Background.

Kershaw was born on 29 April 1943 in Oldham, Lancashire, England, to Joseph Kershaw and Alice Robinson. He was educated at Counthill Grammar School, St Bede's College, Manchester, the University of Liverpool (BA) and Merton College, Oxford (D.Phil). He was originally trained as a medievalist but turned to the study of modern German social history in the 1970s. At first, he was mainly concerned with the economic history of Bolton Abbey. As a lecturer in medieval history at Manchester, Kershaw learned German to study the German peasantry in the Middle Ages. In 1972, he visited Bavaria and was shocked to hear the views of an old man he met in a Munich café who told him: "You English were so foolish. If only you had sided with us. Together we could have defeated Bolshevism and ruled the earth!"—adding in for good measure that "The Jew is a louse!" As a result of this incident, Kershaw became keen to learn how and why ordinary people in Germany could support the Nazi ideology (National Socialism or Nazism).  His wife, Dame Betty Kershaw, is a former professor of nursing and dean of the School of Nursing Studies at the University of Sheffield.

Bavaria Project.

In 1975, Kershaw joined Martin Broszat's "Bavaria Project". During his work, Broszat encouraged Kershaw to examine how ordinary people viewed Hitler. As a result of his work in the 1970s on Broszat's "Bavaria Project", Kershaw wrote his first book on Nazi Germany, "", which was first published in German in 1980 as "Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich". This book examined the "Hitler cult" in Germany, how it was developed by Joseph Goebbels, what social groups the Hitler Myth appealed to and how it rose and fell.  Also arising from the "Bavaria Project" and Kershaw's work in the field of "Alltagsgeschichte" was "Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich". In this 1983 book, Kershaw examined the experience of the Nazi era at the grass-roots in Bavaria. Kershaw showed how ordinary people reacted to the Nazi dictatorship, looking at how people conformed to the regime and to the extent and limits of dissent. Kershaw described his subject as ordinary Bavarians: the muddled majority, neither full-hearted Nazis nor outright opponents, whose attitudes at one and the same time betray signs of Nazi ideological penetration and yet show the clear limits of propaganda manipulation. Kershaw went on to write in his preface:I should like to think that had I been around at the time I would have been a convinced anti-Nazi engaged in the underground resistance fight. However, I know really that I would have been as confused and felt as helpless as most of the people I am writing about.  Kershaw argued that Goebbels failed to create the "Volksgemeinschaft" (people's community) of Nazi propaganda, and that most Bavarians were far more interested in their day-to-day lives than in politics during the Third Reich. Kershaw concluded that the majority of Bavarians were either antisemitic or more commonly simply did not care about what was happening to the Jews. Kershaw also concluded that there was a fundamental difference between the antisemitism of the majority of ordinary people, who disliked Jews and were much coloured by traditional Catholic prejudices, and the ideological and far more radical "völkische" antisemitism of the Nazi Party, who hated Jews.  Kershaw found that the majority of Bavarians disapproved of the violence of the "Kristallnacht" pogrom, and that despite the efforts of the Nazis, continued to maintain social relations with members of the Bavarian Jewish community. Kershaw documented numerous campaigns on the part of the Nazi Party to increase antisemitic hatred, and noted that the overwhelming majority of antisemitic activities in Bavaria were the work of a small number of committed Nazi Party members. Overall, Kershaw noted that the popular mood towards Jews was indifference to their fate. Kershaw argued that during World War II, most Bavarians were vaguely aware of the Holocaust, but were vastly more concerned about and interested in the war than about the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".  Kershaw made the notable claim that "the road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference." By this, Kershaw meant the progress leading up to Auschwitz was motivated by antisemitism of the most vicious kind held by the Nazi elite, but it took place in a context where the majority of German public opinion was completely indifferent to what was happening.  Kershaw's assessment that most Bavarians, and by implication Germans, were "indifferent" to the "Shoah" faced criticism from the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka and the Canadian historian Michael Kater. Kater contended that Kershaw downplayed the extent of popular antisemitism, and that though admitting that most of the "spontaneous" antisemitic actions of Nazi Germany were staged, argued that because these actions involved substantial numbers of Germans, it is wrong to see the extreme antisemitism of the Nazis as coming solely from above.  Kulka argued that most Germans were more antisemitic than Kershaw portrayed them in "Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich", and that rather than "indifference" argued that "passive complicity" would be a better term to describe the reaction of the German people to the "Shoah".

"The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation".

In 1985, Kershaw published a book on the historiography of Nazi Germany, "The Nazi Dictatorship", in which he reflected on the problems in historiography of the Nazi era. Kershaw noted the huge disparity of often incompatible views about the Nazi era such as the debate between:  As Kershaw noted, these divergent interpretations such as the differences between the functionalist view of the Holocaust as caused by a process and the intentionalist view of the Holocaust as caused by a plan are not easily reconciled, and that there was in his opinion the need for a guide to explain the complex historiography surrounding these issues.  Likewise, if one accepts the Marxist view of National Socialism as the culmination of capitalism, then the Nazi phenomenon is universal, and fascism can come to power in any society where capitalism is the dominant economic system, whereas the view of National Socialism as the culmination of "Deutschtum" means that the Nazi phenomenon is local and particular only to Germany. For Kershaw, any historian writing about the period had to take account of the "historical-philosophical", "political-ideological" and moral problems associated with the period, which thus poses special challenges for the historian. In "The Nazi Dictatorship", Kershaw surveyed the historical literature and offered his own assessment of the pros and cons of the various approaches.  In a 2008 interview, Kershaw lists as his major intellectual influences Martin Broszat, Hans Mommsen, Alan Milward, Timothy Mason, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, William Carr and Jeremy Noakes. In the same interview, Kershaw expressed strong approval of Mason's "Primacy of Politics" concept, in which it was German Big Business that served the Nazi regime rather than the other way around, against the orthodox Marxist "Primacy of Economics" concept. Despite his praise and admiration for Mason, in the 2000 edition of "The Nazi Dictatorship", Kershaw was highly skeptical of Mason's "Flight into War" theory of an economic crisis in 1939 forcing the Nazi regime into war.  In the "Historikerstreit" (Historians' Dispute) of 1986–89, Kershaw followed Broszat in criticising the work and views of Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer, Joachim Fest and Klaus Hildebrand, all of whom Kershaw saw as German apologists attempting to white-wash the German past in various ways. In the 1989 edition of "The Nazi Dictatorship", Kershaw devoted an entire chapter towards rebutting the views of Nolte, Hillgruber, Fest, Hildebrand, and Stürmer. In regard to the debate between those who regard National Socialism as a type of totalitarianism (and thus having more in common with the Soviet Union) versus those who regard Nazism as a type of fascism (and thus having more in common with Fascist Italy), Kershaw, though feeling that the totalitarianism approach is not without value, has argued that in essence, Nazism should be viewed as a type of fascism, albeit fascism of a very radical type. Writing of the "Sonderweg" debate, Kershaw finds the moderate "Sonderweg" approach of Jürgen Kocka the most satisfactory historical explanation for why the Nazi era occurred. In the 2000 edition of "The Nazi Dictatorship", Kershaw wrote he considered Gerhard Ritter's claim that one "madman" (i.e. Hitler) single-handedly caused the Second World War to be that of a German apologist, and that he found the historical approach of Ritter's arch-enemy Fritz Fischer to be a far better way of understanding German history. Along the same lines, Kershaw criticised as German apologetics the 1946 statement by the German historian Friedrich Meinecke that National Socialism was just a particularly unfortunate "Betriebsunfall" (industrial accident) of history.  Kershaw was later in a 2003 essay to criticise both Ritter and Meinecke as German apologists who either through the "Betriebsunfall" theory and by blaming everything upon Hitler was seeking to white-wash the German past. Writing of the work of the German historian Rainer Zitelmann, Kershaw has argued that Zitelmann has elevated what were merely secondary considerations in Hitler's remarks to the primary level, and that Zitelmann has not offered a clear definition of what he means by "modernization".  With regard to the Nazi foreign policy debate between "globalists" such as Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, Jochen Thies, Gunter Moltman and Gerhard Weinberg, who argue that Germany aimed at world conquest, and the "continentalists" such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, who argue that Germany aimed only at the conquest of Europe, Kershaw tends towards the "continental" position. Kershaw agrees with the thesis that Hitler did formulate a programme for foreign policy centering on an alliance with Britain to achieve the destruction of the Soviet Union, but has argued that a British lack of interest doomed the project, thus leading to the situation in 1939, where Hitler went to war with Britain, the country he wanted as an ally, not as an enemy, and the country he wanted as an enemy, the Soviet Union, as his ally. At the same time, Kershaw sees considerable merit in the work of such historians as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, Martin Broszat and Wolfgang Schieder, who argue that Hitler had no "programme" in foreign policy, and instead contend that his foreign policy was simply a kneejerk reaction to domestic pressures in the economy and his need to maintain his popularity.  Regarding the historical debates about "Widerstand" (resistance) in German society, Kershaw has argued that there are two approaches to the question, one of which he calls the "fundamentalist" (dealing with those committed to overthrowing the Nazi regime) and the "societal" (dealing with forms of dissent in "everyday life"). In Kershaw's view, Broszat's "Resistenz" (immunity) concept works well in an "Alltagsgeschichte" approach, but works less well in the field of high politics, and moreover by focusing only on the "effect" of one's actions, fails to consider the crucial element of the "intention" behind one's actions. Kershaw has argued that the term "Widerstand" should be used only for those working for the total overthrow of the Nazi system, and those engaging in behaviour that was counter to the regime's wishes without seeking to overthrow the regime should be included under the terms opposition and dissent, depending upon their motives and actions. In Kershaw's opinion, there were three bands ranging from dissent to opposition to resistance. Kershaw has used the Edelweiss Pirates as an example of a group whose behavior initially fell under dissent, and who advanced from there to opposition and finally to resistance.  In Kershaw's view, there was much dissent and opposition within German society, but outside of the working class, very little resistance. Although Kershaw has argued that the "Resistenz" (immunity [against indoctrination]) concept has much merit, he concluded that the Nazi regime had a broad basis of support and it is correct to speak of "resistance without the people".  Regarding the debate in the late 1980s between Martin Broszat and Saul Friedländer over Broszat's call for the "historicization" of National Socialism, Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Friedländer that the Nazi period could not be treated as a "normal" period of history, but he felt that historians should approach the Nazi period as they would any other period of history. In support of Broszat, Kershaw wrote that an "Alltagsgeschichte" approach to German history, provided that it did not lose sight of Nazi crimes, had much to offer as a way of understanding how those crimes occurred.  During the "Goldhagen Controversy" of 1996, Kershaw took the view that his friend, Hans Mommsen, had "destroyed" Daniel Goldhagen's arguments about a culture of "eliminationist antisemitism" in Germany during their frequent debates on German TV. Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Eberhard Jäckel's assessment that "Hitler's Willing Executioners" was "simply a bad book". Though Kershaw had little positive to say about Goldhagen, he wrote that he felt that Norman Finkelstein's attack on Goldhagen had been over-the-top and did little to help historical understanding. However, Kershaw later went on to recommend Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn's extremely critical assessment of Goldhagen's book, ""; stating that "Finkelstein and Birn provide a devastating critique of Daniel Goldhagen's simplistic and misleading interpretation of the Holocaust. Their contribution to the debate is, in my view, indispensable."

Structuralist views.

Like Broszat, Kershaw sees the structures of the Nazi state as far more important than the personality of Hitler (or any other individual for that matter) as an explanation for the way Nazi Germany developed. In particular, Kershaw subscribes to the view argued by Broszat and the German historian Hans Mommsen that Nazi Germany was a chaotic collection of rival bureaucracies in perpetual power struggles with each other. In Kershaw's view, the Nazi dictatorship was not a totalitarian monolith, but rather an unstable coalition of several blocs in a "power cartel" comprising the NSDAP, big business, the German state bureaucracy, the Army and SS/police agencies (and moreover, each of the "power blocs" in turn were divided into several factions). In Kershaw's opinion, the more "radical" blocs such as the SS/police and the Nazi Party gained increasing ascendancy over the other blocs after the 1936 economic crisis, and from then onwards increased their power at the expense of the other blocs. For Kershaw, the real significance of Hitler lies not in the dictator himself, but rather in the German people's perception of him. In his biography of Hitler, Kershaw presented him as the ultimate "unperson"; a boring, pedestrian man devoid of even the "negative greatness" attributed to him by Joachim Fest. Kershaw rejects the Great Man theory of history and has criticised those who seek to explain everything that happened in Nazi Germany as the result of Hitler's will and intentions. Kershaw has argued that it is absurd to seek to explain German history in the Nazi era solely through Hitler, as Germany had sixty-eight million people during the Nazi era, and to seek to explain the fate of sixty-eight million people solely through the prism of one man is in Kershaw's opinion a flawed position. Kershaw wrote about the problems of an excessive focus on Hitler that "even the best biographies have seemed at times in danger of elevating Hitler's personal power to a level where the history of Germany between 1933 and 1945 becomes reduced to little more than an expression of the dictator's will". Kershaw has a low opinion of those who seek to provide "personalized" theories about the Holocaust and/or World War II as due to some defect, medical or otherwise, in Hitler. In his 2000 edition of "The Nazi Dictatorship", Kershaw quoted with approval the dismissive remarks made by the German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler in 1980 about such theories. Wehler wrote:Does our understanding of National Socialist policies really depend on whether Hitler had only one testicle?... Perhaps the Führer had three, which made things difficult for him, who knows?... Even if Hitler could be regarded irrefutably as a sadomasochist, which scientific interest does that further?... Does the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" thus become more easily understandable or the "twisted road to Auschwitz" become the one-way street of a psychopath in power? Kershaw shares Wehler's opinion, that, besides the problem that such theories about Hitler's medical condition were extremely difficult to prove, they had the effect of personalising the phenomena of Nazi Germany by more or less attributing everything that happened in Nazi Germany to one flawed individual.  Kershaw's biography of Hitler is an examination of Hitler's power; how he obtained it and how he maintained it. Following up on ideas that he had first introduced in a 1991 book about Hitler, Kershaw has argued that Hitler's leadership is a model example of Max Weber's theory of charismatic leadership. Kershaw's 1991 book "Hitler: A Profile in Power" marked a change for him from writing about how people viewed Hitler to writing about Hitler himself. In his two-volume biography of Hitler published in 1998 and 2000, Kershaw stated, "What I tried to do was to embed Hitler into the social and political context that I had already studied." Kershaw finds the picture of Hitler as a "mountebank" (opportunistic adventurer) in Alan Bullock's biography unsatisfactory, and Joachim Fest's quest to determine how "great" Hitler was senseless. In a wider sense, Kershaw sees the Nazi regime as part of a broader crisis that afflicted European society from 1914 to 1945. Though in disagreement with many of their claims (especially Nolte's), Kershaw's concept of a "Second Thirty Years' War" reflects many similarities with Ernst Nolte, A. J. P. Taylor and Arno J. Mayer who have also advanced the concept of a "Thirty Years' Crisis" to explain European history between 1914 and 1945.  In the functionalism versus intentionalism debate, Kershaw has argued for a synthesis of the two schools, though leaning towards the functionalist school. Despite some disagreements, Kerhaw has called Mommsen a "good personal friend" and an "important further vital stimulus to my own work on Nazism". Kershaw has argued in his two-volume biography of Hitler that Hitler did play a decisive role in the development of policies of genocide, but also argued that many of the measures that led to the Holocaust were undertaken by many lower-ranking officials without direct orders from Hitler in the expectation that such steps would win them favour. Though Kershaw does not deny the radical antisemitism of the Nazis, he favours Mommsen's view of the Holocaust being caused by the "cumulative radicalization" of Nazi Germany caused by the endless bureaucratic power struggles and a turn towards increasingly radical antisemitism within the Nazi elite. Despite his background in the functionalist historiography, Kershaw admits that his account of Hitler in World War II owes much to intentionalist historians like Gerhard Weinberg, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lucy Dawidowicz and Eberhard Jäckel. Kershaw accepts the picture of Hitler drawn by intentionalist historians as a fanatical ideologue who was obsessed with social Darwinism, "völkisch" antisemitism (in which the Jewish people were viewed as a "race" biologically different from the rest of humanity rather than a religion), militarism and the perceived need for "Lebensraum". However, in a 1992 essay, "Improvised genocide?", in which Kershaw traces how the ethnic cleansing campaign of "Gauleiter" Arthur Greiser in the Warthegau region annexed to Germany from Poland in 1939 led to a campaign of genocide by 1941, Kershaw argued that the process was indeed "improvised genocide" rather the fulfilment of a master plan. Kershaw views the Holocaust not as a plan, as argued by the intentionalists, but rather a process caused by the "cumulative radicalization" of the Nazi state as articulated by the functionalists. Citing the work of the American historian Christopher Browning in his biography of Hitler, Kershaw argues that in the period 1939–41 the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was a "territorial solution", that such plans as the Nisko Plan and Madagascar Plan were serious and only in the latter half of 1941 did the phrase "Final Solution" come to refer to genocide. This view of the Holocaust as a process rather than a plan is the antithesis of the extreme intentionalist approach as advocated by Lucy Dawidowicz, who argues that Hitler had decided upon genocide as early as November 1918, and that everything he did from that time onwards was directed towards that goal.  In recent years Kershaw has come to form a thesis based on the ideas of both traditions of Nazi theory.

"Working Towards the Führer" concept.

Kershaw disagrees with Mommsen's "Weak Dictator" thesis: the idea that Hitler was a relatively unimportant player in Nazi Germany. However, he has agreed with his idea that Hitler did not play much of a role in the day-to-day administration of the government of Nazi Germany. Kershaw's way of explaining this paradox is his theory of "Working Towards the Führer", the phrase being taken from a 1934 speech by the Prussian civil servant Werner Willikens:  Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything which he intends to realize sooner or later. On the contrary, up till now, everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer. Very often and in many spheres, it has been the case—in previous years as well—that individuals have simply waited for orders and instructions. Unfortunately, the same will be true in the future; but in fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough. But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future, one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.  Kershaw has argued that in Nazi Germany officials of both the German state and Party bureaucracy usually took the initiative in initiating policy to meet Hitler's perceived wishes, or alternatively attempted to turn into policy Hitler's often loosely and indistinctly phrased wishes. Though Kershaw does agree that Hitler possessed the powers that the "Master of the Third Reich" thesis championed by Norman Rich and Karl Dietrich Bracher would suggest, he has argued that Hitler was a "lazy dictator"; an indifferent dictator who was really not interested in involving himself much in the daily running of Nazi Germany. The only exceptions were the areas of foreign policy and military decisions, both areas that Hitler increasingly involved himself in from the late 1930s.  In a 1993 essay "Working Towards the Führer", Kershaw argued that the German and Soviet dictatorships had more differences than similarities. Kershaw argued that Hitler was a very unbureaucratic leader who was highly averse to paper work in marked contrast to Stalin. Likewise, Kershaw argued that Stalin was highly involved in the running of the Soviet Union in contrast to Hitler whose involvement in day-to-day decision making was limited, infrequent and capricious. Kershaw argued that the Soviet regime, despite all of its extreme brutality and utter ruthlessness, was basically rational in its goal of seeking to modernise a backward country and had no equivalent of the "cumulative radicalization" towards increasingly irrational goals that Kershaw sees as characteristic of Nazi Germany. In Kershaw's opinion, Stalin's power corresponded to Weber's category of bureaucratic authority, whereas Hitler's power corresponded to Weber's category of charismatic authority.  In Kershaw's view, what happened in Germany after 1933 was the imposition of Hitler's charismatic authority on top of the "legal-rational" authority system that had existed prior to 1933, leading to a gradual breakdown of any system of ordered authority in Germany. Kershaw argues that by 1938 the German state had been reduced to a hopeless, polycratic shambles of rival agencies all competing with each other to win Hitler's favour, which by that time had become the only source of political legitimacy. Kershaw sees this rivalry as causing the "cumulative radicalization" of Germany, and argues that though Hitler always favoured the most radical solution to any problem, it was German officials themselves who for the most part, in attempting to win the Führer's approval, carried out on their own initiative increasingly "radical" solutions to perceived problems like the "Jewish Question", as opposed to being ordered to do so by Hitler. In this, Kershaw largely agrees with Mommsen's portrait of Hitler as a distant and remote leader standing in many ways above his own system, whose charisma and ideas served to set the general tone of politics.  As an example of how Hitler's power functioned in practice, Kershaw used Hitler's directive to the "Gauleiters" Albert Forster and Arthur Greiser to "Germanize" the part of north-western Poland annexed to Germany in 1939 within the next 10 years with his promise that "no questions would be asked" about how this would be done. As Kershaw notes, the completely different ways Forster and Greiser sought to "Germanize" their "Gaue" – with Forster simply having the local Polish population in his "Gau" signing forms saying they had "German blood", and Greiser carrying out a program of brutal ethnic cleansing of Poles in his "Gau" – showed both how Hitler set events in motion, and how his "Gauleiters" could carry out totally different policies in pursuit of what they believed to be Hitler's wishes. In Kershaw's opinion, Hitler's vision of a racially cleansed "Volksgemeinschaft" provided the impetus for German officials to carry out increasingly extreme measures to win his approval, which ended with the Holocaust.  The Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka has praised the concept of "working towards the Führer" as the best way of understanding how the Holocaust occurred, combining the best features and avoiding the weaknesses of both the "functionalist" and "intentionalist" methods.  Thus, for Kershaw Nazi Germany was both a monocracy (rule of one) and polycracy (rule of many). Hitler held absolute power but did not choose to exercise it very much; the rival fiefdoms of the Nazi state fought each other and attempted to carry out Hitler's vaguely worded wishes and dimly defined orders by "Working Towards the Führer".

References.

Notes Bibliography

External links.

On Kershaw  Kershaw interviewed  By Kershaw

Sir Ian Kershaw (born 29 April 1943) is an English historian and author whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th-century Germany. He is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler.

Sir Ian Kershaw (* 29. April 1943 in Oldham, Lancashire) ist ein britischer Historiker, der durch seine Schriften zum Nationalsozialismus, besonders durch seine zweiteilige Biografie Adolf Hitlers, bekannt wurde.


Plot.

In 1955, a young Henry Hill becomes enamored of the criminal life and Mafia presence in his working class Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn. He begins working for local "caporegime" Paul "Paulie" Cicero and his associates: James "Jimmy the Gent" Conway, an Irish truck hijacker and gangster, and Tommy DeVito, a fellow juvenile delinquent. Henry begins as a fence for Jimmy, gradually working his way up to more serious crimes. The three associates spend most of their nights in the 1960s at the Copacabana nightclub carousing with women. Henry starts dating Karen Friedman, a Jewish woman. She is initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities but is eventually seduced by his glamorous lifestyle. She marries him, despite her parents' disapproval.  In 1970, Billy Batts, a made man in the Gambino crew who was recently released from prison, repeatedly insults Tommy at a nightclub owned by Henry; Tommy and Jimmy then beat him to death. The unsanctioned murder of a made man invites retribution; realizing this, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy cover up the murder by burying the body in Upstate New York. Six months later, however, Jimmy learns that the burial site is slated for development, prompting them to exhume and relocate the decomposing corpse.  In 1974, Karen harasses Henry's mistress Janice and holds Henry at gunpoint. Henry moves in with Janice, but Paulie insists that he should return to Karen after collecting a debt from a gambler in Tampa with Jimmy. Upon returning, Jimmy and Henry are arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, an FBI typist, and they receive ten-year prison sentences. In order to support his family on the outside, Henry has drugs smuggled in by Karen and sells them to a fellow inmate from Pittsburgh. In 1978, Henry is paroled and expands this cocaine business against Paulie's orders, soon involving Jimmy and Tommy.  Jimmy organizes a crew to raid the Lufthansa vault at the JFK Airport, stealing several millions in cash and jewelry. After some members purchase expensive items against Jimmy's orders and the getaway truck is found by police, he has most of the crew murdered. In his voiceover narration, as dead bodies are being discovered all over the city, Henry theorizes that Jimmy would have killed them anyway rather than share the profits of the heist. Tommy and Henry are spared by Jimmy. Tommy, however, is later led to believe that he is to become a made man, but is ultimately shot dead on the way to the ceremony in retribution for Batts' murder.  By 1980, Henry has become a nervous wreck from cocaine use and insomnia. He sets up a drug deal with his Pittsburgh associates, but is arrested by narcotics agents, and jailed. After bailing him out, Karen explains that she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving them virtually penniless. Feeling betrayed by Henry's drug dealing, Paulie gives him $3,200 and ends their association. Henry meets Jimmy at a diner and is asked to travel on a hit assignment, but the novelty of such a request makes him suspicious. Henry realizes that Jimmy plans to have him and Karen killed, prompting his decision to become an informant and enroll, with his family, in the witness protection program. He gives sufficient testimony to have Paulie and Jimmy arrested and convicted. Henry is grateful to be alive, but he is forced out of his gangster life and has to readjust to normal life once again; he narrates, "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."  The end title cards state that Henry is still a protected witness as of 1990, but that he was arrested in 1987 in Seattle for narcotics conspiracy, receiving five years' probation. He has been clean since then. He and Karen separated in 1989 after 25 years of marriage, while Paulie died the previous year in Fort Worth Federal Prison at age 73 from respiratory illness. Jimmy is serving a 20 years to life sentence in a New York prison for murder, in which he will be paroled in 2004, when he will be 78 years old.

Production.

Development.

"Goodfellas" is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi's book "Wiseguy". Martin Scorsese did not intend to make another mob film, but he saw a review of Pileggi's book, which he then read while working on the set of "The Color of Money" in 1986. He had always been fascinated by the mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi's book because he thought it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read. After reading the book, Scorsese knew what approach he wanted to take, "To begin "Goodfellas" like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it." According to Pileggi, Scorsese cold-called the writer and told him, "I've been waiting for this book my entire life," to which Pileggi replied, "I've been waiting for this phone call my entire life."  Scorsese decided to postpone making the film when funds materialized in 1988 to make "The Last Temptation of Christ". He was drawn to the documentary aspects of Pileggi's book. "The book ["Wiseguy"] gives you a sense of the day-to-day life, the tedium, how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons. It shows how it's done." He saw "Goodfellas" as the third film in an unplanned trilogy of films that examined the lives of Italian Americans "from slightly different angles." He has often described the film as "a mob home movie" that is about money, because "that's what they're really in business for." Two weeks in advance of the filming, the real Henry Hill was paid $480,000.

Screenplay.

Scorsese and Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay, and over the course of the 12 drafts it took to reach the ideal script, the reporter realized "the visual styling had to be completely redone... So we decided to share credit." They chose the sections of the book they liked and put them together like building blocks. Scorsese persuaded Pileggi that they did not need to follow a traditional narrative structure. The director wanted to take the gangster film and deal with it episode by episode, but start in the middle and move backwards and forwards. Scorsese compacted scenes, realizing that, if they were kept short, "the impact after about an hour and a half would be terrific." He wanted to do the voiceover like the opening of "Jules and Jim" (1962) and use "all the basic tricks of the New Wave from around 1961." The names of several real-life gangsters were altered for the film: Tommy "Two Gun" DeSimone became the character Tommy DeVito; Paul Vario became Paulie Cicero, and Jimmy "The Gent" Burke was portrayed as Jimmy Conway. Scorsese initially titled the film "Wise Guy", but later, he and Pileggi decided to change the title of their film to "Goodfellas" because two contemporary projects, the 1986 Brian De Palma film "Wise Guys" and the 1987–1990 TV series "Wiseguy" had used similar titles.

Casting.

Once Robert De Niro agreed to play Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film. The director cast Ray Liotta after De Niro saw him in Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild" (1986), and Scorsese was surprised by "his explosive energy" in that film. Liotta had read Pileggi's book when it came out and was fascinated by it. A couple of years afterwards, his agent told him Scorsese was going to direct a film version. In 1988, he met the director over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film. He campaigned aggressively for a role, but the studio wanted a well-known actor. He later said "I think they would've rather had Eddie Murphy than me."  To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi, who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book. De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on. Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart. To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a mob wife but was unable to, because they exist in a very tight-knit community. She decided not to meet the real Karen, saying she "thought it would be better if the creation came from me. I used her life with her parents as an emotional guideline for the role." Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character, but found it challenging finding what he called "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened."

Photography.

The film was shot on location in Queens, New York state, New Jersey, and parts of Long Island during the spring and summer of 1989, with a budget of $25 million. Scorsese broke the film down into sequences and storyboarded everything because of the complicated style throughout. The filmmaker stated, "[I] wanted lots of movement and I wanted it to be throughout the whole picture, and I wanted the style to kind of break down by the end, so that by [Henry's] last day as a wiseguy, it's as if the whole picture would be out of control, give the impression he's just going to spin off the edge and fly out." He added that the film's style comes from the first two or three minutes of "Jules and Jim" (1962): extensive narration, quick edits, freeze frames, and multiple locale switches. It was this reckless attitude towards convention that mirrored the attitude of many of the gangsters in the film. Scorsese remarked, "So if you do the movie, you say, 'I don't care if there's too much narration. Too many quick cuts?—That's too bad.' It's that kind of really punk attitude we're trying to show." He adopted a frenetic style to almost overwhelm the audience with images and information. He also put plenty of detail in every frame because he believed the gangster life is so rich. Freeze frames were used as Scorsese wanted images that stopped "because a point was being reached" in Henry's life.  Joe Pesci did not judge his character but found the scene where he kills Spider for talking back to his character hard to do, because he had trouble justifying the action until he forced himself to feel the way Tommy did. Lorraine Bracco found the shoot to be an emotionally difficult one because it was such a male-dominated cast, and she realized if she did not make her "work important, it would probably end up on the cutting room floor." When it came to the relationship between Henry and Karen, Bracco saw no difference between an abused wife and her character.  According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals wherein Scorsese let the actors do whatever they wanted. He made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script that the cast worked from during principal photography. For example, the scene where Tommy tells a story and Henry is responding to him—the "Funny how? Do I amuse you?" scene—is based on an actual event that Pesci experienced. Pesci was working as a waiter when he thought he was making a compliment to a mobster by saying he was "funny", however, the comment was not taken well. It was worked on in rehearsals where he and Liotta improvised, and Scorsese recorded four to five takes, rewrote their dialogue, and inserted it into the script. The dinner scene with Tommy's mother was largely improvised. Her painting of the bearded man with the dogs was based on a photograph from "National Geographic" magazine. The cast did not meet Henry Hill until a few weeks before the film's premiere. Liotta met him in an undisclosed city; Hill had seen the film and told the actor that he loved it.  The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because of a practical problem: the filmmakers could not get permission to go in the short way, and this forced them to go round the back. Scorsese decided to film the sequence in one unbroken shot in order to symbolize that Henry's entire life was ahead of him, commenting, "It's his seduction of her [Karen] and it's also the lifestyle seducing him." This sequence was shot eight times.  Henry's last day as a wiseguy was the hardest part of the film for Scorsese to shoot, because he wanted to properly show Henry's state of anxiety, paranoia, and racing thoughts caused by cocaine and amphetamines intoxication. In an interview with movie critic Mark Cousins, Scorsese explained the reason for Pesci shooting at the camera at the end of the film, "well that's a reference right to the end of "The Great Train Robbery", that's the way that ends, that film, and basically the plot of this picture is very similar to "The Great Train Robbery". It hasn't changed, 90 years later, it's the same story, the gun shots will always be there, he's always going to look behind his back, he's gotta have eyes behind his back, because they're gonna get him someday." The director ended the film with Henry regretting that he is no longer a wiseguy, about which Scorsese said, "I think the audience should get angry at him and I would hope they do—and maybe with the system which allows this."

Post-production.

Scorsese wanted to depict the film's violence realistically, "cold, unfeeling and horrible. Almost incidental." However, he had to remove 10 frames of blood to ensure an R rating from the MPAA. With a budget of $25 million, "Goodfellas" was Scorsese's most expensive film to that point but still only a medium-sized budget by Hollywood standards. It was also the first time he was obliged by Warner Bros. to preview the film. It was shown twice in California, and a lot of audiences were "agitated" by Henry's last day as a wise guy sequence. Scorsese argued that that was the point of the scene. Scorsese and the film's editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, made this sequence faster with more jump cuts to convey Henry's drug-addled point of view. In the first test screening there were 40 walkouts in the first ten minutes. One of the favorite scenes for test audiences was the "Do I amuse you?" scene.

Soundtrack.

While there is no incidental score as such in the film, Scorsese chose songs for the soundtrack that he felt obliquely commented on the scene or the characters. In a given scene, he only used music contemporary to or older than the scene's setting. According to Scorsese, a lot of non-dialogue scenes were shot to playback. For example, he had "Layla" (1970) playing on the set while shooting the scene where the dead bodies are discovered in the car, dumpster, and meat truck. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action. Some of the music Scorsese had written into the script, while other songs he discovered during the editing phase.

Release.

Theatrical.

"Goodfellas" premiered at the 47th Venice International Film Festival, where Scorsese received the Silver Lion award for best director. It was given a wide release in North America on September 21, 1990.

Home media.

"Goodfellas" was released on DVD in March 1997, in a single-disc, double-sided, single-layer format that requires the disc to be flipped during viewing; in 2004, Warner Home Video released a two-disc, dual-layer version, with remastered picture and sound, and bonus materials such as commentary tracks. In early 2007, the film became available on single Blu-ray with all the features from the 2004 release; an expanded Blu-ray version was released on February 16, 2010, for its 20th anniversary, bundled with a disc with features that include the 2008 documentary "Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film." On May 5, 2015, a 25th anniversary edition was released. The film was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on December 6, 2016.

Reception.

Box office.

"Goodfellas" opened in 1,070 theaters, with an opening weekend gross of US$6.3 million. It went on to make $46.8 million domestically.

Critical response.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval score based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 8.99/10. The website's consensus reads, "Hard-hitting and stylish, "GoodFellas" is a gangster classic—and arguably the high point of Martin Scorsese's career." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100 based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.  In his review for the "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert wrote, "No finer film has ever been made about organized crime – not even "The Godfather"." In his review for the "Chicago Tribune", Gene Siskel wrote, "All of the performances are first-rate; Pesci stands out, though, with his seemingly unscripted manner. "GoodFellas" is easily one of the year's best films." Both named it as the best film of 1990. In his review for "The New York Times", Vincent Canby wrote, "More than any earlier Scorsese film, "Goodfellas" is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances... The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits. There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous." "USA Today" gave the film four out of four stars and called it, "great cinema—and also a whopping good time." David Ansen, in his review for "Newsweek" magazine, wrote "Every crisp minute of this long, teeming movie vibrates with outlaw energy." Rex Reed said, "Big, rich, powerful and explosive. One of Scorsese's best films! "Goodfellas" is great entertainment." In his review for "Time", Richard Corliss wrote, "So it is Scorsese's triumph that "GoodFellas" offers the fastest, sharpest 21⁄2-hr. ride in recent film history."

Lists.

The film was ranked the best of 1990 by Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, and Peter Travers.  In a poll of 80 film critics, "Goodfellas" was named the best film of the year by 34 critics. Director Martin Scorsese was chosen as the year's best director in 45 of the 80 ballots.  In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed "Goodfellas" as the fifteenth best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.  "Goodfellas" is 39th on James Berardinelli's 2014-made list of the top 100 films of all time.  "Goodfellas" is ranked #92 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list, published in 2007.

Legacy.

"Goodfellas" is #94 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years, 100 Movies" list and moved up to #92 on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) from 2007. In June 2008, the AFI put "Goodfellas" at #2 on their AFI's 10 Top 10—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the movie-related community. "Goodfellas" was regarded as the second-best in the gangster film genre (after "The Godfather"). In 2000, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.  Roger Ebert named "Goodfellas" the "best mob movie ever" and placed it among the ten best films of the 1990s. In December 2002, a UK film critics poll in "Sight & Sound" ranked the film #4 on their list of the 10 Best Films of the Last 25 Years. "Time" included "Goodfellas" in their list of Time's All-Time 100 Movies. "Channel 4" placed "Goodfellas" at #10 in their 2002 poll "The 100 Greatest Films", "Empire" listed "Goodfellas" at #6 on their "500 Greatest Movies Of All Time," and "Total Film" voted "Goodfellas" #1 as the greatest film of all time.  "Premiere" listed Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito as #96 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time," calling him "perhaps the single most irredeemable character ever put on film." "Empire" ranked Tommy DeVito #59 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll.  "Goodfellas" inspired director David Chase to make the HBO television series "The Sopranos"." He told Peter Bogdanovich, ""Goodfellas" is a very important movie to me and "Goodfellas" really plowed that... I found that movie very funny and brutal and it felt very real. And yet that was the first mob movie that Scorsese ever dealt with a mob crew.... as opposed to say "The Godfather"... which there's something operatic about it, classical, even the clothing and the cars. You know I mean I always think about "Goodfellas" when they go to their mother's house that night when they're eating, you know when she brings out her painting, that stuff is great. I mean "The Sopranos" learned a lot from that." Indeed, the film shares a total of 27 actors with "The Sopranos", including Bracco, Sirico, Imperioli, Frank Pellegrino, Tony Lip, and Vincent, who all had major roles in Chase's HBO series.  July 24, 2010 marked the 20th anniversary of the film's release. This milestone was celebrated with Henry Hill hosting a private screening for a select group of invitees at the Museum of the American Gangster, in New York City.  In January 2012, it was announced that the AMC Network had put a television series version of the movie in development. Pileggi was on board to co-write the adaptation with television writer-producer Jorge Zamacona. The two were set to executive produce with the film's producer Irwin Winkler and his son, David.  Luc Besson's 2013 crime comedy film "The Family" features a sequence where Giovanni Manzoni ("Goodfellas" star De Niro), a gangster who is under witness protection for testifying against a member of his family, watches "Goodfellas."  In 2014, the ESPN-produced "30 for 30" series debuted "Playing for the Mob", the story about how Hill and his Pittsburgh associates, and several Boston College basketball players, committed the point shaving scandal during the 1978–79 season, an episode briefly mentioned in the movie. The documentary, narrated by Liotta, was set up so that the viewer needed to watch the film beforehand, to understand many of the references in the story.  In 2015, "Goodfellas" closed the Tribeca Film Festival with a screening of its 25th-anniversary remaster.  American Film Institute Lists

Goodfellas (stylized GoodFellas) is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese, produced by Irwin Winkler and distributed by Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of the 1985 non-fiction book "Wiseguy" by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film narrates the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill and his friends and family from 1955 to 1980.

Good Fellas – Drei Jahrzehnte in der Mafia ist ein mehrfach preisgekröntes Mafia-Drama des US-amerikanischen Regisseurs Martin Scorsese aus dem Jahr 1990. Es basiert auf Nicholas Pileggis Buch "Wise Guy – Der Mob von innen", das auf einer wahren Begebenheit beruht und vom rücksichtslosen Aufstieg eines Gangsters in den 1960er/1970er Jahren erzählt. Der Titel "Good Fellas" (dt.: "Gute Kerle") bezieht sich auf die verschworene Gemeinschaft der Mobster in (und im Umfeld) der US-amerikanischen Cosa Nostra.


Defining characteristics.

A unique and defining characteristic about a diskmag in contrast to a typical ASCII "zine" or "t-file" (or even "g-file") is that a diskmag usually comes housed as an executable program file that will only run on a specific hardware platform. A diskmag tends to have an aesthetically appealing and custom graphical user interface (or even interfaces), background music and other features that take advantage of the hardware platform the diskmag was coded for. Diskmags have been written for many platforms, ranging from the C64 on up to the IBM PC and have even been created for video game consoles, like scenedicate for the Dreamcast.

Precursors.

Early home and hobby users of personal computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s sometimes typed in programs, usually in the BASIC language, which were published in the computer magazines of the time. This was a lot of work, and prone to error, so the idea of publishing a magazine directly on a computer-readable medium so that the programs could be run directly without typing came independently to several people.  Some ideas of putting bar codes into paper magazines, which could be read into a computer with the appropriate peripheral, were floated at the time, but never caught on. Since the common data storage medium of the earliest home computers was the audio cassette, the first magazine published on a physical computer medium was actually a cassette magazine rather than a disk magazine; "CLOAD" magazine, for the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, began publication in 1978, named after the command to load a program from cassette on that computer system.  "CLOAD" was not the first electronic periodical, however, because various ARPANET digests had been published as text files sent around the network since the early 1970s. These, however, were pure ASCII text and hence were not diskmags by the current definition. Also, at the time, few people outside of academic institutions had access to this forerunner of the Internet.

1980s.

In September, 1981, the first issue of "Softdisk" was published for Apple II computers; coming out monthly on a 51⁄4" diskette, this was the first floppy-disk-based periodical. This was the first publication of a company also known as Softdisk which would later bring out similar publications for the Commodore 64, IBM PC, and Apple Macintosh. Of these magazines, the one for the Commodore 64, called "Loadstar", continued publishing until issue 249 in 2007 - making it the longest running disk software magazine in history. Other publishers produced a variety of competing publications, including "Diskazine", "Window", "I.B.Magazette", "UPTIME", and "PC Life". The Atari ST, in 1986, saw the first disk magazine in the shape of "ST News". This was an English-language on-disk magazine from the Netherlands. Some publishers of paper magazines published disk companions, either polybagged with the magazines (in the form of so-called covermounts) or available as separate subscriptions.

1990s.

In the early 1990s, id Software founders John Carmack and John Romero had some of their earliest works published on disk magazines while working for Softdisk. A short-lived game subscription called "Gamer's Edge" published side-scrolling and 3D games written by the team that would later create "Commander Keen" and "Doom".  By the mid-1990s, CD-ROMs were taking over from floppy disks as the major data storage and transfer medium. Some of the existing disk magazines switched to this format while others, such as Digital Culture Stream, were founded as CD-based magazines from the start. The higher capacity of this format, along with the faster speed of newer computers, allowed disk magazines to provide more of a multimedia experience, including music and animation. Such things as movie trailers and music samples could now be provided, allowing a disk magazine to target fans of the entertainment industry rather than the computer hobbyists of the earlier times.  Many disk magazines of the 1990s and later are connected with the demoscene, including "Grapevine", for the Amiga computer. Demoscene diskmags have been known to cross over into the closely neighboring underground computer art scene and warez scenes as well. Some of the more commonly well known English diskmags include: "Hugi", "Imphobia", "Pain", "Scenial", "Daskmig" (IBM PC), "Jurassic Pack", "RAW", "Upstream", "ROM", "Seenpoint", "Generation" (Amiga), "Undercover Magascene", "Chaos Control Digizine", "Maggie", "DBA Diskmagazine", "Alive" and "ST News" (Atari ST).  In the late 1990s, the Internet became popular among the general public, which had the effect of killing the market for disk-based publications because people could now access the same sorts of material through the net. As a result, disk-based periodicals became uncommon, as publishers of electronic magazines preferred to use the Web or e-mail as their distribution medium.  Demoscene magazines based on executable program files are still commonly called diskmags, although they are seldom distributed on physical disks any more. Bulletin board systems and the Internet took over as major distribution channels for these magazines already in the 1990s.

2000s.

The occasional CD- or DVD-based multimedia magazine has come out since 2000, though more often as a promotional gimmick than a self-sustaining publication. More effort has lately gone into creating and promoting Web sites, ezines, blogs, and e-mail lists than physical-medium-based publications. Some publications that are termed "diskmags" are today distributed through the internet (FTP, WWW, IRC, etc.). The former entertainment disk magazine "Launch" transformed into the online video site "LAUNCHcast", owned by Yahoo!. "Blender" also began life as a CD-ROM diskmag with US-wide distribution. It later transitioned to print. However, with the popularity of tablet computers and portable e-book readers, some print publications are transitioning to electronic form, and other all-electronic publications are starting up.  The longest-lasting disk magazine is, surprisingly enough, for the long-obsolete Commodore 64 computer; "Loadstar", originally published by Softdisk starting in 1984, and later an independent company, has continued publishing well into the 2000s for a "cult following" of Commodore buffs.

Types of content.

Disk magazines differed in the sorts of material they emphasised. Several distinct sorts of things could be published in an electronic periodical, and different ones might have all or most of their content in one or another of these categories:

A disk magazine, colloquially known as a diskmag or diskzine, is a magazine that is distributed in electronic form to be read using computers. These had some popularity in the 1980s and 1990s as periodicals distributed on floppy disk, hence their name. The rise of the Internet in the late 1990s caused them to be superseded almost entirely by online publications, which are sometimes still called "diskmags" despite the lack of physical disks.

Ein Diskmag ist eine elektronische Zeitschrift, die mit Hilfe eines Computers gelesen werden kann. Das Silbenwort „Diskmag“ steht für „Disketten-Magazin“ (). Vor dem Aufschwung des Internets Mitte der 1990er-Jahre war die Weitergabe auf Disketten an persönliche oder mit Hilfe von Offertenblättern wie dem Computer-Flohmarkt geknüpfte Kontakte der übliche Weg zur Verbreitung der zumeist von technisch interessierten Laien autodidaktisch erstellten Magazine.


Early life.

He was born in Grodno (then Second Polish Republic, since 1945 part of Belarus) on April 29, 1926. He was the youngest of three children in a Lithuanian-Jewish family, with the Yiddish given name "Pesach". His family moved to the United States on May 11, 1928, settling in Boston and later in Philadelphia, where his father, Morris "Moshe" Baran (1884–1979), opened a grocery store. He graduated from Drexel University (then called Drexel Institute of Technology) in 1949, with a degree in electrical engineering. He then joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, where he did technical work on UNIVAC models, the first brand of commercial computers in the United States. In 1955 he married Evelyn Murphy, moved to Los Angeles, and worked for Hughes Aircraft on radar data processing systems. He obtained his master's degree in engineering from UCLA in 1959, with advisor Gerald Estrin while he took night classes. His thesis was on character recognition. While Baran initially stayed on at UCLA to pursue his doctorate, a heavy travel and work schedule forced him to abandon his doctoral work.

Packet switched network design.

After joining the RAND Corporation in 1959, Baran took on the task of designing a "survivable" communications system that could maintain communication between end points in the face of damage from nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Then, most American military communications used high-frequency connections, which could be put out of action for many hours by a nuclear attack. Baran decided to automate RAND Director Franklin R. Collbohm's previous work with emergency communication over conventional AM radio networks and showed that a distributed relay node architecture could be survivable. The Rome Air Development Center soon showed that the idea was practicable.  Using the minicomputer technology of the day, Baran and his team developed a simulation suite to test basic connectivity of an array of nodes with varying degrees of linking. That is, a network of n-ary degree of connectivity would have n links per node. The simulation randomly "killed" nodes and subsequently tested the percentage of nodes that remained connected. The result of the simulation revealed that networks in which n ≥ 3 had a significant increase in resilience against even as much as 50% node loss. Baran's insight gained from the simulation was that redundancy was the key. His first work was published as a RAND report in 1960, with more papers generalizing the techniques in the next two years.  After proving survivability, Baran and his team needed to show proof of concept for that design so that it could be built. That involved high-level schematics detailing the operation, construction, and cost of all the components required to construct a network that leveraged the new insight of redundant links. The result was one of the first store-and-forward data layer switching protocols, a link-state/distance vector routing protocol, and an unproved connection-oriented transport protocol. Explicit detail of the designs can be found in the complete series of reports "On Distributed Communications", published by RAND in 1964.  The design flew in the face of telephony design of the time by placing inexpensive and unreliable nodes at the center of the network and more intelligent terminating'multiplexer' devices at the endpoints. In Baran's words, unlike the telephone company's equipment, his design did not require expensive "gold plated" components to be reliable. The Distributed Network that Baran introduced was intended to route around damage. It provided connection to others through many points, not one centralized connection. Fundamental to the scheme was the division of the information into "blocks" before they were sent out across the network. That enabled the data to travel faster and communications lines to be used more efficiently. Each block was sent separately, traveling different paths and rejoining into a whole when they were received at their destination.

Selling the idea.

After the publication of "On Distributed Communications", he presented the findings of his team to a number of audiences, including AT&T engineers (not to be confused with Bell Labs engineers, who at the time provided Paul Baran with the specifications for the first generation of T1 circuit that he used as the links in his network design proposal). In subsequent interviews, Baran mentioned how the AT&T engineers scoffed at his idea of non-dedicated physical circuits for voice communications, at times claiming that Baran simply did not understand how voice telecommunication worked.  Donald Davies, at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom, also thought of the same idea and implemented a trial network. While Baran used the term "message blocks" for his units of communication, Davies used the term "packets," as it was capable of being translated into languages other than English without compromise. He applied the concept to a general-purpose computer network. Davies's key insight came in the realization that computer network traffic was inherently "bursty" with periods of silence, compared with relatively-constant telephone traffic. It was in fact Davies's work on packet switching, not Baran's, that initially caught the attention of the developers of ARPANET at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in October 1967. Baran was happy to acknowledge that Davies had come up with the same idea as him independently. In an e-mail to Davies, he wrote:  Leonard Kleinrock, a contemporary working on analyzing message flow using queueing theory, developed a theoretical basis for the operation of message switching networks in his proposal for a Ph.D. thesis in 1961-2, published as a book in 1964. He later applied this theory to model the performance of packet switching networks. However, the representation of Kleinrock's early work as originating the concept of packet switching is disputed, including Robert Taylor, Baran and Davies. Baran and Davies are recognized by historians and the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame for independently inventing the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking including the Internet.  In 1969, when the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) started developing the idea of an internetworked set of terminals to share computing resources, the reference materials that they considered included Baran and the RAND Corporation's "On Distributed Communications" volumes. The resiliency of a packet-switched network that uses link-state routing protocols, which are used on the Internet, stems in some part from the research to develop a network that could survive a nuclear attack.

Later work.

In 1968, Baran was a founder of the Institute for the Future and was then involved in other networking technologies developed in Silicon Valley. He participated in a review of the NBS proposal for a Data Encryption Standard in 1976, along with Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie of Stanford University. In the early 1980s, Baran founded PacketCable, Inc, "to support impulse-pay television channels, locally generated videotex, and packetized voice transmission." PacketCable, also known as Packet Technologies, spun off StrataCom to commercialize his packet voice technology for the telephony market. That technology led to the first commercial pre-standard Asynchronous Transfer Mode product. He founded Telebit after conceiving its discrete multitone modem technology in the mid-1980s. It was one of the first commercial products to use orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, which was later widely deployed in DSL modems and Wi-Fi wireless modems. In 1985, Baran founded Metricom, the first wireless Internet company, which deployed Ricochet, the first public wireless mesh networking system. In 1992, he also founded Com21, an early cable modem company. After Com21, Baran founded and was president of GoBackTV, which specializes in personal TV and cable IPTV infrastructure equipment for television operators. Most recently, he founded Plaster Networks, providing an advanced solution for connecting networked devices in the home or small office through existing wiring.  Baran extended his work in packet switching to wireless-spectrum theory, developing what he called "kindergarten rules" for the use of wireless spectrum.  In addition to his innovation in networking products, he is also credited with inventing the first doorway gun detector.  He received an honorary doctorate when he gave the commencement speech at Drexel in 1997.

Death.

Baran died in Palo Alto, California, at the age of 84 on March 26, 2011 from complications caused by lung cancer. Upon his death, RAND President James Thomson, stated, "Our world is a better place for the technologies Paul Baran invented and developed, and also because of his consistent concern with appropriate public policies for their use."  One of the fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf, stated, "Paul wasn't afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do." According to Paul Saffo, Baran also believed that innovation was a "team process" and avoided seeking credit for himself. On hearing news of his death, Robert Kahn, co-inventor of the Internet, said: "Paul was one of the finest gentlemen I ever met and creative to the very end."

Paul Baran (born Pesach Baran ; April 29, 1926 – March 26, 2011) was a Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide, and went on to start several companies and develop other technologies that are an essential part of modern digital communication.

Paul Baran (* 29. April 1926 in Grodno, damals Polen; † 26. März 2011 in Palo Alto, USA) war ein US-amerikanischer Informatiker polnischer Abstammung. Seine 1964 veröffentlichte elfteilige Arbeit "On Distributed Communication" gilt als einer der Grundsteine zur Entwicklung des Internets. Darin präsentierte Baran erstmals die Idee, Informationen durch so genannte Paketvermittlung in einem Netzwerk mit hochgradig vernetzten Knoten zu übertragen.


Plot.

A gang of bandits led by Calvera (Eli Wallach) periodically raids a poor Mexican village for food and supplies. After the latest raid, during which Calvera kills a villager, the village leaders decide they have had enough. On the advice of the village elder (Vladimir Sokoloff), they decide to fight back. Taking their few objects of value, three villagers ride to a town just inside the United States border hoping to barter for weapons. They are impressed by Chris Adams (Yul Brynner), a veteran Cajun gunslinger, and approach him for advice. Chris suggests they instead hire gunfighters to defend the village, as "men are cheaper than guns." At first agreeing only to help them recruit men, Chris eventually decides to lead the group. Despite the meager pay offered, he finds five willing gunmen.  They are the gunfighter Vin Tanner (Steve McQueen), who has gone broke after a round of gambling and resists local efforts to recruit him as a store clerk; Chris's friend Harry Luck (Brad Dexter), who assumes Chris is hiding a much bigger reward for the work; the Irish Mexican Bernardo O'Reilly (Charles Bronson), who has fallen on hard times; Britt (James Coburn), an expert in both knife and gun who joins purely for the challenge involved; and the dapper, on-the-run gunman Lee (Robert Vaughn), plagued by nightmares of fallen enemies and haunted that he has lost his nerve for battle. On their way to the village they are trailed by the hotheaded Chico (Horst Buchholz), an aspiring gunfighter whose previous attempts to join Chris had been spurned. Impressed by his persistence, Chris invites him into the group.  Arriving at the village, they work with the villagers to build fortifications and train them to defend themselves. They note the lack of women in the village, until Chico stumbles upon Petra (Rosenda Monteros) and discovers the women were hidden in fear that the gunmen will rape them. The gunmen begin to bond with the villagers, and Petra pursues Chico. When Bernardo points out that the gunmen are being given the choice food, the gunmen share it with the village children.  Three of Calvera's men are dispatched to reconnoiter the village; the seven kill all three. Then Calvera and his bandits arrive in force. The seven and the villagers kill another eight of their cohort in a shootout and run them out of town. The villagers celebrate, believing Calvera will not return. But Chico infiltrates Calvera's camp and learns that Calvera must return, as his men are short of food.  Some fearful villagers thereupon call for the gunfighters to leave. Even some of the seven waver, but Chris insists that they stay, even threatening to kill anyone who suggests giving up the fight. The seven ride out to make a surprise raid on Calvera's camp, but find it abandoned. Returning to the village, they are caught by Calvera and his men, who colluded with some of the villagers to sneak in and take control. Calvera spares the seven's lives, believing they have learned the simple farmers are not worth fighting for, and fearing reprisals from the gunfighters' "friends" across the border. Preparing to depart, Chris and Vin admit they have become emotionally attached to the village. Bernardo likewise gets angry when the boys he befriended call their parents cowards. Chico declares that he hates the villagers; when Chris points out he grew up as a farmer as well, Chico angrily responds that it is men like Calvera and Chris who made the villagers what they are.  The seven gunmen are escorted some distance from the village, where their weapons are returned to them. They debate their next move and all but Harry, who believes the effort will be futile and suicidal, agree to return and fight.  The gunmen infiltrate the village and a gunfight breaks out. Harry, who has had a change of heart, returns in time to save Chris's life, but is himself fatally shot. Harry pleads to know what they were fighting for, and Chris lies about a hidden gold mine to let Harry believe he died for a fortune. Lee finds the nerve to burst into a house where several villagers are being held, shooting their captors and releasing the prisoners to join the fight, but is gunned down as he leaves the house. Bernardo, shot protecting the boys he befriended, tells them as he dies to see how bravely their fathers fought. Britt dies after shooting at many bandits but exposing himself from cover. Chris shoots Calvera, who asks him, "You came back... to a place like this? Why? A man like you? Why?" He dies without receiving an answer. The remaining bandits take flight.  The three surviving gunmen ride out of town. As they stop atop a hill overlooking the village, Chico parts company with them, realizing he wants to stay with Petra. Chris and Vin bid farewell to the village elder, who tells them that only the villagers have really won, whereas the gunslingers are "like the wind, blowing over the land and passing on." As they pass the graves of their fallen comrades, Chris admits, "The Old Man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We'll always lose."

Production.

Development.

Yul Brynner approached producer Walter Mirisch with the idea of remaking Kurosawa's famous samurai film. But once Mirisch had acquired the rights from Japan's Toho Studios, and finalized a distribution deal with United Artists, Brynner was sued for breach of contract by actor Anthony Quinn, who claimed that he and Brynner had developed the concept together and had worked out many of the film's details before the two had a falling-out. Quinn ultimately lost his claim, because there was nothing in writing.

Writing.

Script credit was a subject of contention. Associate producer Lou Morheim commissioned Walter Bernstein, a blacklisted scriptwriter, to produce the first draft "faithfully" adapted from the original script written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni and Akira Kurosawa; when executive producer Walter Mirisch and Brynner took over the production, they brought on Walter Newman, whose version "is largely what's on screen." When Newman was unavailable to be on-site during the film's principal photography in Mexico, William Roberts was hired, in part to make changes required by Mexican censors. When Roberts asked the Writers Guild of America for a co-credit, Newman asked that his name be removed from the credits.

Casting.

Sturges was eager to cast Steve McQueen in the picture, having just worked with him on the 1959 film "Never So Few", but McQueen could not get a release from actor/producer Dick Powell, who controlled McQueen's hit TV series "Wanted Dead or Alive". On the advice of his agent, McQueen, an experienced race car driver, staged a car accident and claimed that he could not work on his series because he had suffered a whiplash injury and had to wear a neck brace. During the interval required for his "recuperation", he was free to appear in "The Magnificent Seven".  James Coburn was a great fan of the Japanese film "Seven Samurai", having seen it 15 times, and was hired through the help of co-star and former classmate Robert Vaughn, after the role of the expert knifethrower had been rejected by actors Sterling Hayden and John Ireland.  Robert Vaughn, who died in November 11, 2016, was the last surviving member of the main cast. Rosenda Monteros was the last surviving cast member until her death on December 29, 2018.

Filming.

The film was shot by cinematographer Charles Lang in a 35mm anamorphic format using Panavision lens. Location shooting began on March 1, 1960, in Mexico, where both the village and the U.S. border town were built for the film. The location filming was in Cuernavaca, Durango, and Tepoztlán and at the Churubusco Studios. The first scenes were the first part of the six gunfighters' journey to the Mexican village prior to Chico being brought into the group.  During filming there was considerable tension between Brynner and McQueen, who was displeased at his character having only seven lines of dialogue in the original shooting script (Sturges had told McQueen that he would "give him the camera"). To compensate, McQueen took numerous opportunities to upstage Brynner and draw attention to himself, including shielding his eyes with his hat, flipping a coin during one of Brynner's speeches, rattling his shotgun shells. Brynner, who was only half an inch taller than McQueen, would often build up a little mound of earth to stand on when the two actors were on camera together, only to have McQueen surreptitiously kick the dirt out of place before retakes. When newspapers started reporting on the altercations on set between the two, Brynner issued a press statement, declaring, "I never feud with actors. I feud with studios."

Soundtrack.

The film's score is by Elmer Bernstein. Along with the readily recognized main theme and effective support of the story line, the score also contains allusions to twentieth-century symphonic works, such as the reference to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, second movement, in the tense quiet scene just before the shoot out. The original soundtrack was not released at the time until reused and rerecorded by Bernstein for the soundtrack of "Return of the Seven". Electric guitar cover versions by Al Caiola in the U.S. and John Barry in the U.K. were successful on the popular charts. A vocal theme not written by Bernstein was used in a trailer.  In 1994, James Sedares conducted a re-recording of the score performed by The Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, which also included a suite from Bernstein's score for "The Hallelujah Trail", issued by Koch Records; Bernstein himself conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for a performance released by RCA in 1997, but the original film soundtrack was not released until the following year by Rykodisc. (Varèse Sarabande reissued this album in 2004.) At the 33rd Academy Awards, the score was nominated for Best Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, losing to Ernest Gold's score for "Exodus". Many decades later, however, the score for "The Magnificent Seven" was listed at 8 on the American Film Institute's list of the top 25 American film scores.

In other media.

Bernstein's score has frequently been quoted in the media and popular culture. Starting in 1963, the theme was used in commercials in the U.S. for Marlboro cigarettes for many years. A similar-sounding (but different) tune was used for Victoria Bitter beer in Australia. The theme was included in a scene of the James Bond film "Moonraker".  Other uses include in the 2004 documentary film "Fahrenheit 9/11"; in the 2005 film "The Ringer"; in the 2015 film "Hardcore Henry"; as entrance music for the British band James, as well as episodes of "The Simpsons" that had a "Western" theme (mainly in the episode titled "Dude, Where's My Ranch?"). The opening horn riff in Arthur Conley's 1967 hit "Sweet Soul Music" is borrowed from the theme. Canadian band Kon Kan use the opening bars of the theme in their single "I Beg Your Pardon". Celtic Football Club (Glasgow, Scotland) used the theme music whenever Henrik Larsson scored a goal. The 2008 J-pop song "Ōgoe Diamond" by AKB48 also used part of the main theme.  The "Cheers" episode "Diane Chambers Day" (season 4, episode 22) revolves around the bar denizens being invited to watch "The Magnificent Seven", and ends with them singing an a cappella version of the theme.  The Mick Jones 1980s band Big Audio Dynamite covered the song as "Keep off the Grass" (although this cover was not officially released). In 1995, the KLF also did a drum and bass cover of the main title as "The Magnificent"; it was released under the group alias One World Orchestra on the charity compilation "The Help Album".  In 1992, the main theme of "The Magnificent Seven" came into use on a section of the Euro Disneyland Railroad at Disneyland Paris. Portions of the theme play as the train exits the Grand Canyon diorama tunnel behind Phantom Manor, enters Frontierland, and travels along the bank of the Rivers of the Far West.  The "Main Title" was used as an intro tune on many nights of Bruce Springsteen's 2012 Wrecking Ball Tour. The theme was played as the E Street Band entered the stage, adding to the dramatic atmosphere in the stadium.

Release.

The film opened October 12, 1960 in a thousand theaters across the South and Southwest of the United States.

Box office.

In the United States and Canada, the film earned in theatrical rentals and was a box office disappointment, but proved to be such a smash hit in Europe that it ultimately made a profit.  In Western Europe, the film sold tickets in Italy, 7,037,826 tickets in France, and 7.7million tickets in the United Kingdom, becoming one of the top 100 highest-grossing films in the United Kingdom and in France. It was also successful in Germany. In the Soviet Union (where Brynner was originally from), the film sold 67million tickets, becoming the highest-grossing Hollywood film ever in the Soviet Union (where it was among only a handful of Hollywood films to become blockbusters there). In South Korea, it sold 80,870 tickets in Seoul City, and it was also successful in Japan. This adds up to a total of at least 89,118,696 tickets sold in overseas territories. The overseas rental was almost three times as much as in the U.S. with a total of $7.5 million, giving it worldwide rentals of $9.75 million.

Critical reception.

Contemporary reviews were mixed to positive. Howard Thompson of "The New York Times" called the film a "pallid, pretentious and overlong reflection of the Japanese original"; according to Thompson, "don't expect anything like the ice-cold suspense, the superb juxtaposition of revealing human vignettes and especially the pile-driver tempo of the first "Seven"." According to "Variety", "Until the women and children arrive on the scene about two-thirds of the way through, "The Magnificent Seven" is a rip-roaring rootin' tootin' western with lots of bite and tang and old-fashioned abandon. The last third is downhill, a long and cluttered anti-climax in which "The Magnificent Seven" grow slightly too magnificent for comfort." Richard L. Coe of "The Washington Post" called the film "rough, tough, funny and splashy most of the way. There's a serious dip the final third, but Keith's newcomer offers shrewd, vastly enjoyable performances." "Harrison's Reports" praised the film as "A superb Western, well acted and crammed full of action, human interest, pathos, suspense, plus some romance and humor." A positive review from Charles Stinson in the "Los Angeles Times" praised the dialogue as "by turns, virile, rowdily funny and then, abruptly, not always predictably, it is pensive, even gentle. John Sturges' direction is superbly staccato; making a knife-sharp use of pauses and silences, it brings out both the humor and melancholy, the humanity as well as the evil inherent in the situation." "The Monthly Film Bulletin" called the casting of Yul Brynner and Horst Buchholz "curious" and thought Chico's decision to stay put was "the film's most completely unbelievable contrivance," but still thought that "the film manages to be both impressive and likeable." Akira Kurosawa, for his part, was reportedly so impressed by the film that he presented John Sturges with a sword.  The film has grown greatly in esteem since its release, in no small part due to its cast (several of whom were to go on to become superstars over the decade following its release) and its music score, but also due to the quality of the script. As of September 19, 2018, it has a score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes based on ratings of 41 critics. It is the second most shown film in U.S. television history, behind only "The Wizard of Oz". The film is also ranked 79 on the AFI's list of American cinema's 100 most-thrilling films.

Sequels and adaptations.

Three sequels were eventually made: "Return of the Seven" (1966), "Guns of the Magnificent Seven" (1969), and "The Magnificent Seven Ride" (1972). None was as successful as the original film.  The film also inspired a television series, "The Magnificent Seven", which ran from 1998 to 2000. Robert Vaughn was a recurring guest star, a judge who hires the seven to protect the town in which his widowed daughter-in-law and his grandson live.  The science fiction film "Battle Beyond the Stars" was a remake of "The Magnificent Seven" set in space. A group of mercenaries, including ones played by George Peppard (as a character known only as "Space Cowboy") and Robert Vaughn (playing essentially the same character as in "The Magnificent Seven") defend farmers from space raiders on the planet Akira (named after "Seven Samurai" director Akira Kurosawa).  The 1980s action-adventure series "The A-Team" was initially devised as a combination of "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Magnificent Seven". The show's pilot film plays much on the plot of "The Magnificent Seven", and there are similar plot echoes in various other episodes. James Coburn was originally approached to play John "Hannibal" Smith, the team's leader, a role that ultimately went to George Peppard in the series; and Robert Vaughn was added to the cast in the final season as part of a revamp attempt to boost fading ratings.  A remake of the film, with the same title, was released on September 23, 2016, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier and Peter Sarsgaard.

The Magnificent Seven is a 1960 American Western film directed by John Sturges and starring Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn and Horst Buchholz. The film is an Old West–style remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese film "Seven Samurai". Brynner, McQueen, Bronson, Vaughn, Dexter, Coburn and Buchholz portray the title characters, a group of seven gunfighters hired to protect a small village in Mexico from a group of marauding bandits (whose leader is played by Wallach). The film's musical score was composed by Elmer Bernstein. In 2013, the film was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Die glorreichen Sieben (Originaltitel: "The Magnificent Seven") ist ein Western aus dem Jahr 1960 von Regisseur John Sturges. Die Handlung basiert auf dem japanischen Film "Die sieben Samurai", wird aber nach Nordamerika verlegt. Der Film wurde von der Mirisch Corporation für United Artists produziert. Er kam am 24. Februar 1961 über den Verleih von United Artists in Deutschland ins Kino. Kinostart in den USA war am 23. Oktober 1960. Der Film gilt gemeinhin als einer der besten Western, die je gedreht wurden.


Description.

Nowhere in the "Volsunga Saga" is a clear description of Gram given, but there is enough scattered throughout the story to draw a picture of the sword. Sigurd's weapons, Gram included, are described as being “all decked with gold and gleaming bright." Depending on how the text is read, the sword may or may not have a dragon emblazoned on it and/or depending on the translation been “brown of hue”.

History.

Gram is primarily seen in the "Volsunga Saga" used by men in the Volsung line after Sigmund. Sigmund receives it during the wedding feast for his sister, Signy. Part of the way through the feast a strange man appears carrying a sword. Although unknown to Sigmund, this is the god Odin. He thrusts the sword into the Barnstokkr tree that grew in the middle of the hall and said, “The man to pull out this sword from the trunk shall receive it from me as a gift and he will find out for himself that he never bore in hand a better sword than this.” Soon after he departed every man made his attempt to pull the sword out of the wood. All fail except Sigmund who easily extracts it. The sword is a fine sword, and King Siggeir is covetous of it, offering Sigmund three times its weight in gold. When he refuses, King Siggeir grows angry and secretly begins plotting to steal it from Sigmund, eventually killing his father and capturing him and all of his brothers. After this the sword disappears from the narrative until Signy secretly gives it back to Sigmund as he is buried alive with Sinfjotli. After Sigmund avenges his family, he uses the sword in several battles before it is eventually broken by Odin during Sigmund's final battle with the King Lyngvi. Borghild, Sigmund's wife, takes up the two halves of the blade and keeps them for Sigurd, their son.  After Gram was broken by Odin, Borghild took the two halves and kept them for her future son. Soon the dwarven smith, Regin, comes and begins teaching Sigurd. After a period of time, he tells Sigurd of the mighty dragon, Fafnir, and the treasure which it guards, asking Sigurd to slay it for him. Sigurd agrees on one condition: that Regin make him a mighty sword capable of slaying such a monster.  Regin confidently makes Sigurd an admirable sword, but when Sigurd sees it, he is disappointed and breaks it over the anvil. On his second attempt, Regin makes him a sword superior to the last, but it also breaks. On his third attempt, Sigurd brings Regin the two halves of Gram, his father's sword, and when he strikes the anvil with Gram, it is cloven in two. Once he tested the strength of the sword, he left the workshop and went to a nearby stream to check its edge. Throwing a piece of wool upstream, he lets it press against Gram, causing it to be sliced through. After testing the blade's sharpness, he uses it to avenge his father, Sigmund, slaying King Lyngvi. Of the many feats done by Gram, by far the most well known and important is the slaying of Fafnir the dragon. This deed is accomplished by Sigurd with a single, mighty thrust to the left shoulder where he drives the sword so deep he gets his arms bloodied up to the shoulder. Eventually Gram is used as a sign of chastity when it is placed between Sigurd and Brynhild on their funeral pyre, after Brynhild arranged Sigurd's death before killing herself in turn. After this the sword is no longer found in the manuscript.

In 'Der Ring des Nibelungen'.

In "Siegfried", the third of the four operas in the "Ring des Nibelungen" cycle, Mime, who essentially takes Regin's part, is unable to reforge Nothung (as Gram is called in the "Ring"). Siegfried, however, manages. Apart from this the story of Regin and Sigurd is more or less identical to that of Mime and Siegfried.

In popular culture.

The sword is featured in the 2017 video game "", where it is found and used in combat by the main character, Senua. The sword's origins are explained to the character by her friend Druth, including the story of Sigmund and Sigurd.  Gram is a one-handed sword that appears in the "Castlevania" series of video games ("Symphony of the Night", "Aria of Sorrow" and "Harmony of Despair").  A powerful magical sword named Balmung appears in the video game "".  Gram is a heavy blade (two-handed sword) in the game "Warframe", the sword also has a variant with better attributes called "Gram Prime".  Gram (under the name "Nothung") appears in the Cartoon Network animated series "Adventure Time" as the sword wielded by the legendary hero Billy.  Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein refers to Gram (using the name "Nothung") in his work "Philosophical Investigations".  Gram is wielded by Siegfried in the "Soul Calibur" series.  Gram is wielded by Kohri in the game "Phantasy Star Online 2".  In "Konosuba", Mitsurugi Kyouya was given the 'Cursed Sword Gram' by Aqua and, at one point, used it to slay a dragon.

In Norse mythology, Gram (Old Norse Gramr, meaning "Wrath") is the sword that Sigurd used to kill the dragon Fafnir. It is primarily used by the Volsungs in the "Volsunga Saga". However, it is also seen in other legends, such as the "Thidrekssaga" wielded by Hildebrand.

Gram (altnordisch: "Gramr", wörtlich: Grimm) ist in der nordischen/germanischen Mythologie das Schwert von Sigurd (Siegfried), dem Drachentöter. Bei Richard Wagner heißt Gram Notung (in der Partitur und dem Klavierauszug als Nothung geschrieben); im Nibelungenlied hat Siegfrieds Schwert eine gänzlich andere Vorgeschichte und heißt Balmung.