In February 2010, the Paris-based band Hold Your Horses! released a music video to go with their song “70 Million,” which became an immediate success. In the video, the band members recreated famous paintings, taking the viewer on an entertaining tour through art history. Try to identify as many paintings as possible, then compare your results with the list of the actual paintings below the jump. Enjoy — and let us know your scores! And, of course, Happy Bastille Day.
How Alice Herz-Sommer, the Oldest Holocaust Survivor, Survived the Horrific Ordeal with Music
What you’re watching is the trailer for the documentary Alice Dancing Under the Gallows by Nick Reed, to be released later this year. At 110, Alice Herz-Sommer is the oldest Holocaust survivor. Her story is both touching and inspiring.
Alice was born in Prague — then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — in 1903. She started playing the piano as a child and took lessons with Conrad Ansorge, a student of Liszt. At 16, she attended the master class at Prague’s prestigious German musical academy. Later, Alice became a respected concert pianist in Prague. Through her family, she also knew Franz Kafka. All of this changed when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Along with other Jews living in Prague, Alice was initially forced to live in Prague’s ghetto before being deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, along with her five-year-old son Raphael. Eventually her whole family, including her husband, cellist Leopold Sommer, and her mother, were sent to Auschwitz, Treblinka and Dachau, where they were killed.
Alice and her son survived Theresienstadt because the Nazis used this particular concentration camp to show the world how “well” the inmates were treated. A propaganda film by the Nazis was shot and a delegation from the Danish and International Red Cross was shown around in 1943. To boost morale, Alice and many other imprisoned musicians regularly performed for the inmates. Despite the unimaginable living conditions, Alice and her son survived. They moved to Israel after the war, where she taught music. In 1986, she moved to London, where she still lives. Her son died in 2001 (obituary here).
The way Alice dealt with those horrible times is particularly inspiring. She says about the role of music: “I felt that this is the only thing which helps me to have hope … it’s a sort of religion actually. Music is … is God. In difficult times you feel it, especially when you are suffering.” When asked by German journalists if she hated Germans, she replied: “I never hate, and I will never hate. Hatred brings only hatred.”
Extra material: Art Therapy Blog has a transcript of the trailer, memorable quotes by Alice and two BBC Radio interviews with her. Alice’s life story is told in the book A Garden of Eden in Hell.
By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.
A Digital Reconstruction of Washington D.C. in 1814
What did the U.S. capital look like 200 years ago? Finding a satisfactory answer to this question is very difficult since there are very few reliable images, maps and written accounts from Washington’s early days. This is why Dan Bailey, director of the Imaging Research Center (IRC) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, has approached architectural historians, cartographers, engineers, and ecologists to “recreate a ‘best guess’ glimpse of the early city.” The video above is the result of the IRC’s work, showing a city that was, they say, “a rough work in progress.”
Nothing was polished. The scale of the federal city was that of a person, not of immense marble bureaucracy. There were cabins and barns on the Capital Lawn. The first fence around the Capitol was to keep the cows out. Congressmen came to town for the legislative sessions, many times sleeping 3 to a room in a boarding house, and working in unfinished buildings.
An in-depth article about the ongoing project was published in The Washington Post.
By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.
Way of Life: Rare Footage of the Hiroshima Aftermath, 1946
The recent 9.0‑magnitude Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima nuclear accidents were among the most devastating environmental disasters in recorded history. The immediate consequences are frightening, but their full, long-term impact remains an unsettling mystery.
This, of course, isn’t the first time Japan has faced a nuclear emergency. After the World War II atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. government recorded the raw aftermath of Hiroshima in candid, grim detail (while Hollywood was busy lampooning America’s nuclear obsession). Filmed in the spring of 1946 by the Department of Defense, Way of Life documents how the people of Hiroshima adapted to life after the atomic bomb. Though the archival footage lacks sound, its imagery — moving, heartbreaking, deeply human — speaks volumes about the delicate duality of despair and resilience.
Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and DesignObserver, and spends a great deal of time on Twitter.
Rare Footage: Home Movie of FDR’s 1941 Inauguration
The vintage video above is an excerpt from a 16 mm home movie showing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on January 20, 1941, the day of his Third Inauguration. This silent color movie was shot by FDR’s son-in-law (Clarence) John Boettiger, who was then working for the Motion Picture Association of America, and the quality of this rare footage is quite outstanding. Watch the full 14-minute version here.
FDR can first be seen at 2:45, heavily supported by his oldest son James. This is one of the rare moments on film where Roosevelt can actually be seen walking, and it’s obvious how difficult it was for him to walk after polio left him paralyzed from the hips down in 1921. Next, FDR is seen on the presidential platform with his wife Eleanor and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, taking the Oath of Office and giving his Inaugural Address. The full text of the address can be read courtesy of Yale Law School, and a high-resolution scan of the Inauguration Ceremonies Program has been uploaded by The Library of Congress.
FDR was the first American president to successfully run for a third term due to the precarious international situation in 1941. (Get the audio file of FDR’s State of the Union from January 6, 1941 here). After George Washington declined to run for a third term in 1796, it had become an unwritten rule to follow his lead. But it was not until the 22nd Amendment from 1947/1951 (“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”) that this restriction was enshrined into law. FDR was, of course, elected for a fourth term in 1945, but died of a massive stroke on April 12, 1945.
By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.
Ahead of Time: The Life & Times of Ruth Gruber
Ahead of Time, a new documentary, tells the remarkable true story of Ruth Gruber. Born in Brooklyn in 1911, Gruber became the youngest person in the world (let alone woman) to earn a Ph.D degree; she did so at the age of 20 from the University of Cologne, where she majored in German Philosophy, Modern English Literature, and Art History.
While in Germany, Gruber witnessed Nazi rallies and later returned to America with an acute awareness of the dangers posed by Nazism. Beginning her career in journalism, she returned to Germany on a secret mission for the FDR administration and photographed Holocaust refugees. (You can see the photos Gruber captured in this post, and absolutely don’t miss the video interview with the 99-year-old Ruth at the bottom of that page). After the war, Gruber continued working as a foreign correspondent and photojournalist – a career that has spanned seven decades.
The short clip above offers a preview of Ahead of Time, which airs on Showtime tonight (Monday, March 7) at 5:30PM ET/PT, tomorrow (Tuesday, March 8) at 8PM ET/PT, and Friday, March 11 at 4PM ET/PT. For a complete list of Ahead of Time showings, see here. Ahead of Time promises to explain the long and incredibly inspiring career of Ruth Gruber as a journalist, lecturer, author, photographer, and humanitarian. Don’t miss it!
Eugene Buchko is a blogger and photographer living in Atlanta, GA. He maintains a photoblog, Erudite Expressions, and writes about what he reads on his reading blog.
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