title: Borg

text: In the fifth season, we see the Borg in "", where an advanced Borg drone is created when Seven of Nine's nanoprobes are fused with the Doctor's mobile emitter in a transporter accident. The Borg play a peripheral role in "", when Seven of Nine is exposed to a weapon against the Borg that essentially causes her to suffer from multiple personality disorder (MPD), reverting to the personas of various people she assimilated while in the Collective. In "", "Voyager" steals and uses a transwarp coil to both rescue Seven of Nine from the Borg Queen and then cut another fifteen years off their journey home before the coil burns out.


title: Borg

text: Juliette Harrisson writing for "Den of Geek" in 2017, gave actress Susanna Thompson and Alice Krige as Borg Queens an honorable mention in a ranking of best guest stars on "Star Trek: Voyager".


title: Borg

text: In the sixth season episode, "", the crew of "Voyager" encounter a damaged cube that is holding Tom Paris, Neelix, Harry Kim and Chakotay hostage. With all the adult drones dead, the ship is run by five Borg children who are saved by "Voyager" and deassimilated. The later episode "Child's Play" reveals that the cube was infected by a pathogen that Icheb, one of the children, had been engineered to act as a host for by his parents, but the crew rescue Icheb before he can be sent back to the Borg. The crew encounter the Borg again in "Unimatrix Zero", a two-part cliffhanger between seasons six and seven.


title: Borg

text: In "", Q's son brings several Borg cubes and drones into conflict with "Voyager" as a way for his amusement, before Q rescues them and warns his son not to provoke the Borg. In "", a freak accident allows Chakotay to travel to various time periods in the ship's history, including the events depicted in "Scorpion", where he interacts with the full drone Seven. In the series finale, "", a future Admiral Janeway tries to bring "Voyager" back to Earth using a Borg transwarp hub. During this episode, she infects the Borg with a neurolytic pathogen which infects the collective and kills the Queen.


title: Borg

text: There are 26 major episodes featuring the Borg in "Voyager", however there are about 100 if counting those with Seven of Nine.


title: Borg

text: In the "" episode "", the remnants of the destroyed sphere from "" are discovered in the Arctic along with two frozen drones. The Borg steal a research ship and send a transmission toward the Delta Quadrant before they are destroyed, creating a perpetual time loop/predestination paradox.


title: Borg

text: The first season of "" included four recovering ex-Borg characters: Picard, Seven of Nine, Hugh (featured in "I, Borg" and "Descent"), and Icheb. The Borg are described as "hobbled" and "decimated", with many Borg drones being de-assimilated and Borg cubes and vessels dismantled for their valuable technology. However, they remain a potent threat, with Seven even briefly assuming the role of a Borg Queen to reactivate several inactive drones and use them against the Tal Shiar.


title: Borg

text: In the second season, a damaged Borg Queen is recruited by Picard to help him and his crew travel into the past and prevent the creation of the xenophobic and totalitarian "Confederation of Earth". The Queen, taking an interest in Picard's friend Agnes Jurati, assimilates her and takes control of her body while plotting to steal an advanced space shuttle so she can assimilate the galaxy before the birth of the Federation. However, Agnes persuades the Queen that the Borg will always be defeated because their collective is built on fear and domination rather than trust. Intrigued by the possibility of finally attaining perfection, the Queen departs Earth to test Agnes' theory. Upon returning to the 24th century, towards the end of the Season 2 finale, it is revealed that a volatile trans-warp conduit threatens to destroy part of the galaxy. Picard orders the fleet to comply with the Borg Queen’s wishes to take control of all vessels in order to create a force field. After the successful containment of the emissions from the conduit, it remains open but nobody knows where it leads. Fearing it may attract belligerents, the Borg Queen volunteers the Borg to protect the conduit, expressing her wish to align the Borg with Starfleet and join the Federation with Agnes as the human counterpart of the Borg Queen.


title: Borg

text: The origin of the Borg is never made clear, though they are portrayed as having existed for hundreds of thousands of years (as attested by Guinan and the Borg Queen). In "Star Trek: First Contact", the Borg Queen merely states that the Borg were once much like humanity, "flawed and weak", but gradually developed into a partially synthetic species in an ongoing attempt to evolve and perfect themselves.


title: Borg

text: In "TNG"s "Q Who", Guinan mentions that the Borg are "made up of organic and artificial life [...] which has been developing for [...] thousands of centuries." In the later episode of "Star Trek: Voyager", "", Gedrin, of the race the Vaadwaur, says that before he and his people were put into suspended animation 892 years earlier (1482 A.D.), the Borg had assimilated only a few colonies in the Delta Quadrant and were considered essentially a minor nuisance. Now awake in the 24th century, he is amazed to see that the Borg control a vast area of the Delta Quadrant. Seven of Nine comments that the Borg's collective memories of that time period are fragmentary, though it is never established why that is.


title: Borg

text: "The Star Trek Encyclopedia" speculates that a connection could exist between the Borg and "V'ger", the vessel encountered in "". This idea of a connection is advanced in William Shatner's novel "The Return". The connection was also suggested in a letter included in "Starlog" no. 160 (November 1990). The letter writer, Christopher Haviland, also speculated that the original Borg drones were members of a race called "the Preservers", which Spock had suggested in the original series episode "The Paradise Syndrome" might be the reason why so many humanoids populate the galaxy. It was confirmed in the "TNG" episode "" that an ancient species seeded hundreds, if not thousands of planets with their DNA, creating the Humans, Vulcans (and Romulans as they are a Vulcan offshoot race), Cardassians and others.


title: Borg

text: The extra section of the game "" contains the supposed "Origin of the Borg", based on a scene in "" which tells the story of "V'ger" being sucked into a black hole. "V'ger" was found by a race of living machines that gave it a form suitable to fulfilling its simplistic programming. Unable to determine who its creator could be, the probe declared all carbon-based life an infestation of the creator's universe. In order to prevent the destruction of Earth by the "V'ger" probe, Commander Decker volunteered to merge with it so that it could fulfill its purpose, albeit a purpose which space and time had corrupted to the point that only fusing with its creator could satisfy it. From this, the Borg were created, as extensions of "V'ger"s purpose. Drones were made from those assimilated and merged into a collective consciousness. The Borg Queen was created out of the necessity for a single unifying voice. With thoughts and desires of her own, she was no longer bound to serve "V'ger".


title: Borg

text: In the graphic novel "Star Trek: The Manga", the Borg resulted from an experiment in medical nanotechnology gone wrong. An alien species under threat of extinction by an incurable disease created a repository satellite containing test subjects infused with body parts, organs, and DNA of multiple species along with cybernetic enhancements put in place by advanced medical technology. The satellite was maintained by nanomachines, which also maintained the medical equipment on board. The medical facility is parked in orbit by a black hole, and along with the relativistic state of time around the black hole, allows long-term research to continue at an accelerated time scale rather than in real-time speed. As the medical facility deteriorates, so does the programming of the nanomachines. The nanomachines began infusing themselves into the patients, interpreting them as part of the satellite in need of repair. Among the patients is the daughter of the head medical researcher of the satellite. The satellite eventually falls apart in an encounter with an away team from the "Enterprise" under the command of James T. Kirk. In the final moments of the satellite's destruction and the escape of the crew members of the "Enterprise" with the patients, the subjects display qualities inherently resembling the Borg: injection of nanomachines in a fashion similar to assimilation, rapid adaptation to weaponry, and a hive mind consciousness, as all the subjects begin following the whim of the daughter. As succumbing to the disease was inevitable, and the corrupt nanomachine programming infused itself into the bodies, the final image of the page of the manga Borg origin is left with the daughter turned Borg Queen saying, "Resistance is futile."


title: Borg

text: In the novel "Lost Souls" (the third book in the "" trilogy), the Borg are revealed to be the survivors of the Caeliar city Mantilis. Thrown across the galaxy in the Delta Quadrant and back in time to about 4500 BC by the destruction of Erigol at the climax of "Gods of Night", the first book in the trilogy, a group of human survivors from the starship "Columbia" and Caeliar scientists try to survive in a harsh arctic climate. Most of the human survivors die of exposure, while several Caeliar are absorbed into their race's gestalt to give life to the others in their group mind. The Caeliar offer the remaining humans a merging of human and Caeliar, to allow both groups to survive. The human survivors are resistant and as time goes on, the Caeliar called Sedin becomes the sole survivor of her group, her mental processes and her form both degrading as time goes on. When the humans return to Sedin for help, she forces them to merge with her, unwilling to allow herself to die when a union can save her life. The forced merging of the humans and the mostly decayed Caeliar results in the creation of the first Borg. The gestalt group mind is perverted to become the collective, driven by Sedin's desperate hunger and need to add the strength, technology, and life-force of others to her own. Ironically, while the Caeliar werealbeit accidentallyinvolved in the creation of the Borg, they also provide the means to end it; in the 24th century, the Caeliar absorb the entire Borg collective back into themselves, ending the cyborgs' centuries-long reign of terror. However, in the "Star Trek: Coda" trilogy that ends with the erasure of the novel timeline, Picard confronts the Borg Queen of an alternate timeline where they conquered Earth in "First Contact", and when he attempts to use his knowledge of the Borg's creation to catch the Queen off-guard she expresses ignorance of that timeline. Picard speculates that the Borg have such a complex history that time-travel has basically manipulated their reality to such an extent that even they don't have a definitive origin any more.


title: Borg

text: In the "Star Trek" novel "Probe", which takes place following the events of "", the Borg are mentioned obliquely in communication with the whale-probe as spacefaring "mites" (the whale-probe's term for humanoid races) who traveled in cubical and spherical spacefaring vessels; the Borg apparently attacked the whale-probe and damaged its memory in some fashion before the events of the film.


title: Borg

text: In the "Star Trek" game "", the Borg are featured prominently throughout the "Enterprise" and "TOS" eras before becoming a major threat in the "TNG" era. In unlockable motion-comics that are unlocked after completing each era, it is revealed that the Vulcan T'Uerell experimented on Borg corpses left behind from the "Enterprise" episode "Regeneration", and became assimilated. It was not until the end of the "TOS" era that she made contact with the main Borg force and became a queen before she was finally killed in a fleet of Starfleet, Romulan, and Klingon ships led by Picard.


title: Borg

text: The Peter David novel "Vendetta" reveals that the planet killer weapon from the "" episode "" is a prototype for a weapon against the Borg. David revisited this concept in a 2007 sequel novel, "Before Dishonor", which features the "Enterprise"-E working with Spock and Seven of Nine to reactivate the original planet killer to stop the Borg.


title: Borg

text: In William Shatner's novel "The Return", Spock is nearly assimilated by the Borg, but is saved because he mind-melded with V'ger, an earlier form of the Borg, and they assume he is already a Borg. Using the information he subconsciously acquired in the meld, Spock is able to lead a crew of "Enterprise" officers (consisting of the "Enterprise"-D crew, himself, Admiral McCoy, and the resurrected Kirk) in a "Defiant"-class ship to destroy the Borg central node, severing all branches of the Collective from each other and limiting their future threat.


title: Borg

text: In David Mack's novel trilogy "", set over a year after "", the Borg stage a massive invasion of local space. Due to Kathryn Janeway crippling their infrastructure in "Endgame", the Borg fear for their survival and attempt to exterminate the Federation and its neighbors. They destroy the populations of numerous Federation worlds. The crews of the "Enterprise"-E, the "", and the "Aventine" (captained by newly commissioned Ezri Dax) make contact with the Caeliar, the advanced species that created the Borg, and enlist their aid to end the Borg threat once and for all.


title: Borg

text: DC Comics began producing "Star Trek" titles in 1984 and subsequently a "Star Trek: the Next Generation" six-issue mini-series (1988) followed by an on-going series (1989–1996). Fans had to wait four years for Locutus and the Borg to make their June 1993 comic book debut in DC Comics issue no. 47. In the story, titled ""the Worst of Both Worlds"", Jean-Luc and his crew are trapped in an alternate dimension where the Borg have destroyed the Federation and assimilated Earth. The crew encounters a more battle-hardened version of themselves, the last survivors of the Federation led by now Captain Riker, struggling to survive and continue the resistance. They agree to team-up to end the chaos caused by the Borg and their leader, Locutus. The arc lasts for four issues, reaching its conclusion in no. 50, a double-sized 68-page special. The Borg would only appear one more time later in the series, issue no. 75, in a story titled ""War and Madness"" which introduces a new villain, Enab, who has been severed from the Collective and wishes to return to it by any means necessary. Enab is based on the Batman villain Bane.


title: Borg

text: In the "Doctor Who"/"Star Trek" crossover comic, , the Borg join forces with the Cybermen. When the Cybermen subvert the Collective, the "Enterprise"-D crew work with the Eleventh Doctor and the Borg, restoring the Borg to full strength and erasing the Borg/Cyberman alliance from existence.


title: Borg

text: Writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens developed an unproduced idea for an episode that would have featured Alice Krige as a Starfleet medical technician who encounters the Borg and is assimilatedthereby becoming the Borg Queen.


title: Borg

text: In the video game "", the Borg invades a Dominion cloning facility to create a clone of Jean-Luc Picard to create a new Locutus.


title: Borg

text: In March of 2001, Activision announced a game called "", in which the player would play a Borg. Though it was planned to be released that winter, Activision later cancelled the game's development.


title: Borg

text: "TV Guide" named the Borg #4 in their 2013 list of the 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time. The Borg are noted as a powerful cybernetic force among the Star Trek aliens, although the Federation has generally been able to thwart their plans.


title: Borg

text: The Borg are noted for their use of powerful starships (the Borg Cube for example), assimilation of other species, and for wanting to acquire new technologies.


title: Borg

text: The phrase "resistance is futile" became prevalent in popular culture from its use in the television show "Star Trek: The Next Generation".


title: Borg

text: The Borg uttered the phrase in several" Star Trek" episodes and the film "Star Trek: First Contact" (which used the phrase as the tagline for the 1996 film). Patrick Stewart's delivery of the line, as Locutus, in "" was ranked no. 93 in TV Land's list of "The 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases". It was used as the title for an episode of the TV series "Dexter" as well as a song by Slovenian avant-garde music group Laibach on their 2014 album Spectre.


title: Borg

text: In 2013, "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked the Borg the second best villain of the "Star Trek" franchise, pointing out "they fly their ugly cube-ship wherever they please and force innocent species to join their ranks" and lamenting Captain Picard's assimilation in the episode "Best of Both Worlds".


title: Borg

text: In 2020, "SyFy Wire" listed several Borg episodes in their guide "Best of Borg Worlds", a guide to seven essential Borg-themed episodes to watch as background before "Star Trek: Picard".


title: Borg

text: In 2020, CNET ranked the Borg cube the 2nd most powerful spacecraft of the "Star Trek" universe, after .


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph II (German: Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adam; English: "Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam"; 13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg lands from November 29, 1780 until his death. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, and the brother of Marie Antoinette, Maria Carolina of Austria and Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma. He was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the union of the Houses of Habsburg and Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph was a proponent of enlightened absolutism; however, his commitment to secularizing, liberalizing and modernizing reforms resulted in significant opposition, which resulted in failure to fully implement his programs. Meanwhile, despite making some territorial gains, his reckless foreign policy badly isolated Austria. He has been ranked with Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia as one of the three great Enlightenment monarchs. False but influential letters depict him as a somewhat more radical "philosophe" than he probably was. His policies are now known as Josephinism.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: He was a supporter of the arts, and most importantly of composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. He died with no surviving children and was succeeded by his younger brother Leopold II.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph was born in the midst of the early upheavals of the War of the Austrian Succession. His formal education was provided through the writings of David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the "Encyclopédistes", and by the example of his contemporary (and sometimes rival) King Frederick II of Prussia. His practical training was conferred by government officials, who were directed to instruct him in the mechanical details of the administration of the numerous states composing the Austrian dominions and the Holy Roman Empire.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph married Princess Isabella of Parma in October 1760, a union fashioned to bolster the 1756 defensive pact between France and Austria. (The bride's mother, Princess Louise Élisabeth, was the eldest daughter of the incumbent King of France. Isabella's father was Philip, Duke of Parma.) Joseph loved his bride, Isabella, finding her both stimulating and charming, and she sought with special care to cultivate his favor and affection. Isabella also found a best friend and confidant in her husband's sister, Maria Christina, Duchess of Teschen.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The marriage of Joseph and Isabella resulted in the birth of a daughter, Maria Theresa. Isabella was fearful of pregnancy and early death, largely a result of the early loss of her mother. Her own pregnancy proved especially difficult as she suffered symptoms of pain, illness and melancholy both during and afterward, though Joseph attended to her and tried to comfort her. She remained bedridden for six weeks after their daughter's birth.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Almost immediately on the back of their newfound parenthood, the couple then endured two consecutive miscarriages—an ordeal particularly hard on Isabella—followed quickly by another pregnancy. Pregnancy was again provoking melancholy, fears and dread in Isabella. In November 1763, while six months pregnant, Isabella fell ill with smallpox and went into premature labor, resulting in the birth of their second child, Archduchess Maria Christina, who died shortly after being born.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Progressively ill with smallpox and strained by sudden childbirth and tragedy, Isabella died the following week. The loss of his beloved wife and their newborn child was devastating for Joseph, after which he felt keenly reluctant to remarry, though he dearly loved his daughter and remained a devoted father to Maria Theresa.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: For political reasons, and under constant pressure, in 1765, he relented and married his second cousin, Princess Maria Josepha of Bavaria, the daughter of Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor, and Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria. This marriage proved extremely unhappy, albeit brief, as it lasted only two years.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Though Maria Josepha loved her husband, she felt timid and inferior in his company. Lacking common interests or pleasures, the relationship offered little for Joseph, who confessed he felt no love (nor attraction) for her in return. He adapted by distancing himself from his wife to the point of near total avoidance, seeing her only at meals and upon retiring to bed. Maria Josepha, in turn, suffered considerable misery in finding herself locked in a cold, loveless union.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Four months after the second anniversary of their wedding, Maria Josepha grew ill and died from smallpox. Joseph neither visited her during her illness nor attended her funeral, though he later expressed regret for not having shown her more kindness, respect, or warmth. One thing the union did provide him was the improved possibility of laying claim to a portion of Bavaria, though this would ultimately lead to the War of the Bavarian Succession.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph never remarried. In 1770, Joseph's only surviving child, the seven-year-old Maria Theresa, became ill with pleurisy and died. The loss of his daughter was deeply traumatic for him and left him grief-stricken and scarred. Lacking children, Joseph II was ultimately succeeded by his younger brother, who became Leopold II.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph was made a member of the constituted council of state ("Staatsrat") and began to draw up minutes for his mother to read. These papers contain the germs of his later policy, and of all the disasters that finally overtook him. He was a friend to religious toleration, anxious to reduce the power of the church, to relieve the peasantry of feudal burdens, and to remove restrictions on trade and knowledge. In these, he did not differ from Frederick, or his own brother and successor Leopold II, all enlightened rulers of the 18th century. He tried to liberate serfs, but that did not last after his death.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Where Joseph differed from great contemporary rulers, and was akin to the Jacobins in the intensity of his belief in the power of the state when directed by reason. As an absolutist ruler, however, he was also convinced of his right to speak for the state uncontrolled by laws, and of the wisdom of his own rule. He had also inherited from his mother the belief of the house of Austria in its "August" quality and its claim to acquire whatever it found desirable for its power or profit. He was unable to understand that his philosophical plans for the molding of humanity could meet with pardonable opposition.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph was documented by contemporaries as being impressive, but not necessarily likable. In 1760, his arranged consort, the well educated Isabella of Parma, was handed over to him. Joseph appears to have been completely in love with her, but Isabella preferred the companionship of Joseph's sister, Marie Christine of Austria. The overweening character of the Emperor was obvious to Frederick II of Prussia, who, after their first interview in 1769, described him as ambitious, and as capable of setting the world on fire. The French minister Vergennes, who met Joseph when he was traveling incognito in 1777, judged him to be "ambitious and despotic".


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: After the death of his father in 1765, he became emperor and was made co-regent by his mother in the Austrian dominions. As emperor, he had little true power, and his mother had resolved that neither her husband nor her son should ever deprive her of sovereign control in her hereditary dominions. Joseph, by threatening to resign his place as co-regent, could induce his mother to abate her dislike for religious toleration.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: He could and did place a great strain on her patience and temper, as in the case of the first partition of Poland and the Bavarian War of 1778–1779, but in the last resort the empress spoke the final word. Therefore, until the death of his mother in 1780, Joseph was never quite free to follow his own instincts.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: During these years, Joseph traveled much. He met Frederick the Great privately at Neisse in 1769 (later painted in "The Meeting of Frederick II and Joseph II in Neisse in 1769"), and again at Mährisch-Neustadt in 1770; the two rulers initially got along well. On the second occasion, he was accompanied by Count Kaunitz, whose conversation with Frederick may be said to mark the starting point of the first partition of Poland. To this and to every other measure which promised to extend the dominions of his house, Joseph gave hearty approval. Thus, when Frederick fell severely ill in 1775, Joseph assembled an army in Bohemia which, in the event of Frederick's death, was to advance into Prussia and demand Silesia (a territory Frederick had conquered from Maria Theresa in the War of the Austrian Succession). However, Frederick recovered, and thereafter became wary and mistrustful of Joseph.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph was also eager to enforce Austria's claim on Bavaria upon the death of the elector Maximilian Joseph in 1777. In April of that year, he paid a visit to his sister the queen of France, Marie Antoinette of Austria, traveling under the name of "Count Falkenstein". He was well received and much flattered by the Encyclopedists, but his observations led him to predict the approaching downfall of the French monarchy, and he was not impressed favorably by the French army or navy.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1778, he commanded the troops collected to oppose Frederick, who supported the rival claimant to Bavaria. This was the War of the Bavarian Succession. Real fighting was averted by the unwillingness of Frederick to embark on a new war and by Maria Theresa's determination to maintain peace. However, the war cost Joseph most of his influence over the other German princes, who were wary of his potential designs on their lands, and looked to Frederick as their protector.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: As the son of Francis I, Joseph succeeded him as titular Duke of Lorraine and Bar, which had been surrendered to France on his father's marriage, and titular King of Jerusalem and Duke of Calabria (as a proxy for the Kingdom of Naples).


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The death of Maria Theresa on 29 November 1780 left Joseph free to pursue his own policy, and he immediately directed his government on a new course, attempting to realize his ideal of enlightened despotism acting on a definite system for the good of all.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: He undertook the spread of education, the secularization of church lands, the reduction of the religious orders and the clergy, in general, to complete submission to the lay state, the issue of the Patent of Tolerance (1781) providing limited guarantee of freedom of worship, and the promotion of unity by the compulsory use of the German language (replacing Latin or in some instances local languages)—everything which from the point of view of 18th-century philosophy, the Age of Enlightenment, appeared "reasonable". He strove for administrative unity with characteristic haste to reach results without preparation. Joseph carried out measures of the emancipation of the peasantry, which his mother had begun, and abolished serfdom in 1781.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1789, he decreed that peasants must be paid in cash payments rather than labor obligations. These policies were violently rejected by both the nobility and the peasants, since their barter economy lacked money. Joseph also abolished the death penalty in 1787, a reform that remained until 1795.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Joseph sought to help the family of his estranged sister Queen Marie Antoinette of France and her husband King Louis XVI of France. Joseph kept an eye on the development of the revolution, and became actively involved in the planning of a rescue attempt. These plans failed, however, either due to Marie Antoinette's refusal to leave her children behind in favor of a faster carriage or Louis XVI's reluctance to become a fugitive king.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph died in 1790, making negotiations with Austria about possible rescue attempts more difficult. It was not until 21 June 1791 that an attempt was made, with the help of Count Fersen, a Swedish general who had been favored at the courts of both Marie Antoinette and Joseph. The attempt failed after the King was recognized from the back of a coin. Marie Antoinette became increasingly desperate for help from her homeland, even giving French military secrets to Austria. Nevertheless, even though Austria was at war with France at the time, it refused to directly help the by now completely estranged French Queen.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: When Maria Theresa died, Joseph started issuing edicts, over 6,000 in all, plus 11,000 new laws designed to regulate and reorder every aspect of the empire. The spirit of Josephinism was benevolent and paternal. He intended to make his people happy, but strictly in accordance with his own criteria.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph set about building a rationalized, centralized, and uniform government for his diverse lands, a hierarchy under himself as a supreme autocrat. The personnel of government was expected to be imbued with the same dedicated spirit of service to the state that he himself had. It was recruited without favor for a class or ethnic origins, and promotion was solely by merit. To further uniformity, the emperor made German the compulsory language of official business throughout the Empire, which affected especially the Kingdom of Hungary. The Hungarian assembly was stripped of its prerogatives, and not even called together.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: As privy finance minister, Count Karl von Zinzendorf (1739–1813) introduced a uniform system of accounting for state revenues, expenditures, and debts of the territories of the Austrian crown. Austria was more successful than France in meeting regular expenditures and in gaining credit. However, the events of Joseph II's last years also suggest that the government was financially vulnerable to the European wars that ensued after 1792.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The busy Joseph inspired a complete reform of the legal system, abolished brutal punishments and the death penalty in most instances, and imposed the principle of complete equality of treatment for all offenders. He lightened censorship of the press and theatre.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1781–82 he extended full legal freedom to serfs. Rentals paid by peasants were to be regulated by officials of the crown and taxes were levied upon all income derived from land. The landlords, however, found their economic position threatened, and eventually reversed the policy. Indeed, in Hungary and Transylvania, the resistance of the magnates was such that Joseph had to content himself for a while with halfway measures. Of the five million Hungarians, 40,000 were nobles, of whom 4,000 were magnates who owned and ruled the land; most of the remainder were serfs legally tied to particular estates.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: After the collapse of the peasant revolt of Horea, 1784–85, in which over a hundred nobles were killed, the emperor acted. His Imperial Patent of 1785 abolished serfdom but did not give the peasants ownership of the land or freedom from dues owed to the landowning nobles. It did give them personal freedom. Emancipation of the peasants from the kingdom of Hungary promoted the growth of a new class of taxable landholders, but it did not abolish the deep-seated ills of feudalism and the exploitation of the landless squatters. Feudalism finally ended in 1848.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: To equalize the incidence of taxation, Joseph caused an appraisal of all the lands of the empire to be made so that he might impose a single and egalitarian tax on land. The goal was to modernize the relationship of dependence between the landowners and peasantry, relieve some of the tax burden on the peasantry, and increase state revenues. Joseph looked on the tax and land reforms as being interconnected and strove to implement them at the same time.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The various commissions he established to formulate and carry out the reforms met resistance among the nobility, the peasantry, and some officials. Most of the reforms were abrogated shortly before or after Joseph's death in 1790; they were doomed to failure from the start because they tried to change too much in too short a time, and tried to radically alter the traditional customs and relationships that the villagers had long depended upon.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In the cities, the new economic principles of the Enlightenment called for the destruction of the autonomous guilds, already weakened during the age of mercantilism. Joseph II's tax reforms and the institution of Katastralgemeinde (tax districts for the large estates) served this purpose, and new factory privileges ended guild rights while customs laws aimed at economic unity. Physiocratic influence also led to the inclusion of agriculture in these reforms.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: To produce a literate citizenry, elementary education was made compulsory for all boys and girls, and higher education on practical lines was offered for a select few. Joseph created scholarships for talented poor students and allowed the establishment of schools for Jews and other religious minorities. In 1784 he ordered that the country change its language of instruction from Latin to German, a highly controversial step in a multilingual empire.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: By the 18th century, centralization was the trend in medicine because more and better-educated doctors were requesting improved facilities. Cities lacked the budgets to fund local hospitals, and the monarchy wanted to end costly epidemics and quarantines. Joseph attempted to centralize medical care in Vienna through the construction of a single, large hospital, the famous Allgemeines Krankenhaus, which opened in 1784. Centralization worsened sanitation problems, causing epidemics and a 20% death rate in the new hospital; the city nevertheless became preeminent in the medical field in the next century.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Probably the most unpopular of all his reforms was his attempted modernization of the highly traditional Catholic Church, which in medieval times had helped establish the Holy Roman Empire beginning with Charlemagne. Calling himself the guardian of Catholicism, Joseph II struck vigorously at papal power. He tried to make the Catholic Church in his empire the tool of the state, independent of Rome. Clergymen were deprived of the tithe and ordered to study in seminaries under government supervision, while bishops had to take a formal oath of loyalty to the crown. He financed the large increase in bishoprics, parishes, and secular clergy by extensive sales of monastic lands.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: As a man of the Enlightenment he ridiculed the contemplative monastic orders, which he considered unproductive. Accordingly, he suppressed a third of the monasteries (over 700 were closed) and reduced the number of monks and nuns from 65,000 to 27,000. The Church's ecclesiastical tribunals were abolished and marriage was defined as a civil contract outside the jurisdiction of the Church.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph sharply cut the number of holy days to be observed in the Empire and ordered ornamentation in churches to be reduced. He forcibly simplified the manner in which the Mass (the central Catholic act of worship) was celebrated. Opponents of the reforms blamed them for revealing Protestant tendencies, with the rise of Enlightenment rationalism and the emergence of a liberal class of bourgeois officials. Anti-clericalism emerged and persisted, while the traditional Catholics were energized in opposition to the emperor.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph's Patent of Toleration in 1781 was a major shift away from the inquisitive religious policies of the Counter Reformation that were previously predominant in the monarchy. Limited religious freedom of worship was given to major non-Catholic Christian sects, although conversion from Catholicism was still restricted. This was followed by the Edict of Tolerance in 1782, removing many restrictions and regulations on Jews.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The Secularization Decree issued on 12 January 1782 banned several monastic orders not involved in teaching or healing and liquidated 140 monasteries (home to 1484 monks and 190 nuns). The banned monastic orders: Jesuits, Camaldolese, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, Carmelites, Carthusians, Poor Clares, Order of Saint Benedict, Cistercians, Dominican Order (Order of Preachers), Franciscans, Pauline Fathers and Premonstratensians, and their wealth was taken over by the Religious Fund.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: His anticlerical and liberal innovations induced Pope Pius VI to pay him a visit in March 1782. Joseph received the Pope politely and showed himself a good Catholic, but refused to be influenced. On the other hand, Joseph was very friendly to Freemasonry, as he found it highly compatible with his own Enlightenment philosophy, although he apparently never joined the Lodge himself. Freemasonry attracted many anticlericals and was condemned by the Church.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph's feelings towards religion are reflected in a witticism he once spoke in Paris. While being given a tour of the Sorbonne's library, the archivist took Joseph to a dark room containing religious documents and lamented the lack of light which prevented Joseph from being able to read them. Joseph put the man at rest by saying "Ah, when it comes to theology, there is never much light." Thus, Joseph was undoubtedly a much laxer Catholic than his mother.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1789 he issued a charter of religious toleration for the Jews of Galicia, a region with a large Yiddish-speaking traditional Jewish population. The charter abolished communal autonomy whereby the Jews controlled their internal affairs; it promoted Germanization and the wearing of non-Jewish clothing.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The Habsburg Empire also had a policy of war, expansion, colonization and trade as well as exporting intellectual influences. While opposing Prussia and Turkey, Austria maintained its defensive alliance with France and was friendly to Russia though trying to remove the Danubian Principalities from Russian influence. Mayer argues that Joseph was an excessively belligerent, expansionist leader, who sought to make the Habsburg monarchy the greatest of the European powers. His main goal was to acquire Bavaria, if necessary in exchange for the Austrian Netherlands, but in 1778 and again in 1785 he was thwarted by King Frederick II of Prussia, whom he feared greatly; on the second occasion, a number of other German princes, wary of Joseph's designs on their lands, joined Frederick's side.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph's travels through Russia in 1780 included a visit with the Russian empress Catherine, which started talks that would later lead to a Russian-Austrian alliance, including an offensive clause to be used against the Ottomans. This was a significant diplomatic development, as it neutralised the previous Russian-Prussian alliance which had threatened the monarchy into peace during the War of the Bavarian Succession. The agreement with Russia would later lead Austria into an expensive and largely futile war with the Turks (1787–1791). Joseph II travelled with only a few servants on horseback as "Count Falkenstein". He preferred to stop at a regular inn - forcing Catherine II to convert a wing of her palace, cajoling her gardener to act as inn-keeper.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph's participation in the Ottoman war was reluctant, attributable not to his usual acquisitiveness, but rather to his close ties to Russia, which he saw as the necessary price to be paid for the security of his people. After initial defeats, the Austrians won a string of victories in 1789, including the capture of Belgrade, a key Turkish fortress in the Balkans. These victories however would not amount to any significant gains for the monarchy. Under the threat of Prussian intervention and with the worrying state of the revolution in France, the Treaty of Sistova of 1791 ended the war with only token gains.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The Balkan policy of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II reflected the Cameralism promoted by Prince Kaunitz, stressing consolidation of the borderlands by reorganization and expansion of the military frontier. Transylvania was incorporated into the frontier in 1761 and the frontier regiments became the backbone of the military order, with the regimental commander exercising military and civilian power. "Populationistik" was the prevailing theory of colonization, which measured prosperity in terms of labor. Joseph II also stressed economic development. Habsburg influence was an essential factor in Balkan development in the last half of the 18th century, especially for the Serbs and Croats.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Multiple interferences with old customs began to produce unrest in all parts of his dominions. Meanwhile, Joseph threw himself into a succession of foreign policies, all aimed at aggrandizement, and all equally calculated to offend his neighbors—all taken up with zeal, and dropped in discouragement. He endeavored to get rid of the Barrier Treaty, which debarred his Flemish subjects from the navigation of the Scheldt. When he was opposed by France, he turned to other schemes of alliance with the Russian Empire for the partition of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice. These plans also had to be given up in the face of the opposition of neighbors, and in particular of France. Then Joseph resumed his attempts to obtain Bavaria—this time by exchanging it for the Austrian Netherlands—and only provoked the formation of the Fürstenbund, organized by Frederick II of Prussia.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Nobility throughout his empire was largely opposed to his policies on taxes and his egalitarian and despotic attitudes. In the Austrian Netherlands and Hungary everyone resented the way he tried to do away with all regional government, and to subordinate everything to his own personal rule in Vienna. The ordinary people were not happy. They loathed the Emperor's interference in every detail of their daily lives. As it seems, Joseph was reforming the policies of the Habsburg empire based on his own criteria and personal inclinations rather than for the good of the people. From many of Joseph's regulations, enforced by the secret police, it looked to the Austrians as though Joseph were trying to reform their characters as well as their institutions. Only a few weeks before Joseph's death, the director of the Imperial Police reported to him: "All classes, and even those who have the greatest respect for the sovereign, are discontented and indignant."


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In Lombardy (in northern Italy) the cautious reforms of Maria Theresa enjoyed support from local reformers. Joseph II, however, by creating a powerful imperial officialdom directed from Vienna, undercut the dominant position of the Milanese principate and the traditions of jurisdiction and administration. In the place of provincial autonomy, he established an unlimited centralism, which reduced Lombardy politically and economically to a fringe area of the Empire. As a reaction to these radical changes, the middle-class reformers shifted away from cooperation to strong resistance. From this basis appeared the beginnings of the later Lombard liberalism.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1784 Joseph II attempted to make German an official language in Hungary after he had renamed the Burgtheater in Vienna the German National Theatre in 1776. Ferenc Széchényi responded by convening of a meeting and said there: "We'll see whether his patriotism also passes to the Crown." Julius Keglević responded with a letter in German to Joseph II: "I write German, not because of the instruction, Your Grace, but because I have to do with a German citizen." The "German citizen" Joseph II let them bring the Holy Crown of Hungary to Vienna, where he gave the keys of the chest in which the Crown was locked to the Crown guards Joseph Keglević and Miklos Nádasdy. Joseph refrained from staging a coronation, and Ferenc Széchényi pulled out of politics. The Austrian Civil Code, also called Joseph's Civil Code, the predecessor of the Civil Code of Austria, which applies to all citizens equally, was published on 1 November 1786 after 10 years working on it since 1776. § 1: "Every subject expects from the territorial prince security and protection, so it is the duty of the territorial prince, the rights of subjects to determine clearly and to guide the way of the actions how it is needed by universal and special prosperity." It is a clear distinction between the rights of subjects and the duties of the territorial prince and not vice versa. "Territorial prince" ("Landesfürst") does not mean "people’s prince" ("Volksfürst"). In Hungary, there was no codified civil code until 1959. The Crown was brought back to Hungary in 1790, on this occasion the people held a mass celebration. One reason for his refusal to be crowned with the Holy Crown of Hungary might have been that Alcuin had written in a letter to Charlemagne in 798: "And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness."


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: By 1790 rebellions had broken out in protest against Joseph's reforms in the Austrian Netherlands (the Brabant Revolution) and Hungary, and his other dominions were restive under the burdens of his war with the Ottomans. His empire was threatened with dissolution, and he was forced to sacrifice some of his reform projects. On 30 January 1790, he formally withdrew almost all his reforms in Hungary.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In November 1788, Joseph returned to Vienna with ruined health and was left abandoned. His minister Kaunitz refused to visit his sick-room and did not see him for two years. His brother Leopold remained at Florence. At last, Joseph, worn out and broken-hearted, recognized that his servants could not, or would not, carry out his plans.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph died on 20 February 1790. He is buried in tomb number 42 in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna. He asked that his epitaph read: "Here lies a ruler who, despite his best intentions, was unsuccessful in all of his endeavors." ("Hier liegt ein Fürst, der trotz der besten Meinung keiner seiner Pläne durchsetzen konnte" in German original).


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Biographer Derek Beales ranked Joseph II as one of the three great Enlightenment monarchs with Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The legacy of Josephinism would live on through the Austrian Enlightenment. To an extent, Joseph II's enlightenment beliefs were exaggerated by the author of what Joseph II historian Derek Beales calls the "false Constantinople letters". Long considered genuine writings of Joseph II, these forged works have erroneously augmented the emperor's memory for centuries. These legendary quotations have created a larger-than-life impression of Joseph II as a Voltaire and Diderot-like "philosophe", more radical than he probably was.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1849 the Hungarian Declaration of Independence declared that Joseph II was not a true King of Hungary as he was never crowned, thus any act from his reign was null and void.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1888, Hungarian historian Henrik Marczali published a three-volume study of Joseph, the first important modern scholarly work on his reign, and the first to make systematic use of archival research. Marczali was Jewish and a product of the bourgeois-liberal school of historiography in Hungary, and he portrayed Joseph as a Liberal hero. The Russian scholar Pavel Pavlovich Mitrofanov published a thorough biography in 1907 that set the standard for a century after it was translated into German in 1910. The Mitrofanov interpretation was highly damaging to Joseph: he was not a populist emperor and his liberalism was a myth; Joseph was not inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment but by pure power politics. He was more despot than his mother. Dogmatism and impatience were the reasons for his failures.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: P. G. M. Dickson noted that Joseph II rode roughshod over age-old aristocratic privileges, liberties, and prejudices, thereby creating for himself many enemies, and they triumphed in the end. Joseph's attempt to reform the Hungarian lands illustrates the weakness of absolutism in the face of well-defended feudal liberties. Behind his numerous reforms lay a comprehensive program influenced by the doctrines of enlightened absolutism, natural law, mercantilism, and physiocracy. With a goal of establishing a uniform legal framework to replace heterogeneous traditional structures, the reforms were guided at least implicitly by the principles of freedom and equality and were based on a conception of the state's central legislative authority. Joseph's accession marks a major break since the preceding reforms under Maria Theresa had not challenged these structures, but there was no similar break at the end of the Josephinian era. The reforms initiated by Joseph II were continued to varying degrees under his successor Leopold and later successors, and given an absolute and comprehensive "Austrian" form in the Allgemeine Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch of 1811. They have been seen as providing a foundation for subsequent reforms extending into the 20th century, handled by much better politicians than Joseph II.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The Austrian-born American scholar Saul K. Padover reached a wide American public with his colorful "The Revolutionary Emperor: Joseph II of Austria" (1934). Padover celebrated Joseph's radicalism, saying his "war against feudal privileges" made him one of the great "liberators of humanity". Joseph's failures were attributed to his impatience and lack of tact, and his unnecessary military adventures, but despite all this Padover claimed the emperor was the greatest of all Enlightenment monarchs. While Padover depicted a sort of New Deal Democrat, Nazi historians in the 1930s made Joseph a precursor of Adolf Hitler.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: A new era of historiography began in the 1960s. American Paul Bernard rejected the German national, radical, and anticlerical images of Joseph and instead emphasized long-run continuities. He argued that Joseph's reforms were well suited to the needs of the day. Many failed because of economic backwardness and Joseph's unfortunate foreign policy. British historian Tim Blanning stressed profound contradictions inherent in his policies that made them a failure. For example, Joseph encouraged small-scale peasant holdings, thus retarding economic modernization that only the large estates could handle. French historian Jean Berenger concludes that despite his many setbacks, Joseph's reign "represented a decisive phase in the process of the modernization of the Austrian Monarchy". The failures came because he "simply wanted to do too much, too fast". Szabo concludes that by far the most important scholarship on Joseph is by Derek Beales, appearing over three decades and based on exhaustive searches in many archives. Beales looks at the emperor's personality, with its arbitrary behavior and mixture of affability and irascibility. Beales shows that Joseph genuinely appreciated Mozart's music and greatly admired his operas. Like most other scholars, Beales has a negative view of Joseph's foreign policies. Beales finds that Joseph was despotic in the sense of transgressing established constitutions and rejecting sound advice, but not despotic in the sense of any gross abuse of power.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph's image in popular memory has been varied. After his death there were many monuments to him built by the central government across his lands. The first Czechoslovak Republic tore down the monuments when it became independent in 1918. While the Czechs credited Joseph II with educational reforms, religious toleration, and the easing of censorship, they condemned his policies of centralization and Germanization that they blamed for causing a decline in Czech culture.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The Budapest District of Józsefváros was named for the Emperor in 1777 and bears this name up to the present.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Like many of the "enlightened despots" of his time, Joseph was a lover and patron of the arts and is remembered as such. He was known as the "Musical King" and steered Austrian high culture towards a more Germanic orientation. He commissioned the German-language opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" from Mozart. The young Ludwig van Beethoven was commissioned to write a funeral cantata for him, but it was not performed because of its technical difficulty.


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph is prominently featured in Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus" and the movie based upon it. In the film version, he is portrayed by actor Jeffrey Jones as a well-meaning but somewhat befuddled monarch of limited but enthusiastic musical skill, easily manipulated by Salieri; however, Shaffer has made it clear his play is fiction in many respects and not intended to portray historical reality. Joseph was portrayed by Danny Huston in the 2006 film "Marie Antoinette".


title: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Joseph also converted Vienna's defensive glacis into public park. The medieval walls defending Vienna's historic center were surrounded by a ditch and glacis about 500m wide, which were kept clear of vegetation and buildings for defensive purposes. Under Joseph the ditch was filled and carriage drives and walkways were built through the glacis, and the area planted with ornamental trees and provided with lanterns and benches. This green public space persisted until the second half of the 19th century, when the Ringstrasse and its associated buildings were built there.


title: Modern Talking

text: Modern Talking was a German pop music duo consisting of arranger, songwriter and producer Dieter Bohlen and singer Thomas Anders. They have been referred to as Germany's most successful pop duo, and have had a number of hit singles, reaching the top five in many countries. Their most popular singles are "You're My Heart, You're My Soul", "You Can Win If You Want", "Cheri, Cheri Lady", "Brother Louie", "Atlantis Is Calling (S.O.S. for Love)" and "Geronimo's Cadillac".


title: Modern Talking

text: Modern Talking worked together from 1983 to 1987, then the band disbanded. In 1998, they reunited and made a successful comeback, recording and releasing music from 1998 to 2003. The duo released singles (many of which involved American rapper Eric Singleton) which again entered the top ten in Germany and abroad, one of which was the re-recorded version of "You're My Heart, You're My Soul '98". After the duo's second and final break-up in 2003, their global sales had reached 120 million singles and albums combined.


title: Modern Talking

text: First formed in Berlin in early 1983, they unexpectedly became immensely popular in the beginning of 1985 with "You're My Heart, You're My Soul", with which they occupied top ten positions in 35 countries including their homeland where the single perched at the top for six consecutive weeks, the single eventually went on to sell eight million copies worldwide. The track was then followed by another number-one hit, "You Can Win If You Want", which was released in the middle of 1985 from the debut album "The 1st Album". The album was certified platinum in Germany for selling over 500,000 units.


title: Modern Talking

text: Soon after their second hit, Modern Talking released the single "Cheri, Cheri Lady" which also quickly climbed to the top of the charts in West Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Norway, meanwhile entering the top ten in Sweden and the Netherlands. The single, being the only track released from their second album "Let's Talk About Love", managed to push the album to a platinum status in West Germany for sales of over 500,000. The success continued with another two number one singles, "Brother Louie" and "Atlantis Is Calling (S.O.S. for Love)", both from the third album, "Ready for Romance". The duo also charted high with their sixth single "Geronimo's Cadillac" from the fourth album "In the Middle of Nowhere", and "Jet Airliner" from their fifth album "Romantic Warriors".


title: Modern Talking

text: Due to their lacklusterly received sixth album, Bohlen announced the end of the project during an interview, while Anders was in Los Angeles. This sparked further animosities between the two, who had had a tumultuous and quarreling relationship even when they were together. According to Bohlen, the main reason for breaking up the group was Anders' then-wife Nora, who refused to have her husband interviewed by female reporters, and constantly demanded huge changes made to shows, videos or recordings, a fact that Anders later admitted in his biography. After a final phone call during which both men heavily insulted each other, they refused to speak with each other for over 10 years.


title: Modern Talking

text: During this era, Modern Talking were successful in Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East and in Iran. In the United Kingdom, they entered the top five only once, with the song "Brother Louie". In 1985, RCA signed Modern Talking for a US deal and released their first album in the US, but they remained almost unknown in North America, never appearing on the US charts. They released two albums each year between 1985 and 1987, while also promoting their singles on television all over Europe, eventually selling sixty-five million records within three years.


title: Modern Talking

text: Particularly notable is that Modern Talking were one of the first Western bloc bands in the Cold War which were allowed to officially sell their records in the Soviet Union, as part of Mikhail Gorbachev's Glasnost reforms in 1986. As a result, they still maintain a large fanbase in Eastern Europe.


title: Modern Talking

text: Immediately after the duo split in mid-1987, Bohlen formed his own project called Blue System and enjoyed several high chart positions, with tracks like "Sorry Little Sarah", "My Bed Is Too Big", "Under My Skin", "Love Suite", "Laila" and "Déjà vu". Meanwhile, Anders went solo, touring under the name of Modern Talking on several continents until the beginning of 1989, when he started to record some of his new pop-like material in LA and London, and also in his native country. Anders recorded five solo albums in English, "Different", "Whispers", "Down on Sunset", "When Will I See You Again" and "Souled", and one of his albums was also recorded in Spanish "Barcos de Cristal". He was more successful in foreign countries than his own country, yet he also reached several hits in Germany. Despite all the quarrels and disagreements that Bohlen and Anders got into with each other in the past, they began staying in touch again after Anders moved back to Koblenz, Germany in 1994.


title: Modern Talking

text: In the beginning of 1998, the duo reunited and had their first performance together in March on the German TV show "Wetten, dass..?". They released a remixed version of their 1984 single "You're My Heart, You're My Soul", which features Eric Singleton on the rap vocals. Their first comeback album "Back for Good", which included four new tracks, as well as all of the previous hits remixed with modern techniques, stayed at number one in Germany for five consecutive weeks and managed to top the charts in fifteen countries, eventually selling three million copies in Europe alone. The duo won the award for Best Selling German Band at the World Music Awards that year. The follow-up album "Alone" also went straight to number one in Germany and was very successful elsewhere; the album managed to sell over one million units in Europe alone.


title: Modern Talking

text: Bohlen and Anders followed the 1980s Modern Talking pattern as they chose to release two singles from each album, as in the past. A series of singles and four more albums followed such as "Year of the Dragon", "America", "Victory" and "Universe". After reaching the point where they had already collected over 400 gold and platinum awards worldwide, Bohlen and Anders decided to disband again in 2003 just before the release of another best-of compilation. The second break-up seemed to have been triggered mainly from the negative portrayal of Anders by Bohlen written in his autobiography published on 4 October 2003. In the course of all the disputes which eventually drove the duo to its break-up, Bohlen was involved in "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" (DSDS), the German edition of the UK's "Pop Idol". The compilation album was released in 2003 entitled "The Final Album" which contained all of the duo's singles. Thomas Anders started another solo career immediately after the end of Modern Talking, while Bohlen had by now begun devoting most of his time to new talents, especially those he discovered on DSDS.


title: Modern Talking

text: In 1984, Bohlen cited the hit single "Precious Little Diamond" (by Fox the Fox), as his inspiration for using falsetto choruses. The studio vocal line up of Rolf Köhler, Michael Scholz, Detlef Wiedeke and (on early albums) Birger Corleis, in addition to Bohlen and Anders, produced the high choruses characteristic of Modern Talking. Köhler, Scholz and Wiedeke later went on to work with Bohlen in Blue System, before joining with songwriter Thomas Widrat to form Systems in Blue. Köhler, Scholz and Wiedeke were never credited on the Modern Talking albums, and eventually went to court over the matter. They received an out of court settlement and Bohlen published a sleeve note for his next release ("Obsession", by Blue System), acknowledging the trio's contribution.


title: Modern Talking

text: Further influences include German-language schlager music, disco pop (the Bee Gees) and romantic English-language songs of Italian and French origin, like Gazebo's "I Like Chopin". After the 1998 reunion, Bohlen produced Eurodance as well as American-style MOR ballads.


title: Modern Talking

text: Dieter Bohlen also composed for other artists while still in Modern Talking, such as for Chris Norman and Smokie, whose song "Midnight Lady" (1986) remains Bohlen's most popular composition. He also composed a large number of tracks for C. C. Catch, using an accelerated, less-romantic sound. Some English Bohlen songs such as "You're My Heart, You're My Soul" were also recorded with German lyrics by Mary Roos, using the same playback tracks. When Modern Talking disbanded in 1987, a number of tracks written for the last album were re-arranged and then transferred onto Bohlen's first solo album by Blue System. Modern Talking's sixth album was released about the same time as the first single from Blue System, "Sorry Little Sarah", where Bohlen competed on the charts against Modern Talking's "In 100 Years" hit song.


title: Modern Talking

text: Global sales of Modern Talking, after the duo's second and final break-up in 2003, had reached 120 million singles and albums combined, making them the biggest-selling German music act in history.


title: Modern Talking

text: In 2006, Bohlen included a secret message in his song "Bizarre Bizarre" when played backwards: "There will never be an end to Modern Talking". Bohlen's response: "I meant to say that the music of Modern Talking will live forever". Anders has kept the Modern Talking songs in his repertoire and produced songs in a similar vein for his solo records ("Independent Girl"). In 2006, he produced an album "Songs Forever" of swing and jazz versions of popular songs (including Modern Talking's first hit). Bohlen has written two autobiographical books about Modern Talking's history from his perspective. The first book sold a million copies in Germany. The sequel was heavily criticised for his unfairness towards the people he worked with. As a result of that, Bohlen withdrew from the public for a year until 2006, when he said he regretted putting out the second book. Anders had not been the only one pressing charges against Bohlen and demanding that sections of the book be modified. Frank Farian was also angered by Bohlen's literary output and released a book in which he tried to expose Bohlen as a fraud. Bohlen's first book was the basis of an animated comedy film called "". The contains the previously unreleased Modern Talking song "Shooting Star" which had been written for the "Universe" album.


title: Modern Talking

text: Music critics were unenthusiastic about Modern Talking and gave the band almost bad reviews because of their music and performance. Although recognizing the catchiness and professional production of the songs, the lack of originality was criticized by British representatives of these genres of music, such as the Pet Shop Boys or Erasure. In particular, it was criticized that many of their songs would sound quite similar; a fact that Bohlen also openly admitted to "Der Spiegel" in 1989:


title: Shaun Evans

text: Shaun Francis Evans (born 6 March 1980) is an English actor and director. He is best known for playing a young Endeavour Morse in the ITV drama series "Endeavour".


title: Shaun Evans

text: Shaun Francis Evans was born on 6 March 1980 into an Irish family in Liverpool, where his father worked as a taxi driver and his mother was a hospital worker. He has a brother who is 11 months his senior. He gained a scholarship to St Edward's College in Liverpool's West Derby suburb, which he attended from 1991 to 1998 and where he began acting in school productions. He completed a course with the National Youth Theatre in London before fully moving to London around the age of 18 to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.


title: Shaun Evans

text: Evans' first major role was that of French teacher John Paul Keating in the Channel 4 comedy-drama "Teachers" during its second series in 2002. The following year he made his feature film debut in "The Boys from County Clare", starring alongside Bernard Hill, Colm Meaney and Andrea Corr. Additional screen credits include "Sam’s Game", "Being Julia", "The Situation", "Cashback", "Gone", "Boy A", "", "Princess Kaiulani" and Clive Barker's horror film "Dread".


title: Shaun Evans

text: On television, Evans was featured in the 2002 docudrama "The Project" and was seen as the Earl of Southampton in the miniseries "The Virgin Queen", which premiered in November 2005 on "Masterpiece Theatre" on PBS in the US before airing on the BBC in January 2006. His stage work includes a UK tour of the award-winning play "Blue/Orange" by Joe Penhall. Recent television appearances include "Murder City", BBC's "Ashes to Ashes", "Gentley's Last Stand" and the four-part drama "The Take" from the novel by Martina Cole on Sky1. Evans also starred in "Sparkle" alongside Bob Hoskins and Stockard Channing (2007). He also portrayed Kurt Cobain in the Roy Smiles play "Kurt and Sid" at the Trafalgar Studios opposite Danny Dyer as Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious.


title: Shaun Evans

text: In 2012, Evans also played the role of new pupil Daniel in the BBC legal drama "Silk" alongside Maxine Peake and starred in the ITV series "The Last Weekend". Since 2012, Evans has played the young Inspector Morse in "Endeavour", which focuses on the detective's early career. The initial episode was broadcast on 2 January 2012. "Endeavour" has since been recommissioned for nine further series by ITV.


title: Shaun Evans

text: On 23 May 2022, ITV had confirmed that "Endeavour" would end production after a decade on air with a total of 36 episodes.


title: Shaun Evans

text: In January and February 2015, Evans starred as Alex in the Peter Souter play "Hello/Goodbye", with Miranda Raison playing his love interest.


title: Shaun Evans

text: In 2021, Evans starred as Elliott Glover, coxswain of fictional submarine HMS "Vigil", in the TV series of the same name.


title: Shaun Evans

text: Evans directed three episodes of the BBC medical drama "Casualty" which aired on 8 July 2017, and 19 and 26 May 2018. He also directed three episodes of "Endeavour": 'Apollo' in series 6, which aired on 17 February 2019; 'Oracle' in series 7, which aired on 9 February 2020; and 'Striker' in series 8, which aired on 12 September 2021. On 22 May 2022, he directed the first episode of the prequel’s ninth and final series.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Keyser Söze ( ) is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1995 film "The Usual Suspects", written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. According to the main protagonist, petty con artist Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), Söze is a crime lord whose ruthlessness and influence have acquired a legendary, even mythical, status among police and criminals alike. Further events in the story make these accounts unreliable; in a twist ending, a police sketch identifies Kint and Söze as one and the same. The character was inspired by real life murderer John List, and the spy thriller "No Way Out", which featured a shadowy KGB mole who may or may not actually exist.


title: Keyser Söze

text: The character has placed on numerous "best villain" lists over the years, including AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains. Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, turning him from a character actor into a star. Since the release of the film, the character has become synonymous with infamous criminals. Analysis of the character has focused on the ambiguity of his true identity and whether he even exists inside the story's reality. Though the filmmakers have preferred to leave the character's nature to viewer interpretation, Singer has said he believes Kint and Söze are the same person.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie originally conceived of "The Usual Suspects" as five felons meeting in a police line-up. Eventually, a powerful underworld figure responsible for their meeting was added to the plot. McQuarrie combined this plot with another idea of his based on the true story of John List, who murdered his family and started a new life. The name was based on one of McQuarrie's supervisors, though the last name was changed. McQuarrie settled on Söze after finding it in a Turkish-language dictionary; it comes from the idiom "söze boğmak", which means "to talk unnecessarily too much and cause confusion" (literally: to drown in words).


title: Keyser Söze

text: Keyser Söze's semi-mythical nature was inspired by Yuri, a rumored KGB mole whose existence nobody can confirm, from the spy thriller "No Way Out". Kint was not originally written to be as obviously intelligent; in the script, he was, according to McQuarrie, "presented as a dummy". Spacey and Singer had previously met at a screening for Singer's film "Public Access". Spacey requested a role in Singer's next film, and McQuarrie wrote the role of Kint specifically for him. McQuarrie said he wanted audiences to dismiss Kint as a minor character, as Spacey was not yet well-known. Spacey made it more obvious that the character is holding back information, though the depth of his involvement and nature of his secrets remain unrevealed. McQuarrie said that he approved of the changes, as it makes the character "more fascinating".


title: Keyser Söze

text: "The Usual Suspects" consists mostly of flashbacks narrated by Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), a con artist with cerebral palsy. Kint was arrested after an apparent drug-related robbery gone wrong resulted in the destruction of a freighter ship and the deaths of nearly everyone on board. He has been granted immunity from prosecution provided he assists investigators, including Customs Agent David Kujan (Chazz Palminteri), and reveals all details of his involvement with a group of career criminals who are assumed to be responsible for the bloodbath. While Kint is telling his story, Kujan learns the name Keyser Söze from FBI agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) and demands Kint tell him what he knows.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Kint states that Söze was believed to be of Turkish origin, but some have said that he was half German through his father.


title: Keyser Söze

text: According to Kint, Söze began his criminal career as a small-time drug dealer. Horrifically though, one afternoon while Söze is away from home rival Hungarian gangsters attempt to intimidate him by taking his family hostage and raping his wife, then when he returns home, slitting the throat of one of his children right before his eyes. Determined to show these vicious criminals what toughness really means, Söze shoots and kills his own family and all but one of the Hungarians, letting the last leave so he can tell his cohorts what happened. Once his family is buried, Söze massacres the Hungarian Mafia, their families, their friends, and even people who owe them money. He goes underground, never again doing business in person, operating instead through oblivious underlings.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Söze's ruthlessness is legendary; Kint describes him as having had enemies and disloyal henchmen brutally murdered, along with everyone they hold dear, for the slightest infractions. Over the years, his criminal empire flourishes, as does his legend. Remarking on Söze's mythical nature, Kint says, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist", a line borrowed from Charles Baudelaire.


title: Keyser Söze

text: In Kint's story, he and several other criminals meet after being jailed on a trumped-up hijacking charge and work together as thieves for hire. After a botched robbery, they are blackmailed by Söze, through Söze's lawyer Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), into destroying a rival Argentinean gang's ninety-one million dollar drug shipment. All but Kint and a Hungarian, Arkash Kovash (Morgan Hunter), are killed in the attack. However, as no drugs were ever found at the scene, Baer and Kujan believe the true purpose of the attack was to eliminate an informant on the ship named Arturo Marquez, a fugitive whom the Argentineans were attempting to sell to Hungarian mobsters. Marquez, had he survived, was one of the exceedingly rare people who could have positively identified Söze, having actually seen his face.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Kujan confronts Kint with the theory that Söze is corrupt ex-police officer Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), one of the criminals involved. Kujan's investigation of Keaton, which had been ongoing for three years, is what had involved him in the case in the first place.


title: Keyser Söze

text: In the film’s final scene, it is revealed that Kint's story is a fabrication, comprising strung-together details culled from a crowded bulletin board in a messy office. Kovash describes Söze to a sketch artist: the drawing faxed in to the police resembles Verbal Kint. Kujan pursues Kint, who has already been released, his limp gone. Kujan misses Kint by moments as the latter gets into a car, driven by "Kobayashi".


title: Keyser Söze

text: A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" called Keyser Söze the "perfect postmodern sociopath", and Quentin Curtis of "The Independent" described him as "the most compelling creation in recent American film". Jason Bailey of "The Atlantic" identified the role as turning Kevin Spacey from a character actor to a star. Kevin Spacey received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.


title: Keyser Söze

text: The character placed 48th in the American Film Institute's "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains" in June 2003. "Time" placed him at #10 on their list of most memorably named film characters and #5 in best pop culture gangsters. "Entertainment Weekly" ranked the character #37 in their list of the 100 greatest characters of the past 20 years, #6 in "most vile villains", and #12 in the best heroes and villains. "Ask Men" ranked him #6 in their list of top ten film villains. "Total Film" ranked him #37 in their best villains and #40 in best characters overall. MSN ranked him #4 in their list of the 13 most menacing villains. "Empire" ranked him #41 in their "100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll.


title: Keyser Söze

text: In an interview with "Metro Silicon Valley", Pete Postlethwaite quoted Bryan Singer as saying that all the characters are Söze. When asked point blank whether his character is Söze, Postlethwaite said, "Who knows? Nobody knows. That's what's good about "The Usual Suspects"." Spacey has also been evasive about his character's true identity. In an interview with "Total Film", he said, "That's for the audience to decide. My job is to show up and do a part – I don't own the audience's imagination." Singer said the film is ambiguous about most of the character's details, but the fax sent at the end of the film proves in his mind that Kint is Söze.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Bryan Enk, writing for UGO, states that the myth-making story of Söze's origins is a classic ghost story that would be right at home in horror fiction. Writing about psychopaths in film, academic Wayne Wilson explicitly likens Söze to Satan and assigns to him demonic motives. Wilson states that Söze allows himself to be caught just to prove his superiority over the police; this compromises his ultimate goal of anonymity, but Söze cannot resist the urge to show off and create mischief. In "The Journal of Nietzsche Studies", Lewis Call states that Söze's mythological status draws the ire of the authoritarian government agents because he "represents a terrifying truth: that power is ephemeral, and has no basis in reality." According to Call, Söze's intermediaries – the "usual suspects" themselves – are more useful to the police, as they represent an easily controlled and intimidated criminal underworld, in direct contrast to Söze himself.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Hanna M. Roisman likens Kint to Odysseus, capable of adapting both his personality and his tales to his current audience. Throughout his tale, Kint adapts his confession to Kujan's revealed biases. Roisman draws direct parallels to Odysseus' tales to the Phaeacians: like Odysseus, Kint allows his audience to define him and his narrative. Appealing to Kujan's arrogance, Kint allows himself to be outwitted, humiliated, and broken by his interrogator; Kint further invents a mythical villain that he credulously believes in and gives Kujan the privileged perspective of the skeptic. Kint thus creates a neo-noir thriller inside of a neo-noir thriller and demonstrates the artificiality of storytelling. Benjamin Widiss identifies post-structural elements to the film, such as the lack of a clear protagonist throughout much of the film. This extends to ambiguity over Kint's role as author or reader, and whether he is Kint pretending to be Söze or the reverse.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Söze was also subject to detailed fan analysis and debate. Fans contacted Singer personally and quizzed him on explanations for the film's complicated plot. Fan theories about Söze's identity became a popular topic on Internet forums. After the film's festival premiere, the ambiguity of Söze's identity and how to pronounce his name were used in the film's marketing. Pronunciation had previously been an issue for distributor Gramercy Pictures, who used, "Who is Keyser Söze?" to demonstrate both proper pronunciation and stoke speculation. The ad campaign was later highlighted by "Entertainment Weekly" as "question of the year" for 1995.


title: Keyser Söze

text: Since the release of the film, the name "Keyser Söze" has become synonymous with a feared, elusive person nobody has met. In June 2001, "Time" referred to Osama bin Laden as "a geopolitical Keyser Söze, an omnipresent menace whose very name invokes perils far beyond his capability". In the episode "The Puppet Show" of the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", a character asks, "Does anyone else feel like they've been Keyser Söze'd?", referring to a sense of having been definitively manipulated and outmaneuvered. In 1996, punk band Link 80 used the character as the basis of the opening song (titled "Verbal Kint") on their debut album "17 Reasons". In his 1999 review of "Fight Club", which was generally negative, film critic Roger Ebert commented, "A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Söze syndrome." During episode six of the first season of "Billions", the character "Dollar" Bill Stearn invokes Keyser Söze's name when metaphorically "murdering" his own family. In the third season of the American comedy fantasy show "The Good Place", main character Eleanor Shellstrop talks about her mother, saying “When the time comes, she will rip this guy off and disappear like Keyser Söze—right after he admitted to groping all those people,” making a veiled reference to the sexual misconduct allegations against Kevin Spacey. In the second season of the Irish comedy "Derry Girls", which is set in the 1990s, several characters go to see "The Usual Suspects". The theater gets evacuated before the film ends, and Ma Mary obsesses about finding out who Keyser Söze is. At the end of his verse on "I Shot Ya (Remix)," which came out the same year as the film, Fat Joe refers to himself with the alias Keyser Söze; in the last line, he raps "Bullets be blazing through these streets filled with torture/Joey Crack, a.k.a. Keyser Söze."


title: Lead Belly

text: Huddie William Ledbetter (; January 20, 1888 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "In the Pines", "Goodnight, Irene", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil".


title: Lead Belly

text: Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer. In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.


title: Lead Belly

text: Lead Belly's songs covered a wide range of genres, including gospel music, blues, and folk music, as well as a number of topics, including women, liquor, prison life, racism, cowboys, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes. Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.


title: Lead Belly

text: Though many releases credit him as "Leadbelly", he wrote his name as "Lead Belly". This is the spelling on his tombstone, and that used by the Lead Belly Foundation.


title: Lead Belly

text: The younger of two children, Lead Belly was born Huddie William Ledbetter to Sallie Brown and Wesley Ledbetter on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana. On his World War II draft registration card in 1942, he gave his birthplace as Freeport, Louisiana ("Shreveport"). There is uncertainty over his precise date and year of birth. The Lead Belly Foundation gives his birth date as January 20, 1889, his grave marker gives the year 1889, and his 1942 draft registration card states January 23, 1889.


title: Lead Belly

text: These records were made by census takers, and ages and dates were defined in terms of the census date. The 1900 United States Census lists "Hudy Ledbetter" as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the 1910 and 1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888. The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with information supplied by wife Martha. The books "Blues: A Regional Experience" by Eagle and LeBlanc and "Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians" by Tomko give January 23, 1888, while the "Encyclopedia of the Blues" gives January 20, 1888.


title: Lead Belly

text: His parents had cohabited for several years. They officially married on February 26, 1888, perhaps after his birth that year. When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, Texas.


title: Lead Belly

text: By the 1910 census of Harrison County, Texas, "Hudy Ledbetter" was living next door to his parents in a separate household with his first wife, Aletha "Lethe" Henderson. Aletha is recorded as age 19 and married one year. Others say she was 15 when they married in 1908. Ledbetter received his first instrument in Texas, an accordion, from his uncle Terrell. By his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter left home to make his living as a guitarist and occasional laborer.


title: Lead Belly

text: By 1903, Huddie was already a "musicianer", a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed to Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, a notorious red-light district. He began to develop his own style of music after exposure to the various musical influences on Shreveport's Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms. This area is now referred to as Ledbetter Heights.


title: Lead Belly

text: Between 1915 and 1939, Ledbetter served several prison and jail terms in Louisiana for a variety of criminal charges. Thirty years after starting his music career, he was "discovered" in prison during a 1930s visit by folklorists John Lomax and his son Alan Lomax. They were recording varieties of local music in the South as a project to preserve traditional music for the Library of Congress. This was one of numerous cultural projects during the Great Depression.


title: Lead Belly

text: Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him in 1933 on portable aluminum disc recording equipment in a project for the Library of Congress. They returned with new and better equipment in July 1934, recording hundreds of his songs. While in prison, Lead Belly may have first heard the traditional prison song "Midnight Special"; his versions became famous. On August 1, Ledbetter was released after having served nearly all of his minimum sentence. The Lomaxes had taken a record and a petition seeking his release to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at his urgent request. It included his signature song, "Goodnight Irene".


title: Lead Belly

text: A prison official later wrote to John Lomax denying that Ledbetter's singing had anything to do with his release from prison. (State prison records confirm he was eligible for this due to good behavior). But, both Ledbetter and the Lomaxes believed that the record they had taken to the governor had helped gain his release from prison.


title: Lead Belly

text: Ledbetter returned to a state in the midst of the Great Depression, and jobs were scarce. In September, needing regular work to satisfy parole, he asked John Lomax to take him on as a paid driver. For three months, he assisted the 67-year-old in his folk song collecting around the South. Son Alan Lomax was ill and did not accompany his father on this trip.


title: Lead Belly

text: In December 1934, Lead Belly participated in a "smoker" (group sing) at a Modern Language Association meeting at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where the senior Lomax had a prior lecture engagement. He was written up in the press as a convict who had sung his way out of prison. On New Year's Day, 1935, the pair arrived in New York City, where Lomax was scheduled to meet with his publisher, Macmillan, about a new collection of folk songs. The newspapers were eager to write about the "singing convict". "Time" magazine made one of its first "March of Time" newsreels about him. Lead Belly attained fame"—"although not fortune.


title: Lead Belly

text: On January 23–25, 1935, Lead Belly had the first of several recording sessions with American Record Corporation (ARC). These sessions, combined with two others on February 5 and March 25, yielded 53 takes. Of those recordings, only six were ever released during Lead Belly's lifetime. ARC decided to simultaneously release these songs on six different labels they owned: Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo, and Paramount. These recordings achieved little commercial success. Part of the reason for the poor sales may have been that ARC released only his blues songs rather than the folk songs for which he would later become better known. Lead Belly continued to struggle financially. Like many performers, what income he made during his career came from touring, not from record sales. In February 1935, he married his girlfriend, Martha Promise, who came North from Louisiana to join him.


title: Lead Belly

text: During February Ledetter recorded his repertoire with Alan Lomax, who also recorded other African Americans. Lomax interviewed Ledbetter about his life for their forthcoming book, "Negro Folk Songs As Sung by Lead Belly" (1936). But his father, who had a management contract with Lead Belly, was not able to arrange concert dates. In March 1935, Lead Belly accompanied John Lomax on a previously scheduled two-week lecture tour of colleges and universities in the Northeast, culminating at Harvard.


title: Lead Belly

text: At the end of the month, John Lomax decided he could no longer work with Lead Belly. He gave him and Martha enough money to return by bus to Louisiana. He also gave Martha the money her husband had earned during three months of performing, but in installments, on the pretext that Lead Belly would spend it all on drinking if he was given a lump sum. From Louisiana, Lead Belly successfully sued Lomax for both the full amount of his earnings and release from his management contract. The quarrel was bitter, with hard feelings on both sides. In the midst of the legal wrangling, Lead Belly wrote to Lomax proposing they team up again, but this did not happen. The book that the Lomaxes published about Lead Belly in the fall of 1936 proved a commercial failure.


title: Lead Belly

text: In January 1936, Lead Belly returned to New York on his own, without John Lomax, in an attempted comeback. He performed twice a day at Harlem's Apollo Theater during the Easter season. He developed a live dramatic recreation of the "March of Time" newsreel (itself a recreation), which was about his prison encounter with John Lomax, when he was still wearing uniform stripes. By this time he was no longer associated with Lomax.


title: Lead Belly

text: "Life" magazine ran a three-page article titled "Lead Belly: Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel" in its issue of April 19, 1937. It included a full-page, color (rare in those days) picture of him sitting on grain sacks playing his guitar and singing. Also included was a striking photograph of his wife Martha Promise (identified in the article as his manager). Other photos showed Lead Belly's hands playing the guitar (with the caption "these hands once killed a man"), Texas Governor Pat M. Neff, and the "ramshackle" Texas State Penitentiary. The article attributes both of his pardons to his singing his petitions to the governors, who were so moved that they pardoned him. The article closed by saying that Lead Belly "may well be on the brink of a new and prosperous period."


title: Lead Belly

text: Lead Belly failed to stir the enthusiasm of Harlem audiences. Instead, he attained success playing at concerts and benefits for an audience of folk music aficionados. He developed his own style of singing and explaining his repertoire in the context of Southern black culture, having learned from his participation in Lomax's college lectures. He was especially successful with his repertoire of children's game songs (as a younger man in Louisiana he had sung regularly at children's birthday parties in the black community). Black novelist Richard Wright wrote about him as a heroic figure in the "Daily Worker," of which Wright was the Harlem editor. The two men became personal friends. In contrast to Wright, who was then a communist, commentators described Lead Belly as apolitical. He was known to support Wendell Willkie, the centrist Republican candidate for president, for whom he wrote a campaign song. Lead Belly also wrote the song "The Bourgeois Blues", which has class-conscious and anti-racist lyrics.


title: Lead Belly

text: In 1939, Lead Belly was convicted and sentenced again to prison. Alan Lomax, then 24, took him under his wing and helped raise money for his legal expenses, dropping out of graduate school to do so. After gaining release, Lead Belly appeared as a regular on Lomax and Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking CBS radio show "Back Where I Come From", broadcast nationwide.


title: Lead Belly

text: He also performed in nightclubs with Josh White, becoming a fixture in New York City's surging folk music scene and befriending the likes of Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, all fellow performers on "Back Where I Come From".


title: Lead Belly

text: In 1940, Lead Belly recorded for RCA Victor, one of the biggest record companies at the time. These sessions in California were held on June 15 and 17, with the Golden Gate Quartet accompanying some songs. The recordings resulted in the album, "The Midnight Special and Other Southern Prison Songs", being issued by Victor Records. The album included sheets with extensive notes and song texts prepared by Alan Lomax. According to Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, "it was one of the finest public presentations of Leadbelly's music: well recorded, well advertised, well documented. And the album justified its reputation as a landmark in African American folk music." Several of the recordings from these sessions were also issued as singles by Bluebird Records.


title: Lead Belly

text: In 1941, Lead Belly was introduced to Moses "Moe" Asch by mutual friends. Asch owned a recording studio and small record label, which mainly released folk records for the local New York City market. He later founded Folkways Records. Between 1941 and 1944, Lead Belly released three albums under the Asch Recordings label. During the first half of the 1940s, Lead Belly also recorded for the Library of Congress.


title: Lead Belly

text: In 1944 he went to California, where he recorded strong sessions for Capitol Records. He lodged with a studio guitar player on Merrywood Drive in Laurel Canyon. Later he returned to New York City. In 1949, Lead Belly had a regular radio show, "Folk Songs of America", broadcast on station WNYC in New York, on Henrietta Yurchenco's show on Sunday nights. Later in the year he began his first European tour with a trip to France, but fell ill before its completion and was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease (a motor neuron disease). Lead Belly was the first American country blues musician to achieve success in Europe. His final concert was at the University of Texas at Austin in a tribute to his former mentor, John Lomax, who had died the previous year. Martha also performed at that concert, singing spirituals with Lead Belly.


title: Lead Belly

text: Lead Belly died later that year in New York City. He was buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church cemetery, in Mooringsport, Louisiana, west of Blanchard, in Caddo Parish. He is honored with a statue across from the Caddo Parish Courthouse, in Shreveport.


title: Lead Belly

text: Lead Belly was imprisoned multiple times beginning in 1915, when he was convicted of carrying a pistol, and sentenced to time on the Harrison County chain gang. He later escaped and found work in nearby Bowie County under the assumed name of Walter Boyd.