title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg had spent the tail end of 1896 and most of 1897 in the university town of Lund in southern Sweden, a sojourn during which he made a number of new friendships, felt his mental stability and health improving and also firmly returned to literary writing; "Inferno, Legends" and "Jacob Wrestling" were written there. In 1899, he returned permanently to Stockholm, following a successful production there of "Master Olof" in 1897 (which was re-staged in 1899 to mark Strindberg's fiftieth birthday). He had the desire to become recognized as a leadíng figure in Swedish literature, and to put earlier controversies behind him, and felt that historical dramas were the way to attain that status. Though Strindberg claimed that he was writing "realistically," he freely altered past events and biographical information, and telescoped chronology (as often done in most historical fiction): more importantly, he felt a flow of resurgent inspiration, writing almost twenty new plays (many in a historical setting) between 1898 and 1902. His new works included the so-called Vasa Trilogy: "The Saga of the Folkungs" (1899), "Gustavus Vasa" (1899), and "Erik XIV" (1899) and "A Dream Play" (written in 1901, first performed in 1907).


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg was pivotal in the creation of chamber plays. Max Reinhardt was a big supporter of his, staging some of his plays at the Kleines Theatre in 1902 (including "The Bond", "The Stronger", and "The Outlaw"). Once Otto Brahm relinquished his role as head as of the Deutsches Theatre, Reinhardt took over and produced Strindberg's plays.


title: August Strindberg

text: In 1903, Strindberg planned to write a grand cycle of plays based on world history, but the idea soon faded. He had completed short plays about Martin Luther, Plato, Moses, Jesus Christ, and Socrates. He wrote another historical drama in 1908 after the Royal Theatre convinced him to put on a new play for its sixtieth birthday. He wrote "The Last of the Knights" (1908), "Earl Birger of Bjalbo" (1909), and "The Regents" (1909).


title: August Strindberg

text: His other works, such as "Days of Loneliness" (1903), "The Roofing Ceremony" (1907), and "The Scapegoat" (1907), and the novels "The Gothic Rooms" (1904) and "Black Banners Genre Scenes from the Turn of the Century", (1907) have been viewed as precursors to Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka.


title: August Strindberg

text: August Falck, an actor, wanted to put on a production of "Miss Julie" and wrote to Strindberg for permission. In September 1906 he staged the first Swedish production of "Miss Julie". August Falck, played Jean and Manda Bjorling played Julie.


title: August Strindberg

text: In 1909, Strindberg thought he might get the Nobel Prize in Literature, but instead lost to Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman and first Swede to win the award. The leader of the Social Democrat Youth Alliance started a fund-raiser for a special "people's award". Nathan Söderblom (friend of Strindberg since the mid-90s years in Paris, a prominent theologian and later to become archbishop of Sweden) was noted as a donor, and both he and Strindberg came under attack from circles close to the conservative party and the church. In total 45,000 Swedish crowns were collected, by more than 20,000 donors, most of whom were workers. Albert Bonniers förlag, who had already published much of his work over the years, paid him 200,000 Swedish crowns for the publishing rights to his complete works; the first volumes of the edition would appear in print in 1912, a few months before his death. He invited his first three children (now, like their mother, living in Finland) to Stockholm and divided the money into five shares, one for each child, one for Siri (absent), and the last one for himself. In setting apart one share for Siri, Strindberg noted, in a shy voice, "This is for your mother - it's to settle an old debt". When the children returned to Helsinki, Siri was surprised to hear that she had been included, but accepted the money and told them in a voice that was, according to her daughter Karin, both proud and moved, "I shall accept it, receiving it as an old debt". The debt was less financial than mental and emotional; Strindberg knew he had sometimes treated her unfairly during the later years of their marriage and at their divorce trial. In 1912, she would pass away only a few weeks before him.


title: August Strindberg

text: In 1907 Strindberg co-founded The Intimate Theatre in Stockholm, together with the young actor and stage director August Falck. His theatre was modeled after Max Reinhardt's Kammerspiel Haus. Strindberg and Falck had the intention of the theatre being used for his plays and his plays only, Strindberg also wanted to try out a more chamber-oriented and sparse style of dramatic writing and production. In time for the theatre's opening, Strindberg wrote four chamber plays: "Thunder in the Air, The Burned Site, The Ghost Sonata", and "The Pelican"; these were generally not a success with audiences or newspaper critics at the time but have been highly influential on modern drama (and soon would reach wider audiences at Reinhardt's theatre in Berlin and other German stages). Strindberg had very specific ideas about how the theatre would be opened and operated. He drafted a series of rules for his theatre in a letter to August Falck: 1. No liquor. 2. No Sunday performances. 3. Short performances without intermissions. 4. No calls. 5. Only 160 seats in the auditorium. 6. No prompter. No orchestra, only music on stage. 7. The text will be sold at the box office and in the lobby. 8. Summer performances. Falck helped to design the auditorium, which was decorated in a deep-green tone. The ceiling lighting was a yellow silk cover which created an effect of mild daylight. The floor was covered with a deep-green carpet, and the auditorium was decorated by six ultra modern columns with elaborate up-to-date capitals. Instead of the usual restaurant Strindberg offered a lounge for the ladies and a smoking-room for the gentlemen. The stage was unusually small, only 6 by 9 metres. The small stage and minimal number of seats was meant to give the audience a greater feeling of involvement in the work. Unlike most theatres at this time, the Intima Teater was not a place in which people could come to socialize. By setting up his rules and creating an intimate atmosphere, Strindberg was able to demand the audience's focus. When the theatre opened in 1907 with a performance of "The Pelican" it was a rather large hit. Strindberg used a minimal technique, as was his way, by only having a back drop and some sea shells on the stage for scene design and props. Strindberg was much more concerned with the actors portraying the written word than the stage looking pretty. The theatre ran into a financial difficulty in February 1908 and Falck had to borrow money from Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke, who attended the première of "The Pelican". The theatre eventually went bankrupt in 1910, but did not close until Strindberg's death in 1912. The newspapers wrote about the theatre until its death.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg died shortly after the first staging of one of his plays in the United States — "The Father" opened on 9 April 1912 at the Berkeley Theatre in New York, in a translation by painter and playwright Edith Gardener Shearn Oland and her husband actor Warner Oland. They jointly published their translations of his plays in book form in 1912.


title: August Strindberg

text: During Christmas 1911, Strindberg became sick with pneumonia and he never recovered completely. He also began to suffer more clearly from a stomach cancer (early signs of which had been felt in 1908). The final weeks of his life were painful. He had long since become a national celebrity, even if highly controversial, and when it became clear that he was seriously ill the daily papers in Stockholm began reporting on his health in every edition. He received many letters and telegrams from admirers across the country. He died on 14 May 1912 at the age of 63.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg was interred at Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm. He had given strict instructions concerning his funeral and how his body should be treated after death: only members of his immediate family were allowed to view his body, there would be no autopsy, no photographs were taken, and no death mask was made. Strindberg had also requested that his funeral should take place as soon as possible after his death to avoid crowds of onlookers. However, the workers' organisations requested that the funeral should take place on a Sunday to make it possible for working men to pay their respects, and the funeral was postponed for five days, until Sunday, 19 May. According to Strindberg's last wish, the funeral procession was to start at 8am, again to avoid crowds, but large groups of people were nevertheless waiting outside his home as well as at the cemetery, as early as 7am. A short service was conducted by Nathan Söderblom by the bier in Strindberg's home, in the presence of three of Strindberg's children and his housekeeper, after which the coffin was taken outside for the funeral procession. The procession was followed by groups of students, workers, members of Parliament and a couple of cabinet ministers, and it was estimated that up to 60,000 people lined the streets. King Gustaf V sent a wreath for the bier.


title: August Strindberg

text: Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Maxim Gorky, John Osborne, and Ingmar Bergman are among the many artists who have cited Strindberg as an influence. Eugene O'Neill, upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, dedicated much of his acceptance speech to describing Strindberg's influence on his work, and referred to him as "that greatest genius of all modern dramatists." Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges said of Strindberg: "[he] was, for a time, my god, alongside Nietzsche".


title: August Strindberg

text: A multi-faceted author, Strindberg was often extreme. His novel "The Red Room" (1879) made him famous. His early plays belong to the Naturalistic movement. His works from this time are often compared with the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Strindberg's best-known play from this period is "Miss Julie". Among his most widely read works is the novel "The People of Hemsö".


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg wanted to attain what he called "greater Naturalism." He disliked the expository character backgrounds that characterise the work of Henrik Ibsen and rejected the convention of a dramatic "slice of life" because he felt that the resulting plays were mundane and uninteresting. Strindberg felt that true naturalism was a psychological "battle of brains": two people who hate each other in the immediate moment and strive to drive the other to doom is the type of mental hostility that Strindberg strove to describe. He intended his plays to be impartial and objective, citing a desire to make literature akin to a science.


title: August Strindberg

text: Following the inner turmoil that he experienced during the "Inferno crisis," he wrote an important book in French, "Inferno" (1896–7), in which he dramatised his experiences. He also exchanged a few cryptic letters with Friedrich Nietzsche.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg subsequently ended his association with Naturalism and began to produce works informed by Symbolism. He is considered one of the pioneers of the modern European stage and Expressionism. "The Dance of Death", "A Dream Play", and "The Ghost Sonata" are well-known plays from this period.


title: August Strindberg

text: Internationally, Strindberg is chiefly remembered as a playwright, but in his native Sweden his name is associated no less with novels and other writings. "Röda rummet" (The Red Room), "Hemsöborna" (The People of Hemsö), "Giftas" (Getting Married), "En dåres försvarstal" (The Confession of a Fool), and "Inferno" remain among his most celebrated novels, representing different genres and styles. He is often, though not universally, viewed as Sweden's greatest author, and taught in schools as a key figure of Swedish culture. The most important contemporary literary award in Sweden, Augustpriset, is named for Strindberg.


title: August Strindberg

text: The Swedish composer Ture Rangström dedicated his first Symphony, which was finished in 1914, to "August Strindberg in memoriam".


title: August Strindberg

text: An acerbic polemicist who was often vehemently opposed to conventional authority, Strindberg was difficult to pigeon-hole as a political figure. Through his long career, he penned scathing attacks on the military, the church, and the monarchy. For most of his public life, he was seen as a major figure on the literary left and a standard-bearer of cultural radicalism, but, especially from the 1890s, he espoused conservative and religious views that alienated many former supporters. He resumed his attacks on conservative society with great vigor in the years immediately preceding his death.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg's opinions were typically stated with great force and vitriol, and sometimes humorously over-stated. He was involved in a variety of crises and feuds, skirmishing regularly with the literary and cultural establishment of his day, including erstwhile allies and friends. His youthful reputation as a genial "enfant terrible" of Swedish literature, transformed, eventually, into the role of a sort of ill-tempered towering giant of Swedish public life.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg was a prolific letter-writer, whose private communications have been collected in several annotated volumes. He often voiced political views privately to friends and literary acquaintances, phrased in a no-holds-barred jargon of scathing attacks, drastic humor, and flippant hyperbole. Many of his most controversial political statements are drawn from this private correspondence.


title: August Strindberg

text: Influenced by the history of the 1871 Paris Commune, the young Strindberg had embraced the view that politics was the art of the upper class to keep the lower class under itself. Early works like the "Red Room" or "Master Olof" took aim at public hypocrisy, royalty, and organized religion. He was, at this time, an outspoken socialist, mainly influenced by anarchist or libertarian socialist ideas. However, Strindberg's socialism was undogmatic and rooted in a ruthless critique of state, chuch, school, press, and economy in which he aimed at pitting the people against kings, economists, priests, and merchants. A small example from this period is his Little Catechism for the Underclass.


title: August Strindberg

text: He read widely among progressive thinkers, including Cabet, Fourier, Babeuf, Saint-Simon, Proudhon, and Owen, whom he referred to as "friends of humanity and sharp thinkers." "Strindberg adopted ideas from everyone," writes Jan Olsson, who notes that Strindberg lived in a period where "terms like anarchism, socialism, and communism were alternately used as synonyms and as different terms."


title: August Strindberg

text: By the early 1880s, many young political and literary radicals in Sweden had come to view Strindberg as a champion of their causes. However, in contrast to the Marxist-influenced socialism then rising within the Swedish labor movement, Strindberg espoused an older type of agrarian radicalism accompanied by spiritual and even mystical ideas. His views remained as fluid and eclectic as they were uncompromising, and on certain issues he could be wildly out of step with the younger generation of socialists. To Martin Kylhammar, the young Strindberg "was a 'reactionary radical' whose writing was populist and democratic but who persisted in an antiquated romanticizing of agrarian life."


title: August Strindberg

text: Although he had been an early proponent of women's rights, calling for women's suffrage in 1884, Strindberg later became disenchanted with what he viewed as an unnatural equation of the sexes. In times of personal conflict and marital trouble (which was much of the time), he could lash out with crudely misogynistic statements. His troubled marriage with Siri von Essen, ended in an upsetting divorce in 1891, became the inspiration for "The Defence of a Fool", begun in 1887 and published in 1893. Strindberg famously sought to insert a warning to lawmakers against "granting citizens' rights to half-apes, lower beings, sick children, [who are] sick and crazed thirteen times a year during their periods, completely insane while pregnant, and irresponsible throughout the rest of their lives." The paragraph was ultimately removed before printing by his publisher.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg's misogyny was at odds with the younger generation of socialist activists and has drawn attention in contemporary Strindberg scholarship. So was Strindberg's anti-Jewish rhetoric. Although particularly targeting Jewish enemies of his in Swedish cultural life, he also attacked Jews and Judaism as such. The antisemitic outbursts were particularly pronounced in the early 1880s, when Strindberg dedicated an entire chapter ("Moses") in a work of social and political satire, "Det nya riket", dedicated to heckling Swedish Jews (including an unflattering portrayal of Albert Bonnier). Although anti-Jewish prejudice was far from uncommon in wider society in the 1880s, Jan Myrdal notes that "the entire liberal and democratic intelligentsia of the time distanced themselves from the older, left-wing antisemitism of August Strindberg." Yet, as with many things, Strindberg's opinions and passions shifted with time. In the mid-1880s he toned down and then mostly ended his anti-Jewish rhetoric, after publicly declaring himself not to be an anti-Semite in 1884.


title: August Strindberg

text: A self-declared atheist in his younger years, Strindberg would also re-embrace Christianity, without necessarily making his peace with the church. As noted by Stockholm's Strindberg Museum, the personal and spiritual crisis that Strindberg underwent in Paris in the 1890s, which prompted the writing of "Inferno", had aesthetic as well as philosophical and political implications: "Before the Inferno crisis (1869 – 92), Strindberg was influenced by anarchism, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche; in the years after the crisis (1897 – 1911) he was influenced by Swedenborg, Goethe, Shakespeare, and Beethoven."


title: August Strindberg

text: Despite his reactionary attitudes on issues such as women's rights and his conservative, mystical turn from the early 1890s, Strindberg remained popular with some in the socialist-liberal camp on the strength of his past radicalism and his continued salience as a literary modernizer. However, several former admirers were disappointed and troubled by what they viewed as Strindberg's descent into religious conservatism and, perhaps, madness. His former ally and friend, Social Democrat leader Hjalmar Branting, now dismissed the author as a "disaster" who had betrayed his past ideals for a reactionary, mystical elitism. In 1909, Branting remarked on Strindberg's shifting political and cultural posture, on the occasion of the author's sixtieth birthday:


title: August Strindberg

text: Toward the end of his life, however, Strindberg would dramatically reassert his role as a radical standard-bearer and return to the good graces of progressive Swedish opinion.


title: August Strindberg

text: In April 1910, Strindberg launched a series of unprompted, insult-laden attacks on popular conservative symbols, viciously thrashing the nationalist cult of former king Charles XII ("pharao worship"), the lauded poet Verner von Heidenstam ("the spirit-seer of Djursholm"), and the famous author and traveler Sven Hedin ("the humbug explorer"). The ensuing debate, known as "Strindbergsfejden" or "The Strindberg Feud", is one of the most significant literary debates in Swedish history. It came to comprise about a thousand articles by various authors across some eighty newspapers, raging for two years until Strindberg's death in 1912. The Feud served to revive Strindberg's reputation as an implacable enemy of bourgeois tastes, while also reestablishing beyond doubt his centrality to Swedish culture and politics. In 1912, Strindberg's funeral was co-organized by Branting and heavily attended by members of the Swedish labor movement, with "more than 100 red banners" in attendance alongside the entire Social Democrat parliamentary contingent.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg's daughter Karin Strindberg married a Russian Bolshevik of partially Swedish ancestry, ("Paulsson").


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg, something of a polymath, was also a telegrapher, theosophist, painter, photographer and alchemist.


title: August Strindberg

text: Painting and photography offered vehicles for his belief that chance played a crucial part in the creative process.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg's paintings were unique for their time, and went beyond those of his contemporaries for their radical lack of adherence to visual reality. The 117 paintings that are acknowledged as his were mostly painted within the span of a few years, and are now seen by some as among the most original works of 19th-century art.


title: August Strindberg

text: Today, his best-known pieces are stormy, expressionist seascapes, selling at high prices in auction houses. Though Strindberg was friends with Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin, and was thus familiar with modern trends, the spontaneous and subjective expressiveness of his landscapes and seascapes can be ascribed also to the fact that he painted only in periods of personal crisis. Anders Zorn also did a portrait.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg's interest in photography resulted, among other things, in a large number of arranged self-portraits in various environments, which now number among the best-known pictures of him. Strindberg also embarked on a series of camera-less images, using an experimental quasi-scientific approach. He produced a type of photogram that encouraged the development and growth of crystals on the photographic emulsion, sometimes exposed for lengthy periods to heat or cold in the open air or at night facing the stars. The suggestiveness of these, which he called Celestographs, provided an object for contemplation, and he noted;


title: August Strindberg

text: His interest in the occult in the 1890s finds sympathy with the chance quality of these images, but for him they are also scientific.


title: August Strindberg

text: In 1895 Strindberg met Camille Flammarion and became a member of the Société astronomique de France. He gave some of his experimental astronomical photographs to the Society.


title: August Strindberg

text: Alchemy, occultism, Swedenborgianism, and various other eccentric interests were pursued by Strindberg with some intensity for periods of his life.


title: August Strindberg

text: In the curious and experimental 1897 work "Inferno" – a dark, paranoid, and confusing tale of his time in Paris, written in French, which takes the form of an autobiographical journal – Strindberg, as the narrator, claims to have successfully performed alchemical experiments and cast black magic spells on his daughter. Much of "Inferno" indicates that the author suffered from paranoid delusions, as he writes of being stalked through Paris, haunted by evil forces, and targeted with mind-altering electric rays emitted by an "infernal machine" covertly installed in his hotel. It remains unclear to what extent the book represents a genuine attempt at autobiography or exaggerates for literary effect. Olof Lagercrantz has suggested that Strindberg staged and imagined elements of the crisis as material for his literary production.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg was age 28 and Siri was 27 at the time of their marriage. He was 44 and Frida was 21 when they married, and he was 52 and Harriet was 23 when they married. Late during his life he met the young actress and painter Fanny Falkner (1890–1963) who was 41 years younger than Strindberg. She wrote a book which illuminates his last years, but the exact nature of their relationship is debated. He had a brief affair in Berlin with Dagny Juel before his marriage to Frida; it has been suggested that the news of her murder in 1901 was the reason he cancelled his honeymoon with his third wife, Harriet.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg's relationships with women were troubled and have often been interpreted as misogynistic by contemporaries and modern readers. Marriage and families were being stressed in Strindberg's lifetime as Sweden industrialized and urbanized at a rapid pace. Problems of prostitution and poverty were debated among writers, critics and politicians. His early writing often dealt with the traditional roles of the sexes imposed by society, which he criticized as unjust.


title: August Strindberg

text: Strindberg's last home was Blå tornet in central Stockholm, where he lived from 1908 until 1912. It is now a museum. Of several statues and busts of him erected in Stockholm, the most prominent is Carl Eldh's, erected in 1942 in Tegnérlunden, a park adjoining this house.


title: Chessboard

text: A chessboard is a used to play chess. It consists of 64 squares, 8 rows by 8 columns, on which the chess pieces are placed. It is square in shape and uses two colours of squares, one light and one dark, in a chequered pattern. During play, the board is oriented such that each player's near-right corner square is a light square.


title: Chessboard

text: The columns of a chessboard are known as ', the rows are known as ', and the lines of adjoining same-coloured squares (each running from one edge of the board to an adjacent edge) are known as "". Each square of the board is named using algebraic, descriptive, or numeric chess notation; algebraic notation is the FIDE standard. In algebraic notation, using White's perspective, files are labeled "a" through "h" from left to right, and ranks are labeled "1" through "8" from bottom to top; each square is identified by the file and rank which it occupies. The a- through d-files comprise the , while the e- through h-files comprise the .


title: Chessboard

text: The earliest known ancestor of the chessboard is the Ashtāpada board. Among other games, it was used to play chaturanga, a historical precursor to chess, beginning around the 6th century in India. The board uses a single color for all squares and is divided into eight columns by eight rows, with marked squares called "castles" in the corners of each quadrant. Unlike in Ashtāpada, castles serve no function in chaturanga.


title: Chessboard

text: The chessboard acquired its modern chequered pattern in the 10th century with the arrival of chess in Europe. This pattern was based on that of the then-5×5 draughts board. As a result of this change, each diagonal was now highlighted by a continuous sequence of same-coloured squares, which later facilitated the introduction of the modern bishop and queen movements in the 15th century.


title: Chessboard

text: The Libro de los juegos (1283) contains a description of the chessboard, describing eight rows and columns as the ideal number, deeming the practice of chess on the 10×10 board too tiresome and on the 6×6 board too quick. In the 13th century, some players began using the convention that the first square of the far right column should be light-coloured; this convention was endorsed by Pedro Damiano at the end of the 15th century.


title: Chessboard

text: In 2003, the ex-world champion Garry Kasparov faced the chess engine X3D Fritz in a series of four matches in a virtual environment, where the computer-generated board hovered in the air in front of Kasparov, who used special glasses. This was the first man–machine game of chess performed in a completely simulated environment.


title: Chessboard

text: Chessboards have been made from numerous materials over the years, such as ebony, ivory, marble, metal, glass, and plastic. They can also be found as decorative elements in plazas, gardens, and living rooms.


title: Chessboard

text: High-level games generally use wooden boards, while vinyl, plastic, and cardboard are common for less important tournaments and matches, as well as for home use. Additionally, some very large chessboards are built into or drawn on the ground. Rarely, decorative glass and marble boards are permitted for games conducted by national or international chess federations.


title: Chessboard

text: Wooden boards are traditionally made of unstained woods that are light brown and dark brown in colour. To reduce cost, some boards are made with veneers of more expensive woods glued to an inner piece of plywood or chipboard. A variety of colour combinations are used for plastic, vinyl, and silicone boards. Common dark-light combinations are black and white, as well as brown, green or blue with buff or cream.


title: Chessboard

text: For international or continental championships, FIDE's regulations state that wooden boards should be used. For other FIDE tournaments, wood, plastic, or cardboard boards may be used, and the board should be rigid in all instances. The board may also be made of marble, as long as there is an appropriate contrast between the light and dark squares. The finishing should be neutral or frosted but never shiny. The squares should be from 5 to 6 cm in length, at least twice the diameter of a pawn's base. If the table and the board are two separate pieces, the latter must be fixed so it stays in place.


title: Chessboard

text: There are various systems for recording moves and referring to the squares of the chessboard; the standard contemporary system is algebraic notation. In algebraic notation, the files are identified by the letters "a" to "h", from left to right from the white player's point of view, and the ranks by the numbers "1" to "8", with 1 being closest to the white player. Each square on the board is identified by a unique coordinate pairing, from a1 to h8.


title: Chessboard

text: In the older descriptive notation, the files are labelled by the piece originally occupying its first rank (e.g. queen, , ), and ranks by the numbers "1" to "8" from each player's point of view, depending on the move being described. This method is no longer commonly used. FIDE stopped using descriptive notation in 1981.


title: Chessboard

text: ICCF numeric notation assigns numbers to both files and ranks, with rank 1 being the one closest to the player with the white pieces. The file leftmost to the white player ("a" in algebraic notation and "QR" in descriptive notation) is file one and the rightmost to them ("h" in algebraic notation and "KR" in descriptive notation) is file eight.


title: Chessboard

text: Variant chessboard shapes and sizes go back to the Persian origins of the game in the 10th century, when the book "Muraj adh-dhahab" (Board of the Gods) described six different variants of chess, including circular and cylinder chess. Due to the widespread creation of new variants, a wide variety of sizes can be found. Gliński's hexagonal chess utilises a board with 91 hexagonal spaces of three different colours. One innovation of the 13th century was the cylindrical board for use in cylinder chess.


title: Chessboard

text: The board used for the Persian Tamerlane chess is one of the first recorded variant chessboards, with eleven columns by ten rows along with two citadels. Each player has a citadel to the right of their second rank, which may be occupied by the opponent's king, in which case that opponent may declare a draw. In 1617, Pietro Carrera proposed a variant that received his name, Carrera's Chess, with a 10×8 board, later used in other variants such as Capablanca chess and Gothic Chess. Other sizes, with ten rows by ten columns, are used in Omega Chess and Grand Chess; Omega Chess has four additional squares, one in each corner of the board. Los Alamos chess uses a smaller 6×6 board.


title: Chessboard

text: Japanese shogi uses a board with nine columns by nine rows. The board of Chinese xianqi consists of nine columns by ten rows; here, the pieces are placed on the intersections of the lines that divide the squares, rather than within the squares themselves. Each player has a 3×3 palace in the central three columns and the closest three rows, within which the player's general and advisors must stay. Between the central two rows is a river that the elephant cannot cross and past which the soldier increases in strength. A similar board without a river is used in Korean janggi.


title: Chessboard

text: Some chess variants use more than a single board per match. Bughouse chess, for example, involves four players playing two simultaneous matches on separate boards. Alice Chess is a popular variant which is usually played on two boards to facilitate the movement of pieces between the boards. Three-dimensional boards are often represented by multiple two-dimensional boards. Variants may use anywhere from two to eight boards. For example, Raumschach utilises five boards of twenty-five squares each, totaling 125 squares. Another noteworthy variant, "Star Trek" Chess, utilises a board of sixty-four squares divided into seven levels. "Star Trek" Chess uses a board with movable parts divided into seven levels. In the initial position, each player occupies two of the movable four-square attack boards. The white pieces start in the lower level, using attack boards connected to this level and the first two rows of the board, while the black pieces start at the top, using the attack boards and first two rows of the third level.


title: Chessboard

text: The game of chess has been represented in the arts since its creation. Chess sets usually had considerable artistic value; they were made of noble materials, such as ebony and ivory, and in large sizes. Many of the pieces in these sets were offered to churches as relics. The book Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis tells a story in which a nobleman, after miraculously escaping from prison, is forced to carry a chessboard until a sanctuary as gesture of gratitude. However, more frequently, there are stories in which the chessboard is used as a weapon. The French tale of Ogier the Dane reports how the son of Charlemagne brutally kills one of Ogier's sons with a chessboard after losing a match, although there is no evidence confirming the veracity of the story.


title: Chessboard

text: In 1250, a sermon called "Quaedam moralitas de scaccario per Innocentium papum" (The Innocent Morality) showed the world as being represented by a chessboard. The white and black squares represented the two conditions of life and death or praise and censure; over these, the pieces, representing humanity, would confront each other in the adversities of the game, which symbolised life.


title: Chessboard

text: Due to its simple geometry, the chessboard is often used in mathematical puzzles or problems unrelated to chess, such as the wheat and chessboard problem and the mutilated chessboard problem. The term "infinite chessboard" is sometimes used to refer to a grid.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Battle of Imphal () took place in the region around the city of Imphal, the capital of the state of Manipur in Northeast India from March until July 1944. Japanese armies attempted to destroy the Allied forces at Imphal and invade India, but were driven back into Burma with heavy losses. Together with the simultaneous Battle of Kohima on the road by which the encircled Allied forces at Imphal were relieved, the battle was the turning point of the Burma campaign, part of the South-East Asian theatre of World War II. The Japanese defeat at Kohima and Imphal was the largest up until that time, with many of the Japanese deaths resulting from starvation, disease and exhaustion suffered during their retreat. According to a voting in a contest run by the British National Army Museum, the Battle of Imphal was bestowed as Britain's Greatest Battle in 2013.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: In March 1943, the Japanese command in Burma had been reorganised. A new headquarters, Burma Area Army, was created under Lieutenant-General Masakazu Kawabe. One of its subordinate formations, responsible for the central part of the front facing Imphal and Assam, was the Fifteenth Army. Lieutenant-General Renya Mutaguchi was appointed to command this army in March 1943. From the moment he took command, Mutaguchi forcefully advocated an invasion of India. His motives for doing so appear to be uncertain. He had played a major part in several Japanese victories, ever since the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937, and believed it was his destiny to win the decisive battle of the war for Japan. He may also have been goaded by the first Chindit expedition, a raid behind Japanese lines launched by the British under Orde Wingate early in 1943. The Allies had widely publicised the successful aspects of Wingate's expedition while concealing their losses to disease and exhaustion, possibly leading Mutaguchi and some of his staff to underestimate the difficulties they would later face.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: At the start of 1944, the war was going against the Japanese on several fronts. They were being driven back in the central and southwest Pacific, and their merchant ships were under attack by Allied submarines and aircraft. In Southeast Asia, they had held their lines over the preceding year, but the Allies were preparing several offensives from India and the Chinese province of Yunnan into Burma. In particular, the town of Imphal in Manipur on the frontier with Burma was built up to be a substantial Allied logistic base, with airfields, encampments and supply dumps. Imphal was linked to an even larger base at Dimapur in the Brahmaputra River valley by a road which wound for through the steep and forested Naga Hills.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Mutaguchi intended to exploit his planned capture of Imphal by advancing to the Brahmaputra Valley. This would cut the Allied lines of communication to the front in northern Burma, where the American-led Northern Combat Area Command was attempting to construct the Ledo Road to link India and China by land, and to the airfields supplying the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek via an airlift over "The Hump" (the Himalaya Mountains). Although the staffs at Burma Area Army and at Southern Expeditionary Army Group (the supreme command for the Japanese forces in southeast Asia and the southern Pacific) had reservations over the scale of Mutaguchi's proposed operation, they were eventually won over by his persistent advocacy. Finally, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and Imperial General Headquarters gave their approval to the plan.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Mutaguchi intended to isolate and destroy the Allied units in their forward positions and then capture Imphal. His plan was named U-Go, or Operation C. In detail:


title: Battle of Imphal

text: At the insistence of Subhas Chandra Bose, leader of the Azad Hind (a movement which sought to overthrow British rule in India by force, with Japanese assistance), the Indian National Army made a substantial contribution. (Originally, the Japanese intended using them only for reconnaissance and propaganda.)


title: Battle of Imphal

text: All of Mutaguchi's divisional commanders disagreed with the plan to some extent. Sato distrusted Mutaguchi's motives, and Yanagida openly derided his abrasive superior as a "blockhead." Yamauchi was already very ill and fatalistic. Their main reservations concerned supply. Mutaguchi had assumed that success would be achieved within three weeks, but adequate supplies after that period could be obtained only if the Japanese captured Allied supply dumps, as the monsoon rains, which usually descended from about the middle of May, would make the supply routes from the Chindwin almost impossible to traverse. Gambles such as Mutaguchi was making had worked in the past, but could no longer be relied upon, given nearly total Allied air superiority in the area and the improvement in morale and training of British and Indian troops. Mutaguchi proposed to use "Genghis Khan" rations, driving herds of buffalo and cattle rounded up throughout northern Burma across the Chindwin as meat rations on the hoof. However, most of these beasts died from lack of forage and their meat rotted many miles from the troops they were intended to supply.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: There were other weaknesses in the plan, which were revealed as the campaign progressed. The Japanese assumed that the British would be unable to use tanks on the steep jungle-covered hills around Imphal. For ease of movement and supply, the Japanese left behind most of their field artillery, their chief anti-tank weapon. As a result, their troops would have little protection against tanks.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Based on his experiences in the campaigns in Malaya and Singapore and in the Japanese conquest of Burma in early 1942, Mutaguchi dismissed British and Indian troops as inherently inferior. The troops he had met on those occasions had generally been inadequately trained and led. The Allies had by now largely overcome the administrative and organisational problems which had crippled their early efforts in Burma, and their troops were far better trained and motivated.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Imphal was held by the IV Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Geoffry Scoones. The corps was in turn part of the Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant General William Slim. Because the Allies were planning to take the offensive themselves, the corps' units were thrown forward almost to the Chindwin River and widely separated, and were therefore vulnerable to being isolated and surrounded.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Indian divisions were composed of both British and Indian personnel. In each brigade, there was generally one British, one Gurkha and one Indian battalion, although two brigades (37th Brigade in 23rd Division and 63rd Brigade in 17th Division) were composed entirely of Gurkha units. Each division was supported by two field artillery regiments (usually British) and one Indian mountain artillery regiment.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: In late February, a local Japanese counterattack was launched against Indian XV Corps in Arakan, using much the same tactics as Mutaguchi proposed to use. The engagement became known to the Allies as the Battle of the Admin Box. The attack failed when Allied aircraft parachuted supplies to cut-off troops, allowing them to stand firm, while the Japanese who had infiltrated behind them ran out of supplies. From this point onwards, the Allies were to rely increasingly on their transport aircraft. Also, the Japanese unexpectedly encountered a number of Indian tanks, to which the lightly equipped infiltrators had little counter. The planning of U-Go, however, was too far advanced to take account of these developments.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Even as the Japanese prepared to launch their attack, the Allies launched the airborne phase (Operation Thursday) of the second Chindit expedition on 5 March 1944. Japanese officers such as Major-General Noburo Tazoe, commanding the Japanese Army Air Force units in Burma, urged Mutaguchi to divert troops from his offensive to secure the Japanese rear areas against the Chindits. Mutaguchi dismissed these concerns, claiming that in a few weeks he would occupy the air bases from which the Chindits were supplied.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: When they received intelligence that a major Japanese offensive was impending, Slim and Scoones planned to withdraw their forward divisions into the Imphal plain and force the Japanese to fight at the end of impossibly long and difficult lines of communication. However, they misjudged the date on which the Japanese were to attack, and the strength they would use against some objectives. The Japanese troops began to cross the Chindwin River on 8 March. Scoones gave his forward divisions orders to withdraw to Imphal only on 13 March.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The 20th Indian Division held Tamu near the Chindwin, and Moreh a short distance to the north, where a large supply dump had been established. On 20 March, there was a clash between six Lee medium tanks of the 3rd Carabiniers and six Type 95 Ha-Go tanks leading Yamamoto's advance from the south. The lighter Japanese tanks were destroyed. Acting major-general Douglas Gracey was opposed to making any retreat, but on 25 March he was ordered to detach some of his division to provide a reserve for IV Corps. As this left the division too weak to hold Tamu and Moreh, they withdrew to the Shenam Saddle, a complex of hills through which the Imphal-Tamu road ran. The supply dump at Moreh was set ablaze, and 200 cattle there were slaughtered. The division fell back without difficulty, mainly because two of Yamamoto Force's battalions from the Japanese 15th Division (II/51 Regiment and III/60 Regiment) were delayed at Indaw in northern Burma by the Chindits and were unable to intervene.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Further south, the 17th Indian Division was cut off by the Japanese 33rd Division. Patrols from the division and from V Force (an irregular force of locally raised levies and guerrillas) warned Cowan of a Japanese force advancing against the rear of the division as early as 8 March, allowing Cowan to regroup the division to protect its rear. On 13 March, the Japanese 215th Regiment attacked a supply dump at milestone 109, twenty miles behind Cowan's leading outposts, while the Japanese 214th Regiment seized Tongzang and a ridge named Tuitum Saddle across the road a few miles behind the 17th Indian Division's main position.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Indian division began to withdraw on 14 March. At Tuitum Saddle, the Japanese 214th Regiment were unable to dig in properly before they were attacked by the 48th Indian Infantry Brigade on 15 March. The Japanese suffered heavy casualties and were forced away from the road. Further north, the Japanese captured the depot at Milestone 109 on 18 March, but Indian troops recovered it on 25 March. Cowan had taken steps to secure the most vulnerable point in the rear of his division, the bridge over the Manipur River. The division's rearguard crossed safely on 26 March, demolishing the bridge behind them. The division removed most of the vehicles, food and ammunition from the depot at Milestone 109 before resuming their retreat.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Both the Japanese and the Indian division had suffered heavy casualties. Yanagida, the Japanese 33rd Division's commander, was already pessimistic, and was apparently unnerved by a garbled radio message which suggested that one of his regiments had been destroyed at Tongzang. He therefore did not press the pursuit against the 17th Division, and advanced cautiously in spite of reprimands from Mutaguchi.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Scoones had nevertheless been forced to send the bulk of his only reserve, the 23rd Indian Infantry Division, to the aid of the 17th Division. The two divisions, supplied by parachute drops from Allied aircraft, made their way back to the Imphal plain, which they reached on 4 April.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Meanwhile, Imphal had been left vulnerable to the Japanese 15th Division. The only force left covering the northern approaches to the base, the Indian 50th Parachute Brigade, was roughly handled in the Battle of Sangshak by a regiment from the Japanese 31st Division on its way to Kohima. The Japanese 60th Regiment cut the main road a few miles north of Imphal on 28 March, while the 51st Regiment advanced on Imphal from the north-east, down the valley of the Iril River and a track from Litan, north-east of Imphal.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: However, the earlier diversionary attack launched by Japanese 55th Division in Arakan had already failed. Admiral Louis Mountbatten, the commander in chief of the Allied South East Asia Command, had taken steps to secure aircraft normally assigned to the "Hump". Slim was able to use these to move the battle-hardened 5th Indian Infantry Division, including all its artillery and first-line transport (jeeps and mules), by air from Arakan to the Central Front. The move was completed in only eleven days. One brigade and a mountain artillery regiment went to Dimapur in the Brahmaputra valley, but the other two brigades, the field artillery and the divisional HQ went to Imphal. The leading troops of the division were in action north and east of Imphal on 3 April.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: On the Japanese left flank, the INA's Subhas Brigade, led by Shah Nawaz Khan, reached the edge of the Chin Hills below Tiddim and Fort White at the end of March. From this position, the 2nd Battalion sent companies to relieve Japanese forces at Falam and to Hakha, from where in turn Khan's forces sent out patrols and laid ambushes for the Chin guerrillas under the command of a British officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Oates, taking a number of prisoners. In the middle of May, a force under Khan's Adjutant, Mahboob "Boobie" Ahmed, attacked and captured the hilltop fortress of Klang Klang. The 3rd Battalion meanwhile moved to Fort White-Tongzang area in premature anticipation of the destruction of Major General Frank Messervy's 7th Indian Infantry Division in the Arakan, which would allow it to receive volunteers.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: During the early part of the offensive, the "Bahadur Group" of the INA apparently achieved some success in inducing British Indian soldiers to desert.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Japanese 33rd Division attacked from the south at Bishenpur, where they cut a secondary track from Silchar into the plain. A commando raid destroyed a suspension bridge, making the Silchar track unusable. The 17th and 23rd Indian Divisions were regrouping after their retreat, and Bishenpur was only held by the 32nd Indian Infantry Brigade (detached from 20th Division). The Japanese advanced through the hills to the west of Bishenpur, almost isolating the British in the village, but suffered severely from British artillery fire. Their leading troops were halted by lack of supply only from Imphal. Other Japanese advancing directly up the Tiddim-Imphal road were halted in Potsangbam south of Bishenpur, as troops of 17th Indian Division rejoined the battle.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Yanagida, the Japanese division's commander, had already infuriated Mutaguchi by his caution. He was finally relieved of command at the end of the month.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: "Yamamoto Force" attacked the Shenam Saddle, defended by the main body of the Indian 20th Division, on the main road from Tamu into Imphal. This was the only metalled road the Japanese could use, and it was vital for them to break through to allow Yamamoto's tanks and heavy artillery to attack the main defences around Imphal itself. Only a few miles north of the saddle was Palel airfield, one of the only two all-weather airfields in the plain, and vital to the defenders.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: A Japanese attack up the road on 4 April was disjointed; the infantry were not ready to take part and twelve Japanese tanks were caught exposed on the road by British anti-tank guns. From 8 to 22 April, there was heavy fighting for five peaks which commanded the road east of the Saddle. The Japanese captured a number of them, but Indian and British counter-attacks regained some of those initially lost. Casualties were heavy on both sides.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Having failed to break through using the road, Yamamoto sent some troops through the rough terrain to the north of the Saddle to raid Palel airfield. The INA's Gandhi Brigade or 2nd Guerrilla Regiment, of two battalions led by Inayat Kiyani, took part in this attack. On 28 April, they attacked Palel. They tried to induce some Indian defenders to surrender, but the defenders rallied after initial hesitation. Another INA detachment carried out demolitions around Palel, but withdrew after they failed to rendezvous with Japanese units. The Gandhi Brigade was short of rations, having brought forward only one day's supplies, and also lost 250 casualties to shellfire after they pulled back from Palel.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Japanese 15th Division encircled Imphal from the north. Its 60th Regiment captured a British supply dump at Kanglatongbi on the main Imphal-Dimapur road a few miles north of Imphal, but the depot had been emptied of food and ammunition.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: A battalion of the Japanese 51st Regiment (which was commanded by Colonel Kimio Omoto) seized the vital Nungshigum Ridge, which overlooked the main airstrip at Imphal. This was a major threat to IV Corps and on 13 April the 5th Indian Division counter-attacked, supported by air strikes, massed artillery and the M3 Lee tanks of B Squadron of the 3rd Carabiniers. The Japanese had expected that the slopes were too steep for tanks to climb, and indeed Lee tanks had never been tried before on such gradients in action. The Japanese regiment had very few effective anti-tank weapons, and their troops were driven from the ridge with heavy casualties. The attackers also lost heavily; every officer of the Carabiniers and the attacking infantry (1st Bn, the 17th Dogra Regiment) was killed or wounded.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: By 1 May, all Japanese attacks had come to a halt. Slim and Scoones began a counter-offensive against the Japanese 15th Division. This division was the weakest of the Japanese formations, and if it was defeated, the siege would be broken (once Kohima was recaptured). The progress of the counter-attack was slow. The monsoon had broken, making movement very difficult. Also, IV Corps was suffering some shortages. Although rations and reinforcements were delivered to Imphal by air, artillery ammunition had to be conserved.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The 5th Indian Division (joined by the 89th Indian Infantry Brigade which was flown in to replace the brigade sent to Kohima) and 23rd Indian Division (later replaced by the 20th Division) tried capturing the steep ridges, such as the Mapao Spur, held by the Japanese, but found these to be almost impregnable. Allied artillery was usually unable to hit Japanese positions on the reverse slopes, and the troops often stormed the summits of the ridges, only to be driven off by mortar fire and grenades from the reverse slope positions. IV Corps regrouped. The 23rd Indian Division took over the defence of the Shenam Saddle, while from the end of May, 5th Division concentrated on driving north from Sengmai up the main road through Kanglatongi, while the 20th Indian Division advanced along the tracks and the Iril River toward Litan and Ukhrul, threatening the Japanese 15th Division's lines of communication.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: By this time, the Japanese were at the end of their endurance. Neither the 31st Division which was fighting at Kohima nor the 15th Division had received adequate supplies since the offensive began, and their troops were starving. Lieutenant General Sato, the commander of the Japanese 31st Division, ordered a retreat at the end of May, so that his division could find food. This allowed Indian XXXIII Corps to drive the Japanese from Kohima, and advance south.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The troops of Japanese 15th Division were forced to abandon their defensive positions to scavenge for supplies in local villages or on the Japanese lines of communication. Mutaguchi dismissed the mortally ill Yamauchi (replacing him with Lieutenant General Uichi Shibata) but this did not change matters. After driving rearguards from the "Miyazaki Group" (an independent detachment from the 31st Division) and the Japanese 60th Regiment from their delaying positions on the Dimapur-Imphal road, the leading troops of IV Corps and XXXIII Corps met at Milestone 109, north of Imphal, on 22 June, and the siege of Imphal was raised.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: South of Imphal, 17th Indian Division had moved back into the line, facing the Japanese 33rd Division. During the first half of May, there were several Japanese air attacks on Bishenpur, and heavy fighting for the village of Potsangbam to the south, in which the British lost 12 tanks. The surviving crews of the 3rd Carabiniers were later flown out of Imphal to be reconstituted in India.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Major General Cowan planned to break the deadlock on this front by sending the 48th Indian Infantry Brigade on a wide left hook into the Japanese division's rear while 63rd Indian Infantry Brigade attacked them in front. The Japanese division's temporary commander (its Chief of Staff, Major General Tetsujiro Tanaka) planned at the same time to infiltrate through Indian 17th Division's front to seize vital objectives in the middle of the Indian positions. Both moves were launched almost simultaneously.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Gurkhas of 48th Indian Brigade cut the road behind the Japanese on 18 May, but 63rd Indian Brigade were unable to break through to them, and 48th Brigade was forced to fight its way through the Japanese positions to rejoin the division, with heavy losses. Meanwhile, some of Tanaka's troops (the 214th Regiment) captured hills close to 17th Division's headquarters on 20 May. Because of the incursion into their own rear, the Japanese were unable to reinforce their forward troops, and over the following week the isolated Japanese were driven from their positions in the middle of the Indian division, many parties being wiped out.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: A new forceful commander, Lieutenant General Nobuo Tanaka, took command of the 33rd Division on 22 May, and ordered repeated attacks which reduced many of his division's battalions to mere handfuls of men. In June, he received reinforcements (a regiment from the Japanese 53rd Division, and a detachment from the 14th Tank Regiment) and used them to launch another attack. After initial success, the fresh regiment suffered heavy casualties from shellfire. By the end of June, the 33rd Division had suffered so many casualties that they could make no further effort.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Yamamoto Force had also suffered heavy casualties, but before withdrawing, they launched two modest raids on Palel Airfield in the first week of July, destroying several parked aircraft.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Towards the end of May, the INA's 1st and 2nd Guerrilla Regiments (the latter commanded by Malik Munawar Khan Awan) had been redirected to Kohima. They moved north across the Japanese rear but by the time they reached Ukhrul, the Japanese had already begun to withdraw. They decided to attack Imphal instead. At Imphal, both units suffered some desertions, but not on the scale that the Commonwealth forces expected.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Japanese had realised that the operation ought to be broken off as early as May. Lieutenant General Hikosaburo Hata, the Vice-Chief of the General Staff, had made a tour of inspection of Southern Army's headquarters in late April. When he returned to Tokyo, he reported pessimistically on the outcome of the operation at a large staff meeting to Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, but Tojo dismissed his concerns as their source was a junior staff officer (Major Masaru Ushiro, at Burma Area Army HQ). Messages were sent from Imperial Headquarters, urging that the operation was to be fought to the end.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Lieutenant General Kawabe travelled north from Rangoon to see the situation for himself on 25 May. Several officers whom he interviewed expressed confidence in success if reinforcements could be provided, but actually concealed their losses and the seriousness of the situation. At a meeting between Mutaguchi and Kawabe on 6 June, both used "haragei", an unspoken form of communication using gesture, expression and tone of voice, to convey their conviction that success was impossible, but neither of them wished to bear the responsibility of ordering a retreat. Kawabe subsequently became ill with dysentery and perhaps physically unfit for duty. He nevertheless ordered repeated attacks, stating later that Bose was the key to Japan's and India's future.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: Mutaguchi ordered the Japanese 31st Division, which had retreated from Kohima when threatened with starvation, to join the 15th Division in a renewed attack on Imphal from the north. Neither division obeyed the order, being in no condition to comply. When he realised that none of his formations were obeying his orders to attack, Mutaguchi finally ordered the offensive to be broken off on 3 July. The Japanese, reduced in many cases to a rabble, fell back to the Chindwin, abandoning their artillery, transport, and many soldiers too badly wounded or sick to walk. The Allies recovered Tamu at the end of July. It was found to contain 550 unburied Japanese corpses, with over 100 more dying amongst them.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Japanese defeat at Kohima and Imphal was the largest up until that time. They had suffered 54,879 casualties, including 13,376 dead (plus 920 casualties in the preliminary battles in Assam). Most of these losses were the result of starvation, disease and exhaustion.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: The Japanese had also lost almost every one of the 12,000 pack horses and mules in their transport units and the 30,000 cattle used either as beasts of burden or as rations, and many trucks and other vehicles. The loss of pack animals was to cripple several of their divisions during the following year. Mutaguchi had sacked all of his divisions' commanders during the battle. Both he and Kawabe were themselves subsequently relieved of command.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: In December, Slim and three of his corps commanders (Scoones, Christison and Stopford) were knighted by the viceroy Lord Wavell, at a ceremony at Imphal in front of Scottish, Gurkha and Punjab regiments. Slim was created KCB, the others were made KBEs.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: By mid-1944, the Allied air forces enjoyed undisputed air supremacy over Burma. The last major effort by the Japanese Army Air Force had been over the Arakan in February and March, when they had suffered severe losses. During the Imphal and Kohima battles, they were able to make barely half a dozen significant raids.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: IV Corps enjoyed close air support from fighter-bombers and dive bombers of 221 Group of the RAF. Allied fighter bombers and medium bombers shot up and bombed enemy concentrations, supply dumps, transport, roads and bridges all the way to the Chindwin river. The monsoon, which occurred every year from May to September, in no way diminished their activity. The RAF Third Tactical Air Force increased their sortie rate to 24,000 sorties during the worst four months of the monsoon, nearly six times the figure of the previous year's record.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: However, the most important contribution to the Allied victory was made by both British and American transport aircraft. The Allies could fly men, equipment and supplies into the airstrips at Imphal (and Pallel also, until the onset of the monsoon rains), so, although cut off by land, the town was not without a lifeline. By the end of the battle, the Allied air forces had flown 19,000 tons of supplies and 12,000 men into Kohima and Imphal, and flown out 13,000 casualties and 43,000 non-combatants. Among the supplies carried during the siege were over a million gallons of fuel, over a thousand bags of mail and 40 million cigarettes. Several thousand mules were used to supply outlying outposts, for example, 17th Indian Division up the Bishenpur trail, so animal fodder was also flown in during the siege. Allied aircraft could also parachute ammunition, rations and even drinking water to surrounded units.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: At the start of the battle, South East Asia Command had 76 transport aircraft (mainly C-47 Skytrain) available, but many others were dedicated to supplying the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang Kai-Shek, or to establishing USAAF bomber bases in China, via "the hump". Not even Admiral Louis Mountbatten, the Commander-in-Chief, had the authority to commandeer any of these aircraft, but at the crisis of the battle in the middle of March he nevertheless did so, acquiring 20 C-46 Commando aircraft (equivalent to another 30 C-47s). He was supported by American officers at SEAC and the American China-Burma-India Theater headquarters.


title: Battle of Imphal

text: After the war, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission set up Imphal War Cemetery and Kohima War Cemetery to commemorate the British and the Indian soldiers who died during the Second World War.


title: Juxtaposition

text: Juxtaposition is an act or instance of placing two elements close together or side by side. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences, etc.


title: Juxtaposition

text: Juxtaposition in literary terms is the showing contrast by concepts placed side by side. An example of juxtaposition are the quotes "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country", and "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate", both by John F. Kennedy, who particularly liked juxtaposition as a rhetorical device. Jean Piaget specifically contrasts juxtaposition in various fields from syncretism, arguing that "juxtaposition and syncretism are in antithesis, syncretism being the predominance of the whole over the details, juxtaposition that of the details over the whole". Piaget writes:


title: Juxtaposition

text: In grammar, juxtaposition refers to the absence of linking elements in a group of words that are listed together. Thus, where English uses the conjunction "and" (e.g. "mother and father"), many languages use simple juxtaposition ("mother father"). In logic, juxtaposition is a logical fallacy on the part of the observer, where two items placed next to each other imply a correlation, when none is actually claimed. For example, an illustration of a politician and Adolf Hitler on the same page would imply that the politician had a common ideology with Hitler. Similarly, saying "Hitler was in favor of gun control, and so are you" would have the same effect. This particular rhetorical device is common enough to have its own name, Reductio ad Hitlerum.


title: Juxtaposition

text: In algebra, multiplication involving variables is often written as a juxtaposition (e.g., formula_1 for formula_2 times formula_3 or formula_4 for five times formula_2), also called "implied multiplication". The notation can also be used for quantities that are surrounded by parentheses (e.g., formula_6 or formula_7 for five times two). This implicit usage of multiplication can cause ambiguity when the concatenated variables happen to match the name of another variable, when a variable name in front of a parenthesis can be confused with a function name, or in the correct determination of the order of operations.


title: Juxtaposition

text: In mathematics, juxtaposition of symbols is the adjacency of factors with the absence of an explicit operator in an expression, especially for commonly used for multiplication: formula_8 denotes the product of formula_9 with formula_2, or "formula_9" times "formula_2". It is also used for scalar multiplication, matrix multiplication, function composition, and logical "and". In numeral systems, juxtaposition of digits has a specific meaning. In geometry, juxtaposition of names of points represents lines or line segments. In lambda calculus, juxtaposition formula_13 denotes function application. In physics, juxtaposition is also used for "multiplication" of a numerical value and a physical quantity, and of two physical quantities, for example, three times formula_14 would be written as formula_15 and "area equals length times width" as formula_16.


title: Juxtaposition

text: Throughout the arts, juxtaposition of elements is used to elicit a response within the audience's mind, such as creating meaning from the contrast. In music, it is an abrupt change of elements, and is a procedure of musical contrast. In film, the position of shots next to one another (montage) is intended to have this effect. In painting and photography, the juxtaposition of colours, shapes, etc, is used to create contrast, while the position of particular kinds of objects one upon the other or different kinds of characters in proximity to one another is intended to evoke meaning. Various forms of juxtaposition occur in literature, where two images that are otherwise not commonly brought together appear side by side or structurally close together, thereby forcing the reader to stop and reconsider the meaning of the text through the contrasting images, ideas, motifs, etc. For example, "He was slouched gracefully" is a juxtaposition. More broadly, an author can juxtapose contrasting types of characters, such as a hero and a rogue working together to achieve a common objective from very different motivations.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is a 2015 American action comedy film directed by Andy Fickman and written by Kevin James and Nick Bakay. It is the sequel to 2009's , and stars James in the title role, Raini Rodriguez, and Shirley Knight.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: Filming began in April 2014 at the Wynn Las Vegas casino resort. It was released the following year on April 17, 2015. "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" was the first film shot on the Steve Wynn property. It was also the first film to receive Nevada's film tax credit, enacted in 2013, netting the production a $4.3 million return on expenditures. The film was panned by critics and grossed $108 million worldwide at the box office.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: Following the events at West Orange Pavilion Mall, Paul Blart is recovering from several misfortunes. His wife Amy divorced him six days into their marriage, and two years later, his mother Margaret was killed after being hit by a milk truck. To feel better, Paul takes pride in patrolling the mall. He receives an invitation to a security officers' convention in Las Vegas and begins to believe his luck is about to change. His daughter, Maya, discovers that she was accepted into UCLA and plans to move across the country to Los Angeles, but in light of her father's invitation, she decides to withhold the information for now.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: After arriving in Las Vegas, Paul and his daughter meet the general manager of Wynn Las Vegas, a pretty young woman named Divina Martinez, whom Paul is instantly attracted to. He later learns that she's dating the hotel's head of security, Eduardo Furtillo. Meanwhile, Maya falls in love with the hotel's valet, Lane. A security guard from the Mall of America attending the convention, Donna Ericone, is aware of Paul's earlier heroics in the West Orange Pavilion Mall incident and believes Paul will be the likely keynote speaker at the event. However, Paul discovers that another security guard, Nick Panero, is giving the speech.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: In the midst of the convention, a criminal named Vincent Sofel and a gang of accomplices disguised as hotel employees are secretly plotting to steal priceless works of art from the hotel and replace them with replicas, then sell the real ones at auction. In the meantime, Paul has become overprotective of Maya after discovering her flirting with Lane and spies on their conversations. He is later mocked by Eduardo for his lack of professionalism in an event where hotel security was notified when Maya turns up missing. In an ensuing argument with her father, Maya becomes angry and claims she's attending UCLA despite Paul's wishes that she remain close to home at a junior college.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: At the convention, Paul, Donna, and three other security guards, Saul Gundermutt, Khan Mubi, and Gino Chizetti check out the non-lethal security equipment on display. Later, Paul takes a break in The Garden Of Contemplation, only to face off against a bird while a man playing piano watches. Paul finds Nick drunkenly hitting on a woman at the bar. Paul attempts to defuse the situation and Nick passes out, giving Paul a chance to be the event's speaker. Following the speech, Paul learns about Maya and Lane's situation and rushes to help but abruptly collapses due to his hypoglycemia that has plagued him for years.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: After recovering, Paul is able to take down several of Vincent's thugs and gathers intel on the group's intentions. Using non-lethal equipment from the convention, he is able to take out more of Vincent's crew. Meanwhile, Maya and Lane overhear Vincent adamantly refusing an oatmeal cookie due to a severe oatmeal allergy, leading to said cookie being thrown from a window. Working with a team – Donna, Saul, Khan, and Gino – Paul is able to clumsily dismantle Vincent's operation, with Maya severely incapacitating Vincent by rubbing oatmeal-infused concealer on his face and Paul finishing Vincent off with an extremely forceful headbutt. Afterward, Paul convinces Divina to be with Eduardo. He also accepts Maya going to UCLA, funding her tuition with the reward he obtained from Steve Wynn for stopping Vincent. After dropping off Maya at UCLA, Paul falls for a mounted police officer who reciprocates his advances, but her horse reflexively kicks him into the side of a car.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: In January 2009, Sony expressed an interest in making a sequel to "". It was revealed on January 7, 2014, that Andy Fickman was in talks to direct the film while Kevin James, who also co-wrote the script with Nick Bakay, would be back to star as Blart. James produced the film along with Todd Garner and Happy Madison's Adam Sandler. The cast includes David Henrie, Raini Rodriguez, Eduardo Verástegui, Nicholas Turturro, Gary Valentine, Neal McDonough, Daniella Alonso, and D. B. Woodside, starring alongside James.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: On March 14, 2014, the Nevada Film Office announced that Sony Pictures had been awarded the first certificate of eligibility for a new tax credit enacted in 2013, in regard to the filming of "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2". Nevada Film Office Director, Eric Preiss, indicated that the production would get $4.3 million in tax credits based on the proposal in their application. The film was initially greenlit with a $45–50 million production budget, but after Kevin James agreed to take a paycut the final figure came in at around $38 million. On April 2, 2014, Columbia Pictures announced that the film would be released on April 17, 2015.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: In an October 2012 interview, James said that he liked the idea of filming the sequel at the Mall of America. Principal photography commenced on April 21, 2014, at Wynn Las Vegas, and ended on June 26, 2014. It is the first time that Steve Wynn has allowed a commercial film to be shot at this property. For the only scene involving the West Orange Pavilion Mall (shown at the beginning of the film), the only exterior shot of the mall is deleted stock footage of the Burlington Mall taken from the first film, while all interior shots were filmed in Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" was released by Columbia Pictures in the United States on April 17, 2015. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 14, 2015.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" grossed $71 million in North America and $36.5 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $107.5 million, against a production budget of $38 million.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: In its opening weekend, the film grossed $23.8 million, finishing second at the box office behind "Furious 7" ($29.2 million).


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 6% based on 63 reviews and an average rating of 3.00/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Bathed in flop sweat and bereft of purpose, "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" strings together fat-shaming humor and Segway sight gags with uniformly unfunny results." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 13 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: Sara Stewart of the "New York Post" gave the film one out of four stars and wrote that the plot is "just an excuse for James to do his one trick over and over: Bluster, then screw up humiliatingly". Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote, "James tries hard, very hard, to inject the proceedings with slapstick humor, propelling his large body through endless physical contortions in a fruitless effort for laughs." Justin Chang of "Variety" called it a "tacky, numbingly inane sequel".


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: In rating the film zero stars, Christy Lemire of "RogerEbert.com" wrote, "Truly, there is not a single redeeming moment in director Andy Fickman's film. A general flatness and lethargy permeate these reheated proceedings." Kevin P. Sullivan of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a D and called it "far from the worst movie that you'll ever see", though he wondered why people would bother watching it. Peter Howell of the "Toronto Star" gave the film a half a star out of four, saying: ""Caddyshack 2". "". "". To this small sample of the ever-expanding list of wretched movie sequels, add "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2", a gobsmackingly witless excuse for entertainment." Andy Webster of "The New York Times" described the film as inoffensive but familiar.


title: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

text: In 2015, Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery (hosts of "The Worst Idea of All Time") formed a podcast called "'Til Death Do Us Blart" with Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, and Griffin McElroy (hosts of "My Brother, My Brother and Me)" to review "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" every Thanksgiving for the rest of their lives.


title: Statism

text: In political science, statism is the doctrine that the political authority of the state is legitimate to some degree. This may include economic and social policy, especially in regard to taxation and the means of production.


title: Statism

text: While in use since the 1850s, the term statism gained significant usage in American political discourse throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Opposition to statism is termed anti-statism or anarchism. The latter is characterized by a complete rejection of all hierarchical rulership.


title: Statism

text: Statism can take many forms from small government to big government. Minarchism is a political philosophy that prefers a minimal state such as a night-watchman state to protect people from aggression, theft, breach of contract and fraud with military, police and courts. This may also include fire departments, prisons and other functions. The welfare state is another form within the spectrum of statism. Authoritarian philosophies view a strong, authoritative state as required to legislate or enforce morality and cultural practices. Totalitarianism is that which prefers a maximum, all-encompassing state.


title: Statism

text: Political theory has long questioned the nature and rights of the state. Some forms of corporatism extol the moral position that the corporate group, usually the state, is greater than the sum of its parts and that individuals have a moral obligation to serve the state. Skepticism towards statism in Western cultures is largely rooted in Enlightenment philosophy. John Locke notably influenced modern thinking in his writings published before and after the English Revolution of 1688, especially "A Letter Concerning Toleration" (1667), "Two Treatises of Government" (1689) and "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690). In the text of 1689, he established the basis of liberal political theory, i.e., that people's rights existed before government; that the purpose of government is to protect personal and property rights; that people may dissolve governments that do not do so; and that representative government is the best form to protect rights.


title: Statism

text: Economic statism promotes the view that the state has a major, necessary and legitimate role in directing the major aspects of the economy, either directly through state-owned enterprises and economic planning of production, or indirectly through economic interventionism and macro-economic regulation.


title: Statism

text: State capitalism is a form of capitalism that features high concentrations of state-owned commercial enterprises or state direction of an economy based on the accumulation of capital, wage labor and market allocation.


title: Statism

text: In some cases, state capitalism refers to economic policies such as dirigisme, which existed in France during the second half of the 20th century and to the present-day economies of the People's Republic of China and Singapore, where the government owns controlling shares in publicly traded companies. Some authors also define the former economies of the Eastern Bloc as constituting a form of state capitalism.


title: Statism

text: The term statism is sometimes used to refer to market economies with large amounts of government intervention, regulation or influence over markets. Market economies that feature high degrees of intervention are sometimes referred to as "mixed economies". Economic interventionism asserts that the state has a legitimate or necessary role within the framework of a capitalist economy by intervening in markets, regulating against overreaches of private sector industry and either providing or subsidizing goods and services not adequately produced by the market.


title: Statism

text: State socialism broadly refers to forms of socialism based on state ownership of the means of production and state-directed allocation of resources. It is often used in reference to Soviet-type economic systems of former communist states and, by extension, those of North Korea, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China.


title: Statism

text: Critics of state socialism argue that its known manifestations in Soviet-model states are merely forms of state capitalism claiming that the Soviet model of economics was based upon a process of state-directed capital accumulation and social hierarchy.


title: Statism

text: Politically, state socialism is often used to designate any socialist political ideology or movement that advocates for the use of state power for the construction of socialism, or to the belief that the state must be appropriated and used to ensure the success of a socialist revolution. It is usually used in reference to Marxist–Leninist socialists who champion a single-party state.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann; 24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822) was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera "The Tales of Hoffmann", in which Hoffmann appears (heavily fictionalized) as the hero. He is also the author of the novella "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" is based. The ballet "Coppélia" is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's "Kreisleriana" is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Hoffmann's stories highly influenced 19th-century literature, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Hoffmann's ancestors, both maternal and paternal, were jurists. His father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann (1736–97), was a barrister in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), as well as a poet and amateur musician who played the viola da gamba. In 1767 he married his cousin, Lovisa Albertina Doerffer (1748–96). Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, born on 24 January 1776, was the youngest of three children, of whom the second died in infancy.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: When his parents separated in 1778, his father went to Insterburg (now Chernyakhovsk) with his elder son, Johann Ludwig Hoffmann (1768–1822), while Ernst's mother stayed in Königsberg with her relatives: two aunts, Johanna Sophie Doerffer (1745–1803) and Charlotte Wilhelmine Doerffer (c. 1754–79) and their brother, Otto Wilhelm Doerffer (1741–1811), who were all unmarried. The trio raised the youngster.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: The household, dominated by the uncle (whom Ernst nicknamed "O Weh"—"Oh dear!"—in a play on his initials), was pietistic and uncongenial. Hoffmann was to regret his estrangement from his father. Nevertheless, he remembered his aunts with great affection, especially the younger, Charlotte, whom he nicknamed "Tante Füßchen" ("Aunt Littlefeet"). Although she died when he was only three years old, he treasured her memory (e.g. see "Kater Murr") and embroidered stories about her to such an extent that later biographers sometimes assumed her to be imaginary, until proof of her existence was found after World War II.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Between 1781 and 1792 he attended the Lutheran school or "Burgschule", where he made good progress in classics. He was taught drawing by one Saemann, and counterpoint by a Polish organist named Podbileski, who was to be the prototype of Abraham Liscot in "Kater Murr". Ernst showed great talent for piano-playing, and busied himself with writing and drawing. The provincial setting was not, however, conducive to technical progress, and despite his many-sided talents he remained rather ignorant of both classical forms and of the new artistic ideas that were developing in Germany. He had, however, read Schiller, Goethe, Swift, Sterne, Rousseau and Jean Paul, and wrote part of a novel titled "Der Geheimnisvolle".


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Around 1787 he became friends with Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger (1775–1843), the son of a pastor, and nephew of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Elder, the well-known writer friend of Immanuel Kant. During 1792, both attended some of Kant's lectures at the University of Königsberg. Their friendship, although often tested by an increasing social difference, was to be lifelong.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: In 1794, Hoffmann became enamored of Dora Hatt, a married woman to whom he had given music lessons. She was ten years older, and gave birth to her sixth child in 1795. In February 1796, her family protested against his attentions and, with his hesitant consent, asked another of his uncles to arrange employment for him in Glogau (Głogów), Prussian Silesia.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: From 1796, Hoffmann obtained employment as a clerk for his uncle, Johann Ludwig Doerffer, who lived in Glogau with his daughter Minna. After passing further examinations he visited Dresden, where he was amazed by the paintings in the gallery, particularly those of Correggio and Raphael. During the summer of 1798, his uncle was promoted to a court in Berlin, and the three of them moved there in August—Hoffmann's first residence in a large city. It was there that Hoffmann first attempted to promote himself as a composer, writing an operetta called "Die Maske" and sending a copy to Queen Luise of Prussia. The official reply advised to him to write to the director of the Royal Theatre, a man named Iffland. By the time the latter responded, Hoffmann had passed his third round of examinations and had already left for Posen (Poznań) in South Prussia in the company of his old friend Hippel, with a brief stop in Dresden to show him the gallery.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: From June 1800 to 1803, he worked in Prussian provinces in the area of Greater Poland and Masovia. This was the first time he had lived without supervision by members of his family, and he started to become "what school principals, parsons, uncles, and aunts call dissolute."


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: His first job, at Posen, was endangered after Carnival on Shrove Tuesday 1802, when caricatures of military officers were distributed at a ball. It was immediately deduced who had drawn them, and complaints were made to authorities in Berlin, who were reluctant to punish the promising young official. The problem was solved by "promoting" Hoffmann to Płock in New East Prussia, the former capital of Poland (1079–1138), where administrative offices were relocated from Thorn (Toruń). He visited the place to arrange lodging, before returning to Posen where he married Mischa (Maria or Marianna Thekla Michalina Rorer, whose Polish surname was Trzcińska). They moved to Płock in August 1802.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Hoffmann despaired because of his exile, and drew caricatures of himself drowning in mud alongside ragged villagers. He did make use, however, of his isolation, by writing and composing. He started a diary on 1 October 1803. An essay on the theatre was published in Kotzebue's periodical, "Die Freimüthige", and he entered a competition in the same magazine to write a play. Hoffmann's was called "Der Preis" ("The Prize"), and was itself about a competition to write a play. There were fourteen entries, but none was judged worthy of the award: 100 Friedrichs d'or. Nevertheless, his entry was singled out for praise. This was one of the few good times of a sad period of his life, which saw the deaths of his uncle J. L. Hoffmann in Berlin, his Aunt Sophie, and Dora Hatt in Königsberg.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: At the beginning of 1804, he obtained a post at Warsaw. On his way there, he passed through his hometown and met one of Dora Hatt's daughters. He was never to return to Königsberg.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Hoffmann assimilated well with Polish society; the years spent in Prussian Poland he recognized as the happiest of his life. In Warsaw he found the same atmosphere he had enjoyed in Berlin, renewing his friendship with Zacharias Werner, and meeting his future biographer, a neighbour and fellow jurist called Julius Eduard Itzig (who changed his name to Hitzig after his baptism). Itzig had been a member of the Berlin literary group called the "Nordstern," or "North Stars", and he gave Hoffmann the works of Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, Carlo Gozzi and Calderón. These relatively late introductions marked his work profoundly.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: He moved in the circles of August Wilhelm Schlegel, Adelbert von Chamisso, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Rahel Levin and David Ferdinand Koreff.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: But Hoffmann's fortunate position was not to last: on 28 November 1806, during the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte's troops captured Warsaw, and the Prussian bureaucrats lost their jobs. They divided the contents of the treasury between them and fled. In January 1807, Hoffmann's wife and two-year-old daughter Cäcilia returned to Posen, while he pondered whether to move to Vienna or go back to Berlin. A delay of six months was caused by severe illness. Eventually the French authorities demanded that all former officials swear allegiance or leave the country. As they refused to grant Hoffmann a passport to Vienna, he was forced to return to Berlin.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: He visited his family in Posen before arriving in Berlin on 18 June 1807, hoping to further his career there as an artist and writer.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: The city of Berlin was also occupied by Napoleon's troops. Obtaining only meagre allowances, he had frequent recourse to his friends, constantly borrowing money and still going hungry for days at a time; he learned that his daughter had died. Nevertheless, he managed to compose his Six Canticles for "a cappella" choir: one of his best compositions, which he would later attribute to Kreisler in "Lebensansichten des Katers Murr".


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: On 1 September 1808 he arrived with his wife in Bamberg, where he began a job as theatre manager. The director, Count Soden, left almost immediately for Würzburg, leaving a man named Heinrich Cuno in charge. Hoffmann was unable to improve standards of performance, and his efforts caused intrigues against him which resulted in him losing his job to Cuno. He began work as music critic for the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung", a newspaper in Leipzig, and his articles on Beethoven were especially well received, and highly regarded by the composer himself. It was in its pages that the "Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler" character made his first appearance.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Hoffmann's breakthrough came in 1809, with the publication of "Ritter Gluck", a story about a man who meets, or believes he has met, the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) more than twenty years after the latter's death. The theme alludes to the work of Jean Paul, who invented the term Doppelgänger the previous decade, and continued to exact a powerful influence over Hoffmann, becoming one of his earliest admirers. With this publication, Hoffmann began to use the pseudonym E. T. A. Hoffmann, telling people that the "A" stood for "Amadeus", in homage to the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91). However, he continued to use Wilhelm in official documents throughout his life, and the initials E. T. W. also appear on his gravestone.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: The next year, he was employed at the Bamberg Theatre as stagehand, decorator, and playwright, while also giving private music lessons.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: He became so enamored of a young singing student, Julia Marc, that his feelings were obvious whenever they were together, and Julia's mother quickly found her a more suitable match. When Joseph Seconda offered Hoffmann a position as musical director for his opera company (then performing in Dresden), he accepted, leaving on 21 April 1813.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Prussia had declared war against France on 16 March during the War of the Sixth Coalition, and their journey was fraught with difficulties. They arrived on the 25th, only to find that Seconda was in Leipzig; on the 26th, they sent a letter pleading for temporary funds. That same day Hoffmann was surprised to meet Hippel, whom he had not seen for nine years.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: The situation deteriorated, and in early May Hoffmann tried in vain to find transport to Leipzig. On 8 May, the bridges were destroyed, and his family were marooned in the city. During the day, Hoffmann would roam, watching the fighting with curiosity. Finally, on 20 May, they left for Leipzig, only to be involved in an accident which killed one of the passengers in their coach and injured his wife.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: They arrived on 23 May, and Hoffmann started work with Seconda's orchestra, which he found to be of the best quality. On 4 June an armistice began, which allowed the company to return to Dresden. But on 22 August, after the end of the armistice, the family was forced to relocate from their pleasant house in the suburbs into the town, and during the next few days the Battle of Dresden raged. The city was bombarded; many people were killed by bombs directly in front of him. After the main battle was over, he visited the gory battlefield. His account can be found in "Vision auf dem Schlachtfeld bei Dresden". After a long period of continued disturbance, the town surrendered on 11 November, and on 9 December the company travelled to Leipzig.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: On 25 February, Hoffmann quarrelled with Seconda, and the next day he was given notice of twelve weeks. When asked to accompany them on their journey to Dresden in April, he refused, and they left without him. But during July his friend Hippel visited, and soon he found himself being guided back into his old career as a jurist.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: At the end of September 1814, in the wake of Napoleon's defeat, Hoffmann returned to Berlin and succeeded in regaining a job at the "Kammergericht", the chamber court. His opera "Undine" was performed by the Berlin Theatre. Its successful run came to an end only after a fire on the night of the 25th performance. Magazines clamoured for his contributions, and after a while his standards started to decline. Nevertheless, many masterpieces date from this time.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: During the period from 1819, Hoffmann was involved with legal disputes, while fighting ill health. Alcohol abuse and syphilis eventually caused weakening of his limbs during 1821, and paralysis from the beginning of 1822. His last works were dictated to his wife or to a secretary.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Prince Metternich's anti-liberal programs began to put Hoffmann in situations that tested his conscience. Thousands of people were accused of treason for having certain political opinions,


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: King Frederick William III of Prussia appointed an Immediate Commission for the investigation of political dissidence; when he found its observance of the rule of law too frustrating, he established a Ministerial Commission to interfere with its processes. The latter was greatly influenced by Commissioner Kamptz. During the trial of "Turnvater" Jahn, the founder of the gymnastics association movement, Hoffmann found himself annoying Kamptz, and became a political target. When Hoffmann caricatured Kamptz in a story ("Meister Floh"), Kamptz began legal proceedings. These ended when Hoffmann's illness was found to be life-threatening. The King asked for a reprimand only, but no action was ever taken. Eventually "Meister Floh" was published with the offending passages removed.


title: E. T. A. Hoffmann

text: Hoffmann died of syphilis in Berlin on 25 June 1822 at the age of 46. His grave is preserved in the Protestant "Friedhof III der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde" (Cemetery No. III of the congregations of Jerusalem Church and New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor at the underground station Mehringdamm.