“In 2014, most European countries will commemorate the start of the First World War 100 years ago. Among the numerous publications to appear to date is a book from Carl Gerold’s Publishers, which contains numerous hitherto unpublished photographs.” >text & album (c) wieninternational.at 2013
Südbahnhof, the vanished train station of Vienna. Bombed down in 1945, re-erected in the 1950s and torn down again tp create the space needed for Vienna’s new Central Train Station. Image: an aquarell by F. Witt, ca 1900
(c) WIENER G’SCHICHTEN, 2013
Today is the birthday of British singer Marianne Faithfull Geburtstag. Besides, she is not only one of the most sucessful groupies of pop history (having been Mick Jagger’s lover), but also the great-grandniece of the (in)famous Austrian Ukrainian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Venus in Furs). Her mother and grandmother were born in Vienna and in 1945, after the end of WW2, raped by Soviet soldiers. Marianne was born in 1946 as the daughter of an English officer of the British occupation forces.
“With the war’s centenary near, this is not a parlour game. Counterfactual
conjecture allows us to see the conflict far more objectively.” >essay
(c) THE GUARDIAN, 2013; photo (c) Virginia Mayo/AP:
David Cameron visits the graves of WW1 soldiers in Zonnebeke, Belgium.
“When the Nazis took power in 1933, Christmas was one of their first targets.
Not even Santa was safe.” >full text (c) FAST CO. DESIGN, 2013
The Lucian Freud exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum was one of the highlights of the autumn 2013 exhibition season. Those who have not yet done so are well advised to check it out before 12 January. It’s worth it! >Text (a bit odd;) & album with images (c) wieninternational.at 2013 Also see another text posted earlier.
“Germany rethinks its liberal ways on sex workers. Prostitution was decriminalised in ‘the bordello of Europe’ in 2002. Now feminists want to overturn that law.” The sex workers resist. >text & photo (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2013
“I escaped Hitler’s Germany and built a new life. As one of the Kindertransport refugees, I arrived in London knowing no one: 75 years later I’m blessed with my own family.” memoir (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2013
“Early in President Obama’s first term, in May 2009, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. paid a visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Addressing the Parliament, he told Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian members, ‘My country is worried. (…) We have seen a sharp and dangerous rise in nationalist rhetoric.'”
>full text & illustration (c) NYT, 2013
“How to tell the story of the rise and destruction of European Jews? Perhaps the most compelling way is through family history, as David Laskin does in his fascinating new book.” >review & photo (c) THE DAILY BEAST, 2013
delirium clemens 