1982, at age 29, Connors was back in the Wimbledon singles final, where he faced McEnroe, who by then was established firmly as the world's top player. Connors recovered from being three points away from defeat in a fourth-set tie-break (at 3–4) to win the match, 3–6, 6–3, 6–7, 7–6, 6–4, and claimed his second Wimbledon title, eight years after his first. Although Connors' tour record against McEnroe was 14–20, McEnroe is six years younger than Connors and had a losing record against Connors until he won 12 out of their last 14 meetings. Head to head in major championship finals, they split their two meetings, Connors winning the 1982 Wimbledon in five sets, and McEnroe winning the 1984 Wimbledon in straight sets. McEnroe won six of their nine meetings in Grand Slam events.

Ivan Lendl.

Connors defeated another of the next generation of tennis stars, Ivan Lendl, in the 1982 US Open final and soon regained the No. 1 ranking. Connors had a tour record of 13–22 against Lendl, but Lendl is seven years younger than Connors and had a losing record against Connors until he won their last 17 matches from 1984 through 1992, after Connors' prime. Head to head in major championship finals, Connors defeated Lendl in both meetings, winning the 1982 and 1983 US Open.

Other matches.

Connors continued to compete against younger men well into his 41st year.  In the fourth round of the 1987 Wimbledon Championships, Connors defeated Mikael Pernfors, ten years his junior, 1–6, 1–6, 7–5, 6–4, 6–2, after having trailed 4–1 in the third set and 3–0 in the fourth set. In July 1988, Connors ended a four-year title drought by winning the Sovran Bank Tennis Classic in Washington, D.C. It was the 106th title of his career. Connors had played in 56 tournaments and lost 11 finals since his previous victory in the Tokyo Indoors against Lendl in October 1984.  At the 1989 US Open, Connors defeated the third seed (and future two-time champion), Stefan Edberg, in straight sets in the fourth round and pushed sixth-seeded Andre Agassi to five sets in a quarterfinal.  His career seemed to be at an end in 1990, when he played only three tournament matches and lost all three, dropping to No. 936 in the world rankings. However, after surgery on his deteriorating left wrist, he came back to play 14 tournaments in 1991. An ailing back forced him to retire from a five-sets match in the third round of the French Open against Michael Chang, the 1989 champion. Connors walked off the court after hitting a winner against Chang.  Connors recuperated and made an improbable run to the 1991 US Open semifinals which he later said were "the best 11 days of my tennis career". On his 39th birthday he defeated 24-year-old Aaron Krickstein, 3–6, 7–6, 1–6, 6–3, 7–6, in 4 hours and 41 minutes, coming back from a 2–5 deficit in the final set. Connors then defeated Paul Haarhuis in the quarterfinals before losing to Jim Courier. 22 years later ESPN aired a documentary commemorating Connors' run.  Connors participated in his last major tournament, in the 1992 US Open, where he beat Jaime Oncins, 6–1, 6–2, 6–3 in the first round, before losing to Lendl (then ranked No. 7), 6–3, 3–6, 2–6, 0–6 in the second round.  In September 1992, Connors played Martina Navratilova in the third Battle of the Sexes tennis match at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Connors was allowed only one serve per point and Navratilova was allowed to hit into half the doubles court. Connors won, 7–5, 6–2.  However, this would not be the end of his playing career. As late as June 1995, three months shy of his 43rd birthday Connors beat Sébastien Lareau, 6–4, 7–6, and Martin Sinner, 7–6, 6–0, to progress to the quarterfinals of the Halle event in Germany. Connors lost this quarterfinal, 6–7, 3–6 to Marc Rosset. Connors' last match on the main ATP tour came in April 1996, when he lost, 2–6, 6–3, 1–6, to Richey Reneberg in Atlanta.

Maverick.

In 1974, Connors and Riordan began filing lawsuits, amounting to $10 million, against the ATP and its president, Arthur Ashe, for allegedly restricting his freedom in the game. The lawsuits stemmed from the French Open banning Connors in 1974 after he had signed a contract to play World Team Tennis (WTT) for the Baltimore Banners. Connors was seeking to enter the French Open, but the ATP and French officials opposed WTT because of scheduling conflicts, so the entries of WTT players were refused between 1974 and 1978. Connors dropped Riordan and eventually the lawsuits after losing to Ashe in the 1975 Wimbledon final (according to the official film produced by Wimbledon 1975, his $2 million suit against Ashe was still outstanding when the two met in the 1975 Wimbledon final).  At Wimbledon in 1977, he declined to participate in a parade of former champions to celebrate the tournament's centenary, choosing instead to practice in the grounds with Ilie Nastase while the parade took place. In 2000, he also declined to join a gathering of 58 former champions held to mark the millennium. In his 2013 autobiography, Connors blamed his missing the 1977 parade on the All England Club for not letting his doctor onto the grounds so that Connors could try on a customized splint for a thumb injury. Connors explained that this necessitated his rushing to meet the doctor at the entrance to the grounds, and then convincing Nastase to help him try out the splint on a practice court. By Connors' account, he then rushed to Centre Court for the parade, but was too late. He was booed when he played his first round match the next day. Reaching the final, he lost in five sets to Borg, who a month later was able briefly to interrupt Connors's long hold on the world No. 1 ranking.  Connors also irritated sponsors and tennis officials by shunning the end-of-year Masters championship from 1974 through 1976. However, he entered this round-robin competition in 1977 when it moved to New York City. Although Connors lost a celebrated late-night match to Vilas, 4–6, 6–3, 5–7, he took the title by defeating Borg in the final, 6–4, 1–6, 6–4.

Distinctions and honors.

Connors is often considered among the greatest tennis players in the history of the sport. Connors won a male record 109 singles titles. He also won 16 doubles titles (including the men's doubles titles at Wimbledon in 1973 and the US Open in 1975). Connors has won more matches (1,274) than any other male professional tennis player in the open era. His career win-loss record was 1,274–282 for a winning percentage of 82.4. He played 401 tournaments, a record until Fabrice Santoro overtook it in 2008.  In Grand Slam Singles events, Connors reached the semifinals or better a total of 31 times and the quarterfinals or better a total of 41 times, despite entering the Australian Open Men's Singles only twice and not entering the French Open Men's Singles for five of his peak career years. The 31 semifinals stood as a record until surpassed by Roger Federer at Wimbledon 2012. The 41 quarterfinals remained a record until Roger Federer surpassed it at Wimbledon 2014. Connors was the only player to win the US Open on three different surfaces: grass, clay, and hard. He was also the first male tennis player to win Grand Slam singles titles on three different surfaces: grass (1974), clay (1976), and hard (1978).  Connors was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1998 and Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Hall of Fame in 1986. He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. In his 1979 autobiography, tennis promoter and Grand Slam winning player Jack Kramer ranked Connors as one of the 21 best players of all time. Because of his fiery competitiveness and acrimonious relationships with a number of peers, he has been likened to baseball player Pete Rose.

Playing style.

In the modern era of power tennis, Connors's style of play has often been cited as highly influential, especially in the development of the flat backhand. Larry Schwartz on ESPN.com said about Connors, "His biggest weapons were an indomitable spirit, a two-handed backhand and the best service return in the game. It is difficult to say which was more instrumental in Connors becoming a champion.... Though smaller than most of his competitors, Connors didn't let it bother him, making up for a lack of size with determination." Of his own competitive nature Connors has said, "[T]here's always somebody out there who's willing to push it that extra inch, or mile, and that was me. (Laughter) I didn't care if it took me 30 minutes or five hours. If you beat me, you had to be the best, or the best you had that day. But that was my passion for the game. If I won, I won, and if I lost, well, I didn't take it so well."  His on-court antics, designed to get the crowd involved, both helped and hurt his play. Schwartz said, "While tennis fans enjoyed Connors's gritty style and his never-say-die attitude, they often were shocked by his antics. His sometimes vulgar on-court behavior—like giving the finger to a linesman after disagreeing with a call or strutting about the court with the tennis racket handle between his legs; sometimes he would yank on the handle in a grotesque manner and his fans would go wild or groan in disapproval—did not help his approval rating. During the early part of his career, Connors frequently argued with umpires, linesmen, the players union, Davis Cup officials and other players. He was even booed at Wimbledon—a rare show of disapproval there—for snubbing the Parade of Champions on the first day of the Centenary in 1977." His brash behavior both on and off the court earned him a reputation as the brat of the tennis world. Tennis commentator Bud Collins nicknamed Connors the "Brash Basher of Belleville" after the St Louis suburb where he grew up. Connors himself thrived on the energy of the crowd, positive or negative, and manipulated and exploited it to his advantage in many of the greatest matches of his career.  Connors was taught to hit the ball on the rise by his teaching-pro mother, Gloria Connors, a technique he used to defeat the opposition in the early years of his career. Gloria sent her son to Southern California to work with Pancho Segura at the age of 16. Segura advanced Connors' game of hitting the ball on the rise which enabled Connors to reflect the power and velocity of his opponents back at them. Segura was the master strategist in developing Jimmy's complete game. In the 1975 Wimbledon final, Arthur Ashe countered this strategy by taking the pace off the ball, giving Connors only soft junk shots (dinks, drop shots, and lobs) to hit.  In an era when the serve and volley was the norm, Björn Borg excepted, Connors was one of the few players to hit the ball flat, low, and predominantly from the baseline. Connors hit his forehand with a semi-Western grip and with little net clearance. Contemporaries such as Arthur Ashe and commentators such as Joel Drucker characterized his forehand as his greatest weakness, especially on extreme pressure points, as it lacked the safety margin of hard forehands hit with topspin. His serve, while accurate and capable, was never a great weapon for him as it did not reach the velocity and power of his opponents.  His lack of a dominating serve and net game, combined with his individualist style and maverick tendencies, meant that he was not as successful in doubles as he was in singles, although he did win Grand Slam titles with Ilie Năstase, reached a final with Chris Evert, and accumulated 16 doubles titles during his career.

Racket evolution.

At a time when most other tennis pros played with wooden rackets, Connors used the "Wilson T2000" steel racket, which utilized a method for stringing that had been devised and patented by Lacoste in 1953. He played with this chrome tubular steel racket until 1984, when most other pros had shifted to new racket technologies, materials, and designs.  At the Tokyo Indoor in October 1983, Connors switched to a new mid-size graphite racket, the Wilson ProStaff, that had been designed especially for him and he used it on the 1984 tour. But 1985 again found Connors playing with the T2000. In 1987, he finally switched to a graphite racket when he signed a contract with Slazenger to play their Panther Pro Ceramic. In 1990, Connors signed with Estusa.  Connors used lead tape which he would wind around the racket head to provide the proper "feel" for his style of game.

Commentating.

Connors did commentary with NBC-TV in 1990 and 1991, during its coverage of the French Open and Wimbledon tournaments. During the Wimbledon tournaments of 2005, 2006, and 2007, Connors commentated for the BBC alongside John McEnroe (among others), providing moments of heated discussion between two former archrivals. Connors returned to BBC commentary at Wimbledon in 2014. Connors has also served as a commentator and analyst for the Tennis Channel since the US Open tournament of 2009.

Coaching.

On July 24, 2006, at the start of the Countrywide Classic tournament in Los Angeles, American tennis player Andy Roddick announced his partnership with Connors as his coach. In September, 2006 Roddick reached the final of the U.S. Open, where he lost to Roger Federer. On March 6, 2008, Roddick announced the end of that 19-month relationship.  In July 2013 former women's world No. 1 Maria Sharapova announced on her website that Connors was her new coach. On August 15, 2013 Sharapova confirmed that she had ended the partnership with Connors after just one match together.

Author.

In 2013, Connors published his autobiography "The Outsider". It won the British Sports Book Awards in the "Best Autobiography/Biography" category.

Personal life.

Connors was engaged to fellow tennis pro Chris Evert from 1974 to 1975, and they each triumphed in the singles events at the 1974 Wimbledon Championships; a feat labelled "The Lovebird Double" by the media. Their engagement was broken off shortly before the 1975 Wimbledon championship. Connors and Evert briefly reconciled in 1976 and 1978, before parting for good. In May 2013, Connors wrote his autobiography in which he alleged that Evert was pregnant with their child and that she unilaterally made the decision to have an abortion.  Former Miss World Marjorie Wallace was engaged to Connors from 1976 to 1977, but in 1979 Connors married "Playboy" model Patti McGuire. They have two children, son Brett and daughter Aubree, and live in the Santa Barbara, California area.  In the fall of 1988, Connors auditioned to host the NBC daytime version of "Wheel of Fortune", a show he and his wife "never missed an episode" of. However, the job went to Rolf Benirschke. According to show creator Merv Griffin, many news outlets tried to get their hands on Connors' audition tape, but Griffin refused to release it because he said "it wouldn't have been fair to Jimmy."  In the 1990s, he joined his brother John as investors in the Argosy Gaming Company which owned riverboat casinos on the Mississippi River. The two owned 19 percent of the company which was headquartered in the St. Louis metropolitan area of East Alton, Illinois. Argosy narrowly averted bankruptcy in the late 1990s and Connors' brother John personally sought Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In the liquidation, Connors, through his company, Smooth Swing, acquired the Alystra Casino in Henderson, Nevada, for $1.9 million from Union Planters Bank, which had foreclosed on John. In 1995, John Connors had opened the casino with announced plans to include a Jimmy Connors theme area. It was shuttered in 1998 and became a magnet for the homeless and thieves who stripped its copper piping. The casino never reopened under Connors' ownership and it was destroyed in a May 2008 fire.  In October 2005, Connors had successful hip-replacement surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.  On January 8, 2007, Connors' mother Gloria died at age 82.  On November 21, 2008, Connors was arrested outside an NCAA basketball game between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California at Santa Barbara after refusing to comply with an order to leave an area near the entrance to the stadium. The charges were dismissed by a judge on February 10, 2009.  On July 24, 2018, LiveWire Ergogenics, Inc. announced that Connors joined the firm as a spokesman and advisor. The company focuses on special purpose real estate acquisitions and the licensing and management of fully compliant turnkey production facilities for cannabis-based products and services.  In December 2019, Connors appeared as himself on season 18 episode 9 of Family Guy entitled "Christmas is Coming".

James Scott Connors (born September 2, 1952) is a retired American world No. 1 tennis player. He held the top Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking for a then-record 160 consecutive weeks from 1974 to 1977 and a career total of 268 weeks.

James Scott „Jimmy“ Connors (* 2. September 1952 in Belleville, Illinois) ist ein ehemaliger US-amerikanischer Tennisspieler. Connors, der erst im Alter von 43 Jahren sein letztes Spiel auf der Profitour bestritt, gewann in seiner Karriere insgesamt acht Grand-Slam-Turniere im Einzel und zwei im Doppel. Fünf Jahre in Folge (1974–1978) beendete er eine Saison an der Spitze der Weltrangliste und er war insgesamt 268 Wochen die Nummer 1. Connors, der sich vor allem in seinen jungen Jahren durch sein umstrittenes Verhalten auf und neben dem Tennisplatz auszeichnete, war einer der dominierenden Tennisspieler der 1970er und frühen 1980er Jahre.


Product life-cycle management (marketing)

Goals.

The goals of product life cycle management (PLM) are to reduce time to market, improve product quality, reduce prototyping costs, identify potential sales opportunities and revenue contributions, maintain and sustain operational serviceability, and reduce environmental impacts at end-of-life. To create successful new products the company must understand its customers, markets and competitors. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) integrates people, data, processes and business systems. It provides product information for companies and their extended supply chain enterprise. PLM solutions help organizations overcome the increased complexity and engineering challenges of developing new products for the global competitive markets.

Product life cycle.

The concept of product life cycle (PLC) concerns the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. The product life cycle proceeds through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills, tools and processes. PLC management makes the following three assumptions: Once the product is designed and put into the market, the offering should be managed efficiently for the buyers to get value from it. Before entering into any market complete analysis is carried out by the industry for both external and internal factors including the laws and regulations, environment, economics, cultural values and market needs. From the business perspective, as a good business, the product needs to be sold before it finishes its life. In terms of profitability, expiry may jolt the overall profitability of the business therefore there are few strategies, which are practiced to ensure that the product is sold within the defined period of maturity.

Extending the product life cycle.

Extending the product life cycle by improving sales, this can be done through  Something important to notice is that all these techniques rely on advertising to become known. Advertising needs the others to target other potential customers and not the same over and over again.

Characteristics of PLC stages.

There are the following major product life cycle stages:

Identifying PLC stages.

Identifying the stage of a product is an art more than a science, but it's possible to find patterns in some of the general product features at each stage. Identifying product stages when the product is in transition is very difficult. More recently, it has been shown that user-generated contents (UGC) (e.g., in the form of online product reviews) has the potential to reveal buyer personality characteristics that can in turn be used to identify product life cycle stage.

Product life-cycle management (PLM) is the succession of strategies by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold (advertising, saturation) changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stage.

Der Produktlebenszyklus ist ein Konzept der Betriebswirtschaftslehre, das den Prozess von der Markteinführung bzw. Fertigstellung eines marktfähigen Produktes bis zu seiner Herausnahme aus dem Markt beschreibt. Die Produktlebenszeit hingegen ist die Zeitspanne von der Herstellung des Produkts bis zum Zeitpunkt, an dem sich von dem Produkt nichts mehr erwirtschaften lässt. Beim Produktlebenszyklus wird die „Lebensdauer“ eines Produktes am Markt in mehrere Phasen unterteilt, die die Hauptaufgaben der aktiven Produktpolitik im Rahmen des Lebenszyklus-Managements () darstellen. Der Produktlebenszyklus gilt in den meisten Fällen nur für Konsumgüter. Für Innovationen sollte der Technologielebenszyklus (TLC) zu Rate gezogen werden.


Technical information.

They were based on the U880 CPU (an East German clone of the Z80), with clock speeds of 1.75 and 2 MHz.  There were two main lines in the KC 85 series, the KC 85/2 (project name "HC 900") to /4 and the KC 85/1 (project name "Z 9001") by Robotron, which was a different system (only the CPU and the name were the same, but later the format of saving the programs on tape cassettes and the BASIC were also made compatible). In 1989, VEB Mikroelektronik Mühlhausen came up with the KC compact, but due to the GDR collapse very few units were actually produced and sold and—being a CPC clone—it was a KC in name only; thus it is usually not counted among the KC family.  Unlike the Pravetz series 8 personal computers, manufactured in Bulgaria, which were equipped with dedicated displays, floppy discs and good quality keyboards, the entire series used a TV set as display (by standard TV-UHF via coaxial cable, composite video, or RGB) and a standard tape recorder as data storage. The KC 85/1 used an integrated calculator-style keyboard with small "keys" of hard plastics, while KC 85/2-4 used a separate keyboard driven by a remote control IC.  The KC 85/2 was the first computer made in Mühlhausen and had only font ROMs for capital letters, and no BASIC in ROM. Later, the KC 85/3 was introduced and this one had a BASIC interpreter in ROM, freeing the user from having to load the BASIC interpreter from a cassette every time. Both systems typically had 16 KB of RAM, but could be expanded with add-on modules. (The module sockets feature prominently on photos, as they occupy the upper 50% of the casing.) The KC 85/4 had 64 KB of RAM (not counting the video ram of more than 40 KB) and better graphics capabilities.  All KC-series computers from Mühlhausen were capable of displaying graphics at a resolution of 320×256 pixels. But the color possibilities were limited (each 4×8-pixel cell had a single foreground (out of 16) and background color (out of 8, slightly darker than foreground equivalents). This limitation was brought down to 1×8 on the KC 85/4, which also featured a video RAM addressing mode and a special 4-color mode which could color every pixel independently. The colors were not paletted in any KC before the KC compact. There was no "text mode", everything had to be painted; this combined with the video RAM layout described above and ROM code made the KC 85/2-3 rather slow at printing and scrolling (improved very much on KC 85/4). There were no blitters, and the video subsystem was developed in-house (the KC compact used a 6845 as the CPC did of course). Sound and tape output was implemented by CTC channels driving flipflops. Memory bank-switching was common since the total address space was only 64 KB. When running Mühlhausen's BASIC, the video RAM (at 0x8000) was banked in only during video operations, thus the maximum BASIC free RAM was about 47 KB instead of 32 KB. The module extension system also used bank-switching and made it theoretically possible to extend to megabytes of RAM (even more modules could be used by adding expansion devices, yielding sort of a tower), however neither BASIC nor most of the applications were prepared to use this as free space.  The KC 87 was a better KC 85/1 with BASIC also in ROM. There was a color option (the 85/1 was only monochrome), but no real graphics apart from ROM pseudographic characters.  The wiring diagrams are freely available and there were also a lot of different (and often home-made) schemes and hardware parts. Various magazines published programs and hardware diagrams and also instructions on how to build them.

Programming languages.

The KC 85 could be programmed in assembly language and BASIC (the KC 85/2 had to load BASIC from tape), but it was possible to use various modules (sold by VEB Mikroelektronik Mühlhausen) or load software from tape, thus allowing programming in Forth and Pascal. The operating system was CAOS ("Cassette Aided Operating System"). It was a simple monitor where one could run different "system services" like LOAD (load a program), JUMP (into extension module ROM), MODIFY (memory cells) or BASIC (if it had been built into the ROM or had been loaded from tape). New commands could be added to the menu by magic numbers (standard: codice_1) anywhere in the memory space.  In the last years of the GDR, a floppy attachment ("tower"-style, too) was produced. It featured a 4 MHz CPU and a 51⁄4" Floppy drive (you could have up to four of them). These (literally: the U 880 A in the attachment did) were able to run CP/M, which was called MicroDOS. (One had to JUMP from the base system to the floppy system and boot from a floppy—another CAOS or MicroDOS). There was also a disk extension mode for CAOS.

Hobby projects.

There were a lot of different projects for the KC 85:

The KC 85 ('KC' meaning "Kleincomputer", or "small computer") were models of microcomputers built in East Germany, first in 1984 by VEB Robotron (the KC 85/1) and later by VEB Mikroelektronik "Wilhelm Pieck" Mühlhausen (KC 85/2, KC 85/3 and KC 85/4).

Die Kleincomputer der Reihe KC 85/2-4 wurden ab 1984 in der DDR vom volkseigenen Betrieb VEB Mikroelektronik „Wilhelm Pieck“ Mühlhausen aus dem "Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt" in den Modellen HC 900, KC 85/2, KC 85/3 und KC 85/4 gebaut. Der Hersteller dachte zunächst an den Hobby- und Privatbereich, allerdings wurden die meisten Rechner für die Volksbildung reklamiert. Bis kurz vor dem Ende der DDR (ca. 1988) waren diese Computer dadurch für Privatpersonen schwer erhältlich. Auch der hohe Preis (3.900 M für den KC 85/3 – später reduziert auf 1.750 M, 4.600 M für den KC 85/4 – später reduziert auf 2.150 M) sorgte dafür, dass die „Kleincomputer“ kaum ihren Weg in Privathaushalte fanden.


Synopsis.

Act I: Munich, 1864  At the funeral of his father, King Maximilian II of Bavaria, Ludwig is met by three black Nymphs, who warn him of a lonely life and the dangers of water, women and politics, and encourage him to pursue his dreams and to build fantastical castles. His ministers encourage him to pursue war, but Ludwig dreams of a peaceful Bavaria, dedicated to art.  Act II: Bad Kissingen  At a ball, Ludwig and his cousin Elizabeth (Sissi) are in love, but she is married to the Emperor of Austria. Ludwig meets the famous composer Wagner. His ministers are worried about his spending. They force the king to become engaged to Sissi's sister Sophie, who in turn loves the court photographer Hanfstaengl.  Act III: At the palace  Ludwig feels helpless against his ministers and seeks comfort in music. Sissi, accompanied by the court's musical director, von Bülow, sings a song about the Eagle and the Seagull, a symbol of her hopeless love for Ludwig. Sophie sings badly on purpose so that Ludwig will feel justified in cancelling their engagement and she can marry Hanfstaengl. Ludwig adores Wagner's new opera but feels betrayed when he finds the composer in a compromising situation with Bülow's wife Cosima.  Act IV: The Realm of the Castles  Ludwig agrees to sell Bavaria's sovereignty to Prussia to found the German Empire. This gives him the money to build Neuschwanstein Castle and his other architectural fantasies. Ludwig becomes known for his nocturnal sleigh-rides and exotic feasts, and indulges in escapist fantasies. His ministers plot to have Ludwig declared insane and then deposed. Act V: Grotto and Lake  In his crystal grotto under the castle, Ludwig becomes a theatre director, who enacts an orgiastic bacchanal starring Lohengrin and Siegfried. He becomes embroiled in the fantasy and sings a love duet with Sissi. As his ministers are about to depose him, Ludwig relinquishes his royal crown, sceptre and cloak. His fantasies call him to the shore of Lake Starnberg.

Ludwig II: Longing for Paradise ("Ludwig II: Sensucht nach dem Paradies") is a German musical in five acts with music by Franz Hummel and book and lyrics by Stephan Barbarino and Heinz Hauser.

Ludwig II. – Sehnsucht nach dem Paradies ist ein Musical über das Leben und Sterben des bayerischen Königs Ludwig II. uraufgeführt am Originalschauplatz. Die Musik komponierte Franz Hummel,Idee, Buch und Regie für dieses Gesamtkunstwerk stammt von Stephan Barbarino.


Early life.

Astley was born on 6 February 1966 in Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire, the fourth child of his family. His parents divorced when he was five and Astley was brought up by his father. Astley remained in very close contact with his mother, who lived a few blocks away from his father. After finding out that his father was the one who kicked his mother out of the house, Astley distanced himself from his father. His musical career started when he was 10, singing in the local church choir. During his schooldays, Astley formed and played the drums in a number of local bands, where he met guitarist David Morris. After leaving school at sixteen, Astley was employed during the day as a driver in his father's market-gardening business and played drums on the Northern club circuit at night in bands such as Give Way – specialising in covering Beatles and Shadows songs – and FBI, which won several local talent competitions.

Career.

1985–1986: Signing with Stock Aitken Waterman.

In 1985, Astley was performing as a drummer with a soul band named FBI, with Morris on guitar. They were a well-known local band writing and performing their own music, gigging in pubs and clubs. When FBI's lead singer left the band, and Morris left to concentrate on his career in hairdressing, Astley offered to be the lead vocalist. This was when he was noticed by the record producer Pete Waterman, who persuaded him to come to London to work at the Pete Waterman Limited (PWL) recording studio, with RCA Records publishing his records. Under the tutelage of the production team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman, known as Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), Astley was taught about the recording process and groomed for his future career, supposedly starting off as the recording studio "tea boy". The reason for Astley to be hired as a "tape op" was to overcome his shyness. SAW also hired most of FBI, including Morris as a guitarist/songwriter.

1987–1989: Success.

His first single was the little-known "When You Gonna", released as a collaboration with Lisa Carter, with little promotion. It did not chart. His first solo offering was "Never Gonna Give You Up", recorded on New Year's Day 1987, and released eight months later, in August. Astley's distinctive rich, deep voice combined with dance-pop, made the song an immediate success, spending five weeks at the top of the British charts and becoming the year's highest-selling single. The song was also a worldwide number one hit, topping the charts in 24 other countries, including the US, Australia, and West Germany. It would become the first of 13 (worldwide) top 30 hit singles for him. "Never Gonna Give You Up" won Best British single at the 1988 BPI awards (now called the "BRIT Awards"), and he performed the hit in front of a global audience of 100 million.  His next single was "Whenever You Need Somebody", which was released in October. The single was a recycled Stock Aitken Waterman song, originally recorded by O'Chi Brown in 1985. It became a successful European hit, reaching No 1 in seven countries, including West Germany and Sweden, following up the success of his debut single. It also reached No 3 in the UK. It was not released in North America.  In November 1987, the album "Whenever You Need Somebody", containing four tracks written by Astley, also reached number one in the UK and Australia, and No 10 in the US. It was certified 4x Platinum in the UK and Canada, and 2x Platinum in the US. Overall "Whenever You Need Somebody" sold 15.2 million copies worldwide, making Astley the top-selling British act of the year.  In December 1987, Astley released a cover version of the Nat King Cole classic "When I Fall in Love". This single is mainly remembered for a closely fought contest for UK Christmas Number 1. Rivals EMI, hoping to see their act the Pet Shop Boys reach No 1, re-released the version by Nat King Cole. This led to a slowdown of purchases of Astley's version, allowing the Pet Shop Boys to reach the coveted top spot with their cover version of Always on My Mind. Despite selling over 200,000 copies and gaining a Silver certification from the BPI, Astley's version of "When I Fall in Love peaked in the UK at No 2 for two weeks. The re-release of Nat King Cole's version reached No 4. The B side for Astley was a dance number, "My Arms Keep Missing You", which was successful in mainland Europe.  Astley's fourth single release would be "Together Forever" in 1988, reaching No 2 in the UK. It was denied the top spot by "Neighbours" sensation Kylie Minogue's debut "I Should Be So Lucky". "Together Forever" was more successful in the US, topping the charts, making it his second US chart topper. In 1989 he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist, but lost to Tracy Chapman.  His fifth and final release from his debut album was "It Would Take a Strong Strong Man". It was a more soulful song, when compared to his other releases, and was mainly intended for the North American market. Thus, it was not released in Britain. It was another hit for Astley, reaching No 10 on the US ""Billboard" Hot 100", and No 1 in Canada. During the period between his debut release and his fifth single, Astley outsold every other artist in the world. In the UK, he was in the Top 40 every week for the first six months of his career.  A fire in the PWL studios destroyed much of Astley's new material, causing a delay in the release of his second album. "Hold Me in Your Arms" was released in January 1989, containing five singles, and reached No 8 in the UK and No 19 in the US, being certified platinum in the UK and gold in the US.  Astley's relationship with British media deteriorated significantly after the release of "Whenever You Need Somebody", with the media calling him a "puppet" of Stock Aitken Waterman, although Astley had written five of his new album's tracks. The negative press inevitably affected the sales of his singles. The first single from the album to be released was "She Wants to Dance with Me", a number written by Astley. It was another successful single, reaching No 6 on both the UK and US charts. "Take Me to Your Heart" was the next single to be released from the album. It reached No 8 in the UK and was not released in the US. "Hold Me in Your Arms", a ballad written by Astley, reached No 10 in the UK and was also not released in North America. The next two singles released from the album were intended for the North American market. "Giving Up on Love" and a cover of The Temptations song "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" charted at No 38 and No 89 in the US respectively.  In December 1989, Astley set off on his first world tour, touring 15 countries including the UK, US, Australia, and Japan. By the end of the tour, he was tiring of the negative press, and wanted to explore alternative paths as a musician. Thus, he left his producers Stock Aitken Waterman, and RCA records bought out his contract with PWL.

1990–1993: Switch to soul and adult contemporary.

By 1990, Astley had parted company with Stock Aitken Waterman. He also decided to leave his dance-pop days behind him, moving towards his passion, soul. This shift in musical genre led him to change his image too, ditching the boy next door look, presenting himself as a mature and passionate musician. His third album, "Free", was released in 1991 containing collaborations with Elton John. The album contained three singles, and reached No 9 in the UK and No 31 in the US.  He achieved one more major success with the 1991 ballad "Cry for Help", which reached No 7 in both the UK and the US. The other two singles from "Free" were not as successful. "Move Right Out" reached No 58 in the UK and No 81 in the US; and "Never Knew Love" reached No 70 in the UK and did not chart in the US. "Free" would mark the end of Astley's successful period, and "Cry for Help" would be the last Astley single to make the Top 10 in either the UK or US to date.  His next album, "Body and Soul", was released in 1993, and was largely an Adult Contemporary album. By the time the album was released, Astley had decided to retire from the music industry. As a result, the album did not get a lot of promotion, not charting in the UK but managing to make the "Billboard" 200, peaking at No 182. The two singles, "The Ones You Love" and "Hopelessly", performed very well on the US adult contemporary chart, peaking at No 19 and No 4 respectively. "The Ones You Love" peaked at No 48 in the UK but did not chart in the US. "Hopelessly" also crossed over and peaked at No 28 on the US Billboard 100, staying in the US top 40 for five weeks, and No 33 in the UK. It was named as one of the most performed songs at the 1994 BMI Awards, and is one of the few songs to achieve BMI 'Million-Air' status.

1994–2000: Retirement.

After 1993, Astley retired from the music industry at the age of 27, deciding that family life was more important. During Astley's time out of the music business, he raised his daughter Emilie, born in 1992. Thus, for much of the 1990s and early 2000s, Astley remained largely out of the spotlight. Astley would later state that this was due to his growing frustration with the business side of things. During this period he co-wrote "Mission Statement", a track for former Marillion singer Fish's 1999 solo album "Raingods with Zippos".

2001–present: Return to singing.

Almost 10 years after "Body and Soul", Astley returned to the music industry, signing a co-publishing deal with Polydor and releasing "Keep It Turned On" in 2001. The album featured the single "Sleeping", which became a minor club hit, thanks to a set of remixes from US house producer Todd Terry. "Keep It Turned On" was only released in Continental Europe.  Astley's first compilation album, "Greatest Hits", was released in 2002, and reached No 16 on the UK Albums Chart. With no promotion from Astley, it sold over 100,000 copies and was certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry. In 2003 he charted at No 10 in the UK as a songwriter with "Shakespeare's (Way With) Words" performed by short-lived boy band One True Voice.  In 2004, Astley toured for the first time in 14 years, which led him to a record contract with Sony BMG.  In March 2005, Astley released the album "Portrait", in which he covered many classic standards such as "Vincent", "Nature Boy" and "Close to You". Astley and Sony BMG were unhappy with the result so the album was poorly promoted, yet it managed to reach No 26 on the UK Albums Chart.  In April 2008, the album "The Ultimate Collection: Rick Astley" was released by Sony BMG, and by early May it had reached #17 on the UK Top 40 Albums Chart, again with no promotion by Astley.  In September 2008, Astley was nominated for the 'Best Act Ever' award at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The push to make Astley the winner of the award continued after the announcement, as did efforts to encourage MTV to invite Astley to the awards ceremony. On 7 November, following a massive Internet campaign by fans, Astley won the award in Liverpool, but was not there in person to receive it. Perez Hilton collected the prize on his behalf. On the back of this, "Never Gonna Give You Up" returned to the UK charts, over 21 years after it was released, peaking at No 73 during the Christmas period. During the late 2000s, Astley continued touring across the globe, touring with various other 1980s acts, such as Boy George and Belinda Carlisle, in the "Here and Now Tour". In April 2009, he wrote an article for "Time" about moot.  Astley was a special guest throughout Peter Kay's new tour, "The Tour That Doesn't Tour Tour...Now On Tour", from 27 April to 22 May 2010. To mark the occasion, Rick Astley released a new single "Lights Out" on his own label on 7 June 2010. This was Astley's first release in the UK Singles Chart in 17 years. It was well received by radio, peaking No 15 on the UK Airplay Charts, but it failed to become a commercial hit, reaching only No 97 on the UK Singles Chart.  During the summer of 2010, Astley became a radio DJ for London's Magic FM, presenting a Sunday show. The initial contract was for eight weeks, but he proved popular with listeners and his contract was extended till the end of the year. In December 2010, Astley co-hosted the "Chris Evans Breakfast Show" on BBC Radio 2 with Peter Kay, and in March 2011 appeared in Comic Relief's Red Nose Day telethon on the BBC.  In April 2016 Astley released "Keep Singing", from his forthcoming album, "50". Interviewed by Amanda Holden on the "Lorraine" show on 7 April, Astley explained that it was turning 50 which had prompted him to release the single. He said, "It was a big milestone. I got back in the studio and friends were telling me the material I was working on was pretty good. So I decided to go for it." On 31 May, the release date for Astley's "50" was revealed to be 10 June 2016. The album reached number one on the Official UK Album Sales charts in the week of 17 June 2016 to 23 June 2016.  In September 2016 Astley released the single "Dance", together with an official video.  On 1 June 2018, Astley posted a video on Twitter announcing his upcoming album "Beautiful Life" set for release on 20 July. Astley has also released a single of the same name. Astley is also doing a tour titled "#BeautifulLife Tour" and tickets were first available for purchase to anyone who pre-ordered the album. "Beautiful Life" ended up being released earlier than previously said, with its release date on 13 July 2018.  In 2019, Astley served as the support act on Take That's Greatest Hits Live 38-date tour in Britain and Ireland.  On 25 October 2019, Astley released a new album called The Best of Me which includes some of his original tracks and some re-imagined versions of his existing songs. One of them is a pianoforte version of Never Gonna Give You Up. For the Pianoforte version, Astley changed the key to F Minor. In a live concert, Astley sings the song in A Minor.  Astley is an occasional guest vocalist at Foo Fighters concerts.

Rickrolling internet phenomenon.

In 2007, Astley became the subject of a viral Internet meme known as rickrolling. In this prank, Web users are tricked into seeing Rick Astley's video "Never Gonna Give You Up" when they follow a link that claims to be something else. Views of this video on various websites are now in the hundreds of millions. The phenomenon became so popular that on 1 April 2008, YouTube pranked its users by making every single featured video on its front page a rickroll.  On 27 November 2008, Astley participated in a live rickroll during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, while the "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" characters were singing "Best Friend", the theme from the 1970s TV series "The Courtship of Eddie's Father". Midway through the song, Astley emerged from the float and began to lip sync his signature hit. At the end of Astley's performance, Cheese (a character from "Foster's") shouted out "I like rickrolling!"  Although the video garnered millions of hits on YouTube, Astley has earned almost no money from the meme. By 2010 he had received only US$12 in royalties from YouTube for his performance share. Astley has denied these reports.  On June 17, 2020, Reddit user u/theMalleableDuck became popular on the internet, when they were able to rickroll Rick Astley.

Personal life.

Astley is married to Lene Bausager and the couple have a daughter, Emilie, who was born in 1992. Astley met Lene when she was working as a promoter with RCA in 1988. Lene is a film producer, and her film "Cashback", directed by Sean Ellis, was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He and his wife live in the Surrey town of Molesey, and his daughter lives in Denmark. He maintains a home recording studio and has a collection of guitars.

Richard Paul Astley (born 6 February 1966) is an English singer, songwriter and radio personality. He rose to fame through his association with the production trio Stock Aitken Waterman; his 1987 recording of their song "Never Gonna Give You Up" was a number 1 hit single in 25 countries, winning the 1988 Brit Award for Best British Single. By the time of his retirement in 1993, Astley had sold approximately 40 million records worldwide.

Richard „Rick“ Paul Astley (* 6. Februar 1966 in Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, heute Merseyside) ist ein britischer Sänger. Er feierte zwischen 1987 und 1993 große Charterfolge, unter anderem mit den Titeln "Never Gonna Give You Up", "Whenever You Need Somebody", "Together Forever", "Take Me to Your Heart" und "Cry for Help". Nach fast 30 Jahren erreichte Astley 2016 wieder Platz eins der britischen Charts mit seinem Comebackalbum "50".


Western philosophy.

The underlying questions are whether we have control over our actions, and if so, what sort of control, and to what extent. These questions predate the early Greek stoics (for example, Chrysippus), and some modern philosophers lament the lack of progress over all these centuries.  On one hand, humans have a strong sense of freedom, which leads us to believe that we have free will. On the other hand, an intuitive feeling of free will could be mistaken.  It is difficult to reconcile the intuitive evidence that conscious decisions are causally effective with the view that the physical world can be explained entirely by physical law. The conflict between intuitively felt freedom and natural law arises when either causal closure or physical determinism (nomological determinism) is asserted. With causal closure, no physical event has a cause outside the physical domain, and with physical determinism, the future is determined entirely by preceding events (cause and effect).  The puzzle of reconciling 'free will' with a deterministic universe is known as the "problem of free will" or sometimes referred to as the "dilemma of determinism". This dilemma leads to a moral dilemma as well: the question of how to assign responsibility for actions if they are caused entirely by past events.  Compatibilists maintain that mental reality is not of itself causally effective. Classical compatibilists have addressed the dilemma of free will by arguing that free will holds as long as we are not externally constrained or coerced. Modern compatibilists make a distinction between freedom of will and freedom of "action", that is, separating freedom of choice from the freedom to enact it. Given that humans all experience a sense of free will, some modern compatibilists think it is necessary to accommodate this intuition. Compatibilists often associate freedom of will with the ability to make rational decisions.  A different approach to the dilemma is that of incompatibilists, namely, that if the world is deterministic, then our feeling that we are free to choose an action is simply an illusion. Metaphysical libertarianism is the form of incompatibilism which posits that determinism is false and free will is possible (at least some people have free will). This view is associated with non-materialist constructions, including both traditional dualism, as well as models supporting more minimal criteria; such as the ability to consciously veto an action or competing desire. Yet even with physical indeterminism, arguments have been made against libertarianism in that it is difficult to assign "Origination" (responsibility for "free" indeterministic choices).  Free will here is predominantly treated with respect to physical determinism in the strict sense of nomological determinism, although other forms of determinism are also relevant to free will. For example, logical and theological determinism challenge metaphysical libertarianism with ideas of destiny and fate, and biological, cultural and psychological determinism feed the development of compatibilist models. Separate classes of compatibilism and incompatibilism may even be formed to represent these.  Below are the classic arguments bearing upon the dilemma and its underpinnings.

Scientific approaches.

Science has contributed to the free will problem in at least three ways. First, physics has addressed the question of whether nature is deterministic, which is viewed as crucial by incompatibilists (compatibilists, however, view it as irrelevant). Second, although free will can be defined in various ways, all of them involve aspects of the way people make decisions and initiate actions, which have been studied extensively by neuroscientists. Some of the experimental observations are widely viewed as implying that free will does not exist or is an illusion (but many philosophers see this as a misunderstanding). Third, psychologists have studied the beliefs that the majority of ordinary people hold about free will and its role in assigning moral responsibility.

Quantum physics.

Early scientific thought often portrayed the universe as deterministic – for example in the thought of Democritus or the Cārvākans – and some thinkers claimed that the simple process of gathering sufficient information would allow them to predict future events with perfect accuracy. Modern science, on the other hand, is a mixture of deterministic and stochastic theories. Quantum mechanics predicts events only in terms of probabilities, casting doubt on whether the universe is deterministic at all, although evolution of the universal state vector is completely deterministic. Current physical theories cannot resolve the question of whether determinism is true of the world, being very

Genetics.

Like physicists, biologists have frequently addressed questions related to free will. One of the most heated debates in biology is that of "nature versus nurture", concerning the relative importance of genetics and biology as compared to culture and environment in human behavior. The view of many researchers is that many human behaviors can be explained in terms of

Neuroscience and neurophilosophy.

It has become possible to study the living brain, and researchers can now watch the brain's decision-making process at work. A seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he measured the associated activity in their brain; in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the readiness potential (after German Bereitschaftspotential, which was discovered by Kornhuber & Deecke in 1965.). Although it was well known that the readiness potential reliably preceded the physical action, Libet asked whether it could be recorded before the conscious intention to move. To determine when subjects felt the intention to move, he asked them to watch the second hand of a clock. After making a movement, the volunteer reported the time on the clock when they first felt the conscious intention to move; this became known as Libet's W time.  Libet found that the "unconscious" brain activity of the readiness potential leading up to subjects' movements began approximately half a second before the subject was aware of a conscious intention to move.  These studies of the timing between actions and the conscious decision bear upon the role of the brain in understanding free will. A subject's declaration of intention to move

Experimental psychology.

Experimental psychology's contributions to the free will debate have come primarily through social psychologist Daniel Wegner's work on conscious will. In his book, "The Illusion of Conscious Will," Wegner summarizes what he believes is empirical evidence supporting the view that human perception of conscious control is an illusion. Wegner summarizes some empirical evidence that may suggest that the perception of conscious control is open to modification (or even manipulation). Wegner observes that one event is inferred to have caused a second event when two requirements are met: For example, if a person hears an explosion and sees a tree fall down that person is likely to infer that the explosion caused

Other experiments.

Other experiments have also been proposed to test free will. Ender Tosun argues for the reality of free will, based on combined experiments consisting of empirical and thought experiments. In the empirical part of these experiments, experimenter 2 is expected to predict which object experimenter 1 will touch. Experimenter 1 is always able to negate the prediction of experimenter 2. In the thought experiment part, Laplace's demon makes the predictions and experimenter 1 is never able to negate his predictions. Based on the non-correspondence of the

Believing in free will.

Since at least 1959, free will belief in individuals has been analysed with respect to traits in social behaviour. In general, the concept of free will researched to date in this context has been that of the incompatibilist, or more specifically, the libertarian, that is freedom from determinism.

What people believe.

Whether people naturally adhere to an incompatibilist model of free will has been questioned in the research. Eddy Nahmias has found that incompatibilism is not intuitive – it was not adhered to, in that determinism does not negate belief in moral responsibility (based on an empirical study of people's responses to moral dilemmas under a deterministic model of reality). Edward Cokely has found that incompatibilism is intuitive – it was naturally adhered to, in that determinism does indeed negate belief in moral responsibility in general. Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols have proposed that incompatibilism may or may not be intuitive, and that it is dependent to some large degree upon the circumstances; whether or not the crime incites an emotional response – for example if it involves harming another human being. They found that belief in free will is a cultural universal, and that the majority of participants said that

Among philosophers.

A recent 2009 survey has shown that compatibilism is quite a popular stance among those who specialize in

Among evolutionary biologists.

79 percent of evolutionary biologists said that they believe in free-will according to

Effects of the belief itself.

Baumeister and colleagues found that provoking disbelief in free will seems to cause various negative effects. The authors concluded, in their paper, that it is belief in determinism that causes those negative effects. After researchers provoked volunteers to disbelieve in free will, participants lied, cheated, and stole more. Kathleen Vohs has found that those whose belief in free will had been eroded were more likely to cheat. In a study conducted by Roy Baumeister, after participants read an article arguing against free will, they were more likely to lie about their performance on a test where they would be rewarded with cash. Provoking a rejection of free will has also been associated with increased aggression and less helpful behaviour. However, although these initial studies suggested that believing in free will is associated with more morally praiseworthy behavior, more recent studies have reported contradictory findings.  Moreover, whether

Eastern philosophy.

Hindu philosophy.

The six orthodox (astika) schools of thought in Hindu philosophy do not agree with each other entirely on the question of free will. For the Samkhya, for instance, matter is without any freedom, and soul lacks any ability to control the unfolding of matter. The only real freedom ("kaivalya") consists in realizing the ultimate separateness of matter and self. For the Yoga school, only Ishvara is truly free, and its freedom is also distinct from all feelings, thoughts, actions, or wills, and is thus not at all a freedom of will. The metaphysics of the Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools strongly suggest a belief in

Buddhist philosophy.

Buddhism accepts both freedom and determinism (or something similar to it), but in spite of its focus towards the human agency, rejects the western concept of a total agent from external sources. According to the Buddha, "There is free action, there is retribution, but I see no agent that passes out from one set of momentary elements into another one, except the [connection] of those elements." Buddhists believe in neither absolute free will, nor determinism. It preaches a middle doctrine, named "pratitya-samutpada" in Sanskrit, often translated as "inter-dependent arising". This theory is also called "Conditioned Genesis" or "Dependent Origination". It teaches that every volition is a conditioned action as a result of ignorance. In part, it states that free will is inherently conditioned and not "free" to begin with. It is also part of the theory of karma in Buddhism. The concept of karma in Buddhism is different from the notion of karma

In theology.

Christianity.

The notions of free will and predestination are heavily debated among Christians. Free will in the Christian sense is the ability to choose between good or evil. Among Catholics, there are those holding to Thomism, adopted from what Thomas Aquinas put forth in the "Summa Theologica." There are also some holding to Molinism which was put forth by Jesuit priest Luis de Molina. Among Protestants there is Arminianism, held primarily by Methodist and some Baptist, and formulated by Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius; and there is also Calvinism held by most in the Reformed tradition which was formulated by the French Reformed theologian, John Calvin. John Calvin was heavily influenced by Augustine of Hippo views on predestination put forth in his work "On the Predestination of the Saints." Martin Luther seems to hold views on predestination similar to

Judaism.

Maimonides reasoned that human beings have free will (at least in the context of choosing to do good or evil). Without free will, the demands

Islam.

In Islam the theological issue is not usually how to reconcile free will with God's foreknowledge, but with God's "jabr", or divine commanding power. al-Ash'ari developed an "acquisition" or "dual-agency" form of compatibilism, in which human free will and divine "jabr" were both asserted, and which became

Others.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard claimed that divine omnipotence cannot be separated from divine goodness. As a truly omnipotent and good being, God could create beings with true freedom over God. Furthermore, God would voluntarily do so because "the greatest good... which can be done for a being, greater than anything else that one can do for it, is to be truly free." Alvin Plantinga's free-will

Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion.

Für den Begriff freier Wille oder Willensfreiheit gibt es keine allgemein anerkannte Definition. Umgangssprachlich versteht man etwas anderes unter dem freien Willen als im juristischen oder psychologischen Sprachgebrauch. In der Philosophie wird der Begriff nicht einheitlich definiert.


Symptoms.

Symptoms are not necessarily distinguishable from other kinds of distress. A dog might stand uncomfortably and seem to be in extreme discomfort for no apparent reason. Other possible symptoms include firm distension of the abdomen, weakness, depression, difficulty breathing, hypersalivation, and retching without producing any vomitus ("non-productive vomiting"). A high rate of dogs with GDV have cardiac arrhythmias (40 percent in one study). Chronic GDV may occur in dogs, symptoms of which include loss of appetite, vomiting and weight loss.

Causes.

Gastric dilatation volvulus in dogs is likely caused by a multitude of factors, but in all cases the immediate prerequisite is a dysfunction of the sphincter between the esophagus and stomach and an obstruction of outflow through the pylorus. Some of the more widely acknowledged factors for developing GDV include increased age, breed, having a deep and narrow chest, eating foods such as kibble that expand in the stomach, overfeeding, too much water consumption in a small period of time before or after exercise and other causes of gastrointestinal disease and distress. Studies have indicated that the risk of bloat in dogs perceived as happy by their owners is decreased, and increased in dogs perceived as fearful. This may be due to the physiological effects of the dog's personality on the function and motility of the gastrointestinal system. Alternatively, the dogs may become unhappy/uncomfortable as a consequence of the conditions that lead up to exhibiting bloat. Dogs with inflammatory bowel disease may be at an increased risk for bloat.

Dietary factors.

One common recommendation in the past has been to raise the food bowl of the dog when it eats. However, studies have shown that this may actually increase the risk of GDV. Eating only once daily and eating food consisting of particles less than in size also may increase the risk of GDV. One study looking at the ingredients of dry dog food found that while neither grains, soy, nor animal proteins increased risk of bloat, foods containing an increased amount of added oils or fats do increase the risk, possibly due to delayed emptying of the stomach.

Pathophysiology.

The stomach twists around the longitudinal axis of the digestive tract, also known as "volvulus". Gas distension may occur prior to or after the stomach twists. The most common direction for rotation is clockwise, viewing the animal from behind. The stomach can rotate up to 360° in this direction and 90° counterclockwise. If the volvulus is greater than 180°, the esophagus is closed off, thereby preventing the animal from relieving the condition by belching or vomiting. The results of this distortion of normal anatomy and gas distension include hypotension (low blood pressure), decreased return of blood to the heart, ischemia (loss of blood supply) of the stomach, and shock. Pressure on the portal vein decreases blood flow to liver and decreases the ability of that organ to remove toxins and absorbed bacteria from the blood. At the other end of the stomach, the spleen may be damaged if the twisting interrupts its blood supply. If not quickly treated, bloat can lead to blood poisoning, peritonitis and death by toxic shock.

Diagnosis.

A diagnosis of gastric dilatation-volvulus is made by several factors. The breed and history will often give a significant suspicion of gastric dilatation-volvulus, and the physical exam will often reveal the telltale sign of a distended abdomen with abdominal tympany. Shock is diagnosed by the presence of pale mucous membranes with poor capillary refill, increased heart rate, and poor pulse quality. Radiographs (x-rays), usually taken after decompression of the stomach if the dog is unstable, will show a stomach distended with gas. The pylorus, which normally is ventral and to the right of the body of the stomach, will be cranial to the body of the stomach and left of the midline, often separated on the x-ray by soft tissue and giving the appearance of a separate gas filled pocket (double bubble sign).

Treatment.

Gastric dilatation volvulus is an emergency medical condition: having the animal examined by a veterinarian is imperative. GDV can become fatal within a matter of minutes.  Treatment usually involves resuscitation with intravenous fluid therapy, usually a combination of isotonic fluids and hypertonic saline or a colloidal solution such as hetastarch, and emergency surgery. The stomach is initially decompressed by passing a stomach tube, or if that is not possible, trocars can be passed through the skin into the stomach to remove the gas, alternatively the trocars may be inserted directly into the stomach following anaesthesia in order to reduce the chances of infection. During surgery, the stomach is placed back into its correct position, the abdomen is examined for any devitalized tissue (especially the stomach and spleen). A partial gastrectomy may be necessary if there is any necrosis of the stomach wall.

Prevention.

Recurrence of gastric dilatation-volvulus attacks can be a problem, occurring in up to 80 percent of dogs treated medically only (without surgery). To prevent recurrence, at the same time the bloat is treated surgically, a right-side gastropexy is often performed, which by a variety of methods firmly attaches the stomach wall to the body wall, to prevent it from twisting inside the abdominal cavity in the future. While dogs that have had gastropexies still may develop gas distension of the stomach, there is a significant reduction in recurrence of gastric volvulus. One study showed that out of 136 dogs that had surgery for gastric dilatation-volvulus, 4.3 percent of those that did have gastropexies had a recurrence, while 54.5 percent of those without the additional surgery recurred. Gastropexies are also performed prophylactically in dogs considered to be at high risk of gastric dilatation-volvulus, including dogs with previous episodes of gastric dilatation-volvulus or with gastrointestinal disease predisposing to gastric dilatation-volvulus, and dogs with a first-order relative (parent or sibling) with a history of gastric dilatation-volvulus.  Precautions that are likely to help prevent gastric dilatation-volvulus include feeding small meals throughout the day instead of one big meal and not exercising immediately before or after a meal.

Prognosis.

Immediate treatment is the most important factor in a favorable prognosis. A delay in treatment greater than six hours or the presence of peritonitis, sepsis, hypotension, or disseminated intravascular coagulation are negative prognostic indicators.  Historically, GDV has held a guarded prognosis. Although "early studies showed mortality rates between 33% and 68% for dogs with GDV," studies from 2007 to 2012 "reported mortality rates between 10% and 26.8%". Mortality rates approach 10% to 40% even with treatment. A study determined that with prompt treatment and good preoperative stabilization of the patient, mortality is significantly lessened to 10% overall (in a referral setting). Negative prognostic indicators following surgical intervention include postoperative cardiac arrhythmia, splenectomy, or splenectomy with partial gastric resection. A longer time from presentation to surgery was associated with a lower mortality, presumably because these dogs had received more complete preoperative fluid resuscitation and were thus better cardiovascularly stabilized prior to the procedure.

Epidemiology.

As a general rule, GDV is of greatest risk to deep-chested dogs. The five breeds at greatest risk are Great Danes, Weimaraners, St. Bernards, Gordon Setters, and Irish Setters. In fact, the lifetime risk for a Great Dane to develop GDV has been estimated to be close to 37 percent. Standard Poodles are also at risk for this health problem, as are Irish Wolfhound, Doberman Pinschers, Rottweilers, German Shorthaired Pointer, German Shepherds, Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Basset Hounds and Dachshunds have the greatest risk for dogs less than.

Gastric dilatation volvulus (GDV), also known as gastric dilation, twisted stomach, or gastric torsion, is a medical condition that affects dogs in which the stomach becomes overstretched and rotated by excessive gas content. The word "bloat" is often used as a general term to mean gas distension without stomach torsion (a normal change after eating), or to refer to GDV.

Die Magendrehung ("Torsio ventriculi", "Dilatatio et Torsio ventriculi") ist eine Krankheit, bei der sich der Magen um die eigene Längsachse dreht. Die Ursache der Erkrankung ist nicht bekannt. Eine Magendrehung tritt vor allem bei älteren Hunden großer Hunderassen auf, selten sind kleine Hunde, Katzen und Meerschweinchen betroffen. Die Magendrehung zeigt sich in Zunahme des Bauchumfangs, Unruhe und vergeblichen Versuchen zu erbrechen. Durch die Ausdehnung des verdrehten und aufgegasten Magens kommt es rasch zu einem Kreislaufzusammenbruch, der ohne Behandlung meist zum Tod des Tieres führt. Die Diagnose wird anhand einer Röntgenaufnahme gestellt. Eine Magendrehung muss chirurgisch versorgt werden. Dabei wird nach Entgasung und Kreislaufstabilisierung die Bauchhöhle eröffnet, der Magen zurückgedreht und zur Verhinderung einer erneuten Magendrehung an der Bauchwand festgenäht. Die mittlere Todesfallquote liegt etwa bei 20 Prozent. Beim Menschen ist die Magendrehung eine seltene Erkrankung bei Säuglingen oder eine Komplikation nach Fundoplikatio und wird auch als Magenvolvulus bezeichnet.


Background.

Decline of Hungarian royal power (1490–1526).

After the death of the absolutist King Matthias Corvinus in 1490, the Hungarian magnates, who did not want another heavy-handed king, procured the accession of the notoriously weak-willed King Vladislaus of Bohemia, who reigned as King Vladislaus II of Hungary from 1490 to 1516. He was known as King Dobře (or "Dobzse" in Hungarian orthography), meaning "all right", for his habit of accepting, without question, every petition and document laid before him. The freshly-elected King Vladislaus II donated most of the Hungarian royal estates, régales, and royalties to the nobility. Thus the king tried to stabilize his new reign and preserve his popularity among the magnates.  Given the naive fiscal and land policy of the royal court, the central power began to experience severe financial difficulties, largely due to the enlargement of feudal lands at royal expense. The noble estate of the parliament succeeded in reducing their tax burden by 70–80%, at the expense of the country's ability to defend itself. Vladislaus became the magnates' helpless "prisoner"; he could make no decision without their consent.  The standing mercenary army (the Black Army) of Matthias Corvinus was dissolved by the aristocracy. The magnates also dismantled the national administration systems and bureaucracy throughout the country. The country's defenses sagged as border-guards and castle garrisons went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled. Hungary's international role declined, its political stability shaken; social progress was deadlocked. The arrival of Protestantism further worsened internal relations in the country.  The strongest nobles were so busy oppressing the peasants and quarreling with the gentry class in the parliament that they failed to heed the agonized calls of King Louis II (reigned in Bohemia and Hungary from 1516 to 1526) for support against the Turks.  In 1514, the weakened and old King Vladislaus II faced a major peasant rebellion led by György Dózsa, which was ruthlessly crushed by the nobles, led by John Zápolya. After the Dózsa Rebellion, the brutal suppression of the peasants greatly aided the 1526 Turkish invasion as the Hungarians were no longer a politically united people. The resulting degradation of order paved the way for Ottoman pre-eminence.  King Louis II of Hungary married Mary of Habsburg in 1522. The Ottomans saw this Jagiellonian-Habsburg marital alliance as a threat to their power in the Balkans and worked to break it. After Suleiman I came to power in Istanbul in 1520, the High Porte made the Hungarians at least one and possibly two offers of peace. For unclear reasons, Louis refused. It is possible that Louis was well aware of Hungary's situation (especially after the Ottomans defeated Persia in the Battle of Chaldiran (1514) and the Polish-Ottoman peace from 1525) and believed that war was a better option than peace. Even in peacetime, the Ottomans raided Hungarian lands and conquered small territories (with border castles), but a final battle still offered Louis a glimmer of hope. Accordingly, another Ottoman–Hungarian war ensued, and in June 1526 an Ottoman expedition advanced up the Danube.

European events, and the Franco-Ottoman alliance.

King Francis I of France was defeated at the Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525 by the troops of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. After several months in prison, Francis I was forced to sign the Treaty of Madrid.  In a watershed moment in European diplomacy, Francis formed a formal Franco-Ottoman alliance with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent as an ally against Charles V. The French-Ottoman strategic, and sometimes tactical, alliance lasted for about three centuries.  To relieve the Habsburg pressure on France, in 1525 Francis asked Suleiman to make war on the Holy Roman Empire, and the road from Turkey to the Holy Roman Empire led across Hungary. The request of the French king coincided well with the ambitions of Suleiman in Europe and gave him an incentive to attack Hungary in 1526, leading to the Battle of Mohács.

Preparations.

The Hungarians had long opposed Ottoman expansion in southeastern Europe, but in 1521 the Turks advanced up the Danube River and took Nándorfehérvár (present-day Belgrade, Serbia) – the strongest Hungarian fortress on the Danube – and Szabács (now Šabac, Serbia). This left most of southern Hungary indefensible.  The loss of Nandorfehervar caused great alarm in Hungary, but the huge 60,000 strong royal army – led by the king, but recruited too late and too slowly – neglected to take food along. Therefore, the army disbanded spontaneously under pressure from hunger and disease without even trying to recapture Belgrade from the newly installed Turkish garrisons. In 1523, Archbishop Pál Tomori, a valiant priest-soldier, was made Captain of Southern Hungary. The general apathy that had characterized the country forced him to lean on his own bishopric revenues when he started to repair and reinforce the second line of Hungary's border defense system. Pétervárad fell to the Turks on July 15, 1526 due to the chronic lack of castle garrisons. For about 400 km along the Danube between Pétervárad and Buda there was no single Hungarian town, village, or fortification of any sort.  Three years later, an Ottoman army set out from Constantinople on 16 April 1526, led by Suleiman the Magnificent personally. The Hungarian nobles, who still did not realize the magnitude of the approaching danger, did not immediately heed their King's call for troops. Eventually, the Hungarians assembled in three main units: the Transylvanian army under John Zápolya, charged with guarding the passes in the Transylvanian Alps, with between 8,000 and 13,000 men; the main army, led by Louis himself (beside numerous Spanish, German, Czech, and Serbian mercenaries); and another smaller force, commanded by the Croatian count Christoph Frankopan, numbering around 5,000 men. The Ottomans deployed the largest field artillery of the era, comprising some 300 cannons, while the Hungarians had only 85 cannons, though even this number was greater than other contemporary Western European armies deployed on the battlefields during the major conflicts of Western European powers.  The geography of the area meant that the Hungarians could not know the Ottomans' ultimate goal until the latter crossed the Balkan Mountains, and when they did, the Transylvanian and Croatian forces were farther from Buda than the Ottomans were. Contemporary historical records, though sparse, indicate that Louis preferred a plan of retreat, in effect ceding the country to Ottoman advances, rather than directly engaging the Ottoman army in open battle. The Hungarian war council – without waiting for reinforcements from Croatia and Transylvania only a few days march away – made a serious tactical error by choosing the battlefield near Mohács, an open but uneven plain with some swampy marshes.  The Ottomans had advanced toward Mohács almost unopposed. While Louis waited in Buda, they had besieged several towns (Petervarad, Ujlak, and Eszek), and crossed the Sava and Drava Rivers. At Mohács the Hungarians numbered some 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. The only external help was a small contingent of Polish troops (1,500 soldiers and knights) led by the royal captain Lenart Gnoiński (but organized and equipped by the Papal State). The Ottoman army numbered perhaps 50,000, though some contemporary and modern-day historians put the number of the Ottoman troops at 100,000. Most of the Ottoman Balkan forces registered before this battle were described as Bosnians or Croats.  The Hungarian army was arrayed to take advantage of the terrain and hoped to engage the Ottoman army piecemeal. They had the advantage that their troops were well-rested, while the Turks had just completed a strenuous march in scorching summer heat. But rather than attacking the fatigued enemy immediately, the Hungarians let them struggle through the marshy terrain. It would have been "unchivalrous" to attack the enemy when they were not yet ready for battle.

Battle.

Hungary built up an expensive but obsolete army, structured similarly to that of King Francis I at the Battle of Pavia and mostly reliant on old fashioned heavily armoured knights on armoured horses (gendarme knights). The Hungarian battlefront consisted of two lines. The first had a center of mercenary infantry and artillery and the majority of the cavalry on either flank. The second was a mix of levy infantry and cavalry. The Ottoman army was a more modern force built around artillery and the elite, musket-armed Janissaries. The remainder consisted of feudal Timarli cavalry and conscripted levies from Rumelia and the Balkans.  As the first of Suleiman's troops, the Rumelian army, advanced onto the battlefield, they were attacked and routed by Hungarian troops led by Pál Tomori. This attack by the Hungarian right caused considerable chaos among the irregular Ottoman troops, but even as the Hungarian attack pressed forward, the Ottomans rallied with the arrival of Ottoman regulars deployed from the reserves. While the Hungarian right advanced far enough at one time to place Suleiman in danger from Hungarian bullets that struck his cuirass, the superiority of the Ottoman regulars and the timely charge of the Janissaries, the elite troops of the Ottomans, probably overwhelmed the attackers, particularly on the Hungarian left. The Hungarians took serious casualties from the skillfully handled Turkish artillery and musket volleys. The Hungarians could not hold their positions, and those who did not flee were surrounded and killed or captured. The result was a disaster, with the Hungarians advancing into withering fire and flank attacks, and falling into the same trap that John Hunyadi had so often used successfully against the Ottomans. The king left the battlefield sometime around twilight but was thrown from his horse in a river at Csele and died, weighed down by his heavy armor. Some 1,000 other Hungarian nobles and leaders were also killed. It is generally accepted that more than 14,000 Hungarian soldiers were killed in the initial battle.  Suleiman could not believe that this small, suicidal army was all that the once powerful country could muster against him, so he waited at Mohacs for a few days before moving cautiously against Buda.

Aftermath.

The victory did not give the Ottomans the security they wanted. Buda was left undefended; only the French and Venetian ambassadors waited for the Sultan to congratulate him on his great victory. Though they entered the unguarded evacuated Buda and pillaged the castle and surroundings, they retreated soon afterwards. It was not until 1541 that the Ottomans finally captured and occupied Buda following the 1541 Siege of Buda. However, for all intents and purposes, the Battle of Mohács meant the end of the independent Kingdom of Hungary as a unified entity. Amid political chaos, the divided Hungarian nobility elected two kings simultaneously, John Zápolya in 1526 and Ferdinand of Austria in 1527. The Ottoman occupation was contested by the Habsburg Archduke of Austria, Ferdinand I, Louis's brother-in-law and successor by treaty with King Vladislaus II.  Bohemia fell to the Habsburgs, who also dominated the northern and western parts of Hungary and the remnants of the Kingdom of Croatia, while the Ottomans held central Hungary and suzerainty over semi-independent Transylvania. This provided the Hungarians with sufficient impetus to continue to resist the Ottoman occupation, which they did for another seventy years.  The Austrian branch of Habsburg monarchs needed the economic power of Hungary for the Ottoman wars. During the Ottoman wars the territory of the former Kingdom of Hungary shrunk by around 70%. Despite these territorial and demographic losses, the smaller, heavily war-torn Royal Hungary had remained economically more important than Austria or the Kingdom of Bohemia even at the end of the 16th century. Of Ferdinand's territories, the depleted Kingdom of Hungary was at that time his largest source of revenue.  The subsequent near constant warfare required a sustained commitment of Ottoman forces, proving a drain on resources that the largely rural and war-torn kingdom proved unable to repay. Crusader armies besieged Buda several times during the 16th century. Sultan Suleiman himself died of natural causes in Hungary during the Battle of Szigetvár in 1566. There were also two unsuccessful Ottoman sieges of Eger, which did not fall until 1596, seventy years after the Ottoman victory at Mohács. The Turks proved unable to conquer the northern and western parts of Hungary, which belonged to the Habsburg monarchs.  A book on the Turkish culture was written by Georgius Bartholomaeus with information obtained from Christian troops released by the Ottomans after the battle.

Legacy.

Mohács is seen by many Hungarians as the decisive downward turning point in the country's history, a national trauma that persists in the nation's folk memory. To indicate magnitude of bad luck at hand, Hungarians still say: "more was lost at Mohács" (). Hungarians view Mohács as marking the end of an independent and powerful European nation.  Whilst Mohács was a decisive loss, it was the aftermath that truly put an end to independent Hungary. The ensuing two hundred years of near constant warfare between the two empires, Habsburg and Ottoman, turned Hungary into a perpetual battlefield. The countryside was regularly ravaged by armies moving back and forth, in turn devastating the population. Only in the 19th century would Hungary regain some degree of autonomy, with full independence coming only after the First World War; however, the Treaty of Trianon awarded much of its former land to other states (such as Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia), and Hungary has never regained its former political power.  In the 463 years from 1526 to 1989, Hungary spent the vast majority of the time under the direct or indirect domination of a foreign power. These foreign powers were, successively, the Ottoman Empire (1526–1686), the Holy Roman Empire (1686–1804), the Austrian Empire (1804–1867), and the Soviet Union (1945–1989); furthermore, between 1867 and 1918 Hungary was widely considered the "junior" partner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire: autonomy was granted, but stopped well short of independence.  The battlefield, beside the village of Sátorhely, became an official national historical memorial site in 1976 on the 450th anniversary of the battle. The memorial was designed by architect György Vadász. A new reception hall and exhibition building, also designed by Vadász and partially funded by the European Union, was completed in 2011.  The year of battle of Mohács marks the end of Middle Ages in the Central European historiography.

The Battle of Mohács (;, ) was one of the most consequential battles in Central European history. It was fought on 29 August 1526 near Mohács, Kingdom of Hungary, between the forces of the Kingdom of Hungary, led by Louis II, and those of the Ottoman Empire, led by Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman victory led to the partition of Hungary for several centuries between the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Principality of Transylvania. Further, the death of Louis II as he fled the battle marked the end of the Jagiellonian dynasty in Hungary and Bohemia, whose dynastic claims passed to the House of Habsburg. The Battle of Mohács marked the end of the Middle Ages in Hungary.

In der Schlacht bei Mohács erlitt das Heer des Königreiches Ungarn unter König Ludwig II. und Pál Tomori am 29. August 1526 gegen die Osmanische Armee unter Süleyman I. bei Mohács in Südungarn eine vernichtende Niederlage. Die Osmanen konnten wenig später große Teile Ungarns und Kroatiens erobern.