title: Becoming Jane

text: An important deviation of the film's plot from history is that there is scant evidence in real life Austen and Lefroy's relationship went beyond acquaintance. Rather, all that is known of them together is that they danced at three Christmas balls before Tom returned to school and that Jane was "too proud" to ask his aunt about him two years later. In the latter years of Tom Lefroy's life, he was questioned about his relationship with Jane Austen by his nephew, and admitted to having loved Jane Austen, but stated that it was a "boyish love". As is written in a letter sent from T.E.P. Lefroy to James Edward Austen Leigh in 1870,My late venerable uncle ... said in so many words that he was in love with her, although he qualified his confession by saying it was a boyish love. As this occurred in a friendly & private conversation, I feel some doubt whether I ought to make it public.Lori Smith, author of "The Jane Austen Guide to Life", opined that:No doubt this relationship and her [Jane's] repartee with Tom fueled her writing. Whether it was "her greatest inspiration" as the trailers for "Becoming Jane" claim, well, that's debatable. But I'm sure it provided as spark.However, contrary to the film's story line, Jane had attempted her first full-length novel before she met Tom and had already read "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" before meeting him. In a cut scene from the movie, it is clear that she is reading the novel for the second time, but in the theatrical release without that scene, it appears he introduces her to it.


title: Becoming Jane

text: Various commentators have offered opinions concerning the presence in the film of characters and themes from Austen's works, particularly with "Pride and Prejudice". Deborah Cartmell contended that Hathaway's Austen is a "replica of Elizabeth Bennet (with a touch of impetuous Lydia thrown in)," and added that the associations between Austen and Elizabeth are "more explicit than in" any other Austen biopic. Tim Robey of "The Daily Telegraph" declared that the film took "good old "P&P"s storyline and replace[d] Elizabeth Bennet with Austen herself [and added] a real-life pseudo-Darcy from the skimpiest of biographical evidence." "A Companion to Jane Austen" observed that the "physicality" of Jane and Lefroy's kiss was similar to the "passionate kiss" between Elizabeth and Darcy in the 1995 serial "Pride and Prejudice".


title: Becoming Jane

text: The implementation of mass marketing in the film's production and release has attracted notice from film and literary scholars. Dianne F. Sadoff writes that "Becoming Jane" "confirms the two-decades-long megaplexing of Jane Austen." According to Andrew Higson, the film was another example of "Austen Power" and the desire of filmmakers to "exploit the possibilities of both the Austen industry and the market for literary cinema and television – and more generally, the market for 'traditional' British drama." While reviewing Austen adaptations of the 1990s and 2000s in her book "Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation", author Belén Vidal viewed "Becoming Jane" as yet another "transformation of Austen's novels into icons of popular culture." To Vidal, this and other productions, such as "The Jane Austen Book Club" (2007) and "Miss Austen Regrets" (2008), confirmed "the generic status of the Austen phenomenon whilst dispensing with the incorporation of the literary text."


title: Becoming Jane

text: "Becoming Jane" followed a different formula than the Austen adaptations of the 1990s and attempted to draw viewers from a variety of demographic groups. Hathaway's casting was intended to attract young female viewers who had enjoyed the actress in "The Princess Diaries" and "". According to producers, the view was that this demographic group would have been in their early teens during the release of the "Princess" films, making them "the right age" for Austen as 15-year-olds. Expecting "Becoming Jane" to be a popular film, in February 2007 Penguin Books announced new editions of six of Austen's best-known novels; their redesigned covers were intended to attract teenage readers.


title: Becoming Jane

text: "Becoming Jane" has been referred to as a heritage costume drama film, a genre which has been popular in the United States among both its audiences and its film studios. According to Andrew Higson, "Becoming Jane" falls into the continuing trend of American attitudes influencing British film. Belén Vidal wrote that the film "exploit[s] a well-defined heritage iconography and strategically combine[s] American stars with supporting casts of international 'quality' players." Hilary Radner analysed the presence of the "marriage plot" – a girl succeeding only by marrying the man of her choice – in film and television, and noted that while "Becoming Jane" critiques this film trope, it "points to the power of the traditional marriage plot as a residual paradigm influencing feminine identity."


title: Becoming Jane

text: Jarrold's adaptation also came in the wake of a number of literary biographical films, such as "Shakespeare in Love" and "Miss Potter". Deborah Cartmell, author of "Screen Adaptations: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: A Close Study of the Relationship between Text and Film", found similarities between "Becoming Jane" and "Shakespeare in Love" "almost so obvious that the [former] film risks the accusation of being dangerously derivative." A given example included the characters of Austen and William Shakespeare inputting their personal experiences directly into their works. Marina Cano López and Rosa María García-Periago explained that the film "follows the path opened by John Madden's "Shakespeare in Love". The numerous intertextual connections between both movies can be reduced to one: just as Shakespeare is imagined as the hero of his own play, Jane Austen becomes the heroine of her own novel." Among other listed similarities, they noted that the romantic interests of both protagonists serve as their literary muses, and that the middle part of both films "lie" when viewed from a historical perspective.


title: Becoming Jane

text: The world premiere of "Becoming Jane" took place in London on 5 March 2007. It was released to cinemas on 9 March 2007 in the United Kingdom and a week later in Ireland by Buena Vista International. It ultimately grossed £3.78 million in the UK and Ireland, placing in sixteenth among all UK films for the year in those markets. Sixty-three percent of the audience was female, and 40.5 percent were above the age of 55. The film's performance was considered "disappointing", and it influenced the US release date. It arrived in Australia on 29 March.


title: Becoming Jane

text: Miramax Films distributed the film in the United States, giving it a release date of 3 August 2007. Originally, the studio intended to release "Becoming Jane" in June or July due to a "counter-programming" strategy, attempting to attract demographic groups who were not interested in large blockbusters. The film was expected to perform well during all seven days of the week and gradually gain more viewers during its time in cinemas. Due to the presence of recognizable stars such as Hathaway, "Becoming Jane" was expected to also do well among mainstream audiences. However, due to its weak UK release, the film's release was moved to August, when it opened on 100 screens in its first week. It increased to 601 screens the following week, later reaching 1,210 screens. While the film made under $1 million in its first week, it was considered "a highly respectable showing for a heritage biopic" and enough of a figure to "justify a ten-week run." The film eventually grossed a total of $18,670,946 in the US.


title: Becoming Jane

text: On an international scale, "Becoming Jane" received a total of $37,311,672. It earned its highest grosses in the US, the UK, and Australia.


title: Becoming Jane

text: "Becoming Jane" was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on 10 September 2007, a month after it arrives in cinemas in the US. On 12 February 2008, Disney and Miramax released the DVD and Blu-ray in the US. Both versions contained audio commentary with Jarrold, Hood, and Bernstein, deleted scenes, "Pop-Up Facts & Footnotes," and a featurette called "Discovering the Real Jane Austen". The US home video rights to the film have since been picked up by Echo Bridge Entertainment and the film has seen several reissues on Blu-ray and DVD, often packaged with other films such as "Jane Eyre".


title: Becoming Jane

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 58% based on reviews from 140 critics, with an average rating of 6.00/10. The site's consensus states: "Although "Becoming Jane" is a well-crafted period piece, it lacks fresh insight into the life and works of Jane Austen. The film focuses too much on wardrobe and not enough on Austen's achievements." On Metacritic the film has a score of 55% based on reviews from 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Becoming Jane

text: "The New York Times" called the film a "triumph" for Hathaway, but observed that "the screenplay's pseudo-Austen tone is so consistent that its lapses into modern romance-novel fantasy [and] threatens to derail the film." "Entertainment Weekly" called the film "a charmer," articulating that "the supporting cast (Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, James Cromwell) is top-drawer; and Anne Hathaway, with her coltish beauty and frank demeanor, is a welcome Jane."


title: Becoming Jane

text: Critics lauded Hathaway and McAvoy for the chemistry between their characters, finding that it lent authenticity to the love story between Austen and Lefroy. While Hathaway was admired for her performance by some critics, some reviews negatively focused on the inauthenticity of her accent. James McAvoy defended the decision of casting Hathaway by stating that a director should, "find the right actor…and [she] is undoubtedly brilliant." Hathaway herself admitted the persistent tendency to "sound too much like myself and not at all like Jane", blaming cold weather in Ireland, which meant she had to do voice retakes for several scenes. Nonetheless, Jarrold praised Hathaway for her performance. In a wrap up party after the filming, the director confessed that the actress had been a different person, "not just her accent but also the whole character, the way of holding yourself and speaking was so completely different".


title: Becoming Jane

text: "Time Out London" gave a positive review, noting: "Overall, the approach is less fluffily contrived than you'd expect, and though the alignment of circumstance and social status thwarting innocent passions is hardly fresh, it's handled with thoughtful decorum. The emotional temperature's rather restrained as a result, but with luxury casting all down the line ... elegant visuals balancing verdant and velvet, and a delightful faux-classical score, it's a classy package, all right – just missing the extra spark." Some reviewers have questioned the historical accuracy of the film, criticising, for instance, the depiction of the relationship between Austen and Lefroy.


title: Becoming Jane

text: "Becoming Jane" and the 2008 BBC serial "Sense and Sensibility" have been credited with "renew[ing] interest" in Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton. According to Robin Bischert, the chief executive of Bath Tourism Plus, Bath, Somerset gained "more than £150,000 worth of free media exposure" in the wake of "Becoming Jane" and "Persuasion", a 2007 television production adapted from another Austen novel. As the city is heavily associated with Austen, the company took advantage of "Becoming Jane"s release in order to celebrate the author and her writings. In late September 2007, Bath launched the seventh Jane Austen festival, which included a parade of people in Regency costumes, readings, tours, and discussions about the author. In addition, the city offered events such as Tea with Mr. Darcy to mark the release of the "Becoming Jane" DVD.


title: Becoming Jane

text: The film's production had a positive impact on the Irish economy, as it resulted in a direct expenditure of €7.1 million, providing jobs for 116 crew members and 17 actors, and also offered 1,250 days of work for extras. John O'Donoghue, the country's Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, visited the set and stated


title: Larry Kramer

text: Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the film "Women in Love" (1969) and received an Academy Award nomination for his work.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 1978, Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his novel "Faggots", which earned mixed reviews and emphatic denunciations from elements within the gay community for Kramer's portrayal of what he characterized as shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer witnessed the spread of the disease later known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among his friends in 1980. He co-founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the world's largest private organization assisting people living with AIDS. Kramer grew frustrated with bureaucratic paralysis and the apathy of gay men to the AIDS crisis, and wished to engage in further action than the social services GMHC provided. He expressed his frustration by writing a play titled "The Normal Heart", produced at The Public Theater in New York City in 1985.


title: Larry Kramer

text: His political activism continued with the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987, an influential direct action protest organization with the aim of gaining more public action to fight the AIDS crisis. ACT UP has been widely credited with changing public health policy and the perception of people living with AIDS, and with raising awareness of HIV and AIDS-related diseases.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his play "The Destiny of Me" (1992), and he was a two-time recipient of the Obie Award.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Laurence David Kramer was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the younger of two children. His mother, Rea (), worked as a shoe store employee, teacher, and social worker for Red Cross. His father, George Kramer, worked as a government attorney. His older brother, Arthur Kramer was born in 1927. The family was Jewish.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer was considered an "unwanted child" by his parents, who struggled to find work during the American Great Depression. When the family moved to Maryland, they found themselves in a much lower socioeconomic bracket than that of Kramer's high school peers. Kramer had become sexually involved with a male friend in junior high school. His father wanted him to marry a woman with money and pressured him to become a member of Pi Tau Pi, a Jewish fraternity.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer's father, older brother Arthur, and two uncles were alumni of Yale University. Kramer enrolled at Yale College in 1953, where he had difficulty adjusting. He felt lonely, and earned lower grades than those to which he was accustomed. He attempted suicide by an overdose of aspirin because he felt like he was the "only gay student on campus". The experience left him determined to explore his sexuality and set him on the path to fight "for gay people's worth". The next semester, he had an affair with his German professor – his first requited romantic relationship with a man. Kramer enjoyed the Varsity Glee Club during his remaining time at Yale, and he graduated in 1957 with a degree in English. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve before beginning his film writing and production career.


title: Larry Kramer

text: According to Kramer, every drama he wrote derived from a desire to understand love's nature and its obstacles. Kramer became involved with movie production at age 23 by taking a job as a Teletype operator at Columbia Pictures, agreeing to the position only because the machine was across the hall from the president's office. Eventually, he won a position in the story department reworking scripts. His first writing credit was as a dialogue writer for "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush," a teen sex comedy. He followed that with the 1969 Oscar-nominated screenplay "Women in Love", an adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He next penned what Kramer later referred to as (the) "only thing I'm truly ashamed of", the 1973 musical remake of Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon", a notorious critical and commercial failure with a screenplay based very closely on Capra's film. Kramer later said that his well-negotiated fee for this work, skillfully invested by his brother, made him financially self-sufficient during the 1980s and 1990s.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer then began to integrate homosexual themes into his work, and tried writing for the stage. He wrote "Sissies' Scrapbook" in 1973 (later rewritten and retitled as "Four Friends"), a dramatic play about four friends, one of whom is gay, and their dysfunctional relationships. Kramer called it a play about "cowardice and the inability of some men to grow up, leave the emotional bondage of male collegiate camaraderie, and assume adult responsibilities". The play was first produced in a theater set up in an old YMCA gymnasium on 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue called the Playwrights Horizons. Live theater moved him to believing that writing for the stage was what he wanted to do. Although the play was given a somewhat favorable review by "The New York Times", it was closed by the producer and Kramer was so distraught that he decided never to write for the stage again, later stating, "You must be a masochist to work in the theater and a sadist to succeed on its stages."


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer then wrote "A Minor Dark Age", which was never produced. Frank Rich, in the foreword to a Grove Press collection of Kramer's lesser known works, wrote that the "dreamlike quality of the writing is haunting" in "Dark Age", and that its themes, such as the exploration of the difference between sex and passion, "are staples of his entire output" that would portend his future work, including the 1978 novel "Faggots."


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 1978, Kramer delivered the final of four drafts of a novel that he wrote about the fast lifestyle of the gay men on Fire Island and in Manhattan. In "Faggots", the primary character was modeled on himself, a man who is unable to find love while encountering the drugs and emotionless sex in the trendy bars and discos. He stated his inspiration for the novel: "I wanted to be in love. Almost everybody I knew felt the same way. I think most people, at some level, wanted what I was looking for, whether they pooh-poohed it or said that we can't live like the straight people or whatever excuses they gave." Kramer researched the book, talking to many men, and visiting various establishments. As he interviewed people, he heard a common question: "Are you writing a negative book? Are you going to make it positive? ... I began to think, 'My God, people must really be conflicted about the lives they're leading.' And that was true. I think people were guilty about all the promiscuity and all the partying."


title: Larry Kramer

text: The novel caused an uproar in the community it portrayed; it was taken off the shelves of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore – at the time New York City's only gay bookstore – and Kramer was banned from the grocery store near his home on Fire Island. Reviewers found it difficult to believe that Kramer's accounts of gay relationships were accurate; both the gay and mainstream press panned the book. On the reception of the novel Kramer said: "The straight world thought I was repulsive, and the gay world treated me like a traitor. People would literally turn their back when I walked by. You know what my real crime was? I put the truth in writing. That's what I do: I have told the fucking truth to everyone I have ever met." "Faggots", however, became one of the best-selling gay novels of all time.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 2000, Reynolds Price wrote that the novel's lasting relevance is that "anyone who searches out present-day responses on the Internet will quickly find that the wounds inflicted by "Faggots" are burning still". Although the novel was rejected by the people from whom Kramer expected praise, the book has never been out of publication and is often taught in gay studies classes. ""Faggots" struck a chord," wrote Andrew Sullivan, "It exuded a sense that gay men could do better if they understood themselves as fully human, if they could shed their self-loathing and self-deception..."


title: Larry Kramer

text: While living on Fire Island in the 1970s, Kramer had no intention of getting involved in political activism. There were politically active groups in New York City, but Kramer noted the culture on Fire Island was so different that they would often make fun of political activists: "It was not chic. It was not something you could brag about with your friends ... Guys marching down Fifth Avenue was a whole other world. The whole gestalt of Fire Island was about beauty and looks and golden men."


title: Larry Kramer

text: However, when friends he knew from Fire Island began getting sick in 1980, Kramer became involved in gay activism. In 1981, although he had not been involved previously with gay activism, Kramer invited the "A-list" (his own term) group of gay men from the New York City area to his apartment to listen to a doctor say their friends' illnesses were related, and research needed to be done. The next year, they named themselves the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and became the primary organization to raise funds for and provide services to people stricken with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the New York area. Although Kramer served on its first board of directors, his view of how it should be run sharply conflicted with that of the rest of its members. While GMHC began to concentrate on social services for men who were dying, Kramer loudly insisted they fight for funding from New York City. Mayor Ed Koch became a particular target for Kramer, as did the behavior of gay men, before the nature of how the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was transmitted was understood.


title: Larry Kramer

text: When doctors suggested men stop having sex, Kramer strongly encouraged GMHC to deliver the message to as many gay men as possible. When they refused, Kramer wrote an essay entitled "1,112 and Counting", which appeared in 1983 in the "New York Native", a gay newspaper. The essay discussed the spread of the disease, the lack of government response, and the apathy of the gay community. The essay was intended to frighten gay men and provoke them to protest government indifference. Michael Specter wrote in "The New Yorker", "it was a five-thousand-word screed that accused nearly everyone connected with health care in America – officials at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, researchers at the National Institutes of Health, in Washington D.C., doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in Manhattan, and local politicians (particularly Mayor Ed Koch) – of refusing to acknowledge the implications of the nascent AIDS epidemic. The article's harshest condemnation was directed at those gay men who seemed to think that if they ignored the new disease, it would simply go away. Tony Kushner, who won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play "Angels in America" about the impact of AIDS in the United States, described the essay as "With that one piece, Larry changed my world. He changed the world for all of us."


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer's confrontational style proved to be an advantage, as it earned the issue of AIDS the attention of the New York media that no other individual could get. He found it a disadvantage when he realized his own reputation was "completely that of a crazy man". Kramer was particularly frustrated by bureaucratic stalling that snowballed in cases where gay but closeted men were the ones in charge of agencies that seemed to ignore AIDS. He confronted the director of a National Institutes of Health agency about not devoting more time and effort toward researching AIDS because he was closeted. He threw a drink in the face of Republican fundraiser Terry Dolan during a party and screamed at him for having affairs with men but using the fear of homosexuality to raise money for conservative causes. He called Ed Koch and the media and government agencies in New York City "equal to murderers". Even Kramer's personal life was affected when he and his lover – also a GMHC board member – split over Kramer's condemnations of the political apathy of GMHC.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer's past also compromised his message, as many men who had been turned off by "Faggots" saw Kramer's warnings as alarmist, displaying negative attitudes toward sex. Playwright Robert Chesley responded to Kramer's "New York Native" article, saying, "Read anything by Kramer closely, and I think you'll find the subtext is always: the wages of gay sin are death". The GMHC ousted Kramer from the organization in 1983. Kramer's preferred method of communication was deemed too militant for the group.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 1990, Kramer appeared in Rosa von Praunheim 's award-winning film "Positive" about the fight of activists in New York City for AIDS-education and the rights of HIV infected people.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Astonished and saddened about being forced out of GMHC, Kramer took an extended trip to Europe. While visiting the Dachau concentration camp he learned that it had opened as early as 1933 and neither Germans nor other nations did anything to stop it. He became inspired to chronicle the same reaction from the American government and the gay community to the AIDS crisis by writing "The Normal Heart", despite having promised never to write for the theater again.


title: Larry Kramer

text: "The Normal Heart" is a play set between 1981 and 1984. It addresses a writer named Ned Weeks as he nurses his lover, who is dying of an unnamed disease. His doctors are puzzled and frustrated by having no resources to research it. Meanwhile, the unnamed organization Weeks is involved in is angered by the bad publicity Weeks' activism is generating, and eventually throws him out. Kramer later explained, "I tried to make Ned Weeks as obnoxious as I could ... I was trying, somehow and again, to atone for my own behavior." The experience was overwhelmingly emotional for Kramer, as at one time during rehearsals he watched actor Brad Davis hold his dying lover played by D. W. Moffett on stage; Kramer went into the bathroom and sobbed, only moments later to find Davis holding him. The play is considered a literary landmark. It contended with the AIDS crisis when few would speak of the disease afflicting gay men, including gays themselves; it remains the longest-running play ever staged at the Public Theater, running for a year starting in 1985. It has been produced over 600 times in the U.S., Europe (where it was televised in Poland), Israel, and South Africa. The Polish television adaptation débuted on the TVP channel on May 4, 1989, one month before the first free election in the country since 1928.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Actors following Davis who have portrayed Kramer's alter ego Ned Weeks include; Joel Grey, Richard Dreyfuss (in Los Angeles), Martin Sheen (at the Royal Court in London), Tom Hulce and then John Shea in the West End, Raul Esparza in a highly acclaimed 2004 revival at the Public Theater, and most recently Joe Mantello on Broadway at the Golden Theater. Upon seeing the production of "The Normal Heart", Naomi Wolf commented, "No one else on the left at that time ... ever used the moral framework that is so much a part of Kramer's voice, and that the right has coopted so skillfully. Conscience, responsibility, calling; truth and lies, clarity of purpose or abandonment of one's moral calling; loyalty and betrayal ..."


title: Larry Kramer

text: He accuses the governmental, medical and press establishments of foot-dragging in combating the disease—especially in the early days of its outbreak, when much of the play is set—and he is even tougher on homosexual leaders who, in his view, were either too cowardly or too mesmerized by the ideology of sexual liberation to get the story out. "There's not a good word to be said about anyone's behavior in this whole mess", claims one character—and certainly Mr. Kramer has few good words to say about Mayor Koch, various prominent medical organizations, "The New York Times" or, for that matter, most of the leadership of an unnamed organization apparently patterned after the Gay Men's Health Crisis.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 2014, HBO produced a film version directed by Ryan Murphy with a screenplay by Kramer. It starred Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer (who won a Golden Globe Award for his performance), Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina, Julia Roberts, Joe Mantello, Jonathan Groff, and BD Wong.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 1987, Kramer was the catalyst in the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), a direct action protest organization that chose government agencies and corporations as targets to publicize lack of treatment and funding for people with AIDS. ACT UP was formed at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center in New York City. Kramer was asked to speak as part of a rotating speaker series, and his well-attended speech focused on action to fight AIDS. He began by having two-thirds of the room stand up, and told them they would be dead in five years. Kramer reiterated the points introduced in his essay "1,112 and Counting": "If my speech tonight doesn't scare the shit out of you, we're in real trouble. If what you're hearing doesn't rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, gay men will have no future here on earth. How long does it take before you get angry and fight back?" Their first target became the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which Kramer accused of neglecting badly needed medication for HIV-infected Americans.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Engaging in civil disobedience that would result in many people being arrested was a primary objective, as it would focus attention on the target. On March 24, 1987, 17 people out of 250 participating were arrested for blocking rush-hour traffic in front of the FDA's Wall Street offices. Kramer was arrested dozens of times working with ACT UP, and the organization grew to hundreds of chapters in the U.S. and Europe. Immunologist Anthony Fauci stated, "In American medicine there are two eras. Before Larry and after Larry." Playwright Tony Kushner offered his opinion of why Kramer fought so relentlessly: "In a way, like a lot of Jewish men of Larry's generation, the Holocaust is a defining historical moment, and what happened in the early 1980s with AIDS felt, and was in fact, holocaustal to Larry."


title: Larry Kramer

text: Two decades later Kramer continued to advocate for social and legal equity for homosexuals. "Our own country's democratic process declares us to be unequal, which means, in a democracy, that our enemy is you," he wrote in 2007. "You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let you."


title: Larry Kramer

text: In later decades, Kramer also continued to argue for funding research into cures for AIDS, contending that existing treatments disincentivized the pharmaceutical industry from developing cures. This distrust of the industry was demonstrated in Kramer's final public statement about curing AIDS, via a question posed to Joe Biden at a town hall during the 2020 presidential campaign, in which he accused pharmaceutical companies of "profit[ing] irrationally from HIV-positive Americans who depend on the medications forever," and asking "as president, how would you finance a CURE and scale back the avarice of pharmaceutical companies."


title: Larry Kramer

text: Continuing his commentary on government indifference toward AIDS, Kramer wrote "Just Say No, A Play about a Farce" in 1988. In the dramatic work he highlighted the sexual hypocrisy in the Reagan and Koch administrations that allowed AIDS to become an epidemic; it concerns a First Lady, her gay son, and the closeted gay mayor of America's "largest northeastern city". Its New York production, starring Kathleen Chalfant, Tonya Pinkens, and David Margulies, was prized by the few who came to see it after its negative review by "The New York Times". Social critic and writer Susan Sontag wrote of the piece, "Larry Kramer is one of America's most valuable troublemakers. I hope he never lowers his voice."


title: Larry Kramer

text: First published in 1989, and later expanded and republished in 1994, "Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist" contains a diverse selection of the non-fiction writings of Larry Kramer focused on AIDS activism and LGBT civil rights, including letters to the editor and speeches, which document his time spent at Gay Men's Health Crisis, ACT UP, and beyond, with the updated edition being organised chronologically from 1978 to 1993.


title: Larry Kramer

text: The central message of the book is that gay men must accept responsibility for their lives, and that those who are still living must give back to their community by fighting for People With AIDS and LGBT rights, for, as Kramer states, "I must put back something into this world for my own life, which is worth a tremendous amount. By not putting back, you are saying that your lives are worth shit, and that we deserve to die, and that the deaths of all our friends and lovers have amounted to nothing. I can't believe that in your heart of hearts you feel this way. I can't believe you want to die. Do you?" The first publication provides a portrait of Kramer as activist, and the 1994 edition contains commentary written by him that reflects on his earlier pieces and provides insight into Larry Kramer as writer.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer directly and deliberately defines AIDS as a holocaust because he believes the United States' government failed to respond quickly and expend the necessary resources to cure AIDS, largely because AIDS initially infected gay men, and, quite soon after, predominantly poor and politically powerless minorities. In "Report from the Holocaust", he wrote: "One inadvertent fall-out from "the" Holocaust is the growing inability to view any other similar tragedies as awful". Through speeches, editorials, and personal, sometimes publicized, letters to figures such as politician Gary Bauer, former New York Mayor Ed Koch, several "New York Times" reporters, and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, Kramer personally advocates for a more significant response to AIDS. He implores the government to conduct research based on commonly accepted scientific standards and to allocate funds and personnel to AIDS research. Kramer ultimately states that the response to AIDS in America must be defined as a holocaust because of the large number deaths that resulted from the negligence and apathy that surrounded AIDS in the Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and early Bill Clinton presidencies.


title: Larry Kramer

text: "The Destiny of Me" picks up where "The Normal Heart" left off, following Ned Weeks as he continues his journey fighting those whose complacency or will impede the discovery of a cure for a disease from which he suffers. The play opened in October 1992 and ran for one year off Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre by the Circle Repertory Company. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was a double Obie Award winner and received the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play of the Year. The original production starred John Cameron Mitchell, "a young actor who dominates the show with a performance at once ethereal and magnetic", according to "The New York Times" reviewer Frank Rich. Most powerful, Rich wrote, was the thematic question Kramer posed to himself: "Why was he of all people destined to scream bloody murder with the aim of altering the destiny of the human race?" Kramer states in his introduction to the play:


title: Larry Kramer

text: Its 2002 London Finborough Theatre production was the No. 1 Critics Choice in "The Evening Standard".


title: Larry Kramer

text: "Tragedy" was a speech and a call to arms that Kramer delivered five days after the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush and later published as a book. Kramer believed that Bush was re-elected largely because of his opposition to same-sex marriage, and found it inconceivable that voters would respond so strongly to that issue when there were so many more pressing ones:


title: Larry Kramer

text: The speech's effects were far-reaching and had most corners of the gay world once again discussing Kramer's moral vision of drive and self-worth for the LGBT community.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer even stated: "Does it occur to you that we brought this plague of AIDS upon ourselves? I know I am getting into dangerous waters here but it is time. With the cabal breathing even more murderously down our backs it is time. And you are still doing it. You are still murdering each other."


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer, again, had his detractors from the community. Writing for Salon.com, Richard Kim felt that once again Kramer personified the very object of his criticism: homophobia.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Around 1981, Kramer began researching and writing a manuscript called "The American People: A History", an ambitious historical work that begins in the Stone Age and continues into the present. For example, there is information relating to Kramer's assertion that Abraham Lincoln was gay. In 2002, Will Schwalbe, editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books – the only man to have read the entire manuscript to that date – said, "He has set himself the hugest of tasks," and he described it as "staggering, brilliant, funny, and harrowing." In 2006, Kramer said of the work, "[It is] my own history of America and of the cause of HIV/AIDS ... Writing and researching this history has convinced me that the plague of HIV/AIDS has been intentionally allowed to happen."


title: Larry Kramer

text: The book was published as a novel by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2015. In "The New York Times Book Review", Dwight Garner wrote, "I wish I could report that "The American People, Volume 1" had power to match its scope. It does not. As a work of sustained passion, it is formidable. As a work of art, it is very modest indeed. The tone is talky and digressive; few real characters emerge; one feels lashed to the mast after only 50 pages or so." In the book, Kramer writes that in addition to Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Richard Nixon were gay. The second volume, 880 pages, was published in 2020.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 1997, Kramer approached Yale University, to bequeath several million dollars "to endow a permanent, tenured professorship in gay studies and possibly to build a gay and lesbian student center." At that time, gender, ethnic and race-related studies were viewed warily by academia. The then Yale provost, Alison Richard, stated that gay and lesbian studies was too narrow a specialty for a program in perpetuity. Kramer's rejected proposal read: "Yale is to use this money solely for 1) the study of and/or instruction in gay male literature, by which I mean courses to study gay male writers throughout history or the teaching to gay male students of writing about their heritage and their experience. To ensure for the continuity of courses in either or both of these areas tenured positions should be established; and/or 2) the establishment of a gay student center at Yale."


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 2001, both sides settled upon establishing the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies, which would include visiting professors and a program of conferences, guest speakers and other events. Arthur Kramer endowed the program at Yale with $1 million to support a five-year trial. Kramer agreed to leave his literary papers and those chronicling the AIDS movement and his founding of GMHC and ACT UP to Yale's Beinecke Library. "A lot has changed since I made my initial demands," said Kramer. "I was trying to cram stuff down their throat. I'd rather they fashion their own stuff. It may allow for a much more expandable notion of what lesbian and gay studies really is." The five-year program ended in 2006.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kramer began to write a play titled "An Army of Lovers Must Not Die".


title: Larry Kramer

text: Larry and Arthur Kramer were eight years apart. Arthur was the founding partner of the law firm Kramer Levin. Their relationship was portrayed in Kramer's "The Normal Heart" (1984). In the play, Kramer portrays Arthur (as Ben Weeks) as more concerned with building his $2 million house in Connecticut than helping his brother's cause. Humorist Calvin Trillin, a friend of both Larry and Arthur, once called "The Normal Heart" "the play about the building of [Arthur's] house". Anemona Hartocollis observed in "The New York Times" that "their story came to define an era for hundreds of thousands of theatergoers". Arthur, who had protected his younger brother from the parents they both disliked, could neither reject Larry, nor accept his homosexuality. This caused years of arguing and stretches of silence between them. In the 1980s, Arthur refused Larry's request for Kramer Levin to represent the fledgling Gay Men's Health Crisis, blaming the need to clear it with his firm's intake committee. When Larry called for a boycott of MCI, a prominent Kramer Levin client, Arthur took it as a personal affront. In 1992, after Colorado voters endorsed Amendment 2, an anti-gay rights referendum, Larry supported a boycott of the state, while Arthur refused to cancel a ski trip to Aspen.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Throughout their disagreements, the two remained close. In "The Normal Heart", Larry wrote: "The brothers love each other a great deal; [Arthur's] approval is essential to [Larry]."


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 2001, Arthur endowed a $1 million grant for Yale University to establish the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies, a program focusing on gay history.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer Levin LLP would later become a staunch advocate for the gay rights movement, assisting the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on high-profile cases as "Lawrence v. Texas" before the U.S. Supreme Court and "Hernandez v. Robles" before the New York Court of Appeals. Arthur Kramer retired from the firm in 1996 and died from a stroke in 2008.


title: Larry Kramer

text: In 1988, stress over the closing of his play "Just Say No", only a few weeks after its opening, forced Kramer into the hospital after it aggravated a congenital hernia. While in surgery, doctors discovered liver damage due to hepatitis B, prompting Kramer to learn that he was HIV positive. In 2001, at the age of 66, Kramer was in dire need of a liver transplant, but he was turned down by Mount Sinai Hospital's organ transplant list. People living with HIV were routinely considered inappropriate candidates for organ transplants because of complications from HIV and perceived short lifespans. Out of the 4,954 liver transplants performed in the United States, only 11 were for HIV-positive people. The news prompted "Newsweek" to announce Kramer was dying in June 2001; the Associated Press in December of the same year reported Kramer's death. Kramer became a symbol for infected people who had new leases on life due to advances in medicine. "We shouldn't face a death sentence because of who we are or who we love", he said in an interview. In May 2001, the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, which had performed more transplants for HIV positive patients than any other facility in the world, accepted Kramer as a potential transplant recipient. Kramer received a new liver on December 21, 2001. In April 2019 he suffered a broken leg.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer and his partner, architectural designer David Webster, were together from 1991 until Kramer's death. Webster's ending of his relationship with Kramer in the 1970s had inspired Kramer to write "Faggots" (1978). When asked about their reunion decades later, Webster replied: "He'd grown up, I'd grown up." On July 24, 2013, Kramer and Webster married in the intensive care unit of NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City while Kramer recovered from surgery.


title: Larry Kramer

text: Kramer divided his time between a residence in Manhattan, near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, and Connecticut. Another resident of Kramer's Manhattan residential complex was Kramer's longtime nemesis, Ed Koch, who had been mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989. The two saw each other relatively infrequently, since they lived in different towers. When Kramer saw Koch looking at the apartment in 1989, Kramer reportedly told him, "Don't move in here! There are people here who hate you!" On another occasion, Koch tried to pet Kramer's Wheaten Terrier dog, Molly, in the building's mail area, and Kramer snatched the dog away, telling her that Koch was "the man who killed all of Daddy's friends."


title: Registered jack

text: A registered jack (RJ) is a standardized telecommunication network interface for connecting voice and data equipment to a service provided by a local exchange carrier or long distance carrier. Registration interfaces were first defined in the "Universal Service Ordering Code" (USOC) system of the Bell System in the United States for complying with the registration program for customer-supplied telephone equipment mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the 1970s. They were subsequently codified in title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 68. Registered jack connections began to see use after their invention in 1973 by Bell Labs.


title: Registered jack

text: The specification includes physical construction, wiring, and signal semantics. Accordingly, registered jacks are primarily named by the letters "RJ", followed by two digits that express the type. Additional letter suffixes indicate minor variations. For example, RJ11, RJ14, and RJ25 are the most commonly used interfaces for telephone connections for one-, two-, and three-line service, respectively. Although these standards are legal definitions in the United States, some interfaces are used worldwide.


title: Registered jack

text: The connectors used for registered jack installations are primarily the modular connector and the 50-pin miniature ribbon connector. For example, RJ11 uses a six-position two-conductor connector (6P2C), RJ14 uses a six-position four-conductor (6P4C) modular jack, while RJ21 uses a 25-pair (50-pin) miniature ribbon connector.


title: Registered jack

text: The registered jack designations originated in the standardization process of telephone connections in the Bell System in the United States, and describe application circuits and not just the physical geometry of the connectors. The same modular connector type may be used for different registered jack applications. Modular connectors were developed to replace older telephone installation methods that used hardwired cords or bulkier varieties of telephone plugs.


title: Registered jack

text: Strictly, "Registered Jack" refers to both the female physical connector (modular connector) and specific wiring patterns, but the term is often used loosely to refer to modular connectors regardless of wiring, gender, or use, commonly for telephone line connections, but also for Ethernet over twisted pair, resulting in confusion over the various connection standards and applications. For example, the six-position physical connector, plug and jack, is identically dimensioned and inter-connectable, whether it is wired for one, two, or three lines. These are the RJ11, RJ14, and RJ25 interfaces. The RJ standards designations only pertain to the wiring of the (female) jacks, hence the name "Registered Jack". It is commonplace, but not strictly correct, to refer to the unwired connectors or the (male) plugs by these names.


title: Registered jack

text: The nomenclature for modular connectors is based on the number of contact positions and the number of wires connected. "6P" indicates a six-position modular plug or jack. A six-position modular plug with conductors in only the middle two positions is designated 6P2C; 6P4C has four conductors in the middle positions, and 6P6C has all six equipped.


title: Registered jack

text: Registration interfaces were created by the Bell System under a Federal Communications Commission order for the standard interconnection between telephone company equipment and customer premises equipment. These interfaces used newly standardized jacks and plugs, primarily based on miniature modular connectors.


title: Registered jack

text: The wired communications provider (telephone company) is responsible for delivery of services to a minimum (or main) point of entry (MPOE). The MPOE is a utility box, usually containing surge protective circuitry, which connects the wiring on the customer's property to the communication provider's network. Customers are responsible for all jacks, wiring, and equipment on their side of the MPOE. The intent was to establish a universal standard for wiring and interfaces, and to separate ownership of in-home (or in-office) telephone wiring from the wiring owned by the service provider.


title: Registered jack

text: In the Bell System, following the Communications Act of 1934, the telephone companies owned all telecommunications equipment and they did not allow interconnection of third-party equipment. Telephones were generally hardwired, but may have been installed with Bell System connectors to permit portability. The legal case "Hush-A-Phone v. United States" (1956) and the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) "Carterfone" (1968) decision brought changes to this policy, and required the Bell System to allow some interconnection, culminating in the development of registered interfaces using new types of miniature connectors.


title: Registered jack

text: Registered jacks replaced the use of protective couplers provided exclusively by the telephone company. The new modular connectors were much smaller and cheaper to produce than the earlier, bulkier connectors that were used in the Bell System since the 1930s. The Bell System issued specifications for the modular connectors and their wiring as "Universal Service Order Codes" (USOC), which were the only standards at the time. Large customers of telephone services commonly use the USOC to specify the interconnection type and, when necessary, pin-assignments, when placing service orders with a network provider.


title: Registered jack

text: When the U.S. telephone industry was reformed to foster competition in the 1980s, the connection specifications became federal law, ordered by the FCC and codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Title 47 CFR Part 68, Subpart F, superseded by T1.TR5-1999.


title: Registered jack

text: In January 2001, the FCC delegated responsibility for standardizing connections to the telephone network to a new private industry organization, the Administrative Council for Terminal Attachments (ACTA). For this delegation, the FCC removed Subpart F from the CFR and added Subpart G. The ACTA derives its recommendations for terminal attachments from the standards published by the engineering committees of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). ACTA and TIA jointly published the standard TIA/EIA-IS-968, replacing the CFR information.


title: Registered jack

text: TIA-968-A, the current version of that standard, details the physical aspects of modular connectors, but not the wiring. Instead, TIA-968-A incorporates the standard T1.TR5-1999, "Network and Customer Installation Interface Connector Wiring Configuration Catalog", by reference. With the publication of TIA-968-B, the connector descriptions have been moved to TIA-1096-A. A registered jack name, such as RJ11, still identifies both the physical connectors and the wiring (pinout) for each application.


title: Registered jack

text: The most widely implemented registered jack in telecommunications is the RJ11. This is a modular connector wired for one telephone line, using the center two contacts of six available positions. This configuration is also used for single-line telephones in many countries other than the United States. It may also use a 6P4C connector, to use an additional wire pair for powering lamps on the telephone set. RJ14 is similar to RJ11, but is wired for two lines and RJ25 has three lines. RJ61 is a similar registered jack for four lines, but uses an 8P8C connector.


title: Registered jack

text: The RJ45S jack is rarely used in telephone applications but a standard version of the 8P8C modular connector used by RJ45S is used in Ethernet networks and the connector is often referred to as RJ45 in this context.


title: Registered jack

text: For example, RJ11 comes in two forms: RJ11W is a jack from which a wall telephone can be hung, while RJ11C is a jack designed to have a cord plugged into it. A cord can be plugged into an RJ11W as well.


title: Registered jack

text: All of these registered jacks are described as containing a number of potential contact positions and the actual number of contacts installed within these positions. RJ11, RJ14, and RJ25 all use the same six-position modular connector, thus are physically identical except for the different number of contacts (two, four and six respectively) allowing connections for one, two, or three telephone lines respectively.


title: Registered jack

text: Cords connecting to an RJ11 interface require a 6P2C connector. Nevertheless, cords sold as RJ11 often use 6P4C connectors (six position, four conductor) with four wires. Two of the six possible contact positions connect tip and ring, and the other two conductors are unused.


title: Registered jack

text: The conductors other than the two central tip and ring conductors are in practice variously used for a second or third telephone line, a ground for selective ringers, low-voltage power for a dial light, or for anti-tinkle circuitry to prevent pulse dialing phones from sounding the bell on other extensions.


title: Registered jack

text: Observing the male connector from the cable opening, with prong facing downward, the pins are numbered 1–6, left to right:


title: Registered jack

text: Some telephones such as the Western Electric Princess and Trimline telephone models require additional power (~6 V AC) for operation of the incandescent dial light. This power is delivered to the telephone set from a transformer by the second wire pair (pins 2 and 5) of the 6P4C connector.


title: Registered jack

text: RJ21 is a registered jack standard using a modular connector with contacts for up to fifty conductors. It is used to implement connections for up to 25 lines, or circuits that require many wire pairs, such as used in the 1A2 key telephone system. The miniature ribbon connector of this interface is also known as a 50-pin telco connector, CHAMP(AMP), or "Amphenol" connector, the latter being a genericized trademark, as Amphenol was a prominent manufacturer of these at one time.


title: Registered jack

text: A cable color scheme, known as even-count color code, is determined for 25 pairs of conductors as follows: For each ring, the primary, more prominent color is chosen from the set blue, orange, green, brown, and slate, in that order, and the secondary, thinner stripe color from the set of white, red, black, yellow, and violet colors, in that order. The tip conductor color scheme uses the same colors as the matching ring but switches the thickness of the primary and secondary colored stripes. Since the sets are ordered, an orange (color 2 in its set) with a yellow (color 4) is the color scheme for the 4·5 + 2 − 5 = 17th pair of wires. If the yellow is the more prominent, thicker stripe, then the wire is a tip conductor connecting to the pin numbered 25 + the pair #, which is pin 42 in this case. Ring conductors connect to the same pin number as the pair number.


title: Registered jack

text: A conventional enumeration of wire color pairs then begins blue (and white), orange (and white), green (and white) and brown (and white), which subsumes a color-coding convention used in cables of 4 or fewer pairs (8 wires or less) with 8P and 6P connectors.


title: Registered jack

text: Dual 50-pin ribbon connectors are often used on punch blocks to create a breakout box for private branch exchange (PBX) and other key telephone systems.


title: Registered jack

text: The RJ45S, a standard jack once specified for modem or data interfaces, uses a mechanically-keyed variation of the 8P8C body with an extra tab that prevents it from mating with other connectors; the visual difference from the more-common 8P8C is subtle. The original RJ45S keyed 8P2C modular connector had pins 5 and 4 wired for tip and ring of a single telephone line, and pins 7 and 8 shorting a programming resistor, but is obsolete today.


title: Registered jack

text: RJ48 is a registered jack. It is used for T1 and ISDN termination and local area data channels or subrate digital services. It uses the eight-position modular connector (8P8C).


title: Registered jack

text: RJ48X is a variation of RJ48C that contains shorting blocks in the jack so that a loopback is created for troubleshooting when unplugged by connecting pins 1 and 4, and 2 and 5. Sometimes this is referred to as a "self-looping jack".


title: Registered jack

text: RJ48S is typically used for local area data channels and subrate digital services, and carries one or two lines. It uses a keyed variety of the 8P8C modular connector.


title: Registered jack

text: RJ48 connectors are fastened to shielded twisted pair (STP) cables, not the standard unshielded twisted pair (UTP) CAT-(1–5).


title: Registered jack

text: RJ61 is a physical interface often used for terminating twisted pair type cables. It uses an eight position, eight conductor (8P8C) modular connector.


title: Registered jack

text: This pinout is for multi-line telephone use only; RJ61 is unsuitable for use with high-speed data, because the pins for pairs 3 and 4 are too widely spaced for high signaling frequencies. T1 lines use another wiring for the same connector, designated RJ48. Ethernet over twisted pair (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX and 1000BASE-T) also use a different wiring for the same connector, either T568A or T568B. RJ48, T568A, and T568B are all designed to keep pins close together for pairs 3 and 4.


title: Registered jack

text: The flat eight-conductor silver-satin cable traditionally used with four-line analog telephones and RJ61 jacks is also unsuitable for use with high-speed data. Twisted pair cabling is required for data applications. Twisted-pair data patch cable used with the three data standards is not a direct replacement for RJ61 cable, because RJ61 pairs 3 and 4 would be split among different patch cable twisted pairs, causing cross-talk between voice lines 3 and 4 that might be noticeable for long patch cables.


title: Registered jack

text: With the advent of structured wiring systems and TIA/EIA-568 (now ANSI/TIA-568) conventions, the RJ61 pinout is falling into disuse. The T568A and T568B standards are used in place of RJ61 so that a single wiring standard in a facility can be used for both voice and data.


title: Registered jack

text: The labels "RJ9", "RJ10", "RJ22" are variously used for 4P4C and 4P2C modular connectors, most typically installed on telephone handsets and their cordage. Telephone handsets do not connect directly to the public network, and therefore have no registered jack designation.


title: Registered jack

text: "RJ45" is often incorrectly used when referring to an 8P8C connector used for ANSI/TIA-568 T568A and T568B and Ethernet. It is distinct from the official RJ45S and ARJ45 interfaces.


title: Registered jack

text: The micro ribbon connector, first made by Amphenol, that is used in the RJ21 interface, has also been used to connect Ethernet ports in bulk from a switch with 50-pin ports to a Cat-5 rated patch panel, or between two patch panels. A cable with a 50-pin connector on one end can support six fully wired 8P8C connectors or Ethernet ports on a patch panel with one spare pair. Alternatively, only the necessary pairs for 10/100 Ethernet can be wired allowing twelve Ethernet ports with a single spare pair.


title: Registered jack

text: This connector is also used with spring bail locks for SCSI-1 connections. Some computer printers use a shorter 36-pin version known as a Centronics connector.


title: Registered jack

text: The 8P8C modular jack was chosen as a candidate for ISDN systems. In order to be considered, the connector system had to be defined by an international standard, leading to the creation of the ISO 8877 standard. Under the rules of the IEEE 802 standards project, international standards are to be preferred over national standards, so when the original 10BASE-T twisted-pair wiring version of Ethernet was developed, this modular connector was chosen as the basis for IEEE 802.3i-1990.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The German revolutions of 1848–1849 (), the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution (), were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire after its dismantlement as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. This process began in the mid 1840s.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The middle-class elements were committed to liberal principles, while the working class sought radical improvements to their working and living conditions. As the middle class and working class components of the Revolution split, the conservative aristocracy defeated it. Liberals were forced into exile to escape political persecution, where they became known as Forty-Eighters. Many emigrated to the United States, settling from Wisconsin to Texas.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The groundwork of the 1848 uprising was laid as early as the Hambacher Fest of 1832, when public unrest began to grow in the face of heavy taxation and political censorship. The Hambacher Fest is also noteworthy for the Republicans adopting the black-red-gold colours used on today's national flag of Germany as a symbol of the Republican movement and of the unity among the German-speaking people.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Activism for liberal reforms spread through many of the German states, each of which had distinct revolutions. They were also inspired by the street demonstrations of workers and artisans led in Paris, France, from February 22 through 24, 1848, which resulted in the abdication by King Louis-Philippe of France and his exile in Britain. In France the revolution of 1848 became known as the February Revolution.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The revolutions spread from France across Europe; they erupted soon thereafter in Austria and Germany, beginning with the large demonstrations on March 13, 1848, in Vienna. This resulted in the resignation of Prince von Metternich as chief minister to Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, and his going into exile in Britain. Because of the date of the Vienna demonstrations, the revolutions in Germany are usually called the March Revolution (German: "Märzrevolution").


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Fearing the fate of Louis-Philippe, some monarchs in Germany accepted some of the demands of the revolutionaries, at least temporarily. In the south and west, large popular assemblies and mass demonstrations took place. They demanded freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, written constitutions, arming of the people, and a parliament.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In 1848, Austria was the predominant German state. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved by Napoleon in 1806, it was succeeded by a similarly loose coalition of states known as the German Confederation at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Austria served as President "ex officio" of this confederation. German Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich had dominated Austrian politics from 1815 until 1848.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: On March 13, 1848, university students mounted a large street demonstration in Vienna, and it was covered by the press across the German-speaking states. Following the important, but relatively minor, demonstrations against royal mistress Lola Montez in Bavaria on February 9, 1848 (see below), the first major revolt of 1848 in German lands occurred in Vienna on March 13, 1848. The demonstrating students in Vienna had been restive and were encouraged by a sermon of Anton Füster, a liberal priest, on Sunday, March 12, 1848, in their university chapel. The student demonstrators demanded a constitution and a constituent assembly elected by universal male suffrage.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Emperor Ferdinand and his chief advisor Metternich directed troops to crush the demonstration. When demonstrators moved to the streets near the palace, the troops fired on the students, killing several. The new working class of Vienna joined the student demonstrations, developing an armed insurrection. The Diet of Lower Austria demanded Metternich's resignation. With no forces rallying to Metternich's defense, Ferdinand reluctantly complied and dismissed him. The former chancellor went into exile in London.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Ferdinand appointed new, nominally liberal, ministers. The Austrian government drafted a constitution in late April 1848. The people rejected this, as the majority was denied the right to vote. The citizens of Vienna returned to the streets from May 26 through 27, 1848, erecting barricades to prepare for an army attack. Ferdinand and his family fled to Innsbruck, where they spent the next few months surrounded by the loyal peasantry of the Tyrol. Ferdinand issued two manifestos on May 16, 1848, and June 3, 1848, which gave concessions to the people. He converted the Imperial Diet into a Constituent Assembly to be elected by the people. Other concessions were less substantial, and generally addressed the reorganizing and unification of Germany.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Ferdinand returned to Vienna from Innsbruck on August 12, 1848. Soon after his return, the working-class populace hit the streets again on August 21 to protest high unemployment and the government's decree to reduce wages. On August 23, 1848, Austrian troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators and shot several.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In late September 1848, Emperor Ferdinand, who was also King Ferdinand V of Hungary, decided to send Austrian and Croatian troops to Hungary to crush a democratic rebellion there. On September 29, 1848, the Austrian troops were defeated by the Hungarian revolutionary forces. On October 6 through 7, 1848, the citizens of Vienna had demonstrated against the emperor's actions against forces in Hungary. As a result, Emperor Ferdinand I fled Vienna on October 7, 1848, taking up residence in the fortress town of Olomouc in Moravia. On December 2, 1848, Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his nephew Franz Joseph.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Baden had a liberal constitution from 1811 until reaction resulted in aristocratic rulers revoking the constitution in 1825. In 1830, Leopold of Baden became Grand Duke. His reign brought liberal reforms in constitutional, civil and criminal law, and in education. In 1832 Baden joined the (Prussian) Customs Union. After news broke of revolutionary victories in February 1848 in Paris, uprisings occurred throughout Europe, including Austria and the German states.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Baden was the first state in Germany to have popular unrest, despite the liberal reforms. Baden happened to be one of the most liberal states in Germany. After the news of the February Days in Paris reached Baden, there were several unorganized instances of peasants burning the mansions of local aristocrats and threatening them.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: On February 27, 1848, in Mannheim, an assembly of people from Baden adopted a resolution demanding a bill of rights. Similar resolutions were adopted in Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and other German states. The surprisingly strong popular support for these movements forced rulers to give in to many of the "Märzforderungen" (demands of March) almost without resistance.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The March Revolution in Vienna was a catalyst to revolution throughout the German states. Popular demands were made for an elected representative government and for the unification of Germany. Fear on the part of the princes and rulers of the various German states caused them to concede in the demand for reform. They approved a pre parliament, which was convened from March 31, 1848, until April 4, 1848, in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt am Main, charged with the task of drafting a new constitution, to be called the "Fundamental Rights and Demands of the German People." The majority of the delegates to the preparliament were constitutional monarchists.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Baden sent two democrats, Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker and Gustav von Struve, to the pre parliament. In the minority and frustrated with the lack of progress, Hecker and Struve walked out in protest on April 2, 1848. The walkout and the continuing revolutionary upsurge in Germany spurred the preparliament to action; they passed a resolution calling for an All-German National Assembly to be formed.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: On April 8, 1848, a law allowing universal suffrage and an indirect (two-stage) voting system was agreed to by the assembly. A new National Assembly was selected, and on May 18, 1848, 809 delegates (585 of whom were elected) were seated at St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt to convene the Frankfurt National Assembly. Karl Mathy, a right-center journalist, was among those elected as deputy to the Frankfurt National Assembly.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Disorder fomented by republican agitators continued in Baden. Fearing greater riots, the Baden government began to increase the size of its army and to seek assistance from neighboring states. The Baden government sought to suppress the revolts by arresting Joseph Fickler, a journalist who was the leader of the Baden democrats. The arrests caused outrage and a rise in protests. A full-scale uprising broke out on April 12, 1848. The Bavarian government suppressed the revolutionary forces led by Friedrich Hecker with the aid of Prussian troops at Kandern on April 20, 1848, ending what became known as the Hecker Uprising.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In May 1849, a resurgence of revolutionary activity occurred in Baden. As this was closely connected to the uprising in the German Palatinate, it is described below, in the section titled, "The Palatinate."


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: When the revolutionary upsurge revived in the spring of 1849, the uprisings started in Elberfeld in the Rhineland on May 6, 1849. However, the uprisings soon spread to the state of Baden, when a riot broke out in Karlsruhe. The state of Baden and the Palatinate (then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria) were separated only by the Rhine. The uprising in Baden and the Palatinate took place largely in the Rhine Valley along their mutual border, and are considered aspects of the same movement. In May 1849, the Grand Duke was forced to leave Karlsruhe, Baden and seek help from Prussia. Provisional governments were declared in both the Palatinate and Baden. In Baden conditions for the provisional government were ideal: the public and army were both strongly in support of constitutional change and democratic reform in the government. The army strongly supported the demands for a constitution; the state had amply supplied arsenals, and a full exchequer. The Palatinate did not have the same conditions.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The Palatinate traditionally contained more upper-class citizens than other areas of Germany, and they resisted the revolutionary changes. In the Palatinate, the army did not support the revolution, and it was not well supplied. When the insurrectionary government took over in the Palatinate, they did not find a fully organized state or a full exchequer. Arms in the Palatinate were limited to privately held muskets, rifles and sporting guns. The provisional government of the Palatinate sent agents to France and Belgium to purchase arms but they were unsuccessful. France banned sales and export of arms to either Baden or the Palatinate.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The provisional government first appointed Joseph Martin Reichard, a lawyer, democrat and deputy in the Frankfurt Assembly, as the head of the military department in the Palatinate. The first Commander in Chief of the military forces of the Palatinate was Daniel Fenner von Fenneberg, a former Austrian officer who commanded the national guard in Vienna during the 1848 uprising. He was soon replaced by Felix Raquilliet, a former Polish staff general in the Polish insurgent army of 1830–1831. Finally Ludwik Mieroslawski was given supreme command of the armed forces in the Palatinate, and Franz Sznayde was given field command of the troops.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Other noteworthy military officers serving the provisional government in the city of Kaiserlautern, were Friedrich Strasser, Alexander Schimmelpfennig, Captain Rudolph von Manteuffel, Albert Clement, Herr Zychlinski, Friedrich von Beust, Eugen Oswald, Amand Goegg, Gustav von Struve, Otto Julius Bernhard von Corvin-Wiersbitzki, Joseph Moll, Johann Gottfried Kinkel, Herr Mersy, Karl Emmermann, Franz Sigel, Major Nerlinger, Colonel Kurz, Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker and Hermann von Natzmer. Hermann von Natzmer was the former Prussian officer who had been in charge of the arsenal of Berlin. Refusing to shoot insurgent forces who stormed the arsenal on June 14, 1848, Natzmer became a hero to insurgents across Germany. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for refusing orders to shoot, but in 1849, he escaped prison and fled to the Palatinate to join its insurgent forces. Gustav Adolph Techow, a former Prussian officer, also joined Palatinate forces. Organizing the artillery and providing services in the ordnance shops was Lieutenant Colonel Freidrich Anneke. He was a member of the Communist League and one of the founders of the Cologne Workers Association in 1848, editor of the "Neue Kölnische Zeitung" and a Rhenish District Committee of Democrats.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Democrats of the Palatinate and across Germany considered the Baden-Palatinate insurrection to be part of the wider all-German struggle for constitutional rights. Franz Sigel, a second lieutenant in the Baden army, a democrat and a supporter of the provisional government, developed a plan to protect the reform movement in Karlsruhe and the Palatinate. He recommended using a corps of the Baden army to advance on the town of Hohenzollern and declare the Hohenzollern Republic, then to march on Stuttgart. After inciting Stuttgart and the surrounding state of Württemberg, the military corps would march to Nuremberg and set up camp in the state of Franconia. Sigel failed to account for dealing with the separate Town of Frankfurt, the home of the Frankfurt Assembly, in order to establish an All-German character to the military campaign for the German constitution.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Despite Sigel's plan, the new insurgent government did not go on the offensive. The uprising in Karlsruhe and the state of Baden was eventually suppressed by the Bavarian Army. Lorenz Peter Brentano, a lawyer and democrat from Baden, headed its government, wielding absolute power. He appointed Karl Eichfeld as War Minister. Later, Eichfeld was replaced as War Minister by Rudolph Mayerhofer. Florian Mördes was appointed as Minister of the Interior. Other members of the provisional government included Joseph Fickler, a journalist and a democrat from Baden. Leaders of the constitutional forces in Baden included Karl Blind, a journalist and a democrat in Baden; and Gustav von Struve, another journalist and democrat from Baden. John Phillip Becker was placed in charge of the peoples' militia. Ludwik Mieroslawski, a Polish-born national who had taken part in the military operations during the Polish uprising of 1830–1831, was placed in charge of the military operation on the Palatinate side of the Rhine River.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Brentano ordered the day-to-day affairs of the uprising in Baden, and Mieroslawski directed a military command on the Palatinate side. They did not coordinate well. For example, Mieroslawski decided to abolish the long-standing toll on the Mannheim-Ludwigshaven bridge over the Rhine River. It was not collected on the Palatinate side, but Brentano's government collected it on the Baden side. Due to the continued lack of coordination, Mieroslawski lost battles in Waghausle and Ubstadt in Baden. He and his troops were forced to retreat across the mountains of southern Baden, where they fought a last battle against the Prussians in the town of Murg, on the frontier between Baden and Switzerland. Mieroslawski and the other survivors of the battle escaped across the frontier to Switzerland, and the commander went into exile in Paris.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Frederick Engels took part in the uprising in Baden and the Palatinate. On May 10, 1848, he and Karl Marx traveled from Cologne, Germany, to observe the events of the region. From June 1, 1848, Engels and Marx became editors of the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung". Less than a year later, on May 19, 1849, the Prussian authorities closed down the newspaper because of its support for constitutional reforms.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In late 1848, Marx and Engels intended to meet with Karl Ludwig Johann D'Ester, then serving as a member of the provisional government in Baden and the Palatinate. He was a physician, democrat and socialist who had been a member of the Cologne community chapter of the Communist League. D'Ester had been elected as a deputy to the Prussian National Assembly in 1848. D'Ester had been elected to the Central committee of the German Democrats, together with Reichenbach and Hexamer, at the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin from October 26 through October 30, 1848. Because of his commitments to the provisional government, D'Ester was unable to attend an important meeting in Paris on behalf of the German Central Committee. He wanted to provide Marx with the mandate to attend the meeting in his place. Marx and Engels met with D'Ester in the town of Kaiserlautern. Marx obtained the mandate and headed off to Paris.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Engels remained in the Palatinate, where in 1849 he joined citizens at the barricades of Elberfeld in the Rhineland, preparing to fight the Prussian troops expected to arrive against the uprising. On his way to Elberfeld, Engels took two cases of rifle cartridges which had been gathered by the workers of Solingen, Germany, when those workers had stormed the arsenal at Gräfrath, Germany. The Prussian troops arrived and crushed the uprising in August 1849. Engels and some others escaped to Kaiserlautern. While in Kaiserlautern on June 13, 1849, Engels joined an 800-member group of workers being formed as a military corps by August Willich, a former Prussian military officer. He was also a member of the Communist League and supported revolutionary change in Germany. The newly formed Willich Corps combined with other revolutionary groups to form an army of about 30,000 strong; it fought to resist the highly trained Prussian troops. Engels fought with the Willich Corps for their entire campaign in the Palatinate.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The Prussians defeated this revolutionary army, and the survivors of Willichs Corps crossed over the frontier into the safety of Switzerland. Engels did not reach Switzerland until July 25, 1849. He sent word of his survival to Marx and friends and comrades in London, England. A refugee in Switzerland, Engels began to write about his experiences during the revolution. He published the article, "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution." Due to the Prussian Army's ease in crushing the uprising, many South German states came to believe that Prussia, not Austria, was going to be the new power in the region. The suppression of the uprising in Baden and the Palatinate was the end of the German revolutionary uprisings that had begun in the spring of 1848.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In March 1848, crowds of people gathered in Berlin to present their demands in an "address to the king". King Frederick William IV, taken by surprise, verbally yielded to all the demonstrators' demands, including parliamentary elections, a constitution, and freedom of the press. He promised that "Prussia was to be merged forthwith into Germany."


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: On March 13, after warnings by the police against public demonstrations went unheeded, the army charged a group of people returning from a meeting in the Tiergarten, leaving one person dead and many injured. On March 18, a large demonstration occurred. After two shots were fired, fearing that some of the 20,000 soldiers would be used against them, demonstrators erected barricades, and a battle ensued until troops were ordered 13 hours later to retreat, leaving hundreds dead. Afterwards, Frederick William attempted to reassure the public that he would proceed with reorganizing his government. The King also approved arming the citizens.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In his memoirs, Field Marshal Alfred von Waldersee, who in March 1848 was a sixteen-year-old student at the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, gave a vivid description of the revolutionary events in Berlin:


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Those March days of 1848 left the most lasting impression on us young soldiers. From the so-called "Spielhof" alongside the Spree we could see the erection of the barricades on the "Marschallbrücke". The outbreak began at different parts of the city at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 18th, our attention being called to it by the circumstance that shots were fired at the sentinels in front of the Franz Regiment's barracks, which adjoined those of the Cadet Corps. The report went that the Cadet Corps, that breeding place of reaction, was to be up rooted [sic]! This put our superior officers in a very awkward predicament; all connection with the outer world was cut off, and the Franz Regiment, which had been quartered next door to us, had been moved away, so we had to decide for ourselves what to do. General von Below was a feeble old man, Lieut.-Colonel Richter and our company commanders were all elderly–most of them had taken part in the War of Liberation–and some of them were no good as officers, so it was small wonder if a lack of vigour or decision was displayed. It was under debate whether we should not abstain from any attempt at resistance, when the senior lieutenant, Besserer von Dahlfingen, of my company, an exceptionally small man, spoke out at the Council of War and declared that it would be a disgrace if we surrendered to the Revolutionaries without a blow. Thereupon it was resolved to put up a fight. Our main position was to be on the first floor, led, up to by four stone staircases, each of which was allotted to a company. Our firearms, which had been placed in hiding already, were taken out again, and we began to block up the entrances to the staircases. Unfortunately we had no ammunition! This lack was in some degree made good by such officers as were sportsmen and had some powder and shot to distribute, so that firing might have been done by each of the companies; percussion-caps we secured from the Franz Regiment's barracks. However, things were not to become serious, for a battalion of the 1st Regiment of Guards pushed forward to the Marschallbrücke and averted all possibility of danger for us. The noise of the fighting died down now a little, only to revive again in the evening. The "Leibregiment" advanced to the Alexanderplatz from the Frankfurter Gate, amidst the same kind of continuous but unsystematic fighting which the Guards also had encountered.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Early in the morning of the 19th–it may have been about 4 o'clock, the shooting had been followed by silence throughout the city–we were given the alarm and had to don our cloaks and fall in with our guns and march to the Schloss (the Royal Palace in Berlin), by order of General von Prittwitz. We set out just as day was breaking. In the Königstrasse we passed three or four deserted barricades; we could see that most of the windows in the street were broken and that all the houses showed marks of bullets.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Arrived at the Schloss, led by General von Below, himself afoot, we were ushered through “Portal No. I” into the Castle Yard, where General von Prittwitz was to be seen mounted on a chestnut with some officers round about him. We had now to down arms and we began almost to freeze in the cold morning air. It was very pleasant for us, therefore, when we were taken, troop by troop, into the kitchen, and given coffee. There was now a lively "va-et-vient" of mounted aides-de-camp, and others in the Castle Yard. The streets through which we had passed, and the open places outside the Schloss, had, of course, been empty. Now we saw many waggons [sic] and bodies of troops bivouacking. Prisoners were being brought in every now and again and taken into the Castle cellars. After a wait of two hours or so we were given orders to march back to Potsdam.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: On March 21, the King proceeded through the streets of Berlin to attend a mass funeral at the Friedrichshain cemetery for the civilian victims of the uprising. He and his ministers and generals wore the revolutionary tricolor of black, red, and gold. Polish prisoners, who had been jailed for planning a rebellion in formerly Polish territories now ruled by Prussia, were liberated and paraded through the city to the acclaim of the people. The 254 persons killed during the riots were laid out on catafalques on the Gendarmenmarkt. Some 40,000 people accompanied these fallen demonstrators to their burial place at Friedrichshain.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: A Constituent National Assembly was elected from various German states in late April and early May 1848 and gathered in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt am Main on May 18, 1848. The deputies consisted of 122 government officials, 95 judges, 81 lawyers, 103 teachers, 17 manufacturers and wholesale dealers, 15 physicians, and 40 landowners. A majority of the Assembly were liberals. It became known as the "professors' parliament", as many of its members were academics in addition to their other responsibilities. The one working-class member was Polish and, like colleagues from the Tyrol, not taken seriously.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Starting on May 18, 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly worked to find ways to unite the various German states and to write a constitution. The Assembly was unable to pass resolutions and dissolved into endless debate.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: On May 22, 1848, another elected assembly sat for the first time in Berlin. They were elected under the law of April 8, 1848, which allowed for universal suffrage and a two-stage voting system. Most of the deputies elected to the Berlin Assembly, called the "Prussian National Assembly", were members of the burghers or liberal bureaucracy. They set about the task of writing a constitution "by agreement with the Crown". King Frederick William IV of Prussia unilaterally imposed a monarchist constitution to undercut the democratic forces. This constitution took effect on December 5, 1848. On December 5, 1848, the Berlin Assembly was dissolved and replaced with the bicameral legislature allowed under the monarchist Constitution. This legislature was composed of a "Herrenhaus" and a "Landtag." Otto von Bismarck was elected to the first "Landtag" elected under the new monarchical constitution.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In Dresden, the capital of the Kingdom of Saxony, the people took to the streets asking King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony to engage in electoral reform, social justice and for a constitution.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: German composer Richard Wagner passionately engaged himself in the revolution in Dresden, supporting the democratic-republican movement. Later during the May Uprising in Dresden from May 3–9, 1849, he supported the provisional government. Others participating in the Uprising were the Russian revolutionary Michael Bakunin and the German working-class leader Stephen Born. In all, about 2,500 combatants manned the barricades during the May Uprising. On May 9, 1849, together with the leaders of the uprising, Wagner left Dresden for Switzerland to avoid arrest. He spent a number of years in exile abroad, in Switzerland, Italy, and Paris. Finally the government lifted its ban against him and he returned to Germany.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: Since the revolutionary events of 1830, Saxony had been ruled as a constitutional monarchy with a two-chamber legislature and an accountable ministry. This constitution continued to serve as the basis of the Saxon government until 1918. The Revolution of 1848 brought more popular reforms in the government of Saxony.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In 1849, many Saxon residents emigrated to the United States, including Michael Machemehl. They landed in Galveston, Texas and created what became the German Texan community. In mid-century, some lived in cities, but many developed substantial farms to the west in Texas.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The Rhineland shared a common history with the Rhenish Hesse, Luxembourg and the Palatinate of having been under the control of Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France from 1795. His rule established social, administrative and legislative measures taken that broke up the feudal rule that the clergy and the nobility had exercised over the area previously. The soil of the Rhineland is not the best for agriculture, but forestry has traditionally been a strong industry there. The relative lack of agriculture, late 18th-century elimination of the feudal structure, and the strong logging industry contributed to the industrialization of the Rhineland. With nearby sources of coal in the Mark, and access via the Rhine to the North Sea, the west bank of the Rhine in the Rhineland became the premier industrial area in Germany in the 19th century. By 1848, the towns of Aachen, Cologne and Düsseldorf were heavily industrialized, with a number of different industries represented. At the beginning of the 19th century, more than 90% of the population of the Rhineland was engaged in agriculture (including lumbering), but by 1933, only 12% were still working in agriculture


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: By 1848, a large industrial working class, the proletariat, had developed and, owing to Napoleonic France, the level of education was relatively high and it was politically active. While in other German states the liberal petty bourgeoisie led the uprisings of 1848, in the Rhineland the proletariat was asserting its interests openly against the bourgeoisie as early as 1840.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: In 1848, Prussia controlled the Rhineland as part of "Western Prussia", having first acquired territory in this area in 1614. During the Napoleonic Era, as noted above, the Rhineland west of the Rhine had been incorporated into France and its feudal structures dismantled. But, following the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, Prussia took over the west bank of the Rhineland. Its government treated the Rhinelanders as subjects and alien peoples, and it began to reinstate the hated feudal structures. Much of the revolutionary impulse in the Rhineland in 1848 was colored by a strong anti-Prussian feeling. The Rhinelanders took careful note of the announcement by King Frederick William IV on March 18, 1848, in Berlin that a United Diet would be formed and that other democratic reforms would be instituted. Elections for the United Diet were indirect. The elections were conducted on the basis of universal male suffrage, and they were to choose the members of the United Diet. Rhinelanders remained hopeful regarding this progress and did not participate in the early round of uprisings that were occurring in other parts of Germany.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The Prussian government mistook this quietude in the Rhineland for loyalty to the autocratic Prussian government. The Prussian government began offering military assistance to other states in suppressing the revolts in their territories and cities, "i.e". Dresden, the Palatinate, Baden, Wűrttemberg, Franconia, "etc". Soon the Prussians discovered that they needed additional troops in this effort. Taking the loyalty of the Rhineland for granted, in the spring of 1849 the Prussian government called up a large portion of the army reserve—the "Landwehr" in Westphalia and the Rhineland. This action was opposed: the order to call up the "Landwehr" affected all males under the age of 40 years, and such a call up was to be done only in time of war, not in peacetime, when it was considered illegal. The Prussian King dissolved the Second Chamber of the United Diet because on March 27, 1849 it passed an unpopular constitution. The entire citizenry of the Rhineland, including the petty bourgeoisie, the grand bourgeoisie and the proletariat, rose up to protect the political reforms which they believed were slipping away.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: On May 9, 1849, uprisings occurred in the Rhenish towns of Elberfeld, Düsseldorf, Iserlohn and Solingen. The uprising in Düsseldorf was suppressed the following day on May 10, 1849. In the town of Elberfeld, the uprising showed strength and persistence, as 15,000 workers took to the streets and erected barricades; they confronted the Prussian troops sent to suppress the unrest and to collect a quota of "Landwehr" conscripts. In the end, the troops collected only about 40 conscripts from Elberfeld. A Committee of Public Safety was formed in the town, to organize the citizens in revolt. Members of the Committee included Karl Nickolaus Riotte, a democrat and a lawyer in Elberfeld; Ernst Hermann Höchster, another lawyer and democrat, elected as chairman of the Committee, and Alexis Heintzmann, a lawyer and a liberal who was also the public prosecutor in Elberfeld. Members of the Palatinate provisional government included Nikolaus Schmitt, serving as Minister of the Interior, and Theodor Ludwig Greiner. Karl Hecker, Franz Heinrch Zitz and Ludwig Blenker were among the other of the leaders of the Elberfeld uprising.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The members of the Committee for Public Safety could not agree on a common plan, let alone control the various groups taking part in the uprising. The awakened working classes were pursuing their goals with single-minded determination. Citizen-military forces (paramilitary) organized to support the uprising. Military leaders of these forces included August Willich and Feliks Trociński and Captain Christian Zinn. On May 17 through 18, 1849, a group of workers and democrats from Trier and neighboring townships stormed the arsenal at Prüm to obtain arms for the insurgents. Workers from Solingen stormed the arsenal at Gräfrath and obtained arms and cartridges for the insurgents. (As noted above under the heading on "The Palatinate") Frederick Engels was active in the uprising in Elberfeld from May 11, 1849 until the end of the revolt. On May 10, 1849, he was in Solingen and making his way toward Elberfeld. He obtained two cases of cartridges from the arsenal at Gräfrath and carried them to Elberfeld.


title: German revolutions of 1848–1849

text: The upper bourgeoisie were frightened by the armed working classes taking to the streets. They began to separate themselves from the movement for constitutional reform and the Committee of Public Safety, describing the leaders as bloodthirsty terrorists. Leaders of the Committee, who were mostly petty bourgeoisie, were starting to vacillate. Rather than working to organize and direct the various factions of protests, they began to draw back from the revolutionary movement, especially the destruction of property. The Committee of Public Safety tried to calm the reformist movement and quell the demonstrations.