Early works.

There are two theories on the genesis of the epistolary novel. The first claims that the genre is originated from novels with inserted letters, in which the portion containing the third person narrative in between the letters was gradually reduced. The other theory claims that the epistolary novel arose from miscellanies of letters and poetry: some of the letters were tied together into a (mostly amorous) plot. Both claims have some validity. The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish "Prison of Love" ("Cárcel de amor") (c.1485) by Diego de San Pedro, belongs to a tradition of novels in which a large number of inserted letters already dominated the narrative. Other well-known examples of early epistolary novels are closely related to the tradition of letter-books and miscellanies of letters. Within the successive editions of Edmé Boursault's "Letters of Respect, Gratitude and Love" ("Lettres de respect, d'obligation et d'amour") (1669), a group of letters written to a girl named Babet were expanded and became more and more distinct from the other letters, until it formed a small epistolary novel entitled "Letters to Babet" ("Lettres à Babet"). The immensely famous "Letters of a Portuguese Nun" ("Lettres portugaises") (1669) generally attributed to Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues, though a small minority still regard Marianna Alcoforado as the author, is claimed to be intended to be part of a miscellany of Guilleragues prose and poetry. The founder of the epistolary novel in English is said by many to be James Howell (1594–1666) with "Familiar Letters" (1645–50), who writes of prison, foreign adventure, and the love of women.  The first novel to expose the complex play that the genre allows was Aphra Behn's "Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister", which appeared in three volumes in 1684, 1685, and 1687. The novel shows the genre's results of changing perspectives: individual points were presented by the individual characters, and the central voice of the author and moral evaluation disappeared (at least in the first volume; her further volumes introduced a narrator). Behn furthermore explored a realm of intrigue with letters that fall into the wrong hands, faked letters, letters withheld by protagonists, and even more complex interaction.  The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in the works of such authors as Samuel Richardson, with his immensely successful novels "Pamela" (1740) and "Clarissa" (1749). John Cleland's early erotic novel "Fanny Hill" (1748) is written as a series of letters from the titular character to an unnamed recipient. In France, there was "Lettres persanes" (1721) by Montesquieu, followed by "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse" (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Choderlos de Laclos' "Les Liaisons dangereuses" (1782), which used the epistolary form to great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related directly or explicitly. In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" ("Die Leiden des jungen Werther") (1774) and Friedrich Hölderlin's "Hyperion". The first Canadian novel, "The History of Emily Montague" (1769) by Frances Brooke, and twenty years later the first American novel, "The Power of Sympathy" (1789) by William Hill Brown, were both written in epistolary form.  Starting in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of savage burlesques. The most notable example of these was Henry Fielding's "Shamela" (1741), written as a parody of "Pamela". In it, the female narrator can be found wielding a pen and scribbling her diary entries under the most dramatic and unlikely of circumstances. Oliver Goldsmith used the form to satirical effect in "The Citizen of the World", subtitled "Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London to his Friends in the East" (1760–61). So did the diarist Fanny Burney in a successful comic first novel, "Evelina" (1788).  The epistolary novel slowly fell out of use in the late 18th century. Although Jane Austen tried her hand at the epistolary in juvenile writings and her novella "Lady Susan" (1794), she abandoned this structure for her later work. It is thought that her lost novel "First Impressions", which was redrafted to become "Pride and Prejudice", may have been epistolary: "Pride and Prejudice" contains an unusual number of letters quoted in full and some play a critical role in the plot.  The epistolary form nonetheless saw continued use, surviving in exceptions or in fragments in nineteenth-century novels. In Honoré de Balzac's novel "Letters of Two Brides", two women who became friends during their education at a convent correspond over a 17-year period, exchanging letters describing their lives. Mary Shelley employs the epistolary form in her novel "Frankenstein" (1818). Shelley uses the letters as one of a variety of framing devices, as the story is presented through the letters of a sea captain and scientific explorer attempting to reach the north pole who encounters Victor Frankenstein and records the dying man's narrative and confessions. Published in 1848, Anne Brontë's novel "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is framed as a retrospective letter from one of the main heroes to his friend and brother-in-law with the diary of the eponymous tenant inside it. In the late 19th century, Bram Stoker released one of the most widely recognized and successful novels in the epistolary form to date, "Dracula". Printed in 1897, the novel is compiled entirely of letters, diary entries, newspaper clippings, telegrams, doctor's notes, ship's logs, and the like.

Types.

Epistolary novels can be categorized based on the number of people whose letters are included. This gives three types of epistolary novels: monologic (giving the letters of only one character, like "Letters of a Portuguese Nun" and "The Sorrows of Young Werther"), dialogic (giving the letters of two characters, like Mme Marie Jeanne Riccoboni's "Letters of Fanni Butler" (1757), and polylogic (with three or more letter-writing characters, such as in Bram Stoker's "Dracula"). A crucial element in polylogic epistolary novels like "Clarissa" and "Dangerous Liaisons" is the dramatic device of 'discrepant awareness': the simultaneous but separate correspondences of the heroines and the villains creating dramatic tension.

Notable works.

The epistolary novel form has continued to be used after the eighteenth century.

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use. The word "epistolary" is derived from Latin from the Greek word ἐπιστολή "epistolē", meaning a letter (see epistle).

Ein Briefroman ist eine Sammlung fiktiver Briefe, die sich in ihrer Präsentation – unter Umständen zusammengehalten von einer Herausgeberstimme – zur Romanhandlung verdichten. Möglich sind Briefwechsel zwischen verschiedenen Personen wie die briefliche Hinterlassenschaft eines einzelnen Helden. Wegen seiner Unmittelbarkeitsfiktion ist der Tagebuchroman mit dem Briefroman vergleichbar.


Youth.

Ahmed Ben Bella was born in Maghnia, in the former department of Oran, western Algeria, on 25 December 1916, during the height of the French colonial period.  He was the son of a farmer and small businessman, who supported his family through this economic activities. He had five brothers and two sisters. Of them, the oldest one died because of the wounds of the First World War which he fought for France, other two died because of illness and one disappeared in France at 1940, in the mayhem of the Nazi victory.  Ben Bella started his studies in Maghnia, where he went to the French school, and continued them in the city of Tlemcen, where he became aware of racial discrimination, disturbed by the discrimination towards Muslims by his European teacher. As it, he started complaining and chafed against imperialism and colonialism and criticized French cultural influence, beginning also his participation in the nationalist movement.

Service with French Army.

Ben Bella volunteered for service in the French Army in 1936. The Army was one of the few avenues of advancement for Algerians under colonial rule and voluntary enlistment was common. Posted to Marseille, he played center midfield for Olympique de Marseille in 1939–1940. His only appearance for the club was in a game against FC Antibes in the Coupe de France on 29 April 1940 in Cannes. He also scored a goal during the game. The club officials offered him a professional spot on the team, but he rejected the offer. He also played for IRB Maghnia.  Ben Bella enlisted in the army again in 1940, believing that this would give Algerians an equal treatment. Consequently, he fought for the French during World War II, and he was even awarded twice. He received the ′′"Croix de guerre"′′ after manning an anti-aircraft post during the Nazi invasion in 1940. He was demobilised after the fall of France but joined a Free French regiment of Moroccan tirailleurs (infantry) with whom he saw service throughout the Italian campaign. There, he was again awarded because of his bravery demonstrated at Monte Cassino, where he dragged one wounded CO to safety, assuming control of his battalion. For this, he was promoted to the rank of warrant officer, and he received the ′′Médaille militaire′′, the highest decoration of the Free French forces, directly from Charles de Gaulle.  On May 8, 1945, while France was celebrating Germany’s capitulation, big protests started to occur in the Algerian town of Setif. The cruelties of colonialism became worse during the wartime period, prompting more Algerian people to stand up against them. Protests turned to five days of rape and killing, and according to the official report, deaths were more than 100 Europeans and around 1,500 Algerians. The anti-colonialists however put the number of Algerian deaths as being around ten thousand. This shocked Ben Bella and his Algerian companions, as they realized that they would not start receiving an equal treatment even after their services in war.

Before independence.

First organization against French regime.

After the events of Setif, Ben Bella returned to Algeria, reincorporating into its political life and into the opposition movement against the French regime. French authorities sent assailants with the intentions of assassinating him on his farm. The attempt to end his life failed, but Ben Bella’s farm was confiscated and he had to hide. After the Government election of Marcel-Edmond Naegelen, he became part of a group that thought democratic independence through peaceful means was something illusory. It was a student Hocine Ait-Ahmed, 22 years old, presented a historical RAPPORT ZEDDINE Wich was the creation of OS 🍖 and the START with Messali Hadj's and his party, founded the "Organisation Spéciale" (OS), a paramilitary organization whose aim was to take up arms against the French colonial regime as quickly as possible. This was the immediate predecessor of the National Liberation Front. In 1949, he robbed a bank in Orán to gain funds for the organization, but he was eventually caught and sent to jail in Blida prison in 1951, sentenced to eight years imprisonment. He escaped soon afterwards, making his way to Tunisia and then to Egypt, reaching Cairo by 1952.  At the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954, Ben Bella was based in Cairo where he had become one of the nine members of the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action which headed the "Front de Liberation Nationale" (FLN), founded on November that year, during a secret meeting of Algerian leaders in Switzerland, in which they also ordered armed insurrection against the French colonists that would start the war between Algeria and France.

Algerian War.

Ben Bella played an important role on the war leading the FLN, organizing the shipment of foreign weapons and coordinating political strategy. Although he was not present in Algeria, attempts against his life persisted. In 1956, he refused to receive a package delivered by taxi to his hotel at Cairo, and as the taxi drove away, a bomb exploded inside it, killing the driver. Later the same year, while in his hotel at Tripoli, a French gunman entered to his room and fired, wounding but not killing him. The shooter was killed by guards while fleeing, on the Libyan border. On October, he was arrested in Algiers by French military authorities, who intercepted the plane where Ben Bella was in, arresting him. He was kept prisoner until the Evian accords in 1962, and released on July 5. He was named as Vice President of Algeria in Benyoucef Benkhedda's cabinet. His arrest led to the resignation of Alain Savary, who was opposed to Guy Mollet's policies. Being captive dissociated his image from the errors that FLN had committed, so when he gained his freedom back, after the Evian agreement, he had an intact reputation.  When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser brought Ben Bella to speak for the first time to an Egyptian audience, he broke into tears because he could not speak standard Arabic. Like many Arab revolutionaries of the time, he would come to describe himself as a "Nasserist" and developed close ties to Egypt even before independence was achieved. Nasser's material, moral and political support of the Algerian movement would come to cause Nasser troubles, as it played a major role in France's choice to wage war on him during the 1956 Suez Crisis.  Due to Pakistan's support for the FLN, Ben Bella had been given a Pakistani diplomatic passport to make his foreign travels possible in the face of the international manhunt for him undertaken by the French and their allies. Ben Bella also traveled on a Pakistani diplomatic passport during the years of his exile from Algeria in the 1980s.

Algerian independence.

Ben Bella's regime.

After Algeria's independence, Ben Bella quickly became more popular. In June 1962, he challenged the leadership of Premier Benyoucef Benkhedda; this led to several disputes among his rivals in the FLN, which were quickly suppressed by Ben Bella's rapidly growing number of supporters, most notably within the armed forces, whose chief was Houari Boumédiènne. By September, Bella was in control of Algeria in all but name. He was elected premier in a one-sided election on 20 September, which was recognized by the United States on 29 September. Algeria was admitted as the 109th member of the United Nations on 8 October 1962.  As prime minister, Ben Bella turned on legalizing the seizures of autogestion which workers had spontaneously started. In March 1963 he drew up (with his circle of advisers) a set of decrees to nationalize all previously European-owned land. In his words, the “Tripoli program remained a dead letter, and independence and revolution made no sense, as long as Algerian soil was in hands of the big landowners”. He used his position to push for the approval of the constitution made by the FLN, and alienated allies: Mohammed Khider and Ferhat Abbas resigned their political charges in 1963, dismayed by Ben Bella's dictatorial tendencies which could be seen in the proposed constitution, as it enshrined a one-party state and rejected political pluralism. Nevertheless, this action presented no problem to the Algerian people: the constitution was approved and on 15 September 1963 Ben Bella was elected president of the country, unopposed and with an immense majority.  In his presidency, he had to deal with a country with no state tradition and whose senior civil servants had always previously been foreigners, with the hard duty of building a state out of nearly nothing. Because of that, despite of his egalitarian way of governing, living with modesty, without using the previous governor's palace, and with an always open door, his actions in the government were not as beneficial as his generous intentions. After stabilizing the country, Ben Bella embarked on a series of initially-popular but somewhat anarchic land reforms to the benefit of landless farmers, and increasingly turned to socialist rhetoric. His policy of autogestion, or self-management, was adopted after the peasants seized former French lands, and inspired by Marxist Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito. He also worked on the development of his country, instituting reforms, undertaking campaigns for national literacy, and nationalizing several industries and calling for socialization of the economy and Arabization. However, many times he improvised government as he went, as with his National Solidarity Fund, where he asked the Algerian people "voluntarily" to hand over jewellery and banknotes.  In international relations, he had to maintain connections with the former colonial master France, and also accepted economic aid from both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, as each sought to move his regime into its orbit and into opposition to the other. Moreover, he wanted Algeria to be a leader country of the Third World liberation movements and of the Third World itself. For strengthening relations with other colonies and former colonies, Algeria joined the Non-Aligned Movement under Ben Bella’s regime, and he forged links with such African leaders as Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, Modibo Keita and Sekou Toure to aid rebel movements throughout Africa. He also established good relations with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Cuba; after his 1962 visit Cuba sent a health mission to Algeria, with doctors and medical help, and later sent weapons and soldiers as aid during the Sand War against Morocco. He was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 30 April 1964.  During his regime, he had political problems with former leaders of the FLN, such as Mohammed Khider, Ferhat Abbas, Mohammed Boudiaf and Hocine Aït Ahmed. Ahmed founded the Front des Forces socialistes (Socialist Forces Front) (FFS) to confront Ben Bella and the others joined after being alienated by Ben Bella's dictatorial leadership. In 1963, the FFS called for an armed revolt against the regime. However, it had force only in the Kabylia region, and by the summer of 1964 the revolt was controlled and FFS leaders were arrested.  In addition to political opposition, Ben Bella faced religious opposition. The Association of the Algerian Ulema claimed that the “state Islam” that Ben Bella wanted to achieve was not an application of true Muslim values, but rather an attempt to please the population.  His government was overthrown in June 1965, while he was planning to host an Afro-Asian international meeting, he was deposed in a bloodless coup led by Houari Boumédiène, his defense minister. He was held for eight months in an underground prison, then for the next 14 years lived under house arrest.

House arrest and later freedom.

After being deposed in 1965, Ben Bella was sent to an underground prison where he was detained for eight months. After that, he was transferred to an isolated villa in Birouta, where he was placed under house arrest for 14 years. However, he was permitted a private life there, and in 1971 he married Zhora Sellami, an Algerian journalist. Their meeting, was arranged by Ben Bella’s mother. They became religiously observant Muslims, and adopted two girls, Mehdia and Nouria. After Boumedienne's death in 1978, restrictions on him were eased in July 1979, and he was freed on 30 October 1980. Ben Bella briefly resided in France, but was expelled in 1983. He then moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, and launched the Mouvement pour la Démocratie en Algérie (MDA), a moderate Islamic opposition party, in 1984. In September 1990, he returned to Algeria, and in 1991 led the MDA in the first round of the country's abortive parliamentary elections. The MDA was banned in 1997.

Later life.

Ben Bella was elected president of the International Campaign Against Aggression on Iraq at its Cairo Conference. He described himself numerous times in interviews as an Islamist of a "mild and peace loving flavour." Despite his former one-party state he later vocally advocated democracy in Algeria. He described the militant voice rising in the Islamic world as having developed from an incorrect and faulty interpretation of Islam. Despite the controversies, he was respected for his role in the anti-colonial struggle and was seen by many Arab intellectuals as one of the last original Arab nationalists.  He was also the chairperson of the African Union Panel of the Wise, which is mandated to advise the AU Commission on issues relevant to conflict prevention, management and resolution. The other members of the panel at the time were: President Miguel Trovoada (former President of São Tomé and Príncipe); Dr. Salim A. Salim (former Secretary-General of the OAU); Dr. Brigalia Bam (Chair of South Africa's Electoral Commission); and Elisabeth Pognon (former President of the Constitutional Court of Benin).

Illness, death and state funeral.

In February 2012, Ben Bella was admitted to a hospital for medical checks. At the same time, a report circulated that he had died, but this was denied by his family.  Ben Bella died on 11 April at his family home in Algiers. Though the reasons of his death were unknown he had been treated for respiratory illnesses twice at Ain Naadja. His body lay in state on 12 April before the funeral at El Alia Cemetery on 13 April. Algeria declared eight days of national mourning.

Further reading.

Aussaresses, General Paul, "The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955–1957". New York: Enigma Books, 2010. 978-1-929631-30-8.

Ahmed Ben Bella ( ""; 25 December 1916 – 11 April 2012) was an Algerian politician, socialist soldier and revolutionary who served as the first President of Algeria from 1963 to 1965.

Ahmed Ben Bella (* 25. Dezember 1918 in Marnia in Algerien nahe der marokkanisch-algerischen Grenze; † 11. April 2012 in Algier; ) war ein algerischer Politiker, Kämpfer für die Unabhängigkeit und von 1962 bis 1965 erster Staatspräsident seines Landes.


History and development.

In the early 1950s, the Taizé Community in France started to attract youths from several religious denominations with worship hymns based on modern melodies.  In the mid-20th century, Christian Unions in university environments hosted evangelistic talks and provided biblical teaching for their members, Christian cafés opened with evangelistic aims, and church youth groups were set up. Amateur musicians from these groups began playing Christian music in a popular idiom. Some Christians felt that the church needed to break from its stereotype as being structured, formal and dull to appeal to the younger generation. By borrowing the conventions of popular music, the antithesis of this stereotype, the church restated the claims of the Bible through Christian lyrics, and thus sent the message that Christianity was not outdated or irrelevant. "The Joystrings" were one of the first Christian pop groups to appear on television, in Salvation Army uniform, playing Christian beat music.  Churches began to adopt some of these songs and the styles for corporate worship. These early songs for communal singing were characteristically simple. "Youth Praise", published in 1966, was one of the first and most famous collections of these songs and was compiled and edited by Michael Baughen and published by the Jubilate Group.  As of the early 1990s, songs such as "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High", "Shine, Jesus, Shine" and "Shout to the Lord" had been accepted in many churches. Integrity Media, Maranatha! Music and Vineyard were already publishing newer styles of music. Supporters of traditional worship hoped the newer styles were a fad, while younger people cited, "Sing to the Lord a new song". Prior to the late 1990s, many felt that Sunday morning was a time for hymns, and young people could have their music on the other six days. A "modern worship renaissance" helped make it clear any musical style was acceptable if true believers were using it to praise God. The changes resulted from the "Cutting Edge" recordings by the band Delirious?, the Passion Conferences and their music, the Exodus project of Michael W. Smith, and the band Sonicflood. Contemporary worship music became an integral part of Contemporary Christian music.  More recently songs are displayed using projectors on screens at the front of the church, and this has enabled greater physical freedom, and a faster rate of turnover in the material being sung. Important propagators of CWM over the past 25 years include Vineyard Music, Hillsong Worship, Bethel Music, Elevation Worship, Jesus Culture and Soul Survivor.

Theology and lyrics.

As CWM is closely related to the charismatic movement, the lyrics and even some musical features reflect its theology. In particular the charismatic movement is characterised by its emphasis on the Holy Spirit, through a personal encounter and relationship with God, that can be summed up in agape love.  Lyrically, the informal, sometimes intimate, language of relationship is employed. The terms 'You' and 'I’ are used rather than 'God' and 'we', and lyrics such as, 'I, I'm desperate for You', and 'Hungry I come to You for I know You satisfy, I am empty but I know Your love does not run dry' both exemplify the similarity of the lyrics of some CWM to popular love songs. Slang is used on occasion (for example 'We wanna see Jesus lifted high') and imperatives ('Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, I want to see You'), demonstrating the friendly, informal terms charismatic theology encourages for relating to God personally. Often a physical response is included in the lyrics ('So we raise up holy hands'; 'I will dance, I will sing, to be mad for my king'). This couples with the use of drums and popular rhythm in the songs to encourage full body worship.  The metaphorical language of the lyrics is subjective, and therefore does risk being misinterpreted; this emphasis on personal encounter with God does not always balance with intellectual understanding.  Just as in secular popular and rock relationships and feelings are central topics, so in CWM association to a personal relationship with God and free expression are emphasised.  As in traditional hymnody, some images, such as captivity and freedom, life and death, romance, power and sacrifice, are employed to facilitate relationship with God.  Beginning in the 2010s, contemporary worship music with a distinctly theological lyric focus blending hymns and worship songs with contemporary rhythms & instrumentation, began to emerge, primarily in the Baptist, Reformed, and more traditional non-denominational branches of Protestant Christianity. Artists include well-known groups such as Shane & Shane, Aaron Peterson, and modern hymn-writers, Keith & Kristyn Getty as well as others like Sovereign Grace Music, Matt Boswell, and Aaron Keyes. By the late 2010s, the format had gained sizable traction in many churches and other areas in culture as well as being heard in CCM collections and musical algorithms on several internet streaming services.

Musical identity.

Because, in common with hymns, such music is sung communally, there can be a practical and theological emphasis on its accessibility, to enable every member of the congregation to participate in a corporate act of worship. This often manifests in simple, easy-to-pick-up melodies in a mid-vocal range; repetition; familiar chord progressions and a restricted harmonic palette. Unlike hymns, the music notation may primarily be based around the chords, with the keyboard score being secondary. An example of this, "Strength Will Rise (Everlasting God)", is in with the exception of one bar shortly before the chorus. Rhythmic variety is achieved by syncopation, most notably in the short section leading into the chorus, and in flowing one line into the next. A pedal note in the opening sets the key and it uses only four chords. Structurally, the form verse-chorus is adopted, each using repetition. In particular the use of a rising four-note figure, used in both melody and accompaniment, makes the song easy to learn.  At more charismatic services, members of the congregation may harmonise freely during worship songs, perhaps singing in tongues (see glossolalia), and the worship leader seeks to be 'led by the Holy Spirit'. There may also be role of improvisation, flowing from one song to the next and inserting musical material from one song into another.

Performance.

The worship band.

There is no fixed band set-up for playing CWM, but most have a lead singer and lead guitarist or keyboard player. Their role is to indicate the tone, structure, pace and volume of the worship songs, and perhaps even construct the order or content during the time of worship. Some larger churches are able to employ paid worship leaders, and some have attained fame by worship leading, blurring contemporary worship music with Christian rock, though the role of the band in a worship service, leading and enabling the congregation in praise normally contrasts that of performing a Christian concert. In CWM today there will often be three or four singers with microphones, a drum kit, a bass guitar, one or two guitars, keyboard and possibly other, more orchestral instruments, such as a flute or violin. There has been a shift within the genre towards using amplified instruments and voices, again paralleling popular music, though some churches play the same songs with simpler or acoustic instrumentation.

The role of technology.

Technological advances have played a significant role in the development of CWM. In particular the use of projectors means that the song repertoire of a church is not restricted to those in a song book. Songs and styles go in trends. The internet has increased accessibility, enabling anyone to see lyrics and guitar chords for many worship songs, and download MP3 tracks. This has also played a part in the globalisation of much CWM. Some churches, such as Hillsong, Bethel and Vineyard, have their own publishing companies, and there is a thriving Christian music business which parallels that of the secular world, with recording studios, music books, CDs, MP3 downloads and other merchandise. The consumer culture surrounding CWM has prompted both criticism and praise, and as Pete Ward deals with in his book "Selling Worship", no advance is without both positive and negative repercussions.

Criticisms.

Criticisms include Gary Parrett's concern that the volume of this music drowns out congregational participation, and therefore makes it a performance. He quotes Ephesians 5:19, in which Paul the Apostle tells the church in Ephesus to be'speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit', and questions whether the worship band, now so often amplified and playing like a rock band, replace rather than enable a congregation's praise.  Seventh-day Adventist author Samuele Bacchiocchi expressed concerns over the use of the "rock" idiom, as he argues that music communicates on a subconscious level, and the often anarchistic, nihilistic ethos of rock stands against Christian culture. Using the physical response induced by drums in a worship context as evidence that rock takes peoples' minds away from contemplating on the lyrics and God, he suggests that rock is actively dangerous for the Church.  The theological content too has raised questions for some, including Martyn Percy, who argues there is too great an emphasis on a very intimate relationship with God, using terms such as 'I' and 'you' instead of 'we' and 'God', and very passionate, physical language, and argues that this bias needs urgent correction. He explains how the emphasis on emotion can encourage hype and a need to create an atmosphere which evokes a sense of encounter with God, rather than allowing God to do so.  Despite the biblical basis employed to underpin CWM, such as, its surrounding culture tends to exclude systematic use of the psalms in weekly worship, sidelining lament from regular worship practice. The emphasis on praise, and on an interpretation of 'worship' that is overwhelmingly positive, can lead to avoidance of the psalms of lament. Michael Vasey writes: "Scripture is, of course, full of lament – and devotes its finest literary creation to warning the godly against quick and easy answers. The power of many of the psalms we are embarrassed to use lies precisely here. Of all this there is little echo in our contemporary reading." Whereas denominational churches generally use a weekly lectionary that gives a broad range of scriptural themes, including selected psalms on those themes, CWM churches tend not to have an agreed lectionary and the consequent agreement on using a broad range of material.  Pope John Paul II, concerning the role of music in regard to worship, said "Today, as yesterday, musicians, composers, liturgical chapel cantors, church organists and instrumentalists must feel the necessity of serious and rigorous professional training. They should be especially conscious of the fact that each of their creations or interpretations cannot escape the requirement of being a work that is inspired, appropriate and attentive to aesthetic dignity, transformed into a prayer of worship when, in the course of the liturgy, it expresses the mystery of faith in sound."  Some have noted that contemporary worship songs often reflect the social climate of individualism as the lyrics emphasize personal relationship with God, even within a group context.  Interviewed in "Christianity Today" in 2011, Grove City College professor T. David Gordon said contemporary music was not easier to sing or better than traditional music, but familiar. If this style of music was all people listened to, then that would make them happy. He also said praise bands had a hard time finding good music, but played the contemporary music because the church wanted it, with the only criteria being how contemporary the music sounded. Gordon also said churches were adding hymns to contemporary services, but that in the past the main concern had never been how new the music sounded.  Gordon said in 2014 that contemporary music could not be as good because one generation could not compete with 50 generations of hymns, and even the contemporary songs were in some cases just the old hymns with an updated sound. Writers of new songs had a hard time with "theologically sound, but significant, profound, appropriate, memorable, and edifying". After his 2011 interview, Gordon said Mark Moring of "Christianity Today" had observed that contemporary music in churches was on the decline. Gordon said the people who first wanted it are older, and contemporary music had become so common that it was no longer a marketing tool, and no longer new when people wanted what was new. Praise teams, Gordon said, were like performers, but that they were in conflict with what the Bible said. And the congregation needed to participate.

Popularity.

Some songs now appear in more traditional hymnals. "Evangelical Lutheran Worship" (published in 2006 by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) includes "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High" by Rick Founds and "Shout to the Lord" by Darlene Zschech. The "United Methodist Hymnal" (1989) includes "Thy Word Is a Lamp" by Amy Grant and "Take Our Bread" by Joe Wise.  Contemporary Christian worship groups, such as Hillsong United, are ranking in the top ten on "Billboard" and other national charts and are earning publicity in pop culture publications.  In 2019, the U.S. radio network Air1 (which was previously devoted to Christian hits) changed its format to focus primarily on worship music.

Contemporary worship music (CWM), also known as praise and worship music, is a defined genre of Christian music used in contemporary worship. It has developed over the past 60 years and is stylistically similar to pop music. The songs are frequently referred to as "praise songs" or "worship songs" and are typically led by a "worship band" or "praise team", with either a guitarist or pianist leading. It has become a common genre of music sung in many churches, particularly in charismatic or non-denominational Protestant churches with some Roman Catholic congregations incorporating it into their mass as well.

Lobpreis und Anbetung sind als besondere Form des Gebetes Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten des christlichen Glaubens. Im Lobpreis erweist der Gläubige Gott Ehre und rühmt seine Taten, in der Anbetung (lateinisch "adoratio", griechisch προσκύνησις) verehrt er Gottes Wesen. Lobpreis und Anbetung sind – auch in der besonderen Form der Doxologie – seit der Urchristenheit liturgischer Bestandteil des christlichen Gottesdienstes aller Konfessionen. In der Gegenwart fungieren die Begriffe zusammen auch als terminus technicus für eine zeitgenössische musikalische Ausdrucksform des Lobpreises, als dessen Besonderheit kurze, meist einstrophige, dafür oftmals wiederholte Gesänge gelten, die in der Musiksprache der Gegenwart gehalten sind. Lobpreis"musik" hat sich im Verlauf von sechzig Jahren zu einem eigenen Musikstil entwickelt, dessen Ursprünge in der charismatischen Bewegung liegen und der inzwischen in den meisten christlichen Konfessionen – vor allem in der Jugend – verbreitet ist. Daneben ist „Lobpreis und Anbetung“ aber auch Inbegriff für eine innere christliche Lebenshaltung, mithin für das Ziel aller theologischen Arbeit. Im Englischen werden die Begriffe "praise" und "worship" verwendet, wobei „worship“ nicht nur die spezielle Gattung der Anbetung, sondern in weiterem Sinne die Gesamtheit des gottesdienstlichen Geschehens beschreibt.


Life.

Childhood and adolescence: 1931–1950.

Rajneesh (a childhood nickname from Sanskrit रजनी rajani, night and ईश isha, lord) was born Chandra Mohan Jain, the eldest of 11 children of a cloth merchant, at his maternal grandparents' house in Kuchwada; a small village in the Raisen District of Madhya Pradesh state in India. His parents, Babulal and Saraswati Jain, who were Taranpanthi Jains, let him live with his maternal grandparents until he was seven years old. By Rajneesh's own account, this was a major influence on his development because his grandmother gave him the utmost freedom, leaving him carefree without an imposed education or

University years and public speaker: 1951–1970.

In 1951, aged 19, Rajneesh began his studies at Hitkarini College in Jabalpur. Asked to leave after conflicts with an instructor, he transferred to D. N. Jain College, also in Jabalpur. Having proved himself to be disruptively argumentative, he was not required to attend college classes at D. N. Jain College except for examinations and used his free time to work for a few months as an assistant editor at a local newspaper. He began speaking in public at the annual "Sarva Dharma Sammelan" (Meeting of all faiths) held at Jabalpur, organised by the Taranpanthi Jain community into

Mumbai: 1970–1974.

At a public meditation event in early 1970, Rajneesh presented his Dynamic Meditation method for the first time. Dynamic Meditation involved breathing very fast and celebrating with music and dance. He left Jabalpur for Mumbai at the end of June. On 26 September 1970, he initiated his first group of disciples or neo-sannyasins. Becoming a disciple meant assuming a new name and wearing the traditional orange dress of ascetic Hindu holy men, including a "mala" (beaded necklace) carrying a locket with his picture. However, his sannyasins were encouraged to follow a celebratory rather than ascetic lifestyle. He himself was not to be worshipped but regarded as a catalytic agent, "a sun encouraging the flower to open".

Pune ashram: 1974–1981.

The humid climate of Mumbai proved detrimental to Rajneesh's health: he developed diabetes, asthma, and numerous allergies. In 1974, on the 21st anniversary of his experience in Jabalpur, he moved to a property in Koregaon Park, Pune, purchased with the help of Ma Yoga Mukta (Catherine Venizelos), a Greek shipping heiress. Rajneesh spoke at the Pune ashram from 1974 to 1981. The two adjoining houses and of land became the nucleus of an ashram, and the property is still the heart of the present-day OSHO International Meditation Resort. It allowed the regular audio recording and, later, video recording and printing of his discourses for worldwide distribution, enabling him to reach far larger audiences. The number of Western visitors increased sharply. The ashram soon featured an arts-and-crafts centre producing clothes, jewellery, ceramics, and organic cosmetics and hosted performances of theatre, music, and mime. From 1975, after the arrival of several therapists from the

United States and the Oregon commune: 1981–1985.

Arrival in the United States.

In 1981, the increased tensions around the Poona ashram, along with criticism of its activities and threatened punitive action by Indian authorities, provided an impetus for the ashram to consider the establishment of a new commune in the United States. According to Susan J. Palmer, the move to the United States was a plan from Sheela. Gordon (1987) notes that Sheela and Rajneesh had discussed the idea of establishing a new commune in the US in late 1980, although he did not agree to travel there until May 1981. On 1 June that year he travelled to the United States on a tourist visa, ostensibly for medical purposes, and spent several months at a Rajneeshee retreat centre located at Kip's

Establishing Rajneeshpuram.

On 13 June 1981, Sheela's husband, John Shelfer, signed a purchase contract to buy property in Oregon for US$5.75 million, and a few days later assigned the property to the US foundation. The property was a ranch, previously known as "The Big Muddy Ranch" and located across two counties (Wasco and Jefferson). It was renamed "Rancho Rajneesh" and Rajneesh moved there on 29 August. Initial local community reactions ranged from hostility to tolerance, depending on distance from the ranch. The press reported, and another study found, that the development met almost immediately with intense local, state, and federal opposition from the government, press, and citizenry. Within months a series of legal battles ensued, principally over land use. Within a year of arriving, Rajneesh and his followers had become embroiled in a series of legal battles with their neighbours, the principal conflict relating to land use. The commune leadership was uncompromising and behaved impatiently in dealing with the locals. They were also insistent upon having demands met, and engaged in implicitly threatening and directly confrontational behaviour. Whatever the true intention, the repeated changes in their stated plans looked to many like conscious deception.  In

1984 bioterror attack.

Rajneesh had coached Sheela in using media coverage to her advantage and during his period of public silence he privately stated that when Sheela spoke, she was speaking on his behalf. He had also supported her when disputes about her behaviour arose within the commune leadership, but in early 1984, as tension amongst the inner circle peaked, a private meeting was convened with Sheela and his personal house staff. According to the testimony of Rajneesh's dentist, Swami Devageet (Charles Harvey Newman), she was admonished during a meeting, with Rajneesh declaring that his house, and not hers, was the centre of the commune. Devageet claimed Rajneesh warned that Sheela's jealousy of anyone close to him would inevitably make them a target.  Several months later, on 30 October 1984, he ended his period of public silence, announcing that it was time to "speak his own truths". In July 1985 he resumed daily public discourses. On 16 September 1985, a few days after Sheela and her entire management team had suddenly left the commune for Europe, Rajneesh held a press conference in which he labelled Sheela and her associates a "gang of fascists". He accused them of having committed serious crimes, most dating back to 1984, and invited the authorities to investigate.  The alleged crimes, which he stated had been committed without his knowledge or consent, included the attempted murder of his personal physician, poisonings of public officials, wiretapping and bugging within the commune and within his own home, and a bioterror attack on the citizens of The Dalles, Oregon, using "Salmonella" to impact the county elections. While his allegations were initially greeted with scepticism by outside observers, the subsequent investigation by the US authorities confirmed these accusations and resulted in the conviction of Sheela and several of her lieutenants. On 30 September 1985, Rajneesh denied that he was a religious teacher. His disciples burned 5,000 copies of "Book of Rajneeshism", a 78-page compilation of his teachings that defined "Rajneeshism" as "a religionless religion". He said he ordered the book-burning to rid the sect of the last traces of the influence of Sheela, whose robes were also "added to the bonfire".  The salmonella attack is considered the first confirmed instance of chemical or biological terrorism to have occurred in the United States. Rajneesh stated that because he was in silence and isolation, meeting only with Sheela, he was unaware of the crimes committed by the Rajneeshpuram leadership until Sheela and her "gang" left and sannyasins came forward to inform him. A number of commentators have stated that they believe that Sheela was being used as a convenient scapegoat. Others have pointed to the fact that although Sheela had bugged Rajneesh's living quarters and made her tapes available to the US authorities as part of her own plea bargain, no evidence has ever come to light that Rajneesh had any part in her crimes. Nevertheless, Gordon (1987) reports that Charles Turner, David Frohnmayer, and other law enforcement officials, who had surveyed affidavits never released publicly and who listened to hundreds of hours of tape recordings, insinuated to him that Rajneesh was guilty of more crimes than those for which he was

Travels and return to Pune: 1985–1990.

Following his exit from the US, Rajneesh returned to India, landing in Delhi on 17 November 1985. He was given a hero's welcome by his Indian disciples and denounced the United States, saying the world must "put the monster America in its place" and that "Either America must be hushed up or America will be the end of the world." He then stayed for six weeks in Manali, Himachal Pradesh. When non-Indians in his party had their visas revoked, he moved on to Kathmandu, Nepal, and then, a few weeks later, to Crete. Arrested after a few days

Death.

Rajneesh died on 19 January 1990, aged 58, at the ashram in Pune, India. The official cause of death was heart failure, but a statement released by his commune said that he had died because

Teachings.

Rajneesh's teachings, delivered through his discourses, were not presented in an academic setting, but interspersed with jokes. The emphasis was not static but changed over time: Rajneesh revelled in paradox and contradiction, making his work difficult to summarise. He delighted in engaging in behaviour that seemed entirely at odds with traditional images of enlightened individuals; his early lectures in particular were famous for their humor and their refusal to take anything seriously. All such behaviour, however capricious and difficult to accept, was explained as "a technique for transformation" to push people "beyond the mind".  He spoke on major spiritual traditions including Jainism, Hinduism, Hassidism, Tantrism, Taoism, Sufism, Christianity, Buddhism, on a variety of Eastern and Western mystics and on sacred scriptures such as the "Upanishads" and the "Guru Granth Sahib". The sociologist Lewis F. Carter saw his ideas as rooted in Hindu advaita, in which the human experiences of separateness, duality and temporality are held to be a kind of dance or play of cosmic consciousness in which everything is sacred, has absolute worth and is an end in itself. While his contemporary Jiddu Krishnamurti did not approve of Rajneesh, there are clear similarities between their respective teachings.  Rajneesh also drew on a wide range of Western ideas. His belief in the unity of opposites recalls Heraclitus, while his description of man as a machine, condemned to the helpless acting out of unconscious, neurotic patterns, has much in common with Sigmund Freud and George Gurdjieff. His vision of the "new man" transcending constraints of convention is reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil"; his promotion of sexual liberation bears comparison to D. H. Lawrence; and his "dynamic" meditations owe a debt to Wilhelm Reich.

Ego and the mind.

According to Rajneesh every human being is a "Buddha" with the capacity for enlightenment, capable of unconditional love and of responding rather than reacting to life, although the ego usually prevents this, identifying with social conditioning and creating false needs and conflicts and an illusory sense of identity that is nothing but a barrier of dreams. Otherwise man's innate being can flower in a move from the periphery to the centre.  Rajneesh viewed the mind first and foremost as a mechanism for survival, replicating behavioural strategies that have proven successful

Meditation.

Rajneesh presented meditation not just as a practice but as a state of awareness to be maintained in every moment, a total awareness that awakens the individual from the sleep of mechanical responses conditioned by beliefs and expectations. He employed Western psychotherapy in the preparatory stages of meditation to create awareness of mental and emotional patterns.  He suggested more than a hundred meditation techniques in total. His own "active meditation" techniques are characterised by stages of physical activity leading to silence. The most famous of these remains Dynamic MeditationTM, which has been described as a kind of microcosm of his outlook. Performed with closed or blindfolded eyes, it comprises five stages, four of which are accompanied by music. First the meditator engages in ten minutes of rapid breathing through the nose. The second ten minutes

"Sannyas".

Another key ingredient was his own presence as a master: "A Master shares his being with you, not his philosophy.... He never does anything to the disciple." The initiation he offered was another such device: "... if your being can communicate with me,

Renunciation and the "New Man".

Rajneesh saw his "neo-sannyas" as a totally new form of spiritual discipline, or one that had once existed but since been forgotten. He thought that the traditional Hindu sannyas had turned into a mere system of social renunciation and imitation. He emphasised complete inner freedom and the responsibility to oneself, not demanding superficial behavioural changes, but a deeper, inner transformation. Desires were to be accepted and surpassed rather than denied. Once this inner flowering had taken place, desires such as that for sex would be left behind.  Rajneesh said that he was "the rich man's guru" and that material poverty was not a genuine spiritual value. He had himself photographed wearing sumptuous clothing and hand-made watches and, while in Oregon, drove a different Rolls-Royce each day – his followers reportedly wanted to buy him 365 of them, one for each day of the year. Publicity shots of the Rolls-Royces were sent to the press. They may have reflected both his advocacy of wealth and his desire to provoke American sensibilities, much as he had enjoyed offending Indian

Euthanasia and genetic selection.

Rajneesh spoke many times of the dangers of overpopulation, and advocated universal legalisation of contraception and abortion. He described the religious prohibitions thereof as criminal, and argued that the United Nations' declaration of the human "right to life" played into the hands of religious campaigners. According to Rajneesh, one has no right to knowingly inflict a lifetime of suffering: life should begin only at birth, and even then, "If a child is born deaf, dumb, and we cannot do anything, and the parents are willing, the child should be put to eternal sleep" rather than "take the risk of burdening

Contradictions and "Heart to heart communion".

Rajneesh claimed on 30 October 1984 in the first talk he gave after three years of public silence that he had gone into public silence partly to put off those who were only intellectually following him:  "Now I have found my people and I have to arrange a silent communion, which will help in two ways: those who cannot understand silence will drop out. That will be good. That will be a good weeding; otherwise they will go on clinging around me because of the words,

Rajneesh's "Ten Commandments".

In his early days as Acharya Rajneesh, a correspondent once asked for his "Ten Commandments". In reply, Rajneesh said that it was a difficult matter

Legacy.

While Rajneesh's teachings were not welcomed by many in his own home country during his lifetime, there has been a change in Indian public opinion since Rajneesh's death. In 1991, an Indian newspaper counted Rajneesh, along with figures such as Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, among the ten people who had most changed India's destiny; in Rajneesh's case, by "liberating the minds of future generations from the shackles of religiosity and conformism". Rajneesh has found more acclaim in his homeland since his death than he ever did while alive. Writing in "The Indian Express", columnist Tanweer Alam stated, "The late Rajneesh was a fine interpreter of social absurdities that destroyed human happiness." At a celebration in 2006, marking the 75th anniversary of Rajneesh's birth, Indian singer Wasifuddin Dagar said that Rajneesh's teachings are "more pertinent in the current milieu than they were ever before". In Nepal, there were 60 Rajneesh centres with almost 45,000 initiated disciples as of January 2008. Rajneesh's entire works have been placed in the Library of India's National Parliament in New Delhi. The Bollywood actor, and former Minister of State for External Affairs, Vinod Khanna, worked as Rajneesh's gardener in Rajneeshpuram in the 1980s. Over 650 books are credited to Rajneesh, expressing his views on all facets of human existence. Virtually

Reception.

Rajneesh is generally considered one of the most controversial spiritual leaders to have emerged from India in the twentieth century. His message of sexual, emotional, spiritual, and institutional liberation, as well as the pleasure he took in causing offence, ensured that his life was surrounded by controversy. Rajneesh became known as the "sex guru" in India, and as the "Rolls-Royce guru" in the United States. He attacked traditional concepts of nationalism, openly expressed contempt for politicians, and poked fun at the leading figures of various religions, who in turn found his arrogance insufferable. His teachings on sex, marriage, family, and relationships contradicted traditional values and aroused a great deal of anger and opposition around the world. His movement was widely considered a cult. Rajneesh was seen to live "in ostentation and offensive opulence", while his followers, most of whom had severed ties with outside friends and family and donated all or most of their money and possessions to the commune, might be at a mere "subsistence level".

Appraisal by scholars of religion.

Academic assessments of Rajneesh's work have been mixed and often directly contradictory. Uday Mehta saw errors in his interpretation of Zen and Mahayana Buddhism, speaking of "gross contradictions and inconsistencies in his teachings" that "exploit" the "ignorance and gullibility" of his listeners. The sociologist Bob Mullan wrote in 1983 of "a borrowing of truths, half-truths and occasional misrepresentations from the great traditions"... often bland, inaccurate, spurious and extremely contradictory". American religious studies professor Hugh B. Urban also said Rajneesh's teaching was neither original nor especially profound, and concluded that most of its content

Appraisal as charismatic leader.

A number of commentators have remarked upon Rajneesh's charisma. Comparing Rajneesh with Gurdjieff, Anthony Storr wrote that Rajneesh was "personally extremely impressive", noting that "many of those who visited him for the first time felt that their most intimate feelings were instantly understood, that they were accepted and unequivocally welcomed rather than judged. [Rajneesh] seemed to radiate energy and to awaken hidden possibilities in those who came into contact with him". Many sannyasins have stated that hearing Rajneesh speak, they "fell in love with

Wider appraisal as a thinker and speaker.

There are widely divergent assessments of Rajneesh's qualities as a thinker and speaker. Khushwant Singh, an eminent author, historian, and former editor of the "Hindustan Times", has described Rajneesh as "the most original thinker that India has produced: the most erudite, the most clearheaded and the most innovative". Singh believes that Rajneesh was a "free-thinking agnostic" who had the ability to explain the most abstract concepts in simple language, illustrated with witty anecdotes, who mocked gods, prophets, scriptures, and religious practices, and gave a totally new dimension to religion. German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, a one time devotee of Rajneesh's (living at the Pune ashram from 1978 to 1980), described him as a "Wittgenstein of religions", ranking him as one of the greatest figures of the 20th century; in his view, Rajneesh had performed a radical deconstruction of the word games played by the world's religions.  During the early 1980s, a number of commentators in the popular press were dismissive of Rajneesh. The Australian critic Clive James scornfully referred to him as "Bagwash", likening the experience of listening to one of his discourses to sitting in a laundrette and watching "your

Selected discourses.

On the sayings of Jesus:  On "Tao":  On Gautama Buddha:  On Zen:  On the Baul mystics:  On Sufis:  On Hassidism:  On the "Upanishads":  On Heraclitus:  On Kabir:  On Buddhist Tantra:  On Patanjali and Yoga: (reprinted as "Yoga, the Science of the Soul")  On Meditation methods:  On his childhood:  Talks based on questions:  "Darshan" interviews:

Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain, 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, and later as Osho (), was an Indian godman, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement.

„Rajneesh“ Chandra Mohan Jain (hindi रजनीश चन्द्र मोहन जैन) (* 11. Dezember 1931 in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, Indien; † 19. Januar 1990 in Pune, Maharashtra, Indien) war ein indischer Philosoph und Begründer der Neo-Sannyas-Bewegung. Er nannte sich Mitte der 1960er bis Anfang der 1970er Jahre Acharya Rajneesh, danach bis Ende 1988 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, kurz Bhagwan genannt, und von 1989 bis zu seinem Tod Osho.


Company profile.

Jenoptik divides its activities into three photonics-based divisions Light & Optics, Light & Production and Light & Safety. The new brand Vincorion is dedicated to the mechatronic business of Jenoptik. The customers of Jenoptik around the world mainly include companies in the semiconductor and semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry, automotive and automotive supplier industry, medical technology, security and defense technology as well as the aviation industry.  Jenoptik has around 4,000 employees and in 2018 generated sales of 834 million Euros. The group was created in 1991 out of Jenoptik Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH. Since June 1998 Jenoptik has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and is included in the TecDAX index. The Jenoptik Group headquarters are in Jena (Thuringia). In addition to several major sites in Germany Jenoptik is represented in about 80 countries worldwide and has major production sites abroad in the US, France and Switzerland as well as shareholdings in Singapore, India, China, Korea, Japan and Australia.  Dr. Stefan Traeger has been the chairman of the executive board of Jenoptik AG since May 1, 2017. Hans-Dieter Schumacher is the chief financial officer.  The group can trace its heritage back to the original Carl Zeiss AG company, founded in Jena in 1846. Following World War II, Jena fell within the Soviet occupation zone, later to become East Germany. In 1948, when it was apparent that the Soviet authorities were moving toward establishing a separate Communist state in their occupation zone, most of the main Zeiss company hastily relocated to West Germany. The Soviet and East German authorities took over the old Zeiss factory in Jena and used it as the nucleus for the state-owned Kombinat VEB Zeiss Jena. The eastern Zeiss became well known for its high-quality optical equipment.  Following German reunification, VEB Zeiss Jena became Zeiss Jena GmbH. The company then sold its microscopy division and other optical divisions to Carl Zeiss AG, effectively reuniting the old prewar Zeiss firm. The remainder of Zeiss Jena GmbH continued as JENOPTIK Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH, owned by the state government of Thuringia specializing in the areas of photonics, optoelectronics, and mechatronics. The name was shortened to Jenoptik GmbH, and was renamed Jenoptik AG in 1996 when the state divested its interest. The JENOPTIK trademark is owned by Jenoptik AG. Jenoptik is regarded as one of the few companies descended from an East German state-owned enterprise to be successful in the post-Reunification era. Indeed, it was one of the few East German firms that was thought to have a realistic chance of competing in a global market.  In August 2017, the company announced it would acquire the American-based process automation firm, Five Lakes, merging the company with its laser-machine business.  From 10 September 2018 Jenoptik presented its competencies in the mechatronic business under the new brand VINCORION. The products for the aviation, security, defense and rail markets are focused by this brand.  Since 2019 Jenoptik has combined its operating business in the three divisions "Light & Optics" (OEM business), "Light & Production" (industrial customer business) and "Light & Safety" (business with public-sector customers). The three divisions are building on their common core competencies in photonics. This includes know-how in optics, sensor technology, imaging, robotics, data analysis and man-machine interfaces.

Group structure and business activities.

“Light & Optics“ Division  Development and production partner for optical and micro-optical systems, services for information and communication technologies as well as security and defense technology. In addition, system and application services for the life science industry as well as laser, automotive and lighting applications.  “Light & Production” Division  The Light & Production Division supports industrial customers in making their production processes more effective and efficient through the use of optical and photonic technologies, and is one of the leading manufacturers of measurement technology and laser systems for manufacturing processes in the automotive industry.  "Laser processing systems:" High-precision gauging devices and machines “Light & Safety“ Division  In the Light & Safety division Jenoptik develops, produces and sells various components, systems and services for public-sector customers which make roads and municipalities safer worldwide.  Vincorion  Vincorion is an independent brand for the mechatronic business.

Concord Camera Corp..

In 2004, Concord Camera Corp. of the United States acquired a related company Jenimage Europe GmbH, and licensed the right to use the Jenoptik trademark for 20 years. It produced a range of compact digital cameras under the Jenoptik brand.

Jenoptik is a German integrated photonics group that divides its activities into three photonics-based divisions Light & Optics, Light & Production and Light & Safety.

Die Jenoptik Aktiengesellschaft ist ein weltweit tätiger, börsennotierter Technologiekonzern mit Hauptsitz in Jena (Thüringen). Jenoptik gliedert sich in die drei photonischen Divisionen Light & Optics, Light & Production und Light & Safety. Das mechatronische Geschäft wird seit 2018 unter der eigenständigen Marke Vincorion geführt. Zu den Hauptkunden zählen vor allem Unternehmen der Halbleiter- und Halbleiterausrüstungsindustrie, der Automobil- und Automobilzulieferindustrie, der Medizintechnik, der Sicherheits- und Wehrtechnik sowie der Luftfahrtindustrie. Neben mehreren Standorten in Deutschland ist Jenoptik in rund 80 Ländern präsent.


Personal life.

Origin and youth.

In the 1700s Van der Bellen's patrilineal ancestors emigrated from the Netherlands into the Russian Empire. During the Russian Civil War (1917-1922) part of his family escaped from the Bolsheviks and migrated to the newly independent Republic of Estonia. Before this Van der Bellen's grandfather Aleksander von der Bellen served as the head of the civilian regional government in Pskov. Claiming Dutch origins the family changed its name from „von der Bellen“ to „Van der Bellen“. In 1931 Van der Bellen's father, who was also called Alexander, married his Estonian mother Alma (née Sieboldt) in Kihelkonna in Saaremaa, and later on the elder Van der Bellen also obtained citizenship of Estonia. In June 1940, as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Estonia was invaded by the Red Army and later annexed by the USSR. Subsequently, in February or March 1941 Van der Bellen's father, mother, and older sister Vivian-Diana moved to Nazi Germany; in line with the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty they were accepted as so-called "Volksdeutsche".  Via Laugszargen (Memelland) and a German resettlement camp in Werneck at Würzburg, Van der Bellen's parents moved to Vienna, where their son Alexander was born in 1944 and baptized into the Lutheran Church. As the Red Army approached Vienna, the family escaped to the Kaunertal in Tyrol, where his father later became active as a businessman again.  In 1954, after completing primary school in Innsbruck, Van der Bellen started attending the Akademisches Gymnasium Innsbruck where he graduated in 1962 with his Matura. Until this time Van der Bellen had Estonian citizenship like his parents, obtaining Austrian citizenship around 1958. According to Van der Bellen himself, he did not complete the mandatory service in the "Bundesheer". He underwent a "Musterung" (military fitness check) twice, the first one resulting in his being rated as unfit ("untauglich"). However, he successfully passed the second one. Later, he received several respites during his studies and after his marriage. After that Van der Bellen was no long summoned for service, due to his subsequent professorship.

Education.

After receiving his Matura Van der Bellen started studying economics at the University of Innsbruck. He completed his studies in 1966 as "Diplom-Volkswirt". With his dissertation "Kollektive Haushalte und gemeinwirtschaftliche Unternehmungen: Probleme ihrer Koordination" ("Collective households and public-service enterprises: Problems of their coordination") he was awarded the title of Dr. rer. oec (doctor rerum oeconomicarum) in December 1966. From 1968 to 1971 he served as a scientific assistant of Clemens August Andreae at the public finance institution of the University of Innsbruck, and from 1972 to 1974 as research fellow at the international institution for management and administration of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. He established a friendship with Turkish economist Murat R. Sertel, with who he worked on decision and preference theories and later on published several articles and discussion papers.  In 1976 Van der Bellen was appointed extraordinary university professor at the Innsbruck University, where he remained until 1980. During this time he moved to Vienna to study and research from 1977 to 1980 at the Verwaltungsakademie des Bundes. From 1980 to 1999 he was extraordinary university professor for economics at the University of Vienna. Between 1990 and 1994 he there also became dean of the faculty for economics at University of Vienna. In October 1999 he became parliamentary leader of the Greens in the National Council and thus resigned as university professor in January 2009. Van der Bellen retired in February 2009.  Van der Bellen's research focused on planning and financing procedures in the public sector, infrastructure financing, fiscal policy, public expenditure, government regulation policy, public undertakings, and environmental and transport policy. He has published in professional journals such as the "Die Betriebswirtschaft", Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, "Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft", Public Choice, "Wirtschaftspolitische Blätter" and the "Zeitschrift für öffentliche und gemeinwirtschaftliche Unternehmen".

Family.

Van der Bellen married when he was 18 years old and became a father for the first time at 19. His relationship with Brigitte (born Hüttner, 1943–2018) lasted over 50 years, until they divorced in 2015. He had two sons with her. Since December 2015 Van der Bellen has been married to a longtime friend and managing director of the Greens Club, Doris Schmidauer. He lives in Vienna and in Kaunertal, Tyrol.

Religion.

As a young man Van der Bellen left the Evangelical Church, because he was upset about his local pastor. According to his own words he does not believe in the one God, but in a "message or vision" (""Botschaft oder Vision""), which in his view the New Testament states. However, in an interview in 2019 he stated, that he re-joined the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession the same year.

Freemason.

According to his own statement, Van der Bellen joined the only existing Freemason chapter in Innsbruck at the time, although he participated at meetings for a year, which he described as "being active". "After that, as a purely passive member, I paid the membership fee for about 10 years and finally left on my explicit request" (""Danach habe ich als rein passives Mitglied noch etwa 10 Jahre lang den Mitgliedsbeitrag bezahlt und bin schließlich auf meinen expliziten Wunsch hin ausgeschieden""), Van der Bellen in a ZIB 2 elections interview with Armin Wolf (18 May 2016). According to Van der Bellen, he is no longer a Freemason.

Estonian citizenship.

After Van der Bellen's victory in the 2016 Austrian presidential elections, President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves congratulated him. The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have stated that Van der Bellen could get back his Estonian passport at any time. This is possible because Van der Bellen's parents were citizens of Estonia as of 16 June 1940; children of such parents are automatically accepted as citizens. Urmas Paet, former foreign minister of Estonia and MEP said: "the election results are a reason to congratulate Austrians twice. For Estonia and its people, the fact that Austria has elected an Estonian citizen as its president also plays a role."

Nickname.

Van der Bellen is sometimes also called "Sascha" (which is an abbreviation of his first name) by his friends, colleagues, and within his party.

Political career.

Joining politics.

Van der Bellen was a member of the Social Democratic Party from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s, but his interests later turned towards the environmental movement. His former postgraduate Peter Pilz, back then the spokesman of the Green Party, brought Van der Bellen into his party. Van der Bellen later described these changes as a development "from an arrogant anti-capitalist to a generous left-liberal", although the latter self-image in his autobiography of 2015 also changed into a "liberal Anglo-Saxon coinage".  In 1992, Van der Bellen was nominated by the Greens for the office of the President of the Court of Audit; he was defeated by the ÖVP-close Franz Fiedler. After the Greens suffered significant losses in the 1995 legislative elections on 17 December, Van der Bellen took over the party chairmanship from Christoph Chorherr in December 1997 and remained until October 2008, being the longest-serving spokesman in the history of the Austrian Greens, with almost eleven years in office.  He assumed chairmanship with the party having 4.8% approval in polls at that time. He led the party through three elections, each higher than the last: in the 1999 legislative elections the party got 7.4% of the vote, in the 2002 legislative elections it got 9.5% of the vote, and in the 2006 legislative elections the party got 11.05% of the vote. After losses in the 2008 legislative elections, in which the Green Party's voteshare dropped to 10.11%, Van der Bellen, dubbed "the green professor" by the media, resigned on 3 October 2008 as spokesman of the Green Party. He handed over the office to the Third President of the National Council at the time, Eva Glawischnig. As designated spokesperson she was elected administrative party leader on 24 October and later officially endorsed and sworn in by the party congress (Bundeskongress).

Member of parliament.

With the beginning of the XIX. legislative period on 7 November 1994 Van der Bellen functioned as a member of the National Council for the first time and held this position until 2012. During the XXIV. legislative period he dropped out of the National Council on 5 July 2012. From 1999 to 2008 he was parliamentary leader of the Green Party in the National Council.  During his time in the National Council, Van der Bellen also served as a member of the Budget, Main, Science, Financial, Industrial (as deputy chairman), Administrative and Foreign Affairs (as clerk and deputy chairman) committees as well as member of several subcommittees. In 2009/10 he was a substitute member and from 2010 to 2012 a member of the Austrian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.  After the 2008 legislative elections, he was proposed by the Greens, who were no longer the third strongest party, as a counter-candidate to the controversial FPÖ candidate Martin Graf for the post of Third President of the National Council, however, he failed to win the vote on 28 October 2008: Graf was elected with 109 out of 156 valid votes, Van der Bellen only received 27, and the remaining 20 votes went to other MPs.

University commissioner.

On February 2011, Van der Bellen was elected by the red-green city and state government as Commissioner for Universities and Research (also: Commissioner of the City of Vienna for Universities and Research, denotation in 2013). While he himself volunteered this activity, in addition to his still exercised National Council mandate, the new infrastructure office for him with a budget of 210,000 euros annually was endowed.  As a university commissioner, he campaigned for the improvement of the relationship between the city of Vienna and the high schools located there, hence, universities, colleges and private universities. At his initiative, regular meetings took place for the first time between representatives of the Viennese universities and the Municipal Department 35 (Municipal Department of the City of Vienna) in order to improve cooperation in immigration and residence matters for third-country students and researchers. The initiative was taken up by the Austrian Universities Conference - The Austrian Conference of Rectors (uniko) and extended from Vienna to the whole of Austria. On the initiative of University Commissioner Van der Bellen, the Vienna University Circle, an informal advisory board composed of rectors and vice-rectors of Viennese universities, including the research institution "Institute of Science and Technology Austria" (IST Austria), were launched.

Vienna state parliament.

At the 2010 Viennese state elections on 10 October Van der Bellen stood as a candidate on the 29th place of the list of the Vienna Greens. With the elections slogan "Go Professor go!" he reached 11,952 preferred votes and thus achieved a precedence on the first place. Although he stated in multiple interviews: "Should I get the preferential votes and it comes to a red-green government, I will definitely move into the "Landtag"", he still did not accept the Gemeinderat mandate after the elections and remained in the National Council til 5 July 2012.  On 14 June 2012, Van der Bellen announced in a press conference to swap from the National Council to the Vienna Gemeinderat and Landtag. On 5 July 2012 he left the National Council. The inauguration took place in September 2012 at the first "Gemeinderat" meeting after the summer break. In January 2015, it was announced that Van der Bellen would retreat from Vienna's municipal politics at the end of the legislative period. In the internal list election of the Vienna Greens on 14 February, after the application deadline, he did not compete in the internal party candidacy. Thus he was no longer on a selectable place on the electoral lists of the Greens in the 2015 Viennese state elections.

Political views.

In 2001, Van der Bellen said that he turned from an "arrogant anti-capitalist" into a "broad-minded left-liberal" over the course of his political career. In his 2015 autobiography, Van der Bellen described himself as a liberal positioned in the political centre while downplaying his earlier description as left-liberal, and said he was inspired by the Anglo-Saxon liberal tradition, particularly John Stuart Mill. He is strongly supportive of the European Union, and advocates European federalism. During the 2016 presidential election, he appealed to the political centre and used "Unser Präsident der Mitte" (Our President of the Centre) for his campaign slogan.  Van der Bellen has argued that Europe should accept refugees who have fled to Europe from war zones in Syria and elsewhere, and has often mentioned his own background as the son of refugees in debates. He has opposed the government's decision to impose a limit on how many asylum-seekers it will allow into Austria.  Van der Bellen has commented that due to emerging Islamophobia and prejudice against women wearing headscarves, he could foresee a day when all non-Muslim women might also be asked to wear headscarves as a sign of solidarity with women who wear them on religious grounds. The remarks were criticized widely, especially on the political right.  Van der Bellen has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump, warning of the dangers of right-wing populism. He has opined that the British withdrawal from the European Union is damaging to the economies of both the United Kingdom and Europe. He is opposed to recognising the Russian annexation of Crimea. He has stated that the Austrian embassy in Israel should remain in Tel Aviv.  Van der Bellen has criticized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his supporters after mass pro-Erdoğan protests by Turks in Austria, saying: "In Austria there is freedom to demonstrate as long as it is peaceful. [...] Everyone that accepts the right to demonstrate, has to see that the same rights – such as freedom of speech, press freedom, independent justice system, and freedom to demonstrate are being denied in Turkey by President Erdogan."

Presidential election.

Before the election.

Since August 2014 Van der Bellen has already been regarded as a presidential candidate. The Green Party reserved the domain "vdb2016.at" through the media agency "Media Brothers" for a possible presidential candidacy of Van der Bellen in November 2014. After its reservation the party delegated the domain to the "Association "Together for Van der Bellen"" as of 6 January 2016.

Campaign.

On 8 January 2016, Van der Bellen officially announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election by video message.  Van der Bellen ran as an independent candidate and thus non-party nominee for the office of President. As the longest-serving leader of the Green party (from 1997 to 2008) and as an afterwards still active party member, Van der Bellen's claimed nonpartisanism was questioned and challenged throughout his presidential campaign. However, Van der Bellen officially suspended his party membership at the Greens as of 23 May 2016, demonstrating his willingness to strive for a nonpartisan incumbency.  Regardless of that the Green Party still supported him during his campaign; establishing the "Association "Together for Van der Bellen – Independent Initiative for the 2016 Presidential Election"" which comprised six employees and premises as well as 1.2 million euros financial aid. The association is headquartered within the Green Party's head office, executive director of the association is Van der Bellen's campaign manager Lothar Lockl. For the repetition of the second ballot, the association received a total of 18,398 private donations, which amounted to about 2.7 million euros. In comparison Van der Bellen's run-off opponent Norbert Hofer was vested with 3.4 million euros by his party. The Greens however, suspected that this sum only encompassed monetary and no material donations.  By running as a non-partisan candidate, Van der Bellen could also avoid an official requirement for approval of the Green Party Congress, therefore discussions about the party basis as well as a possible non-unanimous voting result were bypassed. As an independent candidate, it would legally not have been necessary for him to disclose the campaign donations. Nevertheless, the Association "Together for Van der Bellen" still published them on their website.

Election.

In the first round of the 2016 presidential election, Van der Bellen ranked second with 21.34% of the votes being behind Norbert Hofer with 35.05%.  In the second round of voting (the runoff election) on 22 May 2016, the provisional final result excluding postal votes was: Norbert Hofer with 51.93% and Alexander Van der Bellen with 48.07%. Therefore no winner could be determined on election night. On the following day (23 May 2016), Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka announced the final results including postal votes, according to which Van der Bellen received 50.35% and Hofer 49.64% of valid votes. Van der Bellen had a lead of 31,026 votes on Hofer. The voter turnout was 72.7%.  The complete final result was announced with a correction (in a constituency votes were counted twice), after which the difference has been reduced to less than 31,000 valid votes between Van der Bellen and Hofer, but this had little effect on the total percentage. (The changes only affected the third decimal place.)  Following the election, the designated President Van der Bellen reaffirmed his views on the Freedom Party and stated that he would not charge them with the task to form a government, even if they became the largest party. This would have been a novelty in the history of the Second Republic, since so far all Presidents had charged the chairperson of the largest party with the government formation.  On 8 June, Freedom Party chairman Heinz-Christian Strache brought in a 150-page notice of appeal to the Constitutional Court, which was intended to highlight deficiencies in the conduct of the second voting round. On 1 July 2016, the Constitutional Court consented the electoral appeal of the Freedom Party. Because of irregularities that occurred in the counting of postal votes, the election had to be repeated in the whole of Austria.  Van der Bellen also won the second runoff election postponed to 4 December 2016, receiving 53.8% of valid votes (with a voter turnout of 74.2%). While Van der Bellen's lead in the run-off vote on May 2016 amounted to barely less than 31,000 votes, he was able to expand his lead in the second run-off vote on December 2016 to over 348,000 valid votes.

Inauguration.

Alexander Van der Bellen was inaugurated as President of Austria on 26 January 2017. After his inaugural speech he met with the Kern government and was greeted with a military ceremony as the new commander-in-chief of the Bundesheer.

Honours and awards.

Austrian honours  Foreign honours Other awards

Alexander Van der Bellen (; born 18 January 1944) is the current President of Austria. He previously served as a professor of economics at the University of Vienna, and after joining politics, as the spokesman of the Austrian Green Party.

Alexander Van der Bellen (* 18. Jänner 1944 in Wien), inoffiziell oft mit dem Vornamen "Sascha" oder der Abkürzung "VdB" bezeichnet, ist ein österreichischer Wirtschaftswissenschaftler, Politiker (parteilos, bis 2016 Die Grünen) und seit dem 26. Jänner 2017 Bundespräsident der Republik Österreich.


Background.

Very little is known about Boumédiène's life; even the year of his birth is contested. Most sources state 1932 and Héliopolis as the date and place of his birth, but others say he was born in Guelma on August 23, 1927, or Clauzel near Guelma on August 23, 1927, or August 16, 1925 What is known with reasonable certainty of Boumedienne is that he was born in August 23 1932 near Guelma with the name of Mohammed Ben Brahim Boukharouba, and that his father was an impoverished small wheat-farmer with seven children, an Arab and strict Muslim speaking no French. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, his family is Arabic speaking of Berber origins.  He was educated at the Islamic Institute in Constantine. He joined the National Liberation Front (FLN) in the Algerian War of Independence in 1955, adopting "Houari Boumédiène" as his nom-de-guerre (from Sidi Boumediène, the name of the patron saint of the city of Tlemcen in western Algeria, where he served as an officer during the war, and Sidi El Houari, the patron saint of nearby Oran). He reached the rank of colonel, then the highest rank in the FLN forces, and from 1960 he was chief of staff of the ALN, the FLN's military wing.  He was married to Anissa al-Mansali.

After independence.

In 1961, after its vote of self-determination, Algeria declared independence and the French announced it was independent. Boumédiène headed a powerful military faction within the government, and was made defence minister by the Algerian leader Ahmed Ben Bella, whose ascent to power he had assisted as chief of staff. Boumédiène was also appointed as Vice President of Algeria in September 1963. He grew increasingly distrustful of Ben Bella's erratic style of government and ideological puritanism, and in June 1965, Boumédiène seized power in a bloodless coup.  The country's constitution and political institutions were abolished, and he ruled through a Revolutionary Council of his own mostly military supporters. Many of them had been his companions during the war years, when he was based around the Moroccan border town of Oujda, which caused analysts to speak of the "Oujda Group". One prominent member of this circle was Boumédiène's long-time foreign minister, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who served as Algeria's president from 1999 until 2019.  Initially, he was seen as potentially a weak leader, with no significant power base except inside the army, and it was not known to what extent he commanded the officer corps. He remained Algeria's undisputed leader until his death in 1978. No significant internal challenges emerged from inside the government after the 1967 coup attempt.

Domestic policy.

Economically, Boumédiène turned away from Ben Bella's focus on rural Algeria and experiments in socialist cooperative businesses ("l'autogestion"). Instead, he opted for a more systematic and planned programme of state-driven industrialization. Algeria had virtually no advanced production at the time, but in 1971 Boumédiène nationalized the Algerian oil industry, increasing government revenue tremendously (and sparking intense protest from the French government). He then put the soaring oil and gas resources—enhanced by the oil price shock of 1973—into building heavy industry, hoping to make Algeria the Maghreb's industrial centre. His years in power were in fact marked by a reliable and consistent economic growth, but after his death, in the 1980s, the drop in oil prices and increasingly evident inefficiency of the country's state-run industries, prompted a change in policy towards gradual economical liberalization.  In the 1970s, along with the expansion of state industry and oil nationalization, Boumédiène declared a series of socialist revolutions, and strengthened the leftist aspect of his administration. A side-effect of this was the rapprochement with the hitherto suppressed remnants of the Algerian Communist Party (the PAGS), whose members were now co-opted into the government, where it gained some limited intellectual influence, although without formal legalization of their party. Algeria formally remained a single-party state under the FLN.  Political stability reigned, however, as attempts at challenging the state were generally nipped in the bud. As chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Boumédiène and his associates ruled by decree. During the 1970s, constitutional rule was gradually reinstated and civilian political institutions were restored and reorganized. Efforts were made to revive activity within the FLN, and state institutions were reestablished systematically, starting with local assemblies and moving up through regional assemblies to the national level, with the election of a parliament. The process culminated with the adoption of a constitution (1976) that laid down Algeria's political structure. This was preceded by a period of relatively open debate on the merits of the government-backed proposal, although the constitution itself was then adopted in a state-controlled referendum with no major changes. The constitution reintroduced the office of president, which Boumédiène entered after a single-candidate referendum in 1978.  At the time of his death, later that year, the political and constitutional order in Algeria was virtually entirely of FLN design. This structure remained largely unchanged until the late 1980s, when political pluralism was introduced and the FLN lost its role as dominant single party. (Many basic aspects of this system and the Boumédiène-era constitution are still in place.) However, throughout Boumédiène's era, the military remained the dominant force in the country's politics, and military influence permeated civilian institutions such as the FLN, parliament and government, undercutting the constitutionalization of the country's politics. Intense financial or political rivalries between military and political factions persisted, and was kept in check and prevented from destabilizing the government mainly by Boumédiène's overwhelming personal dominance of both the civilian and military sphere.  Algeria is experiencing significant economic and social development under its government. Between 1962 and 1982, the Algerian population increased from 10 to 20 million people and, massively rural before independence, 45% of the population was urbanized. Annual per capita income, which did not exceed 2,000 francs in 1962, exceeds 11,000 francs twenty years later, while the enrolment rate varies from 75 to 95% depending on the region, far from the 10% of French Algeria. However, it maintains a one-party system and the priority given to industrial development makes it neglect agriculture.

Foreign policy.

Boumédiène pursued a policy of non-alignment, maintaining good relations with both the communist bloc and the capitalist nations, and promoting third-world cooperation. In the United Nations, he called for a unity built on equal status for western and ex-colonial nations, and brought about by a socialist-style change in political and trade relations. He sought to build a powerful third world bloc through the Non-Aligned Movement, in which he became a prominent figure. He unconditionally supported freedom fighters, justice and equality seekers. He offered logistic assistance to anti-colonial movements and other militant groups across Africa and the Arab world, including the PLO, ANC, SWAPO and other nations.  A significant regional event was his 1975 pledge of support for Western Saharan self-determination, admitting Sahrawi refugees and the Polisario Front national liberation movement to Algerian territory, after Morocco and Mauritania claimed control over the territory. This ended the possibility of mending relations with Morocco, already sour after the 1963 Sand War, although there had been a modest thaw in relations during his first time in power. The heightened Moroccan-Algerian rivalry and the still unsolved Western Sahara question became a defining feature of Algerian foreign policy ever since and remains so today.

Death.

In 1978, his appearances became increasingly rare. After lingering in a coma for 39 days, he died in Algiers of a rare blood disease, Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, following unsuccessful treatment in Moscow. Rumors about his being assassinated or poisoned have surfaced occasionally in Algerian politics, especially after two other participants of the 1975 Algiers Agreement events, The Shah and his Minister of Court Asadollah Alam, also died of the same rare disease. The death of Boumédiène left a power vacuum in Algeria which could not easily be filled; a series of military conclaves eventually agreed to sidestep the competing left- and right-wing contenders, and designate the highest-ranking military officer, Colonel Chadli Bendjedid, as a compromise selection. Still, factional intrigue mushroomed after Boumédiène's death, and no Algerian president has since gained the same respect from the Algerians.

Houari Boumédiène, also transcribed Boumediene, Boumedienne etc. ( ; ALA-LC: "Hawwārī Būmadyan"; 23 August 1932 – 27 December 1978), served as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of Algeria from 19 June 1965 until 12 December 1976 and thereafter as the second President of Algeria until his death on 27 December 1978.

Houari Boumedienne oder Huari Bu Madyan (, ; mit bürgerlichem Namen "Mohammed Boukharrouba"; * 23. August 1927 in Guelma; † 27. Dezember 1978 in Algier) war ein algerischer Politiker. Er war algerischer Staatschef von 1965 bis 1978.


Biography.

Drummond was born in Itabira, a mining village in Minas Gerais in the southeastern region of Brazil. His parents were farmers belonging to old Brazilian families of mainly Portuguese origin. He went to a school of pharmacy in Belo Horizonte, but never worked as a pharmacist after graduation, as he did not enjoy the career he chose. He worked as a civil servant for most of his life, eventually becoming director of history for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service of Brazil. Though his earliest poems are formal and satirical, Drummond quickly adopted the new forms of Brazilian modernism that were evolving in the 1920s, incited by the work of Mário de Andrade (to whom he was not related). He would mingle speech fluent in elegance and derive truth about his surroundings, many times describing quotidian, normal aspects of life while achieving a fluidity of thought and speech. Drummond drifted towards communism at the start of World War II and took up the editorship of the Brazilian Communist Party's official newspaper, "Tribuna Popular", but later abandoned the post due to disagreements over censorship, which Drummond staunchly opposed.  Drummond's work is generally divided into several segments, which appear very markedly in each of his books. But this is somewhat misleading, since even in the midst of his "everyday" poems or his "socialist", politicized poems, there appear creations which can be easily incorporated into his later "metaphysical" canon, and none of these "styles" is completely free of the others. There is surely much "metaphysical" content in even his most political poems.  The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is "A Máquina do Mundo" (The World's Machine). The poem deals with an anti-Faust referred to in the first person, who receives the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all possible knowledge, and the sum of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance allegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece "Os Lusíadas".  One of those said segments has been found only after his death: deliberately erotic poetry. That type of poetry has been published in only one book "Moça deitada na grama" (woman laid down in the grass) with the authorization and actual intervention by his son-in-law. Drummond is a favorite of American poets, a number of whom, including Mark Strand and Lloyd Schwartz, have translated his work. Later writers and critics have sometimes credited his relationship with Elizabeth Bishop, his first English language translator, as influential for his American reception, but though she admired him Bishop claimed she barely even knew him. In an interview with George Starbuck in 1977, she said, "I didn't know him at all. He's supposed to be very shy. I'm supposed to be very shy. We've met once — on the sidewalk at night. We had just come out of the same restaurant, and he kissed my hand politely when we were introduced."

Style.

Drummond, as a writer of the modernist style, follows the writing mechanic proposed by Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade; making use of free verse, and not depending on a fixed meter. In modernism, the predominant style which Drummond wrote in, styles were divided into lyrical and subjective or objective and concrete, Drummond would be part of the latter, similar to Oswald de Andrade.  Drummond was the first poet to assert himself after the premiere modernist of Brazil and created a unique style dominated by his writing. His work displays linguistic freedom and free verse. But it goes beyond that: "The work of Drummond reaches – as Fernando Pessoa, Jorge de Lima, Murilo Mendes and Herberto Helder – a coefficient of loneliness that detached from the soil of history, leading the reader to an attitude free of references, trademarks or ideological or prospective," said Alfredo Bosi (1994).  His poetry, according to Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna, can be divided into three parts:  In the late 1980s, his poetry began to become more erotic. "O Amor Natural" ("Natural Love"), a collection of erotic poems, was published posthumously.

Tribute.

On 31 October 2019, Google celebrated his 117th birthday with a Google Doodle.

Further reading.

English  Portuguese  Spanish

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (October 31, 1902 – August 17, 1987) was a Brazilian poet and writer, considered by some as the greatest Brazilian poet of all time. He has become something of a national cultural symbol in Brazil, where his widely influential poem "Canção Amiga" ("Friendly Song") has been featured on the 50-cruzado novo bill.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (* 31. Oktober 1902 in Itabira, Minas Gerais; † 17. August 1987 in Rio de Janeiro) war ein brasilianischer Lyriker.