Background.

""草泥马 style"" (literally, "Grass Mud Horse Style"), was uploaded onto YouTube and other Chinese websites by the political activist and dissident Ai Weiwei. In his parody, Ai Weiwei dances "Gangnam Style" with a pair of handcuffs as a symbol of his arrest by Chinese authorities in 2011. According to the Associated Press, government authorities had removed the video from almost all Chinese websites the next day. In an interview with Reuters, Ai Weiwei remarked, "After we had uploaded it, a few hours later...we found that a lot of people, tens of thousands, had already watched it. Now, in China, it has already been totally removed, deleted entirely, and you can't see it in China".  In order to show his solidarity with Ai Weiwei and to protest against censorship by the Chinese government, Anish Kapoor enlisted the aid of some prominent British artists, including Tom Phillips and Mark Wallinger to produce another parody of "Gangnam Style". It was also produced to support other censored intellectuals and artists including Russia’s jailed feminist punk collective Pussy Riot, the Bahraini human-rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, and also to mark the International Day to End Impunity on 23 November.

Synopsis.

The video clip begins by showing Anish Kapoor lying on the floor in a bright pink shirt and his hands being restrained by a pair of handcuffs. Then, a few shots from Ai Weiwei's parody of "Gangnam Style" are shown. Kapoor then performs the dance moves of "Gangnam Style".  At 0:29, a group of activists holds up a sign which reads, "Human Rights For China". An Amnesty International placard shown at 1:31 reads "End repression. Allow expression". Other participants dance around the room wearing black-and-white masks of Ai Weiwei and Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer who went missing in 2009. In the second part of the video, footage shows staff from contemporary art museums in the United States and elsewhere performing the dance moves of "Gangnam Style" in solidarity with imprisoned human rights activists. In another scene, a line of masked participants are shown with their middle fingers raised to symbolize their defiance against state censorship.  Towards the end of the video, a woman approaches Kapoor and frees him by removing his sunglasses. Kapoor then removes the duct tape from his mouth, and the video ends with a list of people "still being persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and forced into exile because of their expression".

Reception.

Kate Allen, the Director of Amnesty International UK, described the video as "a wonderful tribute to Ai Weiwei" and she also expressed hope that those who have watched the video would "reflect on the limits placed on freedom of expression in China".  Ai Weiwei himself interpreted the video as a "good inspiration for young people."

Credits and personnel.

The video was choreographed by Akram Khan, an English dancer of Bangladeshi descent. It features human rights activists from Amnesty International and was recorded in Kapoor’s studio in London. About 400 dancers and art patrons contributed to the production of the video, as well as staff from art museums such as:  Other prominent figures who participated in the recording of the video include:

Gangnam for Freedom is a 2012 video clip produced by the British sculptor Anish Kapoor. It is a parody of the international K-pop hit single Gangnam Style, and it was created to advocate the freedom of expression as well as to support the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, whose parody of "Gangnam Style" was blocked by Chinese authorities immediately after it was uploaded. The video features appearances by the staff of numerous contemporary art museums as well as human rights activists from Liberty, Index on Censorship, The Helen Bamber Foundation, and Amnesty International.

Gangnam for Freedom (dt. „Gangnam für die Freiheit“) ist ein Video auf dem Videoportal YouTube. Es wurde von dem britischen Bildhauer Anish Kapoor produziert. Im Video tanzt Kapoor aus Solidarität mit dem chinesischen Konzeptkünstler Ai Weiwei den "Gangnam Style".


Early life.

Lyonel Trouillot was born in a family of lawyers. The writer Évelyne Trouillot and the writer and educator Jocelyne Trouillot are his sisters. Following his parents' divorce in the late 1960s, he went to the United States with his mother. He returned to Haiti at age 19, in 1975.  Between 1980-82, political repression forced Trouillot to emigrate to Miami.  He studied at law, but he switched to literature early in his career.

Career.

Trouillot has contributed to different newspapers and magazines in Haiti. He has published poetry, and also writes song lyrics for such musical artists as Tambou Libète and Manno Charlemagne.  Trouillot is a co-editor of the journal "Cahiers du Vendredi".  Along with his sister Evelyne Trouillot and her daughter Nadève Ménard, he founded a writer's organisation named Pré-Texte.  In 2014 he wrote together with Raoul Peck and Pascal Bonitzer the script for Peck's feature film "Murder in Pacot".

Politics.

Trouillot is known for his political stances, and for his resistance to the Haitian Duvalierist dictatorship. He was also part of the "Collective Non" of intellectuals and artists that helped to build momentum for the U.S. and paramilitary backed ouster of the democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was a member of the unelected transitional government following the departure of Aristide, as a cabinet minister of culture. The unelected transitional government of Gerard Latortue (that Trouillot was a member of between 2004-2006) was shown to be involved in massive human rights violations and to work closely with the "families" the local elite groups within the country while being heavily funded by the US bush regime: http://www.ijdh.org/CSHRhaitireport.pdf

Awards and recognition.

Trouillot was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2010.  In 2011, he was awarded the Prix Wepler for his novel "Yanvalou pour Charlie". For "La Belle Amour humane", he was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman Métis (2011), the Geneva Book Fair Literary Prize (2012), and the Gitanjali Literary Prize (2012).  In 2013, he was awarded the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde for his work, "Parabole du failli".

Lyonel Trouillot (born Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on 31 December 1956) is a novelist and poet in French and Haitian Creole, a journalist and a professor of French and Creole literature in Port-au-Prince.

Lyonel Trouillot (* 31. Dezember 1956 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti) ist ein haitianischer Schriftsteller, der vor allem als Lyriker, Journalist, Liedtexter, Essayist, Herausgeber und Romancier tätig ist.


Terrain.

The Hipping vineyard extends along the Rhine north of Nierstein and south of Nackenheim. It is part of the large vineyard Rehbach of the Rheinhessen wine region and surrounds the exclusive site "Brudersberg" in southern direction and borders in the south on the location "Ölberg". The location is 90–160 m above NN. The slope gradient is up to 70% and the exposure to southeast, the incoming morning sun is particularly beneficial for Riesling. The soil is Rotliegend.  Due to its proximity to the Nierstein village centre, the Hipping is a frequently used area for wine festivals, in particular for the event "Weinpräsentation am Roten Hang" (Wine Presentation on the Red Slope) and vineyard tours of the local winegrowers.

Etymology.

The name of the location could be derived from the Middle High German "Hübel" for "hill" or from the tool "Hippe" for billhook. The interpretations are complex and ambiguous.

History.

The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 was celebrated with a Riesling by Franz Karl Schmitt from this vineyard. A 2012 vintage Hipping Riesling of the winery Klaus Peter Keller, who had acquired exactly in 2010 the plot in the Hipping therefore became the official wine for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, which the Queen celebrated in 2012.

Property.

Propertied in the Hipping are the VDP wineries St. Antony, Gunderloch and Klaus Peter Keller, as well as the wineries Georg Albrecht Schneider, J. & H.A. Strub, Schätzel and many more.

Hipping is a vineyard of the red slope in the municipality Nierstein in Germany. Located at the Rhenish Hessian Rhineterrace (Rhineland-Palatinate), wines of this vineyard can be marketed as "Großes Gewächs" or "Erste Lage", provided that other quality characteristics are fulfilled.

Der Hipping ist eine 23 ha große Einzellage des Roten Hangs der Gemeinde Nierstein an der rheinhessischen Rheinterrasse (Rheinland-Pfalz). Weine dieser Lage können als „Großes Gewächs“ oder „Erste Lage“ vermarktet werden, sofern noch andere Qualitätsmerkmale erfüllt werden.


Background.

The Chinese government has invested billions of dollars in the rapid expansion of its high-speed railway network in recent years, including over RMB¥ 700 billion (US$109 billion) on high speed rail in 2010. China's high speed rail now stretches across more than expanding to by 2012, and is planned to double to about by 2020. The nation's entire rail network carried 1.68 billion rides in 2010 with little or no cause for alarm. The BBC too had reported that at this pace, by 2012, mainland China would have had more high-speed railway tracks than the rest of the world put together, a prediction that came true subsequently.

Technology in use.

Signalling.

Railway signalling systems are designed to prevent any train from entering a stretch of track occupied by another train. But in the Wenzhou collision, Train D301 ran onto the track occupied by Train D3115, indicating a signal failure. The 28 July 2011 announcement, by the Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signals and Communication, that signal equipment had a design flaw, and that it would "shoulder responsibility" for the accident, confirmed that the accident was a result of signal failure.  The signalling technology installed on Chinese high speed lines, including the Ningbo–Taizhou–Wenzhou railway where the accident occurred, is Chinese Train Control System CTCS-2 which is the Chinese version of European Train Control System Level 1. The CTCS-2 system uses the classical technology of track circuits to detect the presence of a train on a piece of track. In addition, CTCS-2 uses both fixed-data balises (track-mounted transponders) and controllable-data balises controlled by a Lineside Electronic Unit (LEU) to transmit essential information and signal instructions from the Train Control Center to trains. Information and signal instructions are transmitted by the balises as "telegrams", which are picked up by a balise transmission module mounted under the head of the train, and sent to an on-board "vital computer" for decoding. Using the data it has received, the computer calculates a "speed control curve" showing the maximum speed the train can maintain while allowing sufficient braking distance before any danger. The information is displayed to the train driver on a monitor. Should the driver disregard this information by overspeeding, or enter a danger zone, the Vital Computer can make an automatic brake application.  As of 31 July 2011, Chinese authorities had failed to provide any logical explanation of why the safeguards built into the CTCS-2 signal technology had failed to work in the Wenzhou collision. Various announcements indicated both defects in equipment (lightning strikes had disabled devices) and defects in operating procedures (staff operated signals in "manual mode"). Chinese official announcements were both confused and confusing. An Lusheng, the chief of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, was quoted as saying that a device had "failed to turn from green to red". But CTCS-2 equipped trains do not rely on drivers observing green or red wayside signals, the driver has a computer-controlled monitor in front of him. Early announcements spoke of Train D3115 being stopped by a lightning strike, but that would not cause the accident. The second train D301 should not have been allowed to run into it. Whether Train D3115 was stopped by lightning or for any other reason is irrelevant.  The fuzzy and confused official announcements up to 31 July gave increasing hints that a lightning strike caused some wayside-mounted piece of signal equipment to malfunction (the official investigation report in December 2011 identified a trackside LKD2-T1 signal assembly which malfunctioned after being struck by lightning, causing a false indication in the control center that a section of track was unoccupied). If the equipment was not fail-safe, an incorrect response by staff could then cause an accident. Significantly, on 28 July 2011, An Lusheng "faulted the quality of equipment, personnel and on-site controls. He described safeguards as'still quite weak'."  On 4 August 2011 a high-ranking work safety official ruled out the possibility of natural disaster having caused the train crash. "Now I can say for sure that this is not a natural disaster," Huang Yi, the spokesman and a leading official with the State Administration of Work Safety, said during an on-line chat hosted by people.com.cn, the online arm of "People's Daily". He added that the railway authorities had also pointed out loopholes and deficiencies in safety management, which had emerged in the accident.  The official investigation, completed in December 2011, blamed faulty signal systems which had failed to warn the second train of the stationary first train on the same track, as well as a series of management failures on the part of railway officials in carrying out due procedure.

Rolling stock.

The two trains involved were based on technology from Bombardier and Kawasaki. Train CRH1-046B is a variant of the Swedish Bombardier Regina, while the second train CRH2-139E is a derivative of the Japanese E2 Series Shinkansen 'bullet train.' Kawasaki and other companies in Japan are currently challenging China's high-speed rail project for patent license violations. The Chinese maker has been attempting to patent the same technology and alleged improvements. The trains were of the "D train" class and thus in the first generation of China's express trains, not the faster "G train" class, which travel at more than.

Accident chronology.

On 23 July, at roughly 20:00 CST, CRH train D3115 (CRH1-046B), carrying 1,072 people and travelling from Hangzhou to Fuzhou South came to a halt over a viaduct near the Ou River. Shortly after, CRH train D301 (CRH2-139E), carrying 558 people and running from Beijing South to Fuzhou, crashed into the rear-end of the stationary D3115.  The cause of the crash was initially said to be a lightning strike on one of the line's overhead power lines due to a lightning storm occurring south and west of the viaduct. Lightning reportedly struck the first train, which caused it to stop on the tracks. However, five days after the incident, the Beijing National Railway Research & Design Institute of Signals and Communications Co. Ltd., a railway research institute, claimed responsibility, stating in a report that a signal on the track failed to turn red, and staff failed to notice the error.  A much more detailed description of what happened in the accident, correcting earlier accounts, was published in the December 2011 report of the official investigation. The first train D3115 was stopped not by losing power as a result of the lightning strike, but was stopped by the signal system, the Automatic Train Protection (ATP). The lightning had struck a trackside LKD2-T1 signal assembly, burning out its fuses, and violating the rule that it should be 'fail-safe'. This had caused an incorrect indication in the control center that the track section containing train D3115 was unoccupied (the so-called 'green signal'). The driver He Li of train D3115 worked to override the ATP and, after more than seven minutes of waiting, at 8.29 p.m. he got the train moving again, overriding the ATP. As train D3115 entered the next section of track, where the track circuits that indicate the presence of the train were working correctly, the control center now saw that the track section was occupied. But driver Pan Yiheng of the following train D301 had already been given instructions to proceed onto the section of track where D3115 had been stopped, when the control center had a false indication that the track was unoccupied. Despite a message from the control center that D301 should proceed with caution, less than half a minute later train D301 running at collided with train D3115.  The fifteenth and sixteenth coaches at the rear of D3115 and the front four coaches of D301 were derailed — four coaches fell off the viaduct. Three carriages came to rest horizontally on the ground below while the fourth came to rest vertically, one end on the ground and one end leaning against the viaduct. Soon after the accident, the damaged railway carriages were seen being broken apart by backhoes and buried nearby.  The medical teams responding to the accident consisted of staff from Zhejiang No. 1 Hospital, Zhejiang No. 2 Hospital, Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital and Taizhou Hospital. The evening of the event, 500 Wenzhou residents gave blood in response to early radio appeals by the local blood bank.  A survivor, Liu Hongtaohe, recalled that "the train suddenly shook violently, casting luggage all around. Passengers cried for help but no crew responded" in an interview with China Central Television. CCTV reported on 25 July that the Railways Ministry had declared that 39 people were killed and 192 injured. Two-year-old Xiang Weiyi was the last person rescued, 21 hours after the train crash. Her parents had been killed in the crash.  The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said on 25 July that two U.S. citizens were among the dead. The Italian consulate of Shanghai said that an Italian citizen was among the dead: Assunta Liguori, a 22-year-old student of the Università degli studi di Napoli L'Orientale. Liguori was travelling with Giovanni Pan, a 23-year-old student from L'Orientale, of Chinese origin.

Government response.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao called for "all-out efforts to rescue passengers". Train operations were suspended on the line while damaged infrastructure was repaired. Fifty-eight trains were canceled the following day. Sheng Guangzu, the Railways Minister, ordered an investigation into the accident, and arrived at the scene of the accident on midday 24 July. He also apologised for the horrific accident. Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang flew into Wenzhou to lead rescue efforts.  The Ministry of Railways announced that three high-ranking railway officials were fired immediately after the crash. They were identified as Long Jing, head of the Shanghai Railway Bureau; Li Jia, party secretary and the deputy chief of the bureau, He Shengli. The Chinese government had sacked railways minister Liu Zhijun in February 2011, for allegedly taking over 800 million yuan in kickbacks connected with contracts for high-speed rail expansion. Zhang Shuguang, the deputy chief engineer of China's railways, was also arrested in February 2011 and alleged to have amassed $2.8 billion in overseas accounts. The government ordered a two-month nationwide safety campaign on 26 July, as the families of victims demanded more answers. Sheng Guangzu apologised for the collision on behalf of the Railways department and said the campaign would focus on improving China's high-speed network.  Government officials had not explained by 25 July why the second train was apparently not warned of the disabled one before the crash took place.  Lawyers in China were ordered by the Wenzhou Judicial Bureau not to take on cases from the families of the crash victims. According to a statement issued by the Wenzhou Lawyers' Association, lawyers were told not to take cases because "the accident is a major sensitive issue concerning social stability". The Wenzhou Judicial Bureau later apologized for the statement, saying its wording had been formulated by the Lawyers' Association and had not been approved.  The Wenzhou train collision had an immediate and major effect on China's high-speed rail program. The Chinese government formed a commission to investigate the accident with a directive to report its findings in September 2011. On 10 August 2011 the Chinese government announced that it was suspending approvals of any new high-speed rail lines pending the outcome of the investigation. The Minister of Railways announced further cuts in the speed of Chinese high-speed trains, with the speed of the second-tier 'D' trains reduced from. The speed of the remaining trains between Shanghai and Hangzhou was reduced to as of 28 August 2011. To stimulate ridership, which had suffered due to concerns about safety, on 16 August 2011 ticket prices on Chinese high-speed trains were reduced by 5 percent.  The train crash sparked public anger on the safety of high speed trains in China and on the handling of the accident, even in otherwise tightly controlled Chinese media. Quality and safety concerns will likely have a serious impact on China's ambition to export cheap high speed train technology to other countries.  In November 2011, the state-controlled "The Beijing News" reported that an investigation by the Chinese government into the collision has concluded that "poor management of the local railway administration" was to blame. The final report, which was released after a delay in December, found 54 officials responsible along with flaws in the design of the local control centre and some onboard components.

Official media directives.

The Chinese authorities have been accused of attempting to silence reports into the cause of the crash. The Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department has reportedly ordered the media not to send reporters to the scene, not to report too frequently and not to link the story to high-speed rail development. Thomson Reuters reported that the propaganda department issued directives to the nation's media instructing them to not question or elaborate on reports of the train crash. In their coverage, media were directed to promote the theme 'in the face of great tragedy, there's great love.' Xinhuanet released a number of state-sponsored, touching stories as Propaganda Department's indication, such as "Love in this sublimation," "a city of love and warm" and comments. Still, according to the BBC, several Chinese newspapers published editorials criticising the railway ministry, and the state-run "Global Times" had an unusually scathing editorial.  On Friday, 29 July a second directive was issued banning all coverage of the story 'except positive news or that issued by the authorities'; the sudden ban forced newspapers to scrap seven-day anniversary stories they had prepared. The "China Business Journal" scrapped eight pages, "21st Century Business Herald" twelve pages and "The Beijing News" nine pages. The state-run Xinhua newswire was forced to warn subscribers not to use an investigative report it had issued. The ban was flouted by Beijing-based weekly "The Economic Observer", which published an eight-page feature on 30 July, with a front-page letter pledging to pursue the truth on behalf of Xiang Weiyi, the 2-year-old survivor who was orphaned in the crash.

Investigation.

On 28 December 2011 the official accident investigation report presented to the State Council was released to the public. According to this report, the accident occurred due to severe defects in the design of control center equipment, lax equipment inspection and failure to adequately respond to equipment malfunction caused by lightning. The report names 54 officials as bearing responsibility for the accident and the botched rescue effort. The most senior official implicated in the report is former minister Liu Zhijun, who had been detained on corruption charges before the accident, but nonetheless is accused of improperly raising the operating speed of the Ningbo-Taizhou-Wenzhou Railway and compressing the construction schedule of the railway, which resulted in curtailed safety inspection of the line. He is also blamed for failing to assign proper duties to a newly created office within the MOR to oversee passenger-dedicated high-speed railway lines, failing to resolve bureaucratic overlap in the oversight of HSR safety within the Ministry that weakened regulatory oversight, and failing to direct subordinates to institute proper review and inspection procedures for newly developed signaling equipment, which led the defective LKD2-T1 signal equipment to be put into operation. Other senior MOR officials cited include deputy minister Lu Dongfu, MOR chief engineer He Huawu and former MOR deputy chief engineer Zhang Shuguang.  The report also assigns fault to executives and engineers of the China Railway Signal & Communications Corp., which designed, produced and installed the defective equipment, executives of the Jingfu Railway (Anhui) Corporation, which permitted the faulty equipment to be installed improperly in breach of the contractual terms. Numerous officials of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, which operates the line, are also singled out for blame including former bureau chief Long Jing, who was fired shortly after the accident, as well as deputy bureau chief, Wang Feng, who ordered that wrecked train carriages be buried in pits dug on-site. The chief and deputy chief of Wenzhou South Station are faulted for inadequate oversight of employees. Among the most junior persons cited is Zang Kai, a worker at Wenzhou South Station who discovered signal failure on the D3212 Train but, in breach of protocol, failed to file a log report of the malfunction and did not communicate with the D301 Train.

Reaction.

Wang Yongping's press conference.

On orders from the authorities, the rescue effort concluded less than a day following the accident, and the damaged train cars were seen being broken apart by backhoes and buried nearby. The Railway Ministry justified the burial by claiming that the trains contained valuable "national level" technology that could be stolen. However, hours after the rescuers had been told to stop searching for survivors, a 2-year-old girl was found alive in the wreckage.  Chinese media was especially skeptical of the rescue efforts, particularly the burial of trains. In a press conference, the spokesman of the Railway Ministry, Wang Yongping, said that the burial was for facilitating the rescue work. The answer prompted heckling and gasps of disbelief from the journalists assembled. Wang then said to a journalist, "whether or not you believe [this explanation], I believe it." (".") This phrase eventually became an internet meme. When asked why a little girl was found after the rescue work had been announced finished, Wang said, "This was a miracle. We did find a living girl in the work thereafter. That was what happened." (".") There was no evidence that experts or officials entered the front car to investigate the cause of the accident when it was buried. Families of the victims of the crash were outraged at what they viewed was an inadequate investigation, as well as poor organisation and relief in the aftermath of the disaster. Images of the wreckage being shovelled into the pits were circulated widely on the Internet, and led to speculation over a possible mishandling by the government or concealing evidence crucial for the ongoing investigation.

Chinese media.

Despite reported directives from the Publicity Department, Chinese media, both independent and state-owned, directly criticized the Ministry of Railways and voiced their skepticism of the government. Such challenges to officially sanctioned orthodoxy were bold and rare, particularly on programs aired on China's state-owned television.  In one instance, in response to Wang Yongping's assurance at the press conference that the Chinese railway system was running on "advanced technology", news anchor Bai Yansong retorted on China Central Television, "The technology may be advanced, but is your management advanced? Are your standard operating procedures advanced? Is the supervision advanced? Is your respect for people advanced? Are all the minute details advanced? At the end of the day, is your overall operational capability advanced?"  Similarly, Qiu Qiming of CCTV program "24-Hours" launched into an on-air tirade about Chinese society: "If nobody can be safe, do we still want this speed? Can we drink a glass of milk that's safe? Can we stay in an apartment that will not fall apart? Can the roads we travel on in our cities not collapse? Can we travel in safe trains? And if and when a major accident does happen, can we not be in a hurry to bury the trains? Can we afford the people a basic sense of security? China, please slow down. If you're too fast, you may leave the souls of your people behind."  Qi Qixin, a professor at the Transportation Research Institute of Beijing University of Technology, remarked that "the problem may have come from the mistakes of dispatching management, instead of technological failure," and "The system should have an ability to automatically issue a warning or even stop a train under such circumstances," in a press release. Ren Xianfang, senior analyst at IHS Global Insight in Beijing, said that the pace of development in China had been "phenomenal", but warned it could not be sustained in the long run.  The driver of the crashed train, Pan Yiheng, was hailed as a hero in some quarters on 26 July, for preventing the disaster from becoming worse. He tried to brake the train to keep it from crashing into the rear of the train ahead; he was killed when the brake handle pierced his chest in the crash. It has been stated that had he not acted, at least one more train car would have been derailed, likely increasing the death toll.

Online communities.

Internet users were skeptical that the crash was caused by a natural disaster, instead blaming officials, with one frequently forwarded comment on Sina Weibo microblogging service stating "When a country is so corrupt that one lightning strike can cause a train crash... none of us are exempt. China today is a train rushing through a lightning storm... we are all passengers".  MOR Spokesman Wang Yongping gained particular notoriety online, with netizens parodying his various statements and attacking his credibility and character. Numerous cartoons, and even a music video ridiculing him, appeared. On 16 August, he was dismissed from the Ministry of Railways, ostensibly because of his botched handling of the press conference. Wang endured severe stress throughout the negative publicity online, and he was eventually transferred to a position at the Organization for Cooperation of Railways in Poland on 18 August. In reaction, a web post commented sarcastically "Quick! Sell all your Polish high-speed rail stocks!" Some commentators defended Wang, saying he was merely a scapegoat in a corrupt system. Netizen activity about the crash was also examined.

Stock markets.

Shares in CSR Corp., which built one of the two trains in a joint venture with Canada's Bombardier Inc, fell by 14%, while China Automation Group Ltd., which was responsible for the design and production of the safety and control systems for railways, saw its shares fall by 19% in Hong Kong on 24 and 25 July. China Rail Construction, builder of more than half of the nation's rail links since 1949, fell 6.7%. Shares in China Railway Group also temporarily slid down 7.7%. The high-speed rail woes added to negative market sentiment from the US debt deadlock, sending the Shanghai Composite Index down 3 per cent to 2,688.75. CNR shares fell 9.7%.

Overseas.

An official at Saudi Railways Organization, the kingdom's train network operator, declined to comment on the Chinese crash or whether it might affect the company's decision to award a part of a 2009 $1.8 billion rail contract to a Chinese company. Edwin Merner, the president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp. in Tokyo, reckoned the crash would cause a temporary loss of trust in Chinese railway technology.  The crash drew sharp contrasts between China and Japan, with both Chinese online commentators and international publications pointing out that Japan has never experienced a crash on its high-speed rail lines, despite being in operation for over forty years. Many Japanese experts zoomed in on the accident, which was headlined on the front page in almost all major Japanese newspapers the morning after it occurred. In an editorial titled "Chinese government must stop cover-ups, trivializing life", the "Daily Yomiuri" called for the national overhaul of signaling systems and lauded the role of social media. "The Economist" editorialized strongly against the Chinese government, asserting that the accident has "shown the limits of dictatorship." At "Miller-McCune", Shank and Wasserstrom opined that the crash marks a serious "legitimacy crisis" for the Chinese government and could mark the end of a "confident era." David Bandurski wrote in the "International Herald Tribune" that the accident and its response was "emblematic of a callous, unresponsive political culture that prioritizes instant results over public well-being and accountability." Bandurski called China's high-speed rail development an unsustainable venture mired by political intrigue, corruption, and a 'Great Leap Forward'-style mentality.  Conversely, Robert Zeliger of "Foreign Policy" drew comparisons between China's railway safety record and those of India and the United States. Citing journalist Lloyd Lofthouse, Zeliger points out that between 2007 and the time of the Wenzhou crash, 20% of the 177 accidents during this period actually occurred in the United States, 15% in India, and only 4% in China. He highlighted the much higher death toll of accidents on India's railways. Meanwhile, the "Hindustan Times", while criticizing the Chinese government's response, recognized the need for India to "learn from" China's accident and apply further scrutiny to its own rail networks.

Aftermath.

, the crash has remained the only serious accident on the Chinese high-speed rail network, which how accounts for two-thirds of the world's total high-speed railways, carries over 2 billion passengers every year and still is undergoing large scale expansion.  Modelling of the accident has been published

The Wenzhou train collision occurred on 23 July 2011 when two high-speed trains travelling on the Yongtaiwen railway line collided on a viaduct in the suburbs of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. The two trains derailed each other, and four cars fell off the viaduct. 40 people were killed, at least 192 were injured, 12 of which were severe injuries. This serious traffic disaster was caused by both the critical defects of design and the rough management of the bullet train company. Officials responded to the accident by hastily concluding rescue operations and ordering the burial of the derailed cars. These actions elicited strong criticism from Chinese media and online communities. In response, the government issued directives to restrict media coverage, which was met with limited compliance, even on state-owned networks.

Der Eisenbahnunfall von Wenzhou war ein Auffahrunfall, bei dem am 23. Juli 2011 zwei Hochgeschwindigkeitszüge nach einer Signalstörung auf einem Viadukt in einem Vorort von Wenzhou in der Volksrepublik China zusammenstießen. 40 Menschen starben, mehr als 210 wurden verletzt. Dies war der erste Unfall mit einem Hochgeschwindigkeitszug in China, bei dem Menschen ums Leben kamen.


History.

Planning for the tunnel began in the mid-1980s, when it was determined that a replacement for the Central Artery was needed. Originally built for 75,000 vehicles a day, the expressway was carrying 200,000 vehicles a day by the early 1990s. It was even projected that, by 2010, there would be 16-hour daily traffic jams that would cost the local economy $500 million annually. Furthermore, the North End was cut off from the rest of the city, which hampered economic growth.  One challenge for building the tunnel was constructing the project underneath the existing expressway, as well as crippling the city due to the amount of construction involved. In 1992, construction began on the tunnel, with the relocation of utilities. This was followed in 1996 by the beginning of construction on the tunnels with the pouring of slurry to build walls, which was preceded by underpinning the expressway. The northbound portion of the tunnel was opened in March 2003, followed by the opening of the southbound section in December of the same year. The renovated Dewey Square Tunnel, which was eventually incorporated into the O'Neill Tunnel, was opened in 2005.  In March 2003, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney proposed to name the tunnel the "Liberty Tunnel". The state legislature and the Massachusetts delegation to Congress opposed the choice, and it was officially named after O'Neill (a longtime Speaker of the United States House of Representatives) by Section 1930 of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), which was passed by Congress and signed by then-President George W. Bush in 2005.  Within a year of opening, a large leak backed up traffic for miles, which led to more investigation into leaks that were occurring within the structure. Due to the location of the tunnel near the ocean, brackish water was able to seep into cracks within the concrete, which have had the potential to cause flooding. This was also due to the purposeful design of the concrete to withstand 50-degree temperature swings, instead of the actual 100-degree swings that are experienced in Boston. In 2007, there were 500 leaks that needed to be repaired. Corrosion of the tunnel light fixtures also became a problem as well, which was evidenced in 2011 when a light fixture crashed down onto the roadway. Between fixing the leaks and fixing corroded structures, a report in 2011 estimated that the costs could run a few hundred million dollars.

The Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. Tunnel (colloquially O'Neill Tunnel) is a highway tunnel built as part of the Big Dig in Boston, Massachusetts. It carries the Central Artery underneath downtown Boston, and is numbered as Interstate 93 (I-93), U.S. Route 1 (US 1), and Route 3. It roughly follows the route of the old elevated Central Artery, though the northbound entrance, at the corner of Kneeland Street and Atlantic Avenue, is somewhat east of the southbound exit (at Kneeland and Albany streets) to allow for a reconfigured interchange with the Massachusetts Turnpike. It runs from the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge at its north portal—barely east of the TD Garden sports facility's eastern corner—to Boston's Chinatown at its south portal. The tunnel is named for Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

Der Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Tunnel ist ein Straßentunnel in Boston im Bundesstaat Massachusetts der Vereinigten Staaten. Er wurde nach dem Politiker Tip O’Neill benannt und als Teil des Big Dig errichtet. Der Tunnel führt seit seiner Eröffnung im Jahr 2003 mit der Central Artery die zuvor oberirdisch verlaufenen Straßen I-93, US 1 und Route 3 nun unterirdisch unter Boston hindurch. Er folgt dabei in etwa dem ursprünglichen Verlauf der aufgeständerten "Central Artery", wobei die Zufahrt in nördlicher Fahrtrichtung östlich versetzt zur Ausfahrt in südlicher Fahrtrichtung liegt, um eine verbesserte Anbindung an den Massachusetts Turnpike zu ermöglichen. Der Tunnel erstreckt sich insgesamt vom Stadtteil South Boston an seinem südlichen bis zur Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge an seinem nördlichen Ende.


History.

Origins of the clan.

The progenitor of the Clan Sutherland was a Flemish nobleman by the name of Freskin, who was also the progenitor of the Clan Murray. It has been claimed that Freskin was Pictish but it is much more likely that he was a Flemish knight, one of a ruthless group of warlords who were employed by the Norman kings to pacify their new realm after the Norman conquest of England. David I of Scotland who was brought up in the English court, employed such men to keep hold of the wilder parts of his kingdom and granted to Freskin lands in West Lothian. The ancient Pictish kingdom of Moray ("Moireabh" in Scottish Gaelic) was also given to Freskin and this put an end to the remnants of that old royal house. In a series of astute political moves Freskin and his sons inter married with the old house of Moray to consolidate their power. Freskin's descendants were designated by the surname "de Moravia" ("of Moray" in the Norman language). Freskin's grandson was Hugh de Moravia who was granted lands in Sutherland and was known as "Lord de Sudrland". Hugh's younger brother, William, was progenitor of the Clan Murray. Hugh's eldest son (also called William) was William de Moravia, 1st Earl of Sutherland. The place name and clan name of "Sutherland" came from it being the 'land to the south' of the Norse Earldom of Orkney and Caithness. Although the senior line of chiefs who were the Earls of Sutherland had the surname 'de Moravia', they often used the territorial surname 'Sutherland' and the younger sons of the family also took the surname 'Sutherland', thus creating the cadet branches of the Clan Sutherland.

Wars of Scottish Independence.

During the Wars of Scottish Independence, chief William de Moravia, 3rd Earl of Sutherland (William Sutherland) fought at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where the English army was defeated. Kenneth de Moravia, 4th Earl of Sutherland (Kenneth Sutherland) was killed at the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333.  William de Moravia, 5th Earl of Sutherland (William Sutherland), whose wife was Margaret, the daughter of Robert the Bruce and sister of David II of Scotland, led the clan at Kilblene where he participated in the siege of Cupar Castle Fife. William, Earl of Sutherland accompanied King David II of Scotland into England where both were captured at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, by Durham. They remained in prison for over ten years before being released. John, the son of the Earl and Princess Margaret, was designated the heir to the Throne over Robert Stewart, who eventually became King Robert II in 1371.

14th-century clan conflicts.

The habitual enemies of Clan Sutherland were the Clan Sinclair of Caithness and the Clan Mackay and Clan McLeod to the west of Sutherland. A feud with the Mackays came to a head when Nicholas Sutherland of Duffus, head of one of the junior branches, murdered the chief of the Clan Mackay and his heir at Dingwall Castle, where they had met in an attempt to patch up the feud. A retaliatory raid by the Mackays on Dornoch took place, where the cathedral was set on fire and many Sutherland men were hanged in the town square. William, 5th Earl of Sutherland was killed by the Mackays in 1370 in feud which lasted for the next four centuries. In 1388 the Earl of Sutherland was a leader of the Scots invading into the west of England. He married Margaret Stewart, daughter of Alexander, Earl of Buchan, a younger son of King Robert II of Scotland.

15th century and clan conflicts.

The Battle of Drumnacoub was fought in 1431 where Angus Du Mackay, chief of Clan Mackay defeated Angus Murray and the Sutherlanders on the slopes of the mountain Ben Loyal near Tongue.  The Battle of Skibo and Strathfleet was fought in 1480 where John MacDonald of Islay, Earl of Ross invaded Sutherland and was defeated by the Clan Sutherland and the Murrays of Aberscross.  According to 17th-century historian Sir Robert Gordon, the Clan Sutherland joined the Clan Mackay in their victory over the Clan Ross at the Battle of Aldy Charrish in 1487. However, 19th - 20th-century historian Angus Mackay disputes the Sutherland's presence at the battle stating that it would be unlikely that the Earl of Sutherland at the time would have assisted against the Rosses as he was married to a daughter of the Ross chief of Balnagowan, and also that the feudal superiority of the Sutherlands over the Mackays "nowhere existed save in his own fertile imagination".

16th century and clan conflicts.

William Sutherland, 4th Laird of Duffus was killed fighting against the English at the Battle of Flodden in 1513.  In 1517 Elizabeth de Moravia, 10th Countess of Sutherland (Elizabeth Sutherland) married Adam Gordon, younger son of Gordon of Huntly. Their son was Alexander Gordon, Master of Sutherland who would become the legal heir to the Earldom of Sutherland and overall chiefship of the Clan Sutherland. According to Sir Robert Gordon, who himself was a son of Alexander Gordon, 12th Earl of Sutherland, in the same year the Mackays rose up against the Gordons who had taken power in Sutherland which resulted in the Battle of Torran Dubh, where the Mackays were defeated. Sir Robert Gordon also states that at the battle, the Sutherland force had been led by Alexander Sutherland, brother of Elizabeth, 10th Countess of Sutherland. However, this version of events is disputed by both historian Angus Mackay and historian Sir William Fraser, who state that it can be proved that Alexander Sutherland was in prison in 1517 when the battle is supposed to have taken place. Whatever the truth, the following year in 1518 or 1519, Alexander Sutherland claimed the Earldom of Sutherland for himself and rose up against his sister Elizabeth, 10th Countess of Sutherland and her husband Adam Gordon, but he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Alltachuilain.  According to the book "Conflicts of the Clans" which was published in 1764, in 1542 the Battle of Alltan-Beath took place where the Clan Mackay were defeated by the Clan Sutherland. According to historian Sir Robert Gordon, in 1542, chief Donald Mackay, 11th of Strathnaver was captured by the Gordon Earls of Sutherland and Huntly, and imprisoned in Foulis Castle. However, this is disputed by historian Angus Mackay.  In 1545 at Dingwall, the Earl of Sutherland entered into a bond of manrent with John Mackenzie of Kintail for mutual defense against all enemies, reserving only their allegiance to the youthful Mary, Queen of Scots.  In 1547 John Gordon, 11th Earl of Sutherland led the clan against the English army at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh.  In 1555 the Battle of Garbharry was fought, which was the last battle between the Clan Mackay and the Clan Sutherland. In 1586 the Battle of Leckmelm took place where the Sutherlands, Mackays and MacLeods defeated the Clan Gunn.  In 1588 Castle Sinclair Girnigoe withstood a siege by the Earl of Sutherland and in 1590 George Sinclair, 5th Earl of Caithness, invaded Sutherland resulting in the Battle of Clynetradwell.

17th century and Civil War.

In the 17th century the Clan Sutherland began to acquire the reputation for enthusiastic and pious Protestantism. This is probably what made the Gordon Earls of Sutherland begin to distance themselves from their Gordon Earl of Huntly (Clan Gordon) cousins who were Catholics and later Jacobites. In 1645 John Gordon, 14th Earl of Sutherland led the clan against the royalists at the Battle of Auldearn but was defeated.  In 1650, the Clan Sutherland along with the Clan Munro and the Clan Ross joined forces with the Scottish Argyll Government to fight against James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose and his royalist army of foreigners, who they defeated at the Battle of Carbisdale.  In 1685, John Gordon, 16th Earl of Sutherland, raised men of the Clan Sutherland to oppose Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll's expedition that was known as Argyll's Rising. The Earl of Sutherland also raised two regiments from the clan after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The second of which he was a Colonel in command in Flanders in 1694.

18th century and Jacobite risings.

Jacobite rising of 1715.

During the Jacobite rising of 1715, John Gordon, 16th Earl of Sutherland who later resumed the surname Sutherland, called out his men to fight for George I of Great Britain. The Clan Sutherland garrisoned Inverness Castle against the Jacobites.

Jacobite rising of 1719.

In 1719, a detachment of men from the Clan Sutherland fought for the British Government at the Battle of Glenshiel where they helped to defeat the Jacobites. The Earl and chief of Clan Sutherland had been of the surname Gordon ever since the early 16th century, however John Gordon, 16th Earl of Sutherland resumed the surname of Sutherland and was officially recognized as chief of Clan Sutherland by the Court of the Lord Lyon in 1719. General Wade's report on the Highlands in 1724, estimated the clan strength at 1,000 men.

Jacobite rising of 1745.

The Clan Sutherland also supported the British Government during the Jacobite rising of 1745. At the start of the rising William, 17th Earl of Sutherland and chief of Clan Sutherland reconciled with their ancient enemies, the Mackays, settling the ancient feud. In 1745 the fighting force of the Clan Sutherland was given as 2,000 men. During the rising, Jacobites under George Mackenzie, 3rd Earl of Cromartie occupied the Sutherland's Dunrobin Castle, and the Earl of Sutherland narrowly escaped them through a back door. He then sailed for Aberdeen where he joined the Duke of Cumberland's army. However, this same Jacobite force under the Earl of Cromartie was defeated by the Clan Sutherland militia, who formed an Independent Highland Company, in what became known as the Battle of Littleferry. However, despite all these efforts by the Earl of Sutherland to defeat the Jacobites, including his victory at Littleferry, he struggled to prove to the parliament in London that he had not had Jacobite sympathies.

Disputed chiefship.

The chief of Clan Sutherland was the Earl of Sutherland. When William Sutherland, 18th Earl of Sutherland died in 1766 he left an only daughter, Elizabeth. This led to a legal battle over the succession to the title. Elizabeth's right to succeed as a woman was challenged firstly by George Sutherland of Forse, who was a direct male descendant of the original de Moravia/Sutherland Earls of Sutherland and secondly by Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun who was a direct male descendant of the later Gordon Earls of Sutherland. The case was heard by the House of Lords on 21 March 1771 and it decided in favour of Elizabeth. She married George Leveson-Gower, Marquess of Stafford who later became the first Duke of Sutherland in 1833. The Duke set up businesses on the coast and ruthlessly cleared his tenants off the land, abandoning the customary obligations of a Scottish clan chief. However, two tacksmen of the clan, the brothers Alexander and John Sutherland of Sciberscross, were opposed to the clearance of tenants in Sutherland. Alexander Sutherland of Sciberscross, an army officer, fiercely opposed the clearances and was the source of much of the London press's critical coverage of the clearance events in Sutherland. His brother, John Sutherland of Sciberscross, gave "covert aid" in 1813 to the Kildonan rebels opposing the clearances in Sutherland.  Upon the death of the fifth Duke of Sutherland, the chiefship of the clan and the earldom of Sutherland devolved upon his niece, Elizabeth Sutherland, 24th Countess of Sutherland.

Castles.

Castles that have been owned by the Clan Sutherland include amongst many others:

Clan Sutherland is a Highland Scottish clan whose traditional territory is the shire of Sutherland in the far north of Scotland. The chief of the clan was also the powerful Earl of Sutherland, however in the early 16th century this title passed through marriage to a younger son of the chief of Clan Gordon. The current chief is Alistair Sutherland who holds the title Earl of Sutherland.

Sutherland ist der Name eines schottischen Clans in Sutherland in den nördlichen Highlands. Die Familie Sutherland war einst einer der mächtigsten Clans und stellt seit jeher den einflussreichen Earl of Sutherland. Der Familiensitz ist Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland.


History.

The theater was constructed in 1588 and 1590 by the celebrated Vicentine architect Vincenzo Scamozzi under a commission from Duke Vespasiano I Gonzaga, as part of Gonzaga's effort to turn his tiny Ducal seat into an idealized classical city. The importance that theater had come to hold, as a sign of the civilized society that the Duke was trying to create, is indicated by the prestigious location that was reserved for the theatre in the principal street of the town, the Via Giulia, and by the fact that a separate building was erected to hold the theatre. This prestige location had a cost, however, in the form of a cramped and narrow setting that could be successfully converted into a theater only by the considerable ingenuity of one of the Renaissance's most gifted architects.  The influence of the Teatro Olimpico upon the Teatro all'Antica is evident in a number of features—most notably in the colonnade at the rear of the seating area and in the set designs. Such influences are to be expected; Scamozzi had overseen the construction of the Teatro Olimpico following the death of the great Andrea Palladio, who had laid out its original design. In particular, Scamozzi had been responsible for the remarkable perspectives which form the onstage scenery at the Teatro Olimpico.  However, the Teatro all'Antica was a much different theatre, in part because of the different building in which it was placed, and in part because Scamozzi had learned important lessons as a result of his labours at the earlier theatre. The theatre building is roughly three times as long as it is wide, whereas the space occupied by the Teatro Olimpico is approximately square. The longer, narrower structure of the theatre building meant that Scamozzi was unable to build the seating area in the form of the semicircle that had been seen by Palladio as the ideal form for an audience, based on the model of ancient Roman theatres. Where the wide, shallow space available in the converted building that was used to house the Teatro Olimpico had forced Palladio to stretch the ideal semicircle into an ellipse, the opposite change was forced upon Scamozzi in Sabbioneta, and the seating area was transformed into a horseshoe.  As well, Scamozzi abandoned completely the elaborate and classically inspired "scaenae frons" that in many ways is the defining feature of the Teatro Olimpico. The removal of this rigid stage backdrop, which had forced him to build seven separate street scenes in order that all audience members could see at least one part of the scenery, made it possible to construct a single perspective view of a single street scene. Scamozzi's plans for this trompe l'oeil scenery are clearly visible in the upper-right corner of his plans for the theatre. The illusion of great distance was achieved by rapidly diminishing the size of the false-front buildings over a compressed distance. As an integral part of the illusion, the floor level rose rapidly to allow the buildings to shrink vertically, and the two sides of the street closed in on each other sharply. These two features of the set design can be seen, respectively, on the upper right-hand side and lower right-hand side of Scamozzi's plans. Given the narrowness of the seating area, a single perspective was sufficient for all audience members.  In the 17th century, Scamozzi's original scenery was removed and replaced by a new system with sliding wings. However, his original plans—which are shown above—were preserved in the archives at the Uffizi in Florence, making it possible, in the twentieth century, for new scenery to be rebuilt based on the original plans and added to the theatre.

The Teatro all'Antica ("Theater in the style of the ancients") is a theatre in Sabbioneta, northern Italy; it was the first free-standing, purpose-built theater in the modern world. The Teatro all'Antica is the second-oldest surviving indoor theater in the world (after the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza), and is, along with that theater and the Teatro Farnese in Parma, one of only three Renaissance theaters still in existence.

Das Teatro Olimpico (Olympisches Theater), auch "Teatro all’antica" (Theater nach antiker Art) und "Teatro Ducale" (Fürstliches Theater) genannt, ist ein Theatergebäude in der lombardischen Stadt Sabbioneta. Es entstand im letzten Viertel des 16. Jahrhunderts in der Renaissance. Es ist das älteste noch vorhandene freistehende und nur für den Zweck des Theaters gebaute Gebäude Europas. Das etwas ältere gleichnamige Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza wurde in einen mittelalterlichen Bau eingefügt, das Teatro Olimpico in Sabbioneta hingegen eigens errichtet.


Early years.

He was born in Paris, his father being an English physician and his mother a French dancer. Méryon's mother brought him up, but died when he was still young, and Méryon entered the French navy, and in the corvette "Le Rhin" made the voyage round the world in the 1840s. He was already a draughtsman, for on the coast of New Zealand he made pencil drawings which he was able to employ, years afterwards, as studies for etchings of the landscape of those regions. The artistic instinct developed, and, while he was yet a lieutenant; Méryon left the navy. Finding that he was colour blind, he determined to devote himself to etching. He entered the studio of the engraver Eugène Bléry, from whom he learnt something of technical matters, and to whom he always remained grateful. Méryon had no money, and was too proud to ask help from his family. He was forced to earn a living by doing work that was mechanical and irksome. Among learners' work, done for his own advantage, are to be counted some studies after the Dutch etchers such as Zeeman and Adriaen van de Velde. Having proved himself a skilled copyist, he began doing original work, notably a series of etchings which are the greatest embodiments of his greatest conceptions—the series called "Eaux-fortes sur Paris." These plates, executed from 1850 to 1854, are never found as a set and were never expressly published as such, but they nonetheless constituted in Méryon's mind an harmonious series.

Mature work.

Besides the twenty-two etchings "sur Paris", Méryon did seventy-two etchings of one sort and another ninety-four in all being catalogued in Frederick Wedmore's "Méryon" and "Méryon's Paris"; but these include the works of his apprenticeship and of his decline, adroit copies in which his best success was in the sinking of his own individuality, and more or less dull portraits. Yet among the seventy-two prints outside his professed series there are at least a dozen famous ones. Three or four beautiful etchings of Paris do not belong to the series at all. Two or three others are devoted to the illustration of Bourges, a city in which the old wooden houses were as attractive to him for their own sakes as were the stonebuilt monuments of Paris. Generally it was when Paris engaged him that he succeeded the most. He would have done more work if the material difficulties of his life had not pressed upon him and shortened his days.  He was a bachelor, yet almost as constantly occupied with love as with work. The depth of his imagination and the surprising mastery which he achieved almost from the beginning in the technicalities of his craft were appreciated only by a few artists, critics and connoisseurs, and he could not sell his etchings or could sell them only for about lod. apiece. Disappointment told upon him, and, frugal as was his way of life, poverty must have affected him. He became subject to hallucinations. Enemies, he said, waited for him at the corners of the streets; his few friends robbed him or owed him that which they would never pay. A few years after the completion of his Paris series he was placed in the asylum at Charenton. Briefly restored to health, he came out and did a little more work, but at bottom he was exhausted. In 1867 he returned to his asylum, and died there in 1868. In middle age, just before he was confined, he associated with Félix Bracquemond and Léopold Flameng, skilled practitioners of etching. The best portrait we have of him is one by Bracquemond under which the sitter wrote that it represented “the sombre Méryon with the grotesque visage."  There are twenty-two pieces in the "Eaux-fortes sur Paris". Some of them are insignificant. That is because ten out of the twenty-two were destined as headpiece, tailpiece, or running commentary on some more important plate. But each has its value, and certain of the smaller pieces throw great light on the aim of the entire set. Thus, one little plate—not a picture at all—is devoted to the record of verses made by Méryon, the purpose of which is to lament the life of Paris. Méryon aimed to illustrate its misery and poverty, as well as its splendour. His etchings are no mere views of Paris. They are “views" only so far as is compatible with their being likewise the visions of a poet and the compositions of an artist. Méryon's epic work was coloured strongly by his personal sentiment, and affected here and there by current events — in more than one case, for instance, he hurried with particular affection to etch his impression of some old-world building which was on the point of destruction, as Napoleon III tore down buildings to reconstruct Paris with wide boulevards. Nearly every etching in the series reveals technical skill, but even the technical skill is exercised most happily in those etchings which have the advantage of impressive subjects, and which the collector willingly cherishes for their mysterious suggestiveness or for their pure beauty.  Méryon also taught; among his pupils was the etcher Gabrielle-Marie Niel.

Style.

The "Abside de Notre Dame" is the general favourite and is commonly held to be Méryon's masterpiece. Light and shade play wonderfully over the great fabric of the church, seen over the spaces of the river. As a draughtsman of architecture, Méryon was complete; his sympathy with its various styles was broad, and his work on its various styles unbiased and of equal perfection—a point in which it is curious to contrast him with J.M.W. Turner, who, in drawing Gothic architecture, often drew it with want of appreciation. It is evident that architecture must enter largely into any representation of a city, however much such representation may be a vision, and however little a chronicle. Even the architectural portion of Méryon's labour is only indirectly imaginative; to the imagination he has given freer play in his dealings with the figure, whether the people of the street or of the river or the people who, when he is most frankly or even wildly symbolical, crowd the sky. Generally speaking, his figures are, as regards draughtsmanship, “landscape-painter's figures." They are drawn more with an eye to grace than to academic correctness. But they are not “landscape-painter's figures" at all when what we are ‘concerned with is not the method of their representation but the purpose of their introduction. They are seen then to be in exceptional accord with the sentiment of the scene. Sometimes, as in the case of "La Morgue", it is they who tell the story of the picture. Sometimes, as in the case of "La Rue des Mauvais Garçons"—with the two passing women bent together in secret converse—they at least suggest it. And sometimes, as in "L'Arche du Pont Notre Dame", it is their expressive gesture and eager action that give vitality and animation to the scene. Dealing perfectly with architecture, and perfectly, as far as ‘concerned his peculiar purpose, with humanity in his art, Méryon was little called upon by the character of his subjects to deal with Nature. He drew trees but badly, never representing foliage happily, either in detail or in mass. But to render the characteristics of the city, it was necessary that he should know how to portray a certain kind of water—river-water, mostly sluggish--and a certain kind of sky--the grey obscured and lower sky that broods over a world of roof and chimney. This water and this sky Méryon is thoroughly master of; he notes with observant affection their changes in all lights.  In his technique, Méryon experimented variously in his brief career, and at times within individual works. In two different impressions of his Paris view "La Pompe Notre Dame de Paris" (1852) he could employ crisp lines through a well wiped plate without plate tone, or leave softer edges and richer darks by ample plate tone. His aesthetics were often dictated by his paper, of which he endeavored to acquire the finest available. His more defined works he printed on 'Hudelist' paper, from a mill in Hallines in the North of France, which had the uniform, smooth quality ideal for sharp images. His more gauzy works, by contrast, were printed on a softer, felt-like Morel Lavenere paper produced in Glaignes, which was highly absorbent—and pale green, which Méryon in his color blindness would not have perceived as the typical viewer. Ultimately, however, his stated preference was for cleanly-wiped, clear prints of a uniform quality, which determination ironically positioned him against the Etching Revival he helped inspire.

Value of his prints (to 1911).

It is worthwhile to note the extraordinary enhancement in the value of Méryon's prints. Probably of no other artist of genius, not even of Whistler, could there be cited within the same period a rise in prices of at all the same proportion. Thus the first state of the "Stryge" - that "with the verses" - selling under the hammer in 1873 for £5, sold again under the hammer in 1905 for £100. The first state of the "Galerie de Notre Dame" - selling in 1873 for £5 and at M. Wasset's sale in 1880 for Lii?, fetched in 1905, £52. A "Tour de l'Horloge," which two or three years after it was first issued sold for half a crown, in May 1903 fetched f70. A first state (Wedmore's, not of course M. Delteil's "first state," which, like nearly all his first states, is in fact a trial proof) of the "Saint Étienne du Mont," realizing about £2 at M. Burty's sale in 1876, realized £60 at a sale in May 1906. The second state of the "Morgue" (Wedmore) sold in 1905 for £65; and Wedmore's second of the "Abside," which used to sell throughout the seventies for £4 or £5, reached in November 1906 more than £200. At no period have even Dürers or Rembrandts risen so swiftly and steadily.

Value of his prints (to 2018).

Though while alive he sold prints for francs, in 2014 prints are for sale under US$1000. In 2018 Meryon’s etchings fetch on the market (in the U.K) from between £1,500 to £7,500 GBP

Charles Méryon (23 November 1821 – 13 February 1868) was a French artist who worked almost entirely in etching, as he suffered from colour blindness. Although now little-known in the English-speaking world, he is generally recognised as the most significant etcher of 19th century France. He also suffered from mental illness, dying in an asylum. His most famous work is a series of views of Paris.

Charles Meryon (auch Charles Méryon; * 23. November 1821 in Paris; † 17. Februar 1868 in Charenton-le-Pont, Département Val-de-Marne) war ein französischer Maler und Graveur.


Background.

After the British and German armies first encountered each other at the Battle of Mons on 23 August 1914, the outnumbered British Expeditionary Force had begun to fall back in front of a stronger German army. The two clashed again at the Battle of Le Cateau on 26 August, after which the British again withdrew towards the River Marne. The withdrawal was orderly and disciplined; the German command mistakenly believed the British force was shattered and so neglected to aggressively harass them as they withdrew. As a result, the bulk of the Expeditionary Force was able to withdraw for several days without engaging in any major fighting; the German pursuit was leisurely, and most engagements were skirmishes between rearguard units and cavalry patrols, rarely more than a battalion in strength.  On 31 August, the Expeditionary Force continued falling back to the south-west, crossing the River Aisne between Soissons and Compiègne, with a rear guard provided by the brigades of the Cavalry Division. The day's march was cut short by the warm weather, which exhausted the already fatigued infantry, and they halted for the night just south of the Aisne. The I Corps bivouacked north of the forest around Villers-Cotterêts, with the II Corps to their south-west at Crepy-en-Valois, and the III Corps further to the west around Verberie. This left a gap of around five miles between the II and III Corps, which was filled by the 1st Cavalry Brigade, stationed at the village of Néry. The brigade had spent the day scouting for the German vanguard to the north-west of Compiegne, and did not reach its rest area until dusk, around 8.30pm. The British plan for the following day was for a march of ten to fourteen miles southwards to a new defensive line, which called for an early departure from their rest areas; the III Corps rearguards were expected to pass through Néry by 6 am, which would already have been vacated by the cavalry. However, most units had reached their overnight stations quite late on the 31st, and so General Pulteney, the corps commander, ordered a later departure.  Behind the retreating British forces, the German 1st Army on the right wing had begun to swing south, aiming to cross the river Oise around Compiègne, with the goal of cutting off the retreat of the French Fifth Army and isolating Paris. On the afternoon of 31 August, the 5th Division was identified about eight miles north-west of Compiègne and heading southwards, whilst the leading cavalry divisions of the army crossed the Oise north of Compiègne around the same time. The German units were on a forced march, ordered to reconnoitre towards Paris with all possible speed, and had begun moving at 4 am that morning. Many would continue through the following night; some prisoners at Néry said that they had been travelling for twenty-six hours without sleep. They pressed on regardless of fatigue; one regimental commander responded to complaints that his men were being pushed too hard with the curt remark that "sweat saves blood". The first contact between the armies that evening was just after nightfall, when the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers of III Corps encountered a patrol of the 8. Husaren-Regiment, of the 9th Cavalry Division, outside Verberie, on the extreme west flank of the British force.

Prelude.

On the British side, the 1st Cavalry Brigade bivouacked at Néry consisted of three cavalry regiments under the command of Brigadier-General Sir Charles Briggs, the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays), 5th (Princess Charlotte of Wales's) Dragoon Guards and 11th (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars. Each had a nominal strength of 549 men in three squadrons, with two Vickers machine-guns; They were supported by L Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery, which had a nominal strength of 205 men with six 13-pounder guns. Both units were part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) Cavalry Division, and had seen action throughout the Retreat from Mons, including fighting at the Battle of Mons and the Battle of Le Cateau but neither had suffered many casualties and were still close to establishment size.  The German forces were screened on their southern flank by five cavalry divisions. One of these, the 4th Cavalry Division, had crossed the Oise during 31 August and moved towards Néry, apparently unaware of the presence of British forces in the area. Commanded by General Otto von Garnier, the division consisted of six 722-man cavalry regiments in three brigades, along with a divisional artillery battalion of twelve guns, a battery of six machine-guns and two "Jäger" (light infantry) battalions, each with a further six machine-guns; the total strength was around 5,200 men. The divisional units were the "3. Kavallerie-Brigade" ("2. Kürassier-Regiment" and "9. Ulanen-Regiment") commanded by Karl Leopold Graf von der Goltz, the "17. Kavallerie-Brigade" ("17." and "18. Dragoner-Regiment") commanded by Ernst Graf von Schimmelmann, and the "18. Kavallerie-Brigade" ("15." and "16. Husaren-Regiment") commanded by Walther von Printz. Garnier decided to attack the British at dawn with dismounted cavalry.

Battle.

Néry is set in a north-south oriented valley around a small river, which feeds into the River Autonne to the north; it is overlooked from the east and west by high bluffs. The main landmark was a sugar factory, just south of the village, where L Battery were billeted; the cavalry regiments were stationed in and around the village proper. Dawn on 1 September came with heavy fog lying in the valley; the force had been awakened and prepared for a move at 4.30 am, but due to the terrible visibility it was decided to wait an hour and a half for the mist to clear, and the men stood down to rest, water the horses, and prepare breakfast. The teams for the artillery were left harnessed to their guns, but with the limbers lowered to take the weight off the horses. At 5.25 am, a patrol from the 11th Hussars, which had been sent out to the south-east, encountered a strong force of enemy cavalry and escaped back to the village; the regiment quickly took up dismounted defensive positions along the eastern edge of the village, though the commander of the 5th Dragoon Guards refused to believe an attack was imminent.  At 5.40 am, firing began from the heights overlooking the village from the east, supported by machine-guns and light artillery. This was the advanced guard of the 4th Cavalry Division, which had been surprised to encounter a British force, and signalled that it had unexpectedly "been surrounded by considerable hostile forces". The commander, General von Garnier, sized up the situation and quickly ordered a dismounted attack on the village. The effects of the fire from the heights were dramatic; the riderless horses of the 2nd Dragoon Guards took fright and bolted along the road northwards, whilst the artillery was immobilised and forced to remain in the firing line. One of the first casualties was the commander of the battery, Major Sclater-Booth, who was knocked unconscious as he ran towards the guns; the second-in-command of the battery, Captain Bradbury, took charge, and managed to get three guns moved into firing positions, facing twelve field guns on the ridge to the east. Two were quickly knocked out, leaving only one gun, under the direction of Captain Bradbury assisted by Sergeant Nelson and three other men. It kept up a steady fire, drawing the attention of the German artillery away from the cavalry, until its ammunition was almost exhausted; Bradbury was hit by a shell whilst trying to fetch more ammunition, and fatally wounded. The gun continued firing under Nelson and Battery Sergeant-Major Dorrell, but finally fell silent sometime before 8am, when reinforcements arrived.  Whilst Bradbury kept the gun in action, the men of the cavalry regiments had moved into position, on foot, along the eastern edge of the village to prevent an attack by the dismounted German cavalry. At 6am, two squadrons of the 5th Dragoon Guards were sent north to try to outflank the attackers, looping around to the east and pressing in to hold them in place. By the time Bradbury's gun stopped firing, the first reinforcements from III Corps had arrived; the 4th Cavalry Brigade with I Battery RHA, and two battalions of infantry. I Battery began firing directly on the German guns, now exposed by the clearing mist, as did the machine guns of the 1st Middlesex Regiment; the German horses took heavy casualties, and when the artillery withdrew eight of the guns had to be abandoned for lack of horses to pull them. A squadron of the 11th Hussars passed through to pursue the retreating Germans for a mile, taking seventy-eight prisoners, from all six regiments of the German division.  During the battle, the German cavalry nearly overran some of the British artillery but reinforcements were able to halt the German attack and artillery-fire in the fog caused a "temporary panic" among horses and gun-limbers. The reinforcements began to envelop the northern flank of the 4th Division and ammunition ran short, when the delivery was delayed. At Garnier heard reports that Crépy and Béthisy were occupied and broke off the engagement to rally east of Néry, having lost a battery of artillery. The division then moved south via Rocquemont to Rozières.

Aftermath.

L Battery was almost destroyed as an operational unit in the engagement, losing all five officers and a quarter of its men and was withdrawn to England in order to reform. It did not see active service again until April 1915, when it was sent to Gallipoli. The three cavalry regiments of 1st Brigade suffered less, taking eighty-one casualties between them, one of whom was Colonel Ansell, the commanding officer of the 5th Dragoon Guards. The brigade major of 1st Brigade, Major John Cawley, was also killed.  Three men of L Battery were awarded the Victoria Cross for their services at Néry; Captain Edward Bradbury, Battery Sergeant-Major George Dorrell, and Sergeant David Nelson. Bradbury was fatally wounded at the end of the fighting, dying shortly afterwards; Nelson was killed in action in April 1918, whilst Dorrell survived the war. Both Dorrell and Nelson were also given commissions as second lieutenants; they would later reach the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and Major respectively. The VCs awarded to all three, along with the surviving gun which they had used, are now on display at the Imperial War Museum in London. Lieutenant Giffard of L Battery, who survived, was awarded the French Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, and two men from the battery were awarded the Médaille militaire. The lieutenant commanding the machine-gun section of 2nd Dragoon Guards was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, with two of his men receiving the Distinguished Conduct Medal. L Battery was later awarded the honour title of "Néry"; it was the only unit to be awarded this as a battle honour, although it was applied for by both the 5th Dragoon Guards and the 11th Hussars. The other participating units received the honour Retreat from Mons.  The 4th Cavalry Division, conversely, was almost completely routed. Its actual casualties are unknown, though were thought to be greater than the British losses, and eight of their twelve guns were captured by the counterattack of the Middlesex Regiment. The brigades were ordered to disperse – according to one officer, they "had to withdraw or be destroyed" when the strength of the British reinforcements became apparent, and scattered in various directions. The Germans either moved north into the Compiègne Forest or east towards Crépy-en-Valois, but hearing fighting at Crepy doubled back to the south-east. They halted in the forests around Rosières, south of Néry; however, they were forced to abandon their remaining four guns, and most of their food and ammunition in the process. That afternoon, the cavalry observed the British columns retreating south along the roads, but were unable to attack them because of their lack of supplies. They left Rosières in the evening of 1 September; a patrol of the 1st Rifle Brigade entered the village at 7pm and found it had just been abandoned by a cavalry unit, leaving in such haste that they had abandoned a machine-gun. The bulk of the units managed to rejoin the First Army by the morning of 3 September, but the division was left behind with a reserve corps on 4 September when the II Cavalry Corps began to advance again.

References.

Books  Websites

The Affair of Néry was a skirmish fought on 1 September 1914 between the British Army and the German Army, part of the Great Retreat from Mons during the early stages of the First World War. A British cavalry brigade preparing to leave their overnight bivouac were attacked by a German cavalry division of about twice their strength, shortly after dawn. Both sides fought dismounted; the British artillery was mostly put out of action in the first few minutes but a gun of L Battery, Royal Horse Artillery kept up a steady fire for two and a half hours, against a full battery of German artillery. British reinforcements arrived at around counter-attacked the Germans and forced them to retreat; the German division was routed and did not return to combat for several days. Three men of L Battery were awarded the Victoria Cross for their part in the battle' the battery was later awarded the honour title of "Néry", the only British Army unit to have this as a battle honour.

Als Gefecht bei Néry wird ein Zusammenstoß zwischen deutschen und britischen Kavalleriekräften im Ersten Weltkrieg bezeichnet. Es fand im Verlauf des deutschen Vorstoßes an die Marne statt.


History and words.

Bach composed the cantata in 1731 in Leipzig, for the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Lutheran church year. In Leipzig this was the only Sunday in Advent when a cantata was performed, whereas "tempus clausum" (quiet time) was observed on the other three Sundays. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the Epistle to the Romans, "night is advanced, day will come" (), and from the Gospel of Matthew, the Entry into Jerusalem ().  Bach based parts of the music on a homage cantata of the same name,, which he had composed for the birthday of a Leipzig University teacher and first performed in spring 1725. The text was probably written by Picander, who modified it to a congratulatory cantata for Countess Charlotte Friederike Wilhelmine of Anhalt-Köthen,, first performed on 30 November 1726. Another version was a congratulatory cantata for a member of the Rivinius family from Leipzig,, probably in 1735.  Bach transformed the secular music to a cantata for the first Sunday in Advent, first by combining four movements and simply adding a chorale, the final stanza of "". The librettist of this adaptation, who stayed close to the secular cantata without reference to the readings, is unknown. Klaus Hofmann notes that the jubilant opening matches the Gospel of the entry into Jerusalem "with the people's jubilant shouts of Hosanna". The date of the adaptation is not certain, because the version is extant only in a copy by Bach's student Christoph Nichelmann.  Finally in 1731, Bach reworked the cantata considerably and wrote a new score. He interpolated the arias not with recitatives, but with three stanzas from Luther's hymn for Advent, "". This main hymn for the first Sunday in Advent had already opened his cantata for the same occasion in 1714,, and he had used it as the base for his chorale cantata, in 1724. The hymn stanzas "serve to anchor the cantata to some extent in the Advent story, and to give it liturgical purpose and a clear focus". John Eliot Gardiner terms it "structurally unusual". Bach divided the cantata in two parts to be performed before and after the sermon, closing part I with a stanza from Nicolai's hymn. For context, he replaced stanza 7, which had closed the whole cantata, by stanza 6, and closed part II by the final stanza of Luther's hymn.  Bach first performed the cantata on 2 December 1731, one week after.

Scoring and structure.

The cantata is scored for four soloists—soprano, alto, tenor and bass—a four-part choir, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two oboes d'amore, two violins, viola and basso continuo. It is structured in two parts of four movements each. Its interpolation of chorus and arias with chorales is unique in Bach's cantatas.

Music.

The cantata is unique in Bach's church cantatas in its structure of arias combined with chorale instead of recitatives. Performed one week after, it shows Bach's emphasis on the chorale even beyond his second cycle of chorale cantatas, begun in 1724.  The opening chorus is opened by a ritornello, dominated by two contrasting motifs: the strings play a short rising figure in triplets, the oboes d'amore play an expansive melody. As in the secular model, the movement is in two similar parts, each consisting of two contrasting sections, "" (Soar joyfully upwards to the exalted stars) and "" (Yet stop!). The bass voice, the lowest register, enters first, followed by the tenors, altos, and sopranos. This ascending sequence also reflects the text: "soaring aloft", literally "swinging upward". Gardiner, who conducted the three cantatas for the first Sunday in Advent during the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage with the Monteverdi Choir in 2000, described the movement as a "spiritual madrigal – capricious, light-textured and deeply satisfying once all its virtuosic technical demands have been met: those tricky runs, divisions and chromatic intervals in all voices, and the chains of triplet figuration in the unison oboes d'amore and first violins". He compares the figures on "" (stop) in the middle section to "" (where) in the aria "" in Bach's "St John Passion".  All three settings of the stanzas from Luther's chorale are different, beginning with a duet for soprano and alto for the first stanza. The voices are doubled by the oboes d'amore and render the text in sections of different length, with sixteen measures for the final "" (that God had ordained such a birth for Him). Alfred Dürr notes the expressiveness of the music, especially in leaps of sixths on the urgent request "" (now come), syncopated rhythm on "" (over whom the whole world marvels), and daring chromatic on the final line. The tenor aria reflects "" (Love approaches with gentle steps) with oboe d'amore as obbligato instrument, "the traditional musical symbol of love", alluding to the concept of Jesus as the bride-groom and the Soul as the bride, which is also the base for Nicolai's hymn that closes part I in a "rousing four-part harmonisation".  The bass aria beginning part II, "" (Welcome, worthy treasure!) shows "echoes of the first movement" and avoids a regular da capo structure. The bass voice is the vox Christi, addressing the bride. The welcoming gesture from the secular cantata seems appropriate for the expressed sentiment. The next hymn stanza, "" (You who are like the Father), the sixth stanza from Luther's hymn "dealing with the sins of the flesh and Christ's mission to redeem humankind", is marked "molt' allegro". The tenor sings the chorale melody unadorned as a cantus firmus, but the oboes d'amore play with "the urgent surging of semi-quaver activity". Dürr sees the expression of "" (fight and victory of the Son of God) over "" (weak/sick flesh) of man. Gardiner compares it to a trio sonata movement. He terms the last aria "a berceuse of pure enchantment" and compares it to the "echo aria" from part IV of Bach's "Christmas Oratorio". The text "" (Also with muted, weak voices) is illustrated by a muted (con sordino) solo violin. The closing choral, the final stanza of Luther's hymn, "" (Praise be to God, the Father) is a four-part setting.

Recordings.

A list of recordings is provided by the Bach Cantatas Website. Choir with one voice per part (OVPP) and ensembles playing period instruments in historically informed performance are marked by green background.

Cited sources.

"Scores"  "Books"  "Online sources"  Several databases provide additional information on each cantata, such as history, scoring, sources for text and music, translations to various languages, discography, and musical analysis.  The complete recordings of Bach's cantatas are accompanied by liner notes from musicians and musicologists, John Eliot Gardiner commented his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, Klaus Hofmann wrote for Masaaki Suzuki, Christoph Wolff for Ton Koopman.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata (Soar joyfully upwards), 36, in Leipzig in 1731 for the first Sunday in Advent. He drew on material from previous congratulatory cantatas, beginning with "Schwingt freudig euch empor", BWV 36c (1725). The Gospel for the Sunday was the Entry into Jerusalem, thus the mood of the secular work matched "the people's jubilant shouts of Hosanna". In a unique structure in Bach's cantatas, he interpolated four movements derived from the former works with four stanzas from two important Advent hymns, to add liturgical focus, three from Luther's "" and one from Nicolai's "". He first performed the cantata in its final form of two parts, eight movements, on 2 December 1731.

Schwingt freudig euch empor (BWV 36) ist eine Kirchenkantate von Johann Sebastian Bach. Er komponierte sie in Leipzig für den 1. Advent und führte sie am 2. Dezember 1731 erstmals auf.


Early life and education.

Bryce Edward Bayer was born in Portland, Maine, on August 15, 1929, to Alton and Marguerite Willard Bayer. As a boy he tinkered with Brownies and other cameras. He graduated in 1947 from Deering High School in Portland, where he spent a good deal of time in the school darkroom. "He, in fact, processed all of the pictures for his high school yearbook," his son David told "The New York Times" following Bayer's death.  After receiving a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from the University of Maine in 1951, Bayer moved to Rochester, New York, to work as a research scientist at Eastman Kodak, where he would remain until his retirement in 1986. At Kodak he met Joan Fitzgerald, a fellow researcher; they were married in 1954. Bayer pursued further studies at the University of Rochester, from which he earned a master's degree in industrial statistics in 1960.

Bayer filter.

In 1974, while working for Kodak, Bayer completed his design for the Bayer filter, for which he filed a patent application in 1975 and in 1976 received U.S. patent number 3,971,065. The filter employs what is called the "Bayer Pattern," a checkerboard-like arrangement of red, green, and blue pixels on a square grid of photosensors that allows digital cameras to capture vivid color images. Half of the pixels collect green light, and the others are evenly divided between red and blue light. The patent application described the filter as "a sensing array for color imaging" that "includes individual luminance- and chrominance-sensitive elements that are so intermixed that each type of element...occurs in a repeated pattern with luminance elements dominating the array." In the early eighties, Bryce explained that, as needed, the filter provides more information on luminance and less information on chrominance. "The pattern is very simple," Ken Parulski, former chief scientist for Kodak's digital camera division, told "The New York Times" after Bayer's death. "There are twice as many green elements as red or blue because this mimics the way the human eye provides the sharpest overall color image." Parulski added that although dozens of other patterns have since been devised, including some by Parulski himself, "the Bayer pattern has stood the test of time." Larry Scarff, a former chairman of the Camera Phone Image Quality Standards Group, told the Times that "Ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of all digital cameras — cellphones, pocket cameras, webcams and consumer digital video cameras — use the Bayer pattern to produce color pictures." One commentator said that Bayer's filter "marked a significant paradigm shift in the way we view and capture images." Dr. Terry Taber, Kodak Vice President and Chief Technology Officer has said that the "elegant colour technology invented by Bryce Bayer is behind nearly every digital image captured today."  According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Bayer's work on the filter "helped pave the way for the development of the first working digital camera a year later." Steve Sasson, co-inventor of the first digital camera, told the Rochester newspaper "that Bayer's contributions were not only pioneering but prophetic." "We weren't even thinking about digital cameras in those days," Sasson said. "Bryce was trying to figure out how to capture color with a two-dimensional array of color-blind sensors, and that turned out to be one of the foundations of digital imaging. He was solving a fundamental problem before that problem was even upon us." Sasson added that "Bryce has always been a hero for me." Parulski told the Democrat and Chronicle that he felt "very lucky to have worked with Bryce, starting on my very first day at Kodak...Bryce was so modest and unassuming, it took me years to realize what a genius he really was." Parulski added "that Bayer's invention is the key reason we have cameras that are compact yet provide sharp-looking pictures."

Other professional activities.

Bayer's contribution to photography also included algorithms that play a crucial role in storing, enhancing, and printing digital images. As a leader within the Information Technology Laboratory within the Physics Division of the Kodak Research Laboratories (KRL), Bryce demonstrated, in the early eighties, that computers could greatly enhance image quality. For example, he showed a large print of a dock scene made from a very small Disc camera negative. The image looked like it had been made from a much larger 35 mm negative. One could see the braids in the rope sitting on the dock.  About fifteen years earlier, in the mid-sixties, he developed a way to encrypt information in a way that the code could not be broken by others. Again, he developed this as a leader within the KRL Information Technology Laboratory. At the time, he was also studying Shannon's work on information theory and entropy, Shannon-Fano coding to use shorter codes for more frequent words or signals, etc. Bryce led a group in the areas of computer programming, applied statistics, information science, and applied mathematics. The group developed an automated way to selectively disseminate information to users based on their interest profiles and on their interest level feedback. This process is like processes used today by Google and Amazon.  In the mid-1960s, there was a group of similar size to Bryce's group working down the hall from Bryce's group. They were working on psycho-physics related to user assessment of digital image quality, color perception, etc. The Bayer filter enables a digital imaging system to do what the eye does. The extra green sensors provide more luminance information, as the rods in the eye do, when it is dark. When the digital imaging system and the eye encounter situations with low levels of illumination, both systems can provide and use more luminance information and less chrominance information.

Honors and awards.

Bayer was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal in 2009 given "in recognition of any invention, research, publication or other contribution which has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense." In 2012, Bayer received the first Camera Origination and Imaging Medal from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

Personal life and death.

Bayer and his wife had two sons, Douglas and David, and a daughter, Janet. Bayer died on November 13, 2012, in Bath, Maine, of "a long illness related to dementia," his son Douglas told "The New York Times".

Bryce E. Bayer (/ˈbaɪər/; pronounced BYE-er, August 15, 1929 – November 13, 2012) was an American scientist who invented the Bayer filter, which is used in most modern digital cameras. He has been called "the maestro without whom photography as we know wouldn't have been the same." Without his filter, Larry Scarff, a former chairman of the Camera Phone Image Quality Standards Group, told "The New York Times" after Bayer's death, "we'd still be getting only black-and-white pictures from our digital cameras."

Bryce E. Bayer (* 15. August 1929 in Portland, Maine; † 13. November 2012 in Bath, Maine) war ein US-amerikanischer Physiker. Er entwickelte die Bayer-Matrix.