title: Spalding Gray

text: In June 2001, Gray was severely injured in a car crash while on vacation in Ireland. In the crash, he suffered a broken hip, which left his right leg almost immobilized, and a fracture in his skull. During surgery on his skull, a titanium plate was placed over the break after surgeons removed dozens of bone fragments from his frontal cortex, leaving a jagged scar on his forehead. He struggled to recover from his injuries and a severe depression set in some time after the accident. He had already struggled intermittently with depression. Suffering both from physical impairment and ongoing depression, Gray struggled for months and was treated with a variety of different therapies.


title: Spalding Gray

text: Gray sought treatment from neurologist Oliver Sacks, who began treating him in August 2003 and continued to do so almost until Gray died. Sacks later said Gray perceived the taking of his own life as part of what he had to say, with the monologuist having "talked about what he called 'a creative suicide.' On one occasion, when he was being interviewed, he thought that the interview might be culminated with a 'dramatic and creative suicide. ... I was at pains to say that he would be much more creative alive than dead".


title: Spalding Gray

text: On January 9, 2004, Gray had an interview with Theresa Smalec, the subject of which was Ron Vawter, a deceased friend and colleague whom he had met in the winter of 1972–73. Gray and Vawter had worked closely together throughout the 1970s, first with The Performance Group, then as core members of The Wooster Group. The edited transcript of "Spalding Gray's Last Interview" was published in 2008 by the "New England Theatre Journal".


title: Spalding Gray

text: On January 11, 2004, Gray was declared missing. The night before his disappearance, he had taken his children to see Tim Burton's film "Big Fish." It ends with the line, "A man tells a story over and over so many times he becomes the story. In that way, he is immortal." Gray's widow, Kathie Russo, said after he disappeared, "You know, Spalding cried after he saw that movie. I just think it gave him permission. I think it gave him permission to die."


title: Spalding Gray

text: When Gray was first reported missing, his profile was featured on the Fox Network television show "America's Most Wanted."


title: Spalding Gray

text: On March 7, 2004, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York reported that two men had discovered Gray's body and pulled it from the East River. One of the men gave an interview about the incident. It is believed that Gray jumped off the Staten Island Ferry. He had previously attempted suicide in 2002. Gray was reported to have been working on a new monologue at the time of his death. There was speculation that his revisiting the material of the car crash in Ireland and his subsequent attempts to recover from his injuries might have triggered a final bout of depression.


title: Spalding Gray

text: Gray was buried at Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor, New York. He was survived by his wife Kathie Russo, stepdaughter Marissa, sons Forrest Dylan and Theo Spalding Gray, and brothers Rockwell and Channing Gray.


title: Spalding Gray

text: Director Jonathan Demme said of Gray, "Spalding's unfailing ability to ignite universal emotions and laughter in all of us while gloriously wallowing in his own exquisite uniqueness will remain forever one of the great joys of American performance and literature".


title: Spalding Gray

text: "He took the anarchy and illogic of life and molded it into something we could grab a hold of," said actor and novelist Eric Bogosian. "It took courage to do what Spalding did, courage to make theatre so naked and unadorned, to expose himself in this way and to fight his demons in public."


title: Spalding Gray

text: Theater critic Mel Gussow wrote of Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia" and "Terrors of Pleasure", "Through a look or a comment, he offers intelligent analysis. Though the narrative is entirely centered around Mr. Gray himself, it never suffers from self-pity or self-indulgence. He remains the antihero in his own fascinating life story, the never ending tale of EverySpalding."


title: Spalding Gray

text: In 2005, Gray's unfinished final monologue was published in a hardcover edition titled "Life Interrupted: The Unfinished Monologue." The monologue, which Gray had performed in one of his last public appearances, is augmented by two additional pieces he performed at the time, a short remembrance called "The Anniversary" and an open letter to New York City written in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Also included in the book is an extensive collection of remembrances and tributes from fellow performers and friends.


title: Spalding Gray

text: The 2007 play "Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell," produced at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City, is based on his monologues and journals. Kathleen Russo, his widow, developed the concept for the play. The show has a cast of four actors as well as a rotating guest artist; all five read from selected portions of his work.


title: Spalding Gray

text: In January 2010, Steven Soderbergh's documentary "And Everything Is Going Fine" was released at Utah's Slamdance Film Festival. The film was compiled from film and video clips of Gray's early life and career. Russo said that Soderbergh "wanted Spalding to tell the story, as if it was his last monologue, and I think he accomplished that".


title: Spalding Gray

text: In 2011 a selection from his journals was published as "The Journals of Spalding Gray," edited by Nell Casey, who had worked with Russo on the project. Dwight Garner found this material less interesting than Gray's monologues. He said they have value as a "portrait of a theatrical coming of age" as Gray determined how to make his art. Garner wrote, "His art, these journals make clear, is what kept him alive."


title: Spalding Gray

text: The 2016 season of the Independent Film Channel's mockumentary television series "Documentary Now!" includes the episode "Parker Gail's Location is Everything," a parody of Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia". In it, Bill Hader delivers a monologue expressing his dismay at having to find a new loft apartment in New York City upon learning that his current residence will be converted into an electronics store.


title: Boston Corbett

text: Thomas H. "Boston" Corbett (January 29, 1832 – presumed dead September 1, 1894) was an American Union Army soldier who shot and killed U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Corbett was initially arrested for disobeying orders, but was later released on the orders of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who referred to Corbett as "the patriot" upon dismissing him. He was largely considered a hero by the media and the public.


title: Boston Corbett

text: Known for his devout religious beliefs and eccentric behavior, Corbett drifted around the United States before disappearing "circa" 1888. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he died in the Great Hinckley Fire in September 1894, but that remains impossible to substantiate.


title: Boston Corbett

text: Corbett was born in London and immigrated with his family to New York City in 1840. The Corbetts moved frequently before eventually settling in Troy, New York. As a young man, Corbett began apprenticing as a milliner (also called a "hatter"), a profession that he would hold intermittently throughout his life. As a milliner, Corbett was regularly exposed to the fumes of mercury(II) nitrate, then used in the treatment of fur to produce felt used on hats. Excessive exposure to the compound can lead to hallucinations, psychosis and twitching (known as the "hatter's shakes"). Historians have theorized that the mental issues Corbett exhibited before and after the Civil War were caused by this exposure.


title: Boston Corbett

text: After working as a milliner in Troy, Corbett returned to New York City. He later married, but his wife and child died in childbirth. Following their deaths, he moved to Boston. Corbett became despondent over the loss of his wife and began drinking heavily. He was unable to hold a job and eventually became homeless. After a night of heavy drinking, he was confronted by a street preacher whose message persuaded him to join the Methodist Episcopal Church. Corbett immediately stopped drinking and became devoutly religious. After being baptized, he subsequently changed his name to Boston, the name of the city where he was converted. He regularly attended meetings at the Fulton and Bromfield Street churches where his enthusiastic behavior earned him the nickname "The Glory to God man". In an attempt to imitate Jesus, Corbett began to wear his hair very long (he was forced to cut it upon enlisting in the Union Army).


title: Boston Corbett

text: In 1857, Corbett began working at a hat manufacturer's shop on Washington Street in downtown Boston. He was reported to be a proficient milliner, but was known to proselytize frequently and stop work to pray and sing for co-workers who used profanity in his presence. He also began working as a street preacher and would sermonize and distribute religious literature in North Square. Corbett soon earned a reputation around Boston for being a "local eccentric" and religious fanatic. On July 16, 1858, Corbett was propositioned by two prostitutes while walking home from a church meeting. He was deeply disturbed by the encounter. Upon returning to his room at a boardinghouse, Corbett began reading in the Gospel of Matthew ("And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee...and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake"). In order to avoid sexual temptation and remain holy, he castrated himself with a pair of scissors. He then ate a meal and went to a prayer meeting before seeking medical treatment.


title: Boston Corbett

text: In April 1861, early in the American Civil War, Corbett enlisted as a private in Company I of the 12th Regiment New York Militia. Corbett's eccentric behavior quickly got him into trouble. He carried a Bible with him at all times and read passages aloud from it regularly, held unauthorized prayer meetings and argued with his superior officers. Corbett also condemned officers and superiors for what he perceived as violations of God's word. In one instance, he verbally reprimanded Colonel Daniel Butterfield for using profanity and taking the Lord's name in vain. He was sent to the guardhouse for several days but refused to apologize for his insubordination. Due to his continued disruptive behavior and refusal to take orders, Corbett was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot. His sentence was eventually reduced and he was discharged in August 1863.


title: Boston Corbett

text: Corbett re-enlisted later that month as a private in Company L, 16th New York Cavalry Regiment. On June 24, 1864, he was captured by Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby's men in Culpeper, Virginia and held prisoner at Andersonville prison for five months. While on the way to Andersonville, the following incident happened, told by a fellow prisoner of Corbett's named William Collins:


title: Boston Corbett

text: Corbett was released in an exchange in November 1864 and was admitted to the Army hospital in Annapolis, Maryland where he was treated for scurvy, malnutrition and exposure. On his return to his company, he was promoted to sergeant. Corbett later testified for the prosecution in the trial of the commandant of Andersonville, Captain Henry Wirz.


title: Boston Corbett

text: On April 24, 1865, Corbett's regiment was sent to apprehend John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, whom Booth fatally shot on April 14, 1865. On April 26, the regiment surrounded Booth and one of his accomplices, David Herold, in a tobacco barn on the Virginia farm of Richard Garrett. Herold surrendered, but Booth refused and cried out, "I will not be taken alive!". The barn was set on fire in an attempt to force him out into the open, but Booth remained inside. Corbett was positioned near a large crack in the barn wall.


title: Boston Corbett

text: In an 1878 interview, Corbett claimed that he saw Booth aim his carbine, prompting him to shoot Booth with his Colt revolver despite Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's orders that Booth be captured alive. The bullet struck Booth in the back of the head behind his left ear, passed through his neck, and out into the barn. A low scream of pain like that produced by a sudden throttling came from the assassin, and he pitched headlong to the floor. Corbett and the other soldiers would note a sense of poetic, or cosmic, justice in that Lincoln and Booth were each shot around the same spot of the head. And the damage to Booth was no less severe than that to Lincoln: the bullet had pierced three vertebrae and partially severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. Their conditions were different as well, as Mary Clemmer Ames summed it up, "The balls entered the skull of each at nearly the same spot, but the trifling difference made an immeasurable difference in the sufferings of the two. Mr. Lincoln was unconscious of all pain, while his assassin suffered as exquisite agony as if he had been broken on a wheel."


title: Boston Corbett

text: In a weak voice, Booth asked for water and Lt. Colonel Everton Conger and Colonel Lafayette C. Baker gave it to him. A soldier poured water into his mouth, which he immediately spat out, unable to swallow. The bullet wound prevented him from swallowing any of the liquid. Booth asked them to roll him over and turn him facedown. Conger thought it a bad idea. "Then at least turn me on my side," the assassin pleaded. They did, but Conger saw that the move did not relieve Booth's suffering. Baker noticed it, too: "He seemed to suffer extreme pain whenever he was moved...and would several times repeat, 'Kill me.'" At sunrise, Booth remained in agonizing pain. His pulse weakening as his breathing became more labored and irregular. In agony, unable to move his limbs, he asked a soldier to lift his hands before his face and whispered as he gazed at them, "Useless ... Useless." These were his last words. A few minutes later, Booth began gasping for air as his throat continued to swell, then there was a shiver and a gurgle and his body shuddered, before Booth died from asphyxia. He died two hours after Corbett shot him.


title: Boston Corbett

text: Conger initially thought Booth had shot himself. After realizing Booth had been shot by someone else, Conger and Lt. Doherty asked which officer had shot Booth. Corbett stepped forward and admitted he was the shooter. When asked why he had violated orders, Corbett replied, "Providence directed me".


title: Boston Corbett

text: He was immediately arrested and was accompanied by Lt. Doherty to the War Department in Washington, D.C. to be court-martialed. When questioned by Secretary Edwin Stanton about Booth's capture and shooting, both Doherty and Corbett himself agreed that Corbett had, in fact, disobeyed orders not to shoot. However, Corbett maintained that he believed Booth had intended to shoot his way out of the barn and that he acted in self-defense. He told Stanton, "...Booth would have killed me if I had not shot first. I think I did right." Corbett maintained that he didn't intend to kill Booth, but merely wanted to inflict a disabling wound, but either his aim slipped or Booth moved at the moment Corbett pulled the trigger. Stanton paused and then stated, "The rebel is dead. The patriot lives; he has spared the country expense, continued excitement and trouble. Discharge the patriot." Upon leaving the War Department, Corbett was greeted by a cheering crowd. As he made his way to Mathew Brady's studio to have his official portrait taken, the crowd followed him asking for autographs and requesting that he tell them about shooting Booth. Corbett told the crowd:


title: Boston Corbett

text: Eyewitnesses to Booth's shooting contradicted Corbett's version of events and expressed doubts that Corbett was responsible for shooting Booth. Officers who were near Corbett at the time claimed that they never saw him fire his gun (Corbett's gun was never inspected and was eventually lost). They claimed that Corbett came forward only after Lt. Colonel Conger asked who had shot Booth. Richard Garrett, the owner of the farm on which Booth was found, and his 12-year-old son Robert also contradicted Corbett's testimony that he acted in self-defense. Both maintained that Booth had never reached for his gun.


title: Boston Corbett

text: While there was some criticism of Corbett's actions, he was largely considered a hero by the public and press. One newspaper editor declared that Corbett would, "live as one of the World's great avengers." For his part in Booth's capture, Corbett received a portion of the $100,000 reward money, amounting to $1,653.84 (). His annual salary as a U.S. sergeant was $204 (). Corbett received offers to purchase the gun he used to shoot Booth. He refused stating, "That is not mine—it belongs to the Government, and I would not sell it for any price." Corbett also declined an offer for one of Booth's pistols as he did not want a reminder of shooting Booth.


title: Boston Corbett

text: After his discharge from the army in August 1865, Corbett went back to work as a hatter in Boston and frequently attended the Bromfield Street Church. When the hatting business in Boston slowed, Corbett moved to Danbury, Connecticut to continue his work and also "preached in the country round about." By 1870, he had relocated once again to Camden, New Jersey, where he was known as a "Methodist lay preacher". Corbett's inability to hold a job was attributed to his fanatical behavior; he was routinely fired after continuing his habit of stopping work to pray for his co-workers. In an effort to earn money, Corbett capitalized on his role as "Lincoln's Avenger". He gave lectures about the shooting of Booth accompanied by illustrated lantern slides at Sunday schools, women's groups and tent meetings. Corbett was never asked back due to his increasingly erratic behavior and incoherent speeches.


title: Boston Corbett

text: R.B. Hoover, a man who later befriended Corbett, recalled that Corbett believed "men who were high in authority at Washington at the time of the assassination" were hounding him. Corbett said the men were angry because he had deprived them of prosecuting and executing John Wilkes Booth themselves. He also believed the same men had gotten him fired from various jobs. Corbett's paranoia was furthered by hate mail he received for killing Booth. He became fearful that "Booth's Avengers" or organizations like the "Secret Order" were planning to seek revenge upon him and took to carrying a pistol with him at all times. As his paranoia increased, Corbett began brandishing his pistol at friends or strangers he deemed suspicious.


title: Boston Corbett

text: While attending the Soldiers' Reunion of the Blue and Gray in Caldwell, Ohio, in 1875, Corbett got into an argument with several men over the death of John Wilkes Booth. The men questioned if Booth had really been killed at all which enraged Corbett. He then drew his pistol on the men but was removed from the reunion before he could fire it. In 1878, Corbett moved to Concordia, Kansas, where he acquired a plot of land through homesteading upon which he constructed a dugout home. He continued working as a preacher and attended revival meetings frequently.


title: Boston Corbett

text: In January 1887, Corbett was elected Assistant Doorkeeper in the Kansas House of Representatives where he frequently had run-ins with the public and elected officials, often brandishing his revolver.


title: Boston Corbett

text: Due to his fame as "Lincoln's Avenger", Corbett was appointed assistant doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka in January 1887. On February 15, he became convinced that


title: Boston Corbett

text: officers of the House were discriminating against him. He jumped to his feet, brandished a revolver and began chasing the officers out of the building. No one was hurt and Corbett was arrested. The following day, a judge declared Corbett insane and sent him to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane. On May 26, 1888, he escaped from the asylum on horseback. He then rode to Neodesha, Kansas, where he briefly stayed with Richard Thatcher, a man he had met while they were prisoners of war. When Corbett left, he told Thatcher he was going to Mexico.


title: Boston Corbett

text: Rather than going to Mexico, Corbett is believed to have settled in a cabin he built in the forests near Hinckley, in Pine County in eastern Minnesota. He is believed to have died in the Great Hinckley Fire on September 1, 1894. Although there is no proof, the name "Thomas Corbett" appears on the list of dead and missing.


title: Boston Corbett

text: In the years following Corbett's presumed death, several men came forward claiming to be "Lincoln's Avenger". A few years after Corbett was last seen in Neodesha, Kansas, a patent medicine salesman in Enid, Oklahoma filed an application using Corbett's name to receive pension benefits. After an investigation proved that the man was not Boston Corbett, he was sent to prison. In September 1905, a man arrested in Dallas also claimed to be Corbett. He too was proven to be an imposter and was sent to prison for perjury, and then to the Government Hospital for the Insane.


title: Boston Corbett

text: In 1958, Boy Scout Troop 31, of Concordia, Kansas, built a roadside monument to Corbett located on Key Road. A small sign was also placed to mark the dug hole where Corbett had lived for a time.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: The Duchy of Prussia (, , ) or Ducal Prussia (; ) was a duchy in the region of Prussia established as a result of secularization of the Monastic Prussia, the territory that remained under the control of the State of the Teutonic Order until the Protestant Reformation in 1525.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: The duchy became the first Protestant state when Albert, Duke of Prussia formally adopted Lutheranism in 1525. It was inhabited by a German, Polish (mainly in Masuria), and Lithuanian-speaking (mainly in Lithuania Minor) population.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: In 1525, during the Protestant Reformation, in accordance to the Treaty of Kraków, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert, secularized the order's prevailing Prussian territory (the Monastic Prussia), becoming Albert, Duke of Prussia. As the region had been a part of the Kingdom of Poland since the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), King of Poland Sigismund I the Old, as its suzerain, granted the territory as a hereditary fief of Poland to Duke Albert per the Treaty of Kraków, a decision that was sealed by the Prussian Homage in Kraków in April 1525. The new duke established Lutheranism as the first Protestant state church. The capital remained in Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad). The duchy was inherited by the Hohenzollern prince-electors of Brandenburg in 1618. This personal union is referred to as Brandenburg-Prussia. Frederick William, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, achieved full sovereignty over the duchy under the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau, confirmed in the 1660 Treaty of Oliva. In the following years, attempts were made to return to Polish suzerainty, especially by the capital city of Königsberg, whose burghers rejected the treaties and viewed the region as part of Poland. The Duchy of Prussia was elevated to a kingdom in 1701.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: As Protestantism spread among the laity of the Teutonic Monastic State of Prussia, dissent began to develop against the Roman Catholic rule of the Teutonic Knights, whose Grand Master, Albert, Duke of Prussia, a member of a cadet branch of the House of Hohenzollern, lacked the military resources to assert the order's authority.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: After losing a war against the Kingdom of Poland, and with his personal bishop, Georg von Polenz of Pomesania and of Samland, who had converted to Lutheranism in 1523, and a number of his commanders already supporting Protestant ideas, Albert began to consider a radical solution.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: At Wittenberg in 1522, and at Nuremberg in 1524, Martin Luther encouraged him to convert the order's territory into a secular principality under his personal rule, as the Teutonic Knights would not be able to survive the reformation.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: On 10 April 1525 Albert resigned his position, became a Protestant, and in the Prussian Homage was granted the title "Duke of Prussia" by his uncle, King Sigismund I of Poland. In a deal partly brokered by Luther, Ducal Prussia became the first Protestant state, anticipating the dispensations of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: When Albert returned to Königsberg, he publicly declared his conversion and announced to a quorum of Teutonic Knights his new ducal status. The knights who disapproved of the decision were pressured into acceptance by Albert's supporters and the burghers of Königsberg, and only Eric of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Komtur of Memel, opposed the new duke. On 10 December 1525, at their session in Königsberg, the Prussian estates established the Lutheran Church in Ducal Prussia by deciding the Church Order.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: By the end of Albert's rule, the offices of Grand Commander and Marshal of the Order had deliberately been left vacant while the order was left with but 55 knights in Prussia. Some of the knights converted to Lutheranism in order to retain their property and then married into the Prussian nobility, while others returned to the Holy Roman Empire, and remained Catholic. These remaining Teutonic Knights, led by the next Grand Master, Walter von Cronberg, continued to unsuccessfully claim Prussia, but retained much of the estates in the Teutonic bailiwicks outside of Prussia.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: On 1 March 1526, Albert married Princess Dorothea, daughter of King Frederick I of Denmark, thereby establishing political ties between Lutheranism and Scandinavia. Albert was greatly aided by his elder brother George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, who had earlier established the Protestant religion in his territories of Franconia and Upper Silesia. Albert also found himself reliant on support from his uncle Sigismund I of catholic Poland, as the Holy Roman Empire, and the Roman Catholic Church, had banned him for his Protestantism.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: The Teutonic Order had only superficially carried out its mission to Christianize the native rural population and had erected few churches within the state's territory. There was little longing for Roman Catholicism. Baltic Old Prussians and Prussian Lithuanian peasants continued to practice pagan customs in some areas, for example, adhering to beliefs in Perkūnas (Perkunos), symbolized by the goat buck, Potrimpo, and Pikullos (Patollu) while "consuming the roasted flesh of a goat". Bishop George of Polentz had forbidden the widespread forms of pagan worship in 1524, and repeated the ban in 1540.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: On 18 January 1524 Bishop George had ordered the use of native languages at baptisms, which improved the acceptance of baptism by the peasants. There was little active resistance to the new Protestant religion. The fact that the Teutonic Knights had brought Catholicism and Protestantism made the transition easier.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: The Church Order of 1525 provided for visitations of the parishioners and pastors, first carried out by Bishop George in 1538. Because Ducal Prussia was ostensibly a Lutheran land, authorities traveled throughout the duchy ensuring that Lutheran teachings were being followed and imposing penalties on pagans and dissidents. The rural population of native descent was only thoroughly christianised starting with the Reformation in Prussia.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: A peasant rebellion broke out in Sambia in 1525. The combination of taxation by the nobility, the contentions of the Protestant Reformation, and the abrupt secularization of the Teutonic Order's remaining Prussian lands exacerbated peasant unrest. The relatively well-to-do rebel leaders, including a miller from Kaimen and an innkeeper from Schaaken in Prussia, were supported by sympathizers in Königsberg. The rebels demanded the elimination of newer taxes by the nobility and a return to an older tax of two marks for every hide a measure of land of approximately forty acres.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: They claimed to be rebelling against the harsh nobility, not against Duke Albert, who was away in the Holy Roman Empire, but they would only swear allegiance to him in person. Upon Albert's return from the Empire, he called for a meeting of the peasants in a field, whereupon he surrounded them with loyal troops and had them arrested without incident. The leaders of the rebellion were subsequently executed. There were no more large-scale rebellions. Ducal Prussia became known as a land of Protestantism and sectarianism.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: In 1544 Duke Albert founded the Albertina University in Königsberg, which became the principal educational establishment for Lutheran pastors and theologians of Prussia. In 1560, the university received a royal privilege from King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland. It was granted the same rights and autonomy those enjoyed by the Kraków University, thus it became one of the leading universities in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The use of the native languages in church services made Duke Albert appoint exiled Protestant Lithuanian pastors as professors, e.g. Stanislovas Rapolionis and Abraomas Kulvietis, making the Albertina also a centre of Lithuanian language and literature.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: While the composition of the nobility changed little in the transition from the monastic state to the duchy, the control of the nobility over the dependent peasantry increased. Prussia's free peasants, called Kölmer were holders of free estates according to Culm law). These Kölmer held with about a sixth of the arable land, a considerable share as compared with other nations in the feudal era.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: Administratively, little changed in the transition from the Teutonic Knights to ducal rule. Although he was formally a vassal of the crown of Poland, Albert retained self-government for Prussia, his own army, the minting of his currency, a provincial assembly, (de, "Landtag"), and had substantial autonomy in foreign affairs.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: When Albert died in 1568, his teenage son (exact age is unknown) Albert Frederick inherited the duchy. Sigismund II was also Albert Frederick's cousin. The Elector of Brandenburg Joachim II, converted to Lutheranism in 1539. Joachim wanted to merge his lands with the Prussian dukedom, so his heirs would inherit both. Joachim petitioned his brother-in-law, king Sigismund II of Poland the co-enfeoffment of his line of the Hohenzollern with the Prussian dukedom, and finally succeeded, including the then usual expenses.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: On 19 July 1569, when, in Lublin, Poland, duke Albert Frederick rendered King Sigismund II homage and was in return installed as Duke of Prussia in Lublin, the King simultaneously enfeoffed Joachim II and his descendants as co-heirs.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: Administration in the duchy declined as Albert Frederick became increasingly feeble-minded, leading Margrave George Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach to become Regent of Prussia in 1577.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: Following King Sigismund III's Prussian regency contract (1605) with Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg and his Treaty of Warsaw, 1611, with John Sigismund of Brandenburg, confirming the Brandenburgian co-inheritance of Prussia, these two regents guaranteed the free practice of Catholic religion in predominantly Lutheran Prussia. Based on these contracts some Lutheran churches were reconsecrated as Catholic places of worship (e.g. St. Nicholas Church, Elbląg in 1612).


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: In 1618, the Prussian Hohenzollern became extinct in the male line, and so the Polish fief of Prussia was passed on to the senior Brandenburg Hohenzollern line, the ruling margraves and prince-electors of Brandenburg, who thereafter ruled Brandenburg (a fief of the Holy Roman Empire), and Ducal Prussia (a Polish fief), in personal union. This legal contradiction made a cross-border real union impossible; however, in practice, Brandenburg and Ducal Prussia were more and more ruled as one, and colloquially referred to as "Brandenburg-Prussia".


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: In 1618, the Thirty Years' War broke out, and John Sigismund himself died the following year. His son, George William, was successfully invested with the duchy in 1623 by King of Poland Sigismund III Vasa, thus the personal union Brandenburg-Prussia was confirmed. Many of the Prussian Junkers were opposed to rule by the House of Hohenzollern of Berlin and appealed to Sigismund III Vasa for redress, or even incorporation of Ducal Prussia into the Polish kingdom, but without success.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: Due to the Polish–Swedish War, in 1635 the duchy was administered by Polish statesman Jerzy Ossoliński, appointed by Polish King Władysław IV Vasa.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: Frederick William the "Great Elector", duke of Prussia and prince-elector of Brandenburg, wished to acquire Royal Prussia in order to territorially connect his two fiefs. Yet, during the Second Northern War, Charles X Gustav of Sweden invaded Ducal Prussia and dictated the Treaty of Königsberg (January 1656), which made the duchy a Swedish fief. In the subsequent Treaty of Marienburg (June 1656), Charles X Gustav promised to cede to Frederick William the Polish voivodships of Chełmno, Malbork, Pomerania, and the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, if Frederick William would support Charles Gustav's effort. The proposition was somewhat risky, since Frederick William would definitely have to provide military support, while the reward could only be provided conditional on victory. When the tide of the war turned against Charles X Gustav, he concluded the Treaty of Labiau (November 1656), making Frederick William I the full sovereign in Ducal Prussia and Warmia, which, however, was part of Poland.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: In response to the Swedish-Prussian alliance, King John II Casimir of Poland submitted a counter-offer which Frederick William accepted. They signed the Treaty of Wehlau on 19 September 1657 and the Treaty of Bromberg on 6 November 1657. In return for Frederick William's renunciation of the Swedish-Prussian alliance, John Casimir recognised Frederick William's full sovereignty over the Duchy of Prussia. After almost 200 years of Polish suzerainty over the Teutonic Monastic State of Prussia and its successor Ducal Prussia, the territory passed under the full sovereignty of Brandenburg. Therefore, "Duchy of Prussia" then became the more adequate appellation for the state. Full sovereignty was a necessary prerequisite to upgrade Ducal Prussia to the sovereign Kingdom of Prussia, in 1701. (Not to be confused with Polish Royal Prussia.)


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: However, the end of Polish suzerainty was met with resistance of the population, regardless of ethnicity, as it was afraid of Brandenburg absolutism and wished to remain part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The burghers of the capital city of Königsberg, led by Hieronymus Roth, rejected the treaties of Wehlau and Oliva and viewed Prussia as "indisputably contained within the territory of the Polish Crown". It was noted that the incorporation into the Polish Crown under the Treaty of Kraków was approved by the city of Königsberg, while the separation from Poland took place without the city's consent. Polish King John II Casimir Vasa was asked for help, masses were held in Protestant churches for the Polish King and the Polish Kingdom. In 1662, elector Frederick William entered the city with his troops and forced the city to swear allegiance to him. However, in the following decades attempts to return to Polish suzerainty were still made. In 1675, the Polish-French Treaty of Jaworów was even signed, according to which France was to support Polish efforts to regain control of the region, while Poland was to join the ongoing Franco-Brandenburgian war on the French side, however, it was not implemented.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: The nature of the "de facto" collectively ruled governance of Brandenburg-Prussia became more apparent through the titles of the higher ranks of the Prussian government, seated in Brandenburg's capital of Berlin after the return of the court from Königsberg, where they had sought refuge from the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: Ducal Prussia's full sovereignty allowed Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg to become "king in Prussia" in 1701 without offending Emperor Leopold I. The government of de facto collectively ruled Brandenburg-Prussia, seated in Brandenburg's capital Berlin, mostly appeared under the higher ranking titles of the Prussian government.


title: Duchy of Prussia

text: After the Kingdom of Prussia's annexation of the bulk of the province of Royal Prussia in the First Partition of Poland in 1772, former Ducal Prussia — including previously Polish-controlled Warmia within Royal Prussia — was reorganized into the Province of East Prussia, while Pomerelia and the Malbork Land became the Province of West Prussia, with the exceptions of the two principal cities of Gdańsk and Toruń, annexed into West Prussia only in 1793. The Kingdom of Prussia, then consisting of East and West Prussia, being a sovereign state, and Brandenburg, being a fief within the Holy Roman Empire, were amalgamated "de jure" only after the latter's dissolution in 1806, though later became again partially distinct during the existence of the German Confederation (1815-1866).


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: Poltergeist is a 2015 American supernatural horror film directed by Gil Kenan, written by David Lindsay-Abaire, and produced by Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Roy Lee. It is a remake of the 1982 film of the same name and is the fourth installment overall in the "Poltergeist" franchise. The film stars Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jared Harris, and Jane Adams, and follows a family who arrive at their new home and begin experiencing paranormal occurrences.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: The project was announced in 2008 with Vadim Perelman initially directing the project from a screenplay written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White. It was delayed several times and entered into development hell. By 2012, a remake of the 1982 film was announced with Raimi producing the project alongside Lee, Tapert, and Nathan Kahane. Kenan was announced as the film's director in 2013 and principal photography took place in Toronto from September to December that same year.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: "Poltergeist" was theatrically released on May 22, 2015, by 20th Century Fox. It received mixed reviews from critics for its excessive jump scares and was deemed inferior to the original. It had moderate box office success, grossing over $95 million worldwide against a budget of $35 million.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: Eric and Amy Bowen are a married couple looking to buy a house for themselves and their three children: 16-year-old daughter Kendra, 9-year-old son Griffin and 6-year-old daughter Madison. Eric was recently laid off, but they are shown a house that has recently come on the market that fits their price range, they purchase it and move in.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: The first night, they hear strange noises in the walls and Griffin finds a box containing clown dolls that were left at the house. In the middle of the night, lights and electronic devices start turning on and off, as an unseen force appears to move through the home. The commotion wakes Griffin, and he goes downstairs and finds Maddie talking to an unknown presence inside the television. She tells Griffin someone is coming, and he attempts to unplug the TV, causing the lights to go out of control. Maddie then tells the family "They're here" while touching their TV screen.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: The following evening, Eric and Amy go to dinner with their friends, leaving the three children at home. They learn that their house was built on an old cemetery, although the property developer was supposed to have relocated the human remains. Kendra wakes up to a strange sound in the laundry room. While investigating the noise, the floor cracks and a corpse's hand emerges. It begins pulling at her foot, but she manages to pull herself up. Meanwhile, Griffin notices the clown dolls seem to be moving by themselves. One clown doll attacks him, but he destroys it with his foot and runs from his bedroom. He finds Maddie in her room, scared, crouching in a corner, and tells her to stay while he goes to find Kendra. Maddie is then lured by the light from her lamp and her favorite toy into her closet, becoming lost in an unending void. As she turns to see her bedroom drifting away further, she is dragged into the darkness by ghosts. Griffin is grabbed through a window by the branches of the old tree outside their house, which pulls him outside. Amy and Eric arrive home to see Griffin being tossed around in the tree branches, which releases its grip when they come close, while Kendra hysterically tells them she cannot find Maddie.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: The family hears Maddie's voice emanating from the television. Amy places her hand on the television screen while Maddie's static hand is seen to be touching Amy's hand from the other side of the screen. Amy and Griffin visit the Paranormal Research department for help. The staff set up equipment in the house and install GPS devices on everyone in the house. During the setup, Boyd has a near-death experience in drilling a hole in the wall, yanked in by spirits by his arm. While trying to contact Maddie, Eric is ambushed in the closet by a ghost resembling her. Angered, he breaks down the closet wall, throwing a section of a broken table into the darkness inside the closet; the table segment falls back into the living room (nearly crushing Griffin), revealing a potential portal for Maddie to escape through. The investigators deduce and confirm that the haunting is caused by a poltergeist. The lead investigator, Dr. Brooke Powell, decides to call occult specialist and television personality Carrigan Burke (revealed, much later, to be Powell's ex).


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: Carrigan explains that Maddie is a possible psychic, able to communicate with spirits. He reveals that the ghosts are trapped and are angry because only the headstones were moved to the new cemetery, but the bodies remain; they plan on using Maddie "to free them from their purgatory". Carrigan comes up with a plan to get Maddie back. He anchors a rope in Maddie's room and tosses it into the vortex. They attempt to use Griffin's toy drone to guide Maddie out, but it is immediately destroyed by the ghosts when inside the portal. Griffin, guilt-ridden over leaving Maddie alone in the first place, goes through the portal himself. When he finds Maddie, the ghosts attempt to destroy the rope to trap them, but Griffin and Maddie grab onto the rope and fall back through the portal into the house. Both children are unconscious and covered in grey matter, to which Carrigan instructs for them to be washed and they awake.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: The family get in their car and begin to leave the house, but the ghosts drag them back into the house and attempt to abduct Maddie again, flipping the car in the process. Maddie is seen being abducted up the stairs. The family saves her from being sucked into the portal, and Carrigan decides that as the only other psychic, he must go into the vortex and lead the spirits into the light. Kendra stamps and destroys the television screen as ghosts' hands are seen, trying to communicate with Maddie. The Bowens flee the neighbourhood as the house is destroyed by the spirits soaring into the sky as a beacon of light. The investigative team run to their equipment, looking for a sign that Carrigan managed to get back.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: As the Bowens look for a new house, the realtor shows them a house with much closet space and an old tree in the backyard but the Bowens drive away laughing. During the end credits, it is revealed that Carrigan survived the incident and is back filming his ghost program, now hosting the show with Dr. Powell.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: From 2008 to 2009, filmmaker Vadim Perelman has already been tapped to direct the remake of the 1982 film of the same name, with Juliet Snowden and Stiles White reportedly on-board to write the screenplay. The project was initially set to be released on November 24, 2010. "Bloody Disgusting" then reported it postponed till 2011.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: In April 2012, "The Hollywood Reporter" announced that Sam Raimi, Nathan Kahane, Roy Lee, and Robert Tapert would produce. Raimi helped oversee the search for a helmer. David Lindsay-Abaire, who worked on Disney’s "" for Raimi, worked on the script.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: By early September 2013, 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures had green-lit this reboot of the "Poltergeist" film series, with Gil Kenan signed to direct a screenplay written by Lindsay-Abaire, and Raimi, Lee and Tapert producing.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: In September 2013, Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jared Harris and Jane Adams were cast in the film. Tom Cruise and Richard Armitage were considered for the role of Eric Bowen. Saxon Sharbino, Kyle Catlett and Kennedi Clements were cast in the film.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: Principal photography began on September 23 and ended on December 13, 2013. The crew shot interior scenes for the film in an old residence in Toronto. Exterior shots were filmed on the West Mountain of Hamilton.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: On August 6, 2014, the film's release date was shifted from February 13, 2015 to July 24, 2015. On March 4, 2015, the date was shifted again to when it was previously set for release alongside "Spy". It was released in 3D.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: The film's first trailer was released on February 5, 2015. Forrest Wickman of "Slate Magazine"s opinion was that the trailer made the film appear to be too similar to the original film. James Hibberd of "Entertainment Weekly" said that the trailer "retains and amplifies several elements from the original", and praised that "the modernizing doesn’t result in, say, the family’s daughter being kidnapped by ghosts in Snapchat". Brad Miska of Bloody Disgusting stated that "while every fiber of my being wants to reject it, [the film] actually looks pretty insane", and praised the trailer's final shot. Ben Kuchera of "Polygon" also opined that the trailer appeared to be similar to the original film, but that it "looks great, as a horror movie".


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: "Poltergeist" was released on DVD, Blu-ray Disc and Blu-ray 3D on September 29, 2015. The Blu-ray editions included an extended cut of the film.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: "Poltergeist" grossed $47.4 million in North America and $48.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $95.6 million against a budget of an estimated $35 million.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: In North America, "Poltergeist" made $1.4 million during its Thursday night showings from 2,500 theaters, and an estimated $9.4 million on its opening day. Through its first three-day opening, it grossed $22.6 million from 3,240 theaters, debuting at fourth place at the box office behind "Tomorrowland", "Pitch Perfect 2" and "". In comparison to prior horror film reboots, its opening is well below the openings of 2009's "Friday the 13th" ($40.57 million), 2010's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" ($32.9 million), 2003's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" ($28.1 million), and right below 2005's "The Amityville Horror" ($23.5 million).


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: Outside North America, it earned $8.3 million on its opening weekend from 3,750 screens in 36 countries, finishing at sixth place at the international box office. In the UK, Ireland and Malta it opened in third place with $2.2 million and Brazil with $2 million.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 29% based on 137 reviews and an average rating of 4.81/10. The site's consensus reads: "Paying competent homage without adding anything of real value to the original "Poltergeist", this remake proves just as ephemeral (but half as haunting) as its titular spirit." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 47 out of 100 based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: Writing for "Variety", Andrew Barker called it "generally entertaining yet fundamentally unnecessary" and concluded: "Even when one is inclined to admire the cleverness with which the remake revisits and reincorporates "Poltergeist"s themes, it’s hard to pinpoint a single moment where it improves on them, and the aura of inessentiality hangs thick over the proceedings". Neil Genzlinger gave the film a mostly positive review in "The New York Times", writing: "The new "Poltergeist" might well be the scariest movie 13-or-unders have yet seen, just as the original was for their parents back in 1982. Those parents might find it an enjoyable trip down memory lane, even if they do now recognize it as largely a well-served collection of horror-movie tropes". Eddie Goldberger echoed that sentiment in The New York Daily News, writing "It doesn't approach the original--really, how could it? But the new "Poltergeist" is a fun, worthy horror entry." Tirdad Derakhshani wrote in "The Philadelphia Inquirer": "It's not exactly a scary film, but it does provide an enjoyable ride. It's good fun. But it left me befuddled", adding: "Why would anyone want to remake "Poltergeist" in the first place?". Writing in "The Daily Telegraph", Mike McCahill called the film "an efficient scare-machine". Bilge Ebiri wrote in "New York" magazine: "This new "Poltergeist" isn't anything special... But it's not a travesty, and that feels like cause for brief celebration".


title: Poltergeist (2015 film)

text: Other critics took a more skeptical view of the film. Writing a review for "The Village Voice", Alan Scherstuhl stated, ""Poltergeist 2015" is to "Poltergeist '82" what today's shipped-frozen-to-the-store Pizza Hut dough is to the kneaded-on-site pies the chain's stoned cooks tossed in the Reagan era. It's the same kind of thing, with the same shape and some shared ingredients, but the texture's gone limp, and there's no sense of occasion about it, and there's some unpalatable goop stuffed in the crust. In a pinch, it beats pizzalessness — but just barely." Linda Cook wrote in "The Quad City Times", "The "Poltergeist" remake is OK, but won't stay with you." Randy Cordova in "The Arizona Republic" wrote, "Ultimately, the whole affair is forgettable."


title: Moses Sithole

text: Moses Sithole (born 17 November 1964) is a South African serial killer and rapist who committed the ABC Murders, so named because they began in Atteridgeville, continued in Boksburg and finished in Cleveland, a suburb of Johannesburg. Sithole murdered at least 37 women and one toddler between 16 July 1994 and 6 November 1995.


title: Moses Sithole

text: Moses Sithole was born on 17 November 1964 in Vosloorus, a township near Boksburg, Transvaal Province (now Gauteng). When he was five years old, his father died and his mother abandoned the family. Sithole and his siblings spent the next three years in an orphanage, where he later said they were mistreated. By his own account, Sithole was arrested for rape in his teens and spent seven years in prison. He later blamed his imprisonment for turning him into a murderer. He explained his crimes by saying that the women he murdered all reminded him of the women who had falsely accused him of rape years before.


title: Moses Sithole

text: Sithole appeared to be a mild-mannered individual to those around him. At the time of his crimes, he was managing a shell organization, Youth Against Human Abuse, ostensibly devoted to the eradication of child abuse. After committing murders in Atteridgeville, near Pretoria, Sithole moved his focus to Boksburg and eventually to Cleveland. By 1995, he had claimed over thirty victims, sparking nationwide panic. In some cases, he would later phone the victims' families for no other apparent reason than to taunt them. At one point, President Nelson Mandela visited Boksburg in person to appeal for public assistance in apprehending the killer.


title: Moses Sithole

text: Sithole targeted black women between the ages of 19 and 45 years old. Most of his victims were being interviewed for positions with Sithole's ersatz charity. Sithole would take them to remote fields, where he would beat, rape, and murder them. They were generally strangled with their own underwear. He once inflicted a head wound on the two-year-old son of one of his victims and left him to die from exposure.


title: Moses Sithole

text: In August 1995, Sithole was identified as having been seen with one of the victims, but he disappeared shortly after SAPS investigators learned details of his previous rape conviction. In October 1995, Sithole contacted South African journalist Tamsen de Beer and identified himself as the wanted murderer. During a phone conversation with de Beer, he indicated that the killings were carried out in revenge for his unjust imprisonment and claimed 76 victims, twice as many as those reported. Finally, in order to prove his identity, Sithole gave directions to where one of the bodies had been left. Local authorities subsequently cornered Sithole in Johannesburg, shooting the suspect when he attacked a constable with a hatchet. Sithole was driven to the hospital, where he was found to be HIV positive and also tested positive for TB.


title: Moses Sithole

text: On 5 December 1997, Sithole was sentenced to 50 years' imprisonment for each of the 38 murders, twelve years' imprisonment for each of the 40 rapes, and five years' imprisonment for each of six robberies. Since his sentences run consecutively, his total effective sentence is 2,410 years. Justice David Carstairs ordered that Sithole would be required to serve at least 930 years before being eligible for parole, making him eligible for parole at the age of 963. The judge also told Sithole that if capital punishment was still used, he would have been sentenced to death. Sithole was incarcerated in C-Max, the maximum security section of Pretoria Central Prison. He is currently incarcerated in Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Pan-Germanism ( or '), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism, is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also Germanic-speaking peoples – in a single nation-state known as the Greater Germanic Reich (), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation ().


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Pan-Germanism was highly influential in German politics in the 19th century during the unification of Germany when the German Empire was proclaimed as a nation-state in 1871 but without Austria (Kleindeutsche Lösung/Lesser Germany), and the first half of the 20th century in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire. From the late 19th century, many Pan-Germanist thinkers, since 1891 organized in the Pan-German League, had adopted openly ethnocentric and racist ideologies, and ultimately gave rise to the foreign policy "Heim ins Reich" pursued by Nazi Germany under Austrian-born Adolf Hitler from 1938, one of the primary factors leading to the outbreak of World War II.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: As a result of the disaster of World War II, Pan-Germanism was mostly seen as a taboo ideology in the postwar period in both West and East Germany. Today, Pan-Germanism is mainly limited to some nationalist groups in Germany and Austria.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The word "pan" is a Greek word element meaning "all, every, whole, all-inclusive". The word "German" in this context derives from Latin "Germani" originally used by Julius Caesar referring to tribes or a single tribe in northeastern Gaul. In the Late Middle Ages, it acquired a loose meaning referring to the speakers of Germanic languages (alongside 'Almain' and 'Teuton') most of whom spoke dialects ancestral to modern German. In English, "Pan-German" was first attested in 1892. In German, there exists a synonym ""Alldeutsche Bewegung"" which is a calque using German instead of Latin and Greek roots.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The origins of Pan-Germanism began with the birth of Romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars, with Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Ernst Moritz Arndt being early proponents. Germans, for the most part, had been a loose and disunited people since the Reformation, when the Holy Roman Empire was shattered into a patchwork of states following the end of the Thirty Years' War with the Peace of Westphalia.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Advocates of the "Großdeutschland" (Greater Germany) solution sought to unite all the German-speaking people in Europe, under the leadership of the German Austrians from the Austrian Empire. Pan-Germanism was widespread among the revolutionaries of 1848, notably among Richard Wagner and the Brothers Grimm. Writers such as Friedrich List and Paul Anton Lagarde argued for German hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe, where German domination in some areas had begun as early as the 9th century AD with the Ostsiedlung, Germanic expansion into Slavic and Baltic lands. For the Pan-Germanists, this movement was seen as a Drang nach Osten, in which Germans would be naturally inclined to seek Lebensraum by moving eastwards to reunite with the German minorities there.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The "Deutschlandlied" ("Song of Germany"), written in 1841 by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, in its first stanza defines "Deutschland" as reaching "From the Meuse to the Memel / From the Adige to the Belt", i.e. as including East Prussia and South Tyrol.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Reflecting upon the First Schleswig War in 1848, Karl Marx noted in 1853 that "by quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of confederating, Germans and Scandinavians, both of them belonging to the same great race, only prepare the way for their hereditary enemy, the Slav."


title: Pan-Germanism

text: By the 1860s Prussia and Austria had become the two most powerful states dominated by German-speaking elites. Both sought to expand their influence and territory. The Austrian Empire—like the Holy Roman Empire—was a multi-ethnic state, but the German-speaking people there did not have an absolute numerical majority; its re-shaping into the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one result of the growing nationalism of other ethnicities—especially the Hungarians. Under Prussian leadership, Otto von Bismarck would ride on the coat-tails of nationalism to unite all of the northern German lands. After Bismarck excluded Austria and the German Austrians from Germany in the German war of 1866 and (following a few other events over the next few years), the unification of Germany, established the Prussian-dominated German Empire in 1871 with the proclamation of Wilhelm I as head of a union of German-speaking states, while disregarding millions of its non-German subjects who desired self-determination from German rule. After World War I the Pan-Germanist philosophy changed drastically during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as "Großdeutschland" (Greater Germany), where "German-speaking" was sometimes taken as synonymous with Germanic-speaking, to the inclusion of the Frisian- and Dutch-speaking populations of the Low Countries, and Scandinavia.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Although Bismarck had excluded Austria and the German Austrians from his creation of the Kleindeutschland state in 1871, integrating the German Austrians nevertheless remained a strong desire for many people of both Austria and Germany. The most radical Austrian pan-German Georg Schönerer (1842–1921) and (1862–1941) articulated Pan-Germanist sentiments in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There was also a rejection of Roman Catholicism with the Away from Rome! movement (ca 1900 onwards) calling for German-speakers to identify with Lutheran or Old Catholic churches. The Pan-German Movement gained an institutional format in 1891, when , a professor at the University of Leipzig and a member of the Reichstag, organized the Pan-German League, an ultra-nationalist political-interest organization which promoted imperialism, anti-semitism, and support for ethnic German minorities in other countries.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The organization achieved great support among the educated middle and upper class; it promoted German nationalist consciousness, especially among ethnic Germans outside Germany. In his three-volume work, "Deutsche Politik" (1905–07), Hasse called for German imperialist expansion in Europe. The Munich professor Karl Haushofer, , and Hans Grimm (author of the novel "Volk ohne Raum") preached similar expansionist policies.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: During the German entry into World War I, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg prepared the Septemberprogramm proposing that the German Empire use the First World War to seek massive territorial annexations similar to the ones demanded by pan-German nationalists. The West German historian Fritz Fischer argued in his 1962 thesis "Germany's Aims in the First World War" that this and other documents indicated that Germany was responsible for World War I and intended to fulfill pan-German aims, although other historians have since disputed this conclusion. When Bethmann-Hollweg later endorsed a negotiated peace without annexations, Naval Minister Alfred von Tirpitz resigned from the Cabinet in protest and united pan-German nationalists under the German Fatherland Party in the Reichstag.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: After the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas, in which the liberal nationalistic revolutionaries advocated the Greater German solution, the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) with the effect that Austria was now excluded from Germany, and increasing ethnic conflicts in the multinational Habsburg monarchy, a German national movement evolved in Austria. Led by the radical German nationalist and Austrian anti-Semite Georg Ritter von Schönerer, organisations such as the "Pan-German Society" demanded the annexation of all German-speaking territories under the rule of the Habsburg monarchy to the German Empire, and fervently rejected Austrian nationalism and a pan-Austrian identity. Schönerer's völkisch and racist German nationalism was an inspiration to Adolf Hitler's Nazi ideology.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: In 1933, Austrian Nazis and the national-liberal Greater German People's Party formed an action group, fighting together against the Austrofascist Federal State of Austria which imposed a distinct Austrian national identity and in accordance said that Austrians were "better Germans." Kurt Schuschnigg adopted a policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany and called Austria the "better German state", but he still struggled to keep Austria independent. With "Anschluss" of Austria in 1938, the historic aim of Austria's German nationalists was achieved.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: After the end of Nazi Germany and the events of World War II in 1945, the ideas of pan-Germanism and an "Anschluss" fell out of favour due to their association with Nazism and allowed Austrians to develop their own national identity. Nevertheless, such notions were revived with the German national camp in the Federation of Independents and the early Freedom Party of Austria.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The idea of including the North Germanic-speaking Scandinavians into a Pan-German state, sometimes referred to as Pan-Germanicism, was promoted alongside mainstream pan-German ideas. Jacob Grimm adopted Munch's anti-Danish Pan-Germanism and argued that the entire peninsula of Jutland had been populated by Germans before the arrival of the Danes and that thus it could justifiably be reclaimed by Germany, whereas the rest of Denmark should be incorporated into Sweden. This line of thinking was countered by Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, an archaeologist who had excavated parts of Danevirke, who argued that there was no way of knowing the language of the earliest inhabitants of Danish territory. He also pointed out that Germany had more solid historical claims to large parts of France and England, and that Slavs—by the same reasoning—could annex parts of Eastern Germany. Regardless of the strength of Worsaae's arguments, pan-Germanism spurred on the German nationalists of Schleswig and Holstein and led to the First Schleswig War in 1848. In turn, this likely contributed to the fact that Pan-Germanism never caught on in Denmark as much as it did in Norway. Pan-Germanic tendencies were particularly widespread among the Norwegian independence movement. Prominent supporters included Peter Andreas Munch, Christopher Bruun, Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Bjørnson, who wrote the lyrics for the Norwegian national anthem, proclaimed in 1901:


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Anti-German Scandinavism surged in Denmark in the 1930s and 1940s in response to the pan-Germanic ambitions of Nazi Germany.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: World War I became the first attempt to carry out the Pan-German ideology in practice, and the Pan-German movement argued forcefully for expansionist imperialism.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Following the defeat in World War I, the influence of German-speaking elites over Central and Eastern Europe was greatly limited. At the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was substantially reduced in size. Austria-Hungary was split up. A rump Austria, which to a certain extent corresponded to the German-speaking areas of Austria-Hungary (a complete split into language groups was impossible due to multi-lingual areas and language-exclaves) adopted the name "German Austria" () in hope for union with Germany. Union with Germany and the name "German Austria" was forbidden by the Treaty of St. Germain and the name had to be changed back to Austria.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: It was in the Weimar Republic that the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, under the influence of the stab-in-the-back myth, first took up German nationalist ideas in his "Mein Kampf". Hitler met Heinrich Class in 1918, and Class provided Hitler with support for the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler and his supporters shared most of the basic pan-German visions with the Pan-German League, but differences in political style led the two groups to open rivalry. The German Workers Party of Bohemia cut its ties to the pan-German movement, which was seen as being too dominated by the upper classes, and joined forces with the German Workers Party led by Anton Drexler, which later became the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party, NSDAP) that was to be headed by Adolf Hitler from 1921.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: Nazi propaganda also used the political slogan "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" ("One people, one Reich, one leader"), to enforce pan-German sentiment in Austria for an "Anschluss".


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The chosen name for the projected empire was a deliberate reference to the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) that existed in the Middle Ages, known as the "First Reich" in Nazi historiography. Different aspects of the legacy of this medieval empire in German history were both celebrated and derided by the Nazi government. Hitler admired the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne for his "cultural creativity", his powers of organization, and his renunciation of the rights of the individual. He criticized the Holy Roman Emperors however for not pursuing an "Ostpolitik" (Eastern Policy) resembling his own, while being politically focused exclusively on the south. After the "Anschluss", Hitler ordered the old imperial regalia (the Imperial Crown, Imperial Sword, the Holy Lance and other items) residing in Vienna to be transferred to Nuremberg, where they were kept between 1424 and 1796. Nuremberg, in addition to being the former unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire, was also the place of the Nuremberg rallies. The transfer of the regalia was thus done to both legitimize Hitler's Germany as the successor of the "Old Reich", but also weaken Vienna, the former imperial residence.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: After the 1939 German occupation of Bohemia, Hitler declared that the Holy Roman Empire had been "resurrected", although he secretly maintained his own empire to be better than the old "Roman" one. Unlike the "uncomfortably internationalist Catholic empire of Barbarossa", the Germanic Reich of the German Nation would be racist and nationalist. Rather than a return to the values of the Middle Ages, its establishment was to be "a push forward to a new golden age, in which the best aspects of the past would be combined with modern racist and nationalist thinking".


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The historical borders of the Holy Roman Empire were also used as grounds for territorial revisionism by the NSDAP, laying claim to modern territories and states that were once part of it. Even before the war, Hitler had dreamed of reversing the Peace of Westphalia, which had given the territories of the Empire almost complete sovereignty. On November 17, 1939, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that the "total liquidation" of this historic treaty was the "great goal" of the Nazi regime, and that since it had been signed in Münster, it would also be officially repealed in the same city.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The "Heim ins Reich" ("Back Home to the Reich") initiative was a policy pursued by the Nazis which attempted to convince the ethnic Germans living outside of Nazi Germany (such as in Austria and Sudetenland) that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into a Greater Germany. This notion also led the way for an even more expansive state to be envisioned, the Greater Germanic Reich, which Nazi Germany tried to establish. This pan-Germanic empire was expected to assimilate practically all of Germanic Europe into an enormously expanded Greater Germanic Reich. Territorially speaking, this encompassed the already-enlarged Reich itself (consisting of pre-1938 Germany plus the areas annexed into the "Großdeutsche Reich"), the Netherlands, Belgium, areas in north-eastern France considered to be historically and ethnically Germanic, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. The most notable exception was the predominantly Anglo-Saxon United Kingdom, which was not projected as having to be reduced to a German province but to instead become an allied seafaring partner of the Germans.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The eastern "Reichskommissariats" in the vast stretches of Ukraine and Russia were also intended for future integration, with plans for them stretching to the Volga or even beyond the Urals. They were deemed of vital interest for the survival of the German nation, as it was a core tenet of Nazi ideology that it needed "living space" ("Lebensraum"), creating a "pull towards the East" ("Drang nach Osten") where that could be found and colonized, in a model that the Nazis explicitly derived from the American Manifest Destiny in the Far West and its clearing of native inhabitants.


title: Pan-Germanism

text: As the foreign volunteers of the Waffen-SS were increasingly of non-Germanic origin, especially after the Battle of Stalingrad, among the organization's leadership (e.g. Felix Steiner) the proposition for a Greater Germanic Empire gave way to a concept of a European union of self-governing states, unified by German hegemony and the common enemy of Bolshevism. The Waffen-SS was to be the eventual nucleus of a common European army where each state would be represented by a national contingent. Himmler himself, however, gave no concession to these views, and held on to his Pan-Germanic vision in a speech given in April 1943 to the officers of the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" and the 3rd SS Division "Totenkopf":


title: Pan-Germanism

text: The defeat of Germany in World War II brought about the decline of Pan-Germanism, much as World War I had led to the demise of Pan-Slavism. Parts of Germany itself were devastated, and the country was divided, firstly into Soviet, French, American, and British zones and then into West Germany and East Germany. The end of World War II brought even larger territorial losses for Germany than the First World War, with vast portions of eastern Germany directly annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland. The scale of the Germans' defeat was unprecedented; Pan-Germanism became taboo because it had been tied to racist concepts of the "master race" and "Nordicism" by the Nazi party. However, the reunification of Germany in 1990 revived the old debates.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Diogo Meireles da Costa (; born 19 September 1999) is a professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Primeira Liga club Porto and the Portugal national team.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Coming through Porto's youth system, Costa won the UEFA Youth League in 2019. He was promoted from the reserve side to the first-team in 2019, winning a domestic double of the Primeira Liga and the Taça de Portugal in his first season. He broke into the starting line-up in 2021, aged 22, helping Porto to a second domestic double and being named in the Primeira Liga Team of the Year.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Born in Switzerland to parents from Portugal, Costa represented Portugal at various youth levels, being part of the under-17 team that won the 2016 European Championship, the under-19 team that won the 2018 European Championship and the under-21 team that finished as runners-up at the 2021 European Championship. He made his senior international debut in 2021, representing Portugal at the 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Born in Rothrist, Canton of Aargau to Portuguese parents, Costa relocated to Santo Tirso at the age of 7. In his childhood, he played football with his cousin Vitor, with their idol being FC Porto legend Vítor Baía, whom they looked to emulate. He started playing football at a local academy AMCH Ringe, and later began going through some training sessions with Benfica, being integrated into one of their feeder club's Póvoa de Lanhoso, where he stayed for two years, standing out alongside future teammate Vitinha, before joining FC Porto's academy in 2011, following the consent of his parents.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Costa made his senior debut with the reserve team on 6 August 2017, in a 1–2 home loss against Gil Vicente for the LigaPro. He finished the season with a further 31 appearances, helping to a seventh-place finish, and on 15 May he renewed his contract until June 2022. In September, he was named the club's Newcomer of the Year; late in the same year, Spaniard Iker Casillas – who started for the first team – heaped praise upon him, regarding him as his "successor".


title: Diogo Costa

text: Costa won the 2018–19 UEFA Youth League with Porto, defeating Chelsea 3–1 in the final in Nyon, Switzerland on 29 April. Days later, after Casillas suffered a heart attack, Vaná replaced him as starting goalkeeper and Costa was called up to the bench for the final three games of the season, starting with a 4–0 win at Desportivo das Aves on 4 May.


title: Diogo Costa

text: On 25 September 2019, Costa made his first-team debut in the opening group match of the Taça da Liga, keeping a clean sheet in a 1–0 home victory over Santa Clara. His first Primeira Liga appearance took place on 10 November in a 1–0 away defeat of Boavista, as the habitual starter Agustín Marchesín was suspended internally after a breach of discipline. He made a further two until the end of the campaign for the eventual champions, as well as all seven Taça de Portugal matches as they secured the double.


title: Diogo Costa

text: At the start of the 2020–21 season, Costa inherited Porto's 99 shirt, made famous by goalkeeper and club legend Vítor Baía. He remained Marchesín's backup, only appearing in one league game, and made his Champions League debut on 9 December 2020; he kept a clean sheet in a 2–0 group stage win at Olympiakos.


title: Diogo Costa

text: At the start of the 2021–22 season, Costa had a run as first-choice goalkeeper when Marchesín was sidelined with an injury. He was September 2021's Goalkeeper of the Month, receiving 25% of the votes while Benfica's Odysseas Vlachodimos received 22%. On 16 October, he agreed to a contract extension to 2026, increasing his buyout clause from €30 million to €60 million. After helping Porto to an unbeaten run of sixteen consecutive league games, during which he kept eight clean sheets, he was named the league's Goalkeeper of the Month for four consecutive months from December to March 2022.


title: Diogo Costa

text: He would then be part of five more victories that would seal Porto a second domestic double of the Primeira Liga and the Taça de Portugal, after keeping a clean sheet in the 1–0 victory of "O Clássico" against rivals Benfica. Despite finishing the season with 15 clean sheets, the second-highest total behind Antonio Adán of Sporting CP, Costa was still named in the Primeira Liga Team of the Year ahead of them.


title: Diogo Costa

text: On 12 October 2022, Costa managed to provide an assist to a goal from Galeno, then saved a penalty from Kerem Demirbay, and preserved a clean sheet in a 3–0 away win over Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League, becoming the first goalkeeper to achieve that feat. On 26 October, Costa managed to save two consecutive penalties from Hans Vanaken and Noa Lang, becoming the first goalkeeper to save three consecutive penalties in the competition's history. His form throughout the club's Champions League group stage campaign, saw him help his side qualify to the round of sixteen, as group winners, following a 2–1 home win over Atlético Madrid on 1 November, amassing 43 saves, and a man of the Match award, during the group stages.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Costa started all of Portugal's matches in the 2016 UEFA European Under-17 Championship. In the final against Spain, he saved Manu Morlanes' spot kick in a 5–4 penalty shoot-out victory after a 1–1 draw, helping his team win the tournament for the sixth time. With the under-19s, he participated in the 2017 European Championship, playing four out of five matches as they lost in the final to England. He represented the nation at the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup, starting in all the matches in a quarter-final exit.


title: Diogo Costa

text: In July 2018, Costa played four matches out of five at the UEFA European Under-19 Championship in Finland, helping Portugal win the tournament for the first time, but missed the final due to a muscle injury.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Previously, on 25 May, the 18-year-old won his first cap for the under-21 side, coming on as a second-half substitute in a 3–2 friendly win over Italy. In March 2021, Costa played all of Portugal's matches in the 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, as Portugal finished the tournament as runners-up, losing the final 1–0 to Germany.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Costa was called up to the senior team for the first time on 26 August 2021, for 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers against the Republic of Ireland and Azerbaijan and a friendly with Qatar. He made his debut on 9 October against the last of those opponents, in a 3–0 victory at Algarve Stadium.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Costa was chosen as the first-choice goalkeeper by the head coach Fernando Santos for the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification play-offs, relegating usual starter Rui Patrício to the bench. On 24 March, at his club ground, he played his first competitive game in a 3–1 win over Turkey in the play-off semi-finals; he featured again five days later in a 2–0 victory over North Macedonia that sealed a place for the tournament.


title: Diogo Costa

text: Costa was called up for the final 26-man squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. On 25 November, he played his first World Cup match, a 3–2 group stage win against Ghana. This made him the youngest Portuguese goalkeeper to play in a major international tournament, at age 23. He played every minute of the campaign, as they were knocked out of the tournament after losing in the quarter-finals to Morocco, where he misjudged a cross when coming for the ball, and Youssef En-Nesyri headed the only goal of the game.


title: Hound

text: Hounds can be contrasted with gun dogs that assist hunters by identifying prey and/or recovering shot quarry. The hound breeds were the first hunting dogs. They have either a powerful sense of smell, great speed, or both.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard ("Étendard" is French for "battle flag", cognate to English "standard") is a French carrier-borne strike fighter aircraft designed by Dassault-Breguet for service with the French Navy.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The aircraft is an advanced development of the Étendard IVM, which it replaced. The Super Étendard first flew in October 1974 and entered French service in June 1978. French Super Étendards have served in several conflicts such as the Kosovo war, the war in Afghanistan and the military intervention in Libya.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The Super Étendard was also operated by Iraq (on a temporary lease) and Argentina, which both deployed the aircraft during wartime. Argentina's use of the Super Étendard and the Exocet missile during the 1982 Falklands War led to the aircraft gaining considerable popular recognition. The Super Étendard was used by Iraq to attack oil tankers and merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq-Iran War. In French service, the Super Étendard was replaced by the Dassault Rafale in 2016.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The Super Étendard is a development of the earlier Étendard IVM which had been developed in the 1950s. The Étendard IVM was originally to have been replaced by a navalised version of the SEPECAT Jaguar, designated as the Jaguar M; however the Jaguar M project was stalled by a combination of political problems and issues experienced during trial deployments on board carriers. Specifically, the Jaguar M had suffered handling problems when being flown on a single engine and a poor throttle response time that made landing back on a carrier after an engine failure difficult. In 1973, all development work on the Jaguar M was formally cancelled by the French government.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: There were several proposed aircraft to replace the Jaguar M, including the LTV A-7 Corsair II and the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. Dassault pulled some strings with the French government and produced its own proposal to meet the requirement. According to Bill Gunston and Peter Gilchrist, Dassault had played a significant role in the cancellation of the Jaguar M with the aim of creating a vacancy for their own proposal – the Super Étendard. The Super Étendard was essentially an improved version of the existing Étendard IVM, outfitted with a more powerful engine, a new wing and improved avionics. Dassault sold its plane as the only fully French-made candidate, and as cheaper than the other contestants, using modern technology already proven in existing Dassault planes. Dassault's Super Étendard proposal was accepted by the French Navy in 1973, leading to a series of prototypes being quickly assembled.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The first of three prototypes to be built, an Étendard IVM which had been modified with the new engine and some of the new avionics, made its maiden flight on 28 October 1974. The original intention of the French Navy was to order a total of 100 Super Étendards, however the order placed was for 60 of the new model with options for a further 20; further budget cuts and an escalation in the aircraft's per unit price eventually led to only 71 Super Étendards being purchased. Dassault began making deliveries of the type to the French Navy in June 1978.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: In the first year of production, 15 Super Étendards were produced for the French Navy, allowing the formation of the first squadron in 1979. Dassault produced the aircraft at a rough rate of two per month.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The Argentine Navy was the only export customer. Argentina placed an order for 14 aircraft to meet their requirements for a capable new fighter that could operate from their sole aircraft carrier. In 1983, all manufacturing activity was completed, the last delivery to the French Navy taking place that year.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The Super Étendard is a small, single-engined, mid-winged aircraft with an all-metal structure. Both the wings and tailplane are swept, with the folding wings having a sweepback of about 45 degrees, while the aircraft is powered by a non-afterburning SNECMA Atar 8K-50 turbojet with a rating of 49 kN (11,025 lbf). Its performance was not much better than the Étendard IV, but its avionics were significantly improved.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The main new weapon of the Super Étendard was the French anti-shipping missile, the Aérospatiale AM 39 Exocet. The aircraft had a Thomson-CSF Agave radar which, amongst other functions, was essential to launch the Exocet missile. One of the major technical advances of the Super Étendard was its onboard UAT-40 central computer; this managed most mission-critical systems, integrating navigational data and functions, radar information and display, and weapons targeting and controls.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: In the 1990s, significant modifications and upgrades were made to the type, including an updated UAT-90 computer and a new Thomson-CSF Anemone radar which provided nearly double the range of the previous Agave radar. Other upgrades at this time included an extensively redesigned cockpit with HOTAS controls, and airframe life-extension work was undertaken; a total of 48 aircraft received these upgrades, at a rate of 15 per year. During the 2000s, further improvements included significantly improved self-defence ECM capability to better evade enemy detection and attacks, cockpit compatibility with night vision goggles, a new inertial data system partly integrating GPS, and compatibility with the Damocles Laser designator pod.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The Super Étendard could also deploy tactical nuclear weapons; initially these were unguided gravity bombs only, however, during the 1990s the Super Étendard was extensively upgraded, enabling the deployment of the Air-Sol Moyenne Portée, a ramjet-powered air-launched nuclear missile. The aircraft was also refitted with the ability to operate a range of laser-guided bombs and, to enable the type to replace the retiring Étendard IV in the reconnaissance mission, the Super Étendard was fitted to carry a specialist reconnaissance pod as well. However, the aircraft is unable to perform naval landings without jettisoning unexpended ordnance.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The Argentine Naval Aviation decided to buy 14 Super Étendards in 1979 after the United States put an arms embargo in place, due to the Dirty War and refused to supply spare parts for Argentina's fleet of A-4Q Skyhawks. Between August and November 1981, five Super Étendards and five anti-ship sea-skimming Exocet missiles were shipped to Argentina. The Super Étendards, armed with Exocet anti-ship missiles played a key role in the Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982. The 2nd Naval Squadron was stationed at the Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego naval air base; during the conflict. The threat posed to British naval forces led to the planning of Operation Mikado and other proposed infiltration missions to raid the airbase, aiming to destroy the Super Étendards to prevent their use. A total of four Super Étendards were operational during the conflict.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: A first attempt to attack the British fleet was made on 2 May 1982, but this was abandoned due to in-flight-refuelling problems. On 4 May, two Super Étendards, guided by a Lockheed P-2H Neptune, each launched one Exocet at the British destroyer , with one missile crippling "Sheffield". On 25 May, another attack by two Super Étendards resulted in two missiles hitting the merchant ship , which was carrying several helicopters and other supplies to the front line. The Exocets that struck "Atlantic Conveyor" had been inadvertently redirected by decoy chaff deployed as a defensive measure by other ships; Both "Sheffield" and "Atlantic Conveyor" sank whilst under tow some days later following these Exocet strikes.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: On May 30 two Super Étendards, one carrying Argentina's last remaining Exocet, escorted by four A-4C Skyhawks each with two 500lb bombs, took off to attack the carrier HMS Invincible. The missile was shot down by a Sea Dart fired by HMS Exeter.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: Following the end of the conflict, by 1984 Argentina had received all the 14 Super Étendards ordered, and Exocets with which to arm them. Super Étendards performed qualifications on the aircraft carrier ARA "25 de Mayo" until the ship's final retirement. Since 1993, Argentine pilots have practised on board the neighbouring Brazilian Navy's aircraft carrier . Touch-and-go landing exercises were also common on US Navy carriers during Gringo-Gaucho manoeuvres and joint exercises.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: In 2009, an agreement was signed between Argentina and France to upgrade Argentina's remaining fleet of Super Étendards. An earlier proposal to acquire former French Naval Super Étendards was rejected due to high levels of accumulated flight hours; instead equipment and hardware would be removed from retiring French airframes and installed into Argentine aircraft, effectively upgrading them to the Super Étendard Modernisé (SEM) standard. By March 2014, while the Argentine Navy continued to seek the upgrade kits for 10 of its 11 remaining Super Étendards; this ambition appears to have been complicated by several factors, France has been non-committal regarding the sought sale; critically, political developments between France and the UK may potentially allow the UK to obstruct the supply of military equipment to Argentina such as the upgrade kits and the Exocet missile.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: In 2017 five Super Étendard Modernisé were purchased from France to bolster the fleet at a cost of €12.5 million, along with a simulator, eight spare engines, and a large batch of spares and tooling. However, while these aircraft were delivered in 2019, as of 2020 they still await the delivery of key spare parts and may not be in operational service for a further two years. In 2021, it was reported that the aircraft also remained non-operational due to problems obtaining components for the Martin Baker ejection seats manufactured in the U.K.. As a result, alternative parts were being sought in the United States. In early 2022, it was reported that the spare parts problem remained unresolved and the aircraft remained in storage.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: Deliveries of the Super Étendard to the French Navy started in 1978, with the first squadron, "Flottille 11F" becoming operational in February 1979. As they offered no air combat capabilities France had to extend useful life of its Crusaders fighters, as no replacement option was found.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: In total, three operational squadrons and a training unit were equipped with the Super Étendard. The Super Étendards would operate from both of France's aircraft carriers at that time, and ; either carrier's air wing typically comprised 16 Super Étendards, 10 F-8 Crusaders, 3 Étendard IVPs, 7 Breguet Alizé anti-submarine aircraft, as well as numerous helicopters.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The first fighting operational missions took place in Lebanon during Operation Olifant. On 22 September 1983, French Navy Super Étendards operating from "Foch" bombed and destroyed Syrian forces positions after a few artillery rounds were fired at the French peace keepers. On November 10, a Super Étendard escaped from being hit by a Syrian SA-7 shoulder-launched missile near Bourj el-Barajneh while flying over Druze positions. On 17 November 1983, the same airplanes attacked and destroyed an Islamic Amal training camp in Baalbeck after a terrorist attack on French paratroopers in Beirut.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: From 1991, the original pure attack Étendard IVMs were withdrawn from French service; though the reconnaissance version of the Étendard IV, the IVP, remained in service until July 2000. In response, the Super Étendards underwent a series of upgrades throughout the 1990s to add new capabilities and update existing systems for use in the modern battlefield. Designated "Super Étendard Modernisé" (SEM), the first combat missions for the type came during NATO's "Allied Force" operations over Serbia in 1999 flying 400 combat missions.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: The SEM also flew strike missions in Operation Enduring Freedom. "Mission Héraclès" starting 21 November 2001 saw the deployment of the aircraft carrier and its Super Étendards in Afghanistan. Operation Anaconda, starting on 2 March 2002 saw extensive use of the Super Étendard in support of French and allied ground troops. Super Étendards returned to operations over Afghanistan in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010–2011. One of their main roles was to carry laser designation pods to illuminate targets for Dassault Rafales.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: In March 2011, Étendards were deployed as a part of Task Force 473, during France's Opération Harmattan in support of UN resolution 1973 during the Libyan conflict. They were paired again with Dassault Rafales on interdiction missions. The final Super Étendards in French naval aviation were in one "flottille" (squadron) called flottille 17F. All Super Étendards were retired from French service on 12 July 2016 to be replaced by the Dassault Rafale M, 42 years after the subsonic attack jet performed its first flight. The Super Étendard's last operational deployment from "Charles de Gaulle" was in support of Opération Chammal against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, which began in late 2015. On 16 March 2016, the aircraft undertook its final launch from "Charles de Gaulle" ahead of its final withdrawal from service in July.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: A total of five Super Étendards were loaned to Iraq in 1983 while the country was waiting for deliveries of Agave-equipped Dassault Mirage F1s capable of launching Exocet missiles that had been ordered; the first of these aircraft arrived in Iraq on 8 October 1983. The provision of Super Étendards to Iraq was politically controversial, the United States and Iraq's neighbour Iran were vocal in their opposition while Saudi Arabia supported the loan; the aircraft were seen as an influential factor in the 1980–88 Iraq-Iran War as they could launch Exocet strikes on Iranian merchant shipping traversing the Persian Gulf. The Super Étendards began maritime operations over Persian Gulf in March 1984; a total of 34 attacks were carried out on Iranian shipping through the rest of 1984. Tankers of any nationality that were carrying Iranian crude oil were also subject to Iraqi attacks.


title: Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard

text: Iraq typically deployed the Super Étendards in pairs, escorted by Mirage F1 fighters from bases in Southern Iraq; once inside the mission zone, the Super Étendards would search for targets using their onboard radar and engage suspected tankers at long range without visual identification. While tankers would typically be struck by a launched Exocet, they were often only lightly damaged. On 2 April 1984, an Iraqi Super Étendard was reportedly shot down by a AIM-7E-2 missile fired by an Iranian F-4 Phantom II piloted by Khosrow Adibi over Kharg Island. Separately, on 26 July and 7 August 1984, claims of Super Étendard losses to Iranian Grumman F-14 Tomcats were reported. Iran claimed a total of three Super Étendards to have been shot down by Iranian interceptors; France stated that four of the five leased aircraft were returned to France in 1985.


title: Western Ukraine

text: Western Ukraine or West Ukraine ( or , ) is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Second Polish Republic, and came fully under the control of the Soviet Union (via the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) only in 1939, following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. There is no universally accepted definition of the territory's boundaries (see the map, right), but the contemporary Ukrainian administrative regions or Oblasts of Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankovsk, Lviv, Ternopil and Transcarpathia (which were part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) are nearly always included and the Lutsk and Rivne Oblasts (parts of the annexed from Poland during its Third Partition) are usually included. It is less common to include the Khmelnytski and, especially, the Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr Oblasts in this category. It includes several historical regions such as Transcarpathia, Halychyna including Pokuttia (eastern portion of Eastern Galicia), most of Volhynia, northern Bukovina, and western Podolia. Less often the Western Ukraine includes areas of eastern Volhynia, Podolia, and small portion of northern Bessarabia (eastern part of Chernivtsi Oblast).