Google Revisits the Fall of the Iron Curtain in New Online Exhibition

in Google, History | November 13th, 2012

I like to col­lect sounds while trav­el­ing. A few favorites that come to mind include the whine of scoot­ers buzzing down the streets of Paris, the calm female voice announc­ing the next stop on the Prague Metro and the clink clink of peo­ple chip­ping away chunks of the Berlin Wall.

That was 1990, just a few months after mil­lions of Germans—from both sides of the wall—succeeded in end­ing the East Ger­man regime through street protests.

The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute cap­tures this amaz­ing peri­od of recent his­to­ry with The Fall of the Iron Cur­tain, a new col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments, videos and pho­tos curat­ed by Niall Fer­gu­son, an emi­nent Har­vard his­to­ri­an.

The 1980s saw the Cold War come to an end with a wave of cit­i­zen protests that swept across Europe. Google’s col­lec­tion includes 13 exhibits that begin with Poland’s Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment but then con­sid­ers the his­to­ry and sig­nif­i­cance of the Berlin Wall.

Google part­nered with major Ger­man and Pol­ish muse­ums to cre­ate the exhibits so the expe­ri­ence is rich with con­text, includ­ing inter­views with his­to­ri­ans and images from the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the time.

Fol­low the riv­et­ing events of Decem­ber 14, 1989 as Roman­ian cit­i­zens crowd­ed Maria Plaza in Timisoara call­ing for lead­ers Nico­lae and Ele­na Ceauces­cu to step down. By evening the crowd filled all of the roads off the plaza and the mil­i­tary opened fire, killing 62 peo­ple. The peri­od of the Ceauces­cu tri­al and exe­cu­tion is brought to life in anoth­er exhib­it with images and inter­views.

The exhibits con­clude with the rapid accel­er­a­tion of events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall itself.

Each exhib­it is rich and com­plete with anec­dotes, includ­ing a diary of life dur­ing Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion.

Speak­ing of col­lect­ing sounds while trav­el­ing, check out the Pink Floyd’s live per­for­mance we brought you of The Wall in east­ern Berlin, a mere eight months after the Wall had come down.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. You can con­tact her and find more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Bertolt Brecht Testifies Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947)

in History, Politics, Theatre | November 12th, 2012

Ger­man poet, play­wright, and the­o­reti­cian, Bertolt Brecht—author of such famous works as The Three­pen­ny Opera (1928) and Moth­er Courage and Her Chil­dren (1938)—was a com­mit­ted Marx­ist who pro­posed a new the­ater to shat­ter what he saw as the com­fort­able mid­dle-class con­ven­tions of both trag­ic and real­ist dra­ma. His the­o­ry of “epic the­ater” under­lay his prac­tice, an attempt to shock audi­ences out of com­pla­cen­cy through what he called Ver­frem­dungsef­fekt (“defa­mil­iar­iza­tion” or “dis­tanc­ing effect”).

Brecht’s enor­mous influ­ence was felt not only through­out Europe, but also in the Unit­ed States, where he set­tled for a short time along with many oth­er Ger­man artists and intel­lec­tu­als flee­ing Nazi per­se­cu­tion. In 1943, Brecht col­lab­o­rat­ed with fel­low exiles Fritz Lang and com­pos­er Hanns Eisler on the film Hang­men Also Die!, his only Hol­ly­wood script, loose­ly based on the assas­si­na­tion of num­ber-two leader of the SS, Rein­hard Hey­drich.

Despite Brecht’s anti-Nazi activ­i­ties, in 1947 he was nonethe­less called before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (HUAC) and accused of writ­ing “a num­ber of very rev­o­lu­tion­ary poems, plays, and oth­er writ­ings.” HUAC, fueled by post­war Com­mu­nist and sub­ver­sive para­noia, inves­ti­gat­ed dozens of artists and pro­vid­ed the mod­el for Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts of the 1950s. Brecht’s friend Eisler was also called to tes­ti­fy, hav­ing been denounced by his own sis­ter. Brecht was crit­i­cized by many for his appear­ance. As part of the “Hol­ly­wood Nine­teen,” a group of screen­writ­ers sub­poe­naed by HUAC, he was one of eleven who actu­al­ly appeared, and the only mem­ber of the group who chose to answer ques­tions. The remain­ing ten, includ­ing even­tu­al­ly black­list­ed writ­ers Dal­ton Trum­bo and Ring Lard­ner, invoked their Fifth Amend­ment rights against self-incrim­i­na­tion. But Brecht was also the only for­eign­er in the group, as he put it, a “guest” in the coun­try, and feared that his return trip to Europe would be delayed if he did­n’t coop­er­ate. After his tes­ti­mo­ny, Brecht wrote in a let­ter to Eisler:

“I see from some news­pa­per clip­pings that cer­tain jour­nal­ists thought I behaved arro­gant­ly in Wash­ing­ton; the truth is that I sim­ply had to obey my six lawyers, who advised me to tell the truth and noth­ing else. Not being a cit­i­zen either, I could no more refuse to tes­ti­fy than you could.”

Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny (excerpt above) has become some­what leg­endary. The man who invent­ed the the­ater of alien­ation turns this hear­ing into some­thing of a piece of the­ater. Brecht did not lie to the com­mit­tee; he denied offi­cial mem­ber­ship of any Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which was true. But his pol­i­tics were decid­ed­ly prob­lem­at­ic for HUAC. Instead of dis­cussing them direct­ly, Brecht gave answers that were often equiv­o­cal, iron­ic, or seem­ing­ly eva­sive, turn­ing (like Bill Clinton’s post-Lewin­sky tes­ti­mo­ny) on small mat­ters of def­i­n­i­tion, or mak­ing use of the ambi­gu­i­ties of trans­la­tion. For exam­ple, Chief Inves­ti­ga­tor Robert Stripling asks Brecht about a song enti­tled “For­ward We’ve Not For­got­ten” (from his play, The Deci­sion) then reads an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the song. Asked if he had writ­ten it, Brecht responds, “No, I wrote a Ger­man poem, but that is very dif­fer­ent from this thing,” pro­vok­ing laugh­ter among the audi­ence. In response to the ques­tion about his “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” writ­ings, Brecht clev­er­ly responds: “I have writ­ten a num­ber of poems and songs and plays in the fight against Hitler, and of course they can be con­sid­ered there­fore as rev­o­lu­tion­ary, ‘cause I of course was for the over­throw of that gov­ern­ment.”

The com­plete tran­script of Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny is avail­able here, and an audio excerpt is online here. Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny is a fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment of a time when cen­sor­ship and polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion were very much Amer­i­can activ­i­ties.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

An Acoustic History of Punk Rock Sheds Light on NYC’s Lower East Side (NSFW)

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | November 3rd, 2012

With elec­tric­i­ty just restored to low­er Man­hat­tan and sub­ways still sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­abled six days after Hur­ri­cane Sandy, it seems a fit­ting time for an unplugged His­to­ry of Punk Rock and Its Devel­op­ment on the Low­er East Side, 1950 to 1975.

This neigh­bor­hood salute comes cour­tesy of anti-folk hero/comic book writer Jef­frey Lewis, who was­n’t born until late in the peri­od he describes, but he’s got tons of street cred, hav­ing grown up with­out a TV in one of the very build­ings whose dark­ened stair­wells have dom­i­nat­ed recent head­lines. The clip was orig­i­nal­ly avail­able as a mini cd, pack­aged with FUFF #1, one of Lewis’ com­ic books. Here, he deliv­ers the goods in one cat­er­waul­ing, NSFW, eight-minute take, accom­pa­ny­ing him­self on a stick­er cov­ered acoustic gui­tar. The break­neck, charm­ing­ly off-key primer name checks every­one from The Holy Modal Rounders and the Fugs to Pat­ti Smith and Richard Hell, with son­ic exam­ples of their work crammed between instruc­tive rhyming recita­tive.

To whit:

In ’71, Lester Bangs first writes the word ‘punk’
to describe ’60s enthu­si­as­tic teenage rock junk
’72, Lenny Kaye puts out the ’60s Garage comp. ‘Nuggets’
and coins the phrase ‘punk-rock’ in the lin­er notes of it
Though punk-rock would soon come to mean some­thing dif­fer­ent
from what Lester and Lenny thunk
(They meant raw 60s punk songs)

Even if you’re still pissed about that John Var­vatos bou­tique open­ing in the build­ing that once housed CBG­Bs, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to help New York­ers clob­bered by Hur­ri­cane Sandy. Espe­cial­ly if Lewis’ trib­ute has expand­ed your men­tal pic­ture of who an elder­ly per­son on today’s Low­er East Side might be.

Those with the pow­er to do so can down­load FUFF #1 in dig­i­tal form, and lis­ten to the His­to­ry of Punk Rock on the Low­er East Side via leg­endary New Jer­sey radio sta­tion WFMU.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

The Clash: West­way to the World

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of the Zinester’s Guide to NYC.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Archive of Handwritten Recipes (1600 — 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

in Books, History | October 31st, 2012

If you’ve ever tried to fol­low a recipe from your grandmother’s col­lec­tion, squint­ing at her spi­dery writ­ing on a stained 3x5 card, you might be a can­di­date for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa Libraries’ lat­est DIY His­to­ry project.

The University’s spe­cial col­lec­tions man­ages the Sza­th­mary Culi­nary Man­u­s­cipts and Cook­books, a hand­writ­ten col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can and Euro­pean recipes from the 1600s to the 1960s.

Help­ful food­ies, his­to­ry buffs and hand­writ­ing sleuths are invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in UI’s crowd­sourc­ing his­to­ry project by tran­scrib­ing dig­i­tized images of recipes.

It’s not the first time the uni­ver­si­ty has out­sourced a por­tion of its archival hand­work. Last year the Civ­il War Diaries and Let­ters Tran­scrip­tion Project was pow­ered by vol­un­teers, who tran­scribed more than 15,000 pages of mate­r­i­al. All you need to do is select a page from with­in the col­lec­tion and get start­ed. So far more than 17,000 pages have been tran­scribed and vol­un­teers chat and post ques­tions on a dis­cus­sion forum.

An exam­ple of the his­tor­i­cal nuggets uncov­ered while tran­scrib­ing: a pos­net is an 18th cen­tu­ry term for a small met­al pot, a spi­der is a skil­let, and to scearce is to sift. Of course no cook­book his­to­ri­an has com­plet­ed their task until they have actu­al­ly tried the recipes them­selves. This could be inter­est­ing for the lucky tran­scriber of a recipe from Abi­gail Welling­ton Townsend’s cook­book, cir­ca 1840:

To stew a calf­shead, let the calf­shead be split and open and cleaned put it in the stew pan with water to cov­er it stew it quite ten­der take it and cut it to pieces put them on again in the stew pan with the water it was first boiled in  put with it six large onions half a pint of claret a lit­tle catch up a lit­tle mace & pep­per & salt to your taste when it is stewed ten­der thick­en the gravy with yolks of six eggs boiled hard & braid in a lit­tle of the gravy put in six yolks of eggs boiled hard & fry’d forced meat.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at  and thenifty.blogspot.com.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Watch James Burke’s TV Series Connections, and Discover the Unexpected History of Innovation

in History, Science, Technology, Television | October 30th, 2012

Even if we did­n’t grow up as sci­ence fans, all of us caught at least the occa­sion­al tele­vi­sion show on sci­ence his­to­ry. Some came expert­ly pro­duced. Oth­ers packed the infor­ma­tion to a very high den­si­ty (by TV’s stan­dards, at least). Oth­ers cracked jokes to keep our wits engaged. Oth­ers got us intrigued enough about a par­tic­u­lar dis­cov­ery to per­form our own fur­ther research at the library or on the inter­net. But those of us who came of age dur­ing a run of one of James Burke’s Con­nec­tionsseries got all of that at once, exe­cut­ed on a high­er plane, and with quite dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal premis­es. Design­ing each of his pro­grams to exam­ine a dif­fer­ent nexus between sev­er­al ele­ments of sci­ence, nature, and  engi­neer­ing, Burke premis­es these nar­ra­tives on the insep­a­ra­bil­i­ty of human inge­nu­ity, his­tor­i­cal coin­ci­dence, and sheer acci­dent. How, for instance, did we end up in a world of film pro­jec­tors (cur­rent­ly being dis­placed by dig­i­tal pro­jec­tors though they may be)? For the answer, Burke argues, you’ve got to start with medieval cas­tle for­ti­fi­ca­tions. Then you work your way through can­nons, map­ping, lime­light, bil­liard-ball ivory, gun­cot­ton, the zooprax­is­cope, Morse code, and the phono­graph. These tech­no­log­i­cal threads all con­verge to give us the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence we enjoy today — or enjoyed in 1978, any­way.

If you enjoyed that episode of Con­nec­tions back then, know that you can now relive it on a Youtube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to Burke and his shows. If you nev­er watched any in the first place, you can now catch up on not just the ten episodes of the orig­i­nal Con­nec­tions, but 1994’s twice-as-long Con­nec­tions2, and the final series, 1997’s Con­nec­tions3. I rec­om­mend begin­ning at the begin­ning, with Con­nec­tions’ first episode, “The Trig­ger Effect,” embed­ded above. It gets you into the mind­set of Burke’s “alter­na­tive view of change” by break­ing down and illus­trat­ing the very con­cept of human reliance on com­plex­ly con­nect­ed net­works. The pro­gram’s clear and fast-mov­ing but no-stone-unturned method­ol­o­gy of expla­na­tion takes you through the New York Black­out of 1965, ancient Egypt­ian agri­cul­ture, and the oil fields of Kuwait. Reach the end of the third series, and you wind up learn­ing just how much the Eif­fel Tow­er has to do with the Elgin Mar­bles, Ben­jamin Franklin, Lon­don Bridge, and the ZIP code. Burke empha­sizes that none of the his­tor­i­cal agents involved in all these scat­tered small inno­va­tions that enabled the big ones — the ones with such effects on our mod­ern lives — could have planned for things to go the way they did. His sto­ries thus grant us more than a bit of humil­i­ty about pre­dict­ing the inno­va­tions of the future, built as they will be atop the kind of com­plex­i­ty that not even Con­nec­tions ever described.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Exquis­ite Paper Craft Ani­ma­tions Tell the Sto­ries of Words

The Sci­ence of the Olympic Flame; Ancient Style Meets Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Watch Historic Footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 102,800 Jump from Space (1960)

in History, Random | October 25th, 2012

When I first heard that 43-year old Aus­tri­an dare­dev­il and for­mer mil­i­tary para­chutist Felix Baum­gart­ner would be jump­ing 128,000 feet from space, my imme­di­ate reac­tion was, “What? Why?!” Because why would any­one do that? And I assumed it was all some macho stunt to pro­mote Red Bull, his cor­po­rate spon­sor, which isn’t entire­ly unfound­ed. But I also had no sense of the his­toric con­text, the sci­en­tif­ic impli­ca­tions, and until I read the details, the tru­ly death-defy­ing mag­ni­tude of it all. As I watched the jump and then learned more, my won­der and admi­ra­tion grew, par­tic­u­lar­ly in read­ing Baumgartner’s own accounts of his sev­en years of prepa­ra­tion for the feat.

Baum­gart­ner best­ed Chuck Yea­ger on the same day in his­to­ry that Yea­ger broke the sound bar­ri­er (he says Yeager’s going to be “pissed”). He also broke the record set by Joseph Kit­tinger, an Air Force pilot who leapt from 102,800 feet (19.5 miles) above earth in 1960. You can watch a short doc­u­men­tary of Kittinger’s famous jump above. The tech­nol­o­gy of 1960 didn’t allow for the crys­tal-clear images Baum­gart­ner cap­tured with his two suit cam­eras, but it’s still an impres­sive lit­tle film, made more so by Kittinger’s voice over describ­ing the sen­sa­tions he expe­ri­enced dur­ing free fall. Below is a clas­sic 1960 news­reel film of the jump, with a dra­mat­ic announc­er and tri­umphal, mar­tial music.

Kit­tinger and Baum­gart­ner first met in 2008, and the elder test pilot sup­port­ed and helped plan the Red Bull Stratos project that would break his record. He also served as Baum­gart­ner’s mis­sion con­trol, guid­ing him from his tiny space cap­sule to the ground. The jump was appar­ent­ly sup­posed to take place two years ear­li­er, on the 50th anniver­sary of Kittinger’s, but was delayed. Below, you can watch Kit­tinger dis­cuss the project and his own career in a 2010 inter­view with Red Bull.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Helen Keller Pays a Visit to Martha Graham’s Dance Studio Circa 1954

in History | October 24th, 2012

Helen Keller’s sto­ry is remark­able. With the help of Anne Sul­li­van, Keller (1880–1968) escaped from a “dou­ble dun­geon of dark­ness and silence” and achieved great things. In 1904, she grad­u­at­ed from Rad­cliffe Col­lege (now Har­vard), becom­ing the first deaf blind per­son to earn a B.A. in the U.S..  She went on to write 14 books (a few more than the rest of us) and cham­pi­oned impor­tant polit­i­cal caus­es. A rad­i­cal at heart, she backed wom­en’s suf­frage and birth con­trol move­ments, helped found the ACLU, urged paci­fism, and railed against cap­i­tal­ism. She count­ed many world lead­ers and cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as friends, palling around with fig­ures like Char­lie Chap­lin and Mark Twain. And then there’s the time she paid a vis­it to the dance stu­dio of Martha Gra­ham and gained a tac­tile intro­duc­tion to mod­ern dance. The nar­ra­tor describes the mem­o­rable scene fair­ly well. But, if you want more back­sto­ry and pho­tos, you should head over to Brain­Pick­ings to get the big­ger pic­ture.

Relat­ed Must-See Video: Helen Keller and Anne Sul­li­van Togeth­er in 1930

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Enduring Analog Underworld of Gramercy Typewriter

in Books, History, Technology | October 22nd, 2012

Are type­writ­ers going the way of vinyl?

Note to those cave dwellers who’ve yet to suc­cumb to Mad Men mania, it’s not that same route so trav­eled by the dodo. For a while it looked like the world’s sup­ply of Under­woods and Olivet­tis was being req­ui­si­tioned for hip­ster jew­el­ry, but their recent come­back is root­ed in their intend­ed pur­pose. These days, they’re near fetish objects for roman­tic young writ­ers con­ceived in the shad­ow of the Mac Clas­sic.

Mean­while, the likes of Cor­mac McCarthy and David McCul­lough, author of 1776, have yet to turn their backs on their beloved, quite like­ly lucky ana­log imple­ments.

All due respect to the young Turks seek­ing to dig­i­tize the dinosaur, but the real hero of the type­writer’s post mil­len­ni­al sur­vival is Paul Schweitzer, the ink fin­gered med­i­cine man at the helm of Gramer­cy Type­writer. His once-robust com­pe­ti­tion con­signed to the ash heap, Schweitzer has both the stub­born­ness and exper­tise to tough it out, in an ana­log lair that’s the antithe­sis of sleek.

No one will fault you if your heart lies with your var­i­ous screens. But let’s not for­get where you came from.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mak­ing Paper in L.A., Pianos in Paris: Old Crafts­men Hang­ing on in a Chang­ing World

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of a half dozen some books includ­ing the decid­ed­ly ana­log Zinester’s Guide to NYC.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast