Early life.

Paul de Man was born in Antwerp, Belgium, to a prominent and cultivated upper-class Flemish family. His maternal great-grandfather was the noted Flemish poet Jan Van Beers, and the family spoke French at home. His uncle Henri de Man (Dutch: Hendrik) was a famous socialist theorist and politician, who became a Nazi-collaborator during World War II. Paul's father, Robert ("Bob") de Man, was a moderately successful businessman whose firm manufactured X-ray equipment. De Man's father and his mother, Madeleine De Braey, who were first cousins, married over the family's opposition. The marriage proved unhappy.  De Man's early life was difficult and shadowed by tragedy. His mother Madeleine's first pregnancy with her oldest son Hendrik ("Rik," b. 1915) coincided with the intense German bombings of World War I and strained her physical and mental health. The stillbirth of a daughter two years later pushed her into intermittent but lifelong suicidal depression. She was psychologically fragile and had to be watched. The family walked on eggshells and "Bob" de Man found solace with other women. In contrast to Rik, who was backward and a failure in school, Paul dealt with his difficult home life by becoming a brilliant student and accomplished athlete. He was enrolled in the Dutch-speaking cohort of boys admitted to the prestigious and highly competitive Royal Athenaeum of Antwerp. There, he followed his father's career path in choosing to study science and engineering, consistently receiving top marks in all subjects and graduating at the top of his class. He took no courses in literature or philosophy but developed a strong extracurricular interest in both as well as in religious mysticism. In 1936, his brother Rik de Man was killed at the age of 21 when his bicycle was struck by a train at a railroad crossing. The following year, it was Paul, then seventeen, who discovered the body of their mother, who had hanged herself a month before the anniversary of Rik's death.  That fall Paul enrolled in the Free University of Brussels. He wrote for student magazines and continued to take courses in science and engineering. For stability he turned to his uncle Henri as a patron and surrogate emotional father, later on several occasions telling people Henri was his real father and his real father was his uncle. He fathered a son with Romanian-born Anaïde Baraghian, the wife of his good friend, Gilbert Jaeger. They lived in a "menage à trois" until August 1942, when Baraghian left her husband. Paul married her in 1944, and the couple had two more sons together.  De Man, Baraghian and Jaeger fled to the south of France near the Spanish border when the Nazis occupied Belgium in 1940. Henri, who by then was a self-avowed fascist, welcomed the Nazi invaders, whom he saw as essential for instituting his brand of socialism. For a year, Henri de Man was appointed as de facto puppet Prime Minister of Belgium under the Nazis. Some believed that he used his influence to secure his nephew a position as an occasional cultural critic for "Le Soir", the influential Belgian French-language newspaper. After contributing an essay, “The Jews in Present-Day Literature,” to "Le Soir volé"'s notorious anti-Semitic attack of March 4, 1941, de Man became its official book reviewer and a cultural critic. Later he contributed to the Flemish daily "Het Vlaamsche Land"; both publications were vehemently anti-Semitic when under Nazi control. As a cultural critic, de Man would contribute hundreds of articles and reviews to these publications. His writings supported the Germanic ideology and the triumph of Germany in the war, while never referring directly to Hitler himself. In spite of that he maintained friendships with individual Jews.  Holding three different jobs, de Man became very highly paid, but he lost all three between November 1942 and April 1943, failures that resulted from a combination of losing a coup he had launched against one employer and his own incompetence as a businessman at another. After this, de Man went into hiding; the Belgian Resistance had now begun assassinating prominent Belgian pro-Nazis. He had lost his protection in late 1942, when Henri, mistrusted by his collaborators on the right and himself marked for death as a traitor by the Belgian Resistance, went into exile.  De Man spent the rest of the war in seclusion reading American and French literature and philosophy and organizing a translation into Dutch of "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, which he published in 1945. He would be interrogated by prosecutor Roger Vinçotte, but not charged after the war. Henri de Man was tried and convicted "in absentia" for treason; he died in Switzerland in 1953, after crashing his car into an oncoming train, an accident that was almost certainly a suicide.

Post-war years.

In 1948, de Man left Belgium and emigrated to New York City. He had fled as an exile to avoid what became two trials for criminal and financial misdeeds (thefts of money from investors in a publishing company he ran) for which he was convicted "in absentia" to five years of imprisonment and heavy fines. Baraghian sailed with their three young sons to Argentina, where her parents had recently immigrated. De Man found work stocking books at the Doubleday Bookstore at New York City's Grand Central Station. From there he wrote to his friend Georges Bataille, a French philosopher, and through him, he met Dwight MacDonald, a key figure on the New York intellectual and literary scene. At MacDonald's apartment, de Man met the celebrated novelist Mary McCarthy. McCarthy recommended de Man to her friend Artine Artinian, a professor of French at Bard College, as a temporary replacement while Artinian spent the academic year of 1949–50 in France as a Fulbright fellow.  "De Man was to teach Mr. Artinian's courses, advise Mr. Artinian's advisees, and move into Mr. Artinian's house. By December [1949], de Man had married one of the advisees, a French major named Patricia Kelley, and when the first Mrs. de Man turned up with their three young boys, Hendrik, Robert, and Marc, in the spring of 1950, Patricia de Man [sic] was pregnant."De Man persuaded the devastated Baraghian to accept a sum of money, agree to a divorce, and return to Argentina. She, however, surprised him when she left the eldest boy with him, while he surprised her when his first check proved worthless. The boy was raised by Kelley's parents while she took the younger ones back to Argentina with a promise of child support that de Man was never to honor.  A heavily fictionalized account of this period of de Man's life is the basis of Henri Thomas's 1964 novel "Le Parjure" ("The Perjurer"). His life also provides the basis for Bernhard Schlink's 2006 novel, translated as "Homecoming". De Man married Kelley a first time in June 1950, but did not tell her that he had not actually gotten a divorce and that the marriage was bigamous. They underwent a second marriage ceremony in August 1960, when his divorce from Baraghian was finalized, and later had a third ceremony in Ithaca. In addition to their son, Michael, born while the couple was at Bard College, they had a daughter, Patsy. The couple remained together until de Man's death, aged 64, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Academic career.

The de Mans moved to Boston, where Paul earned money teaching conversational French at Berlitz and did translations assisted by Patricia de Man; he also gave private French lessons to Harvard student Henry Kissinger, then running a small center and publication of his own. There, de Man met Harry Levin, the Harvard Professor of Comparative Literature, and "was invited to join an informal literary seminar that met at Levin's house (alongside, e.g., George Steiner and John Simon). By the fall of 1952, he was officially admitted to graduate study in comparative literature." In 1954 someone sent Harvard an anonymous letter denouncing de Man as a wartime collaborator and questioning his immigration status (a letter not surviving, and known only on the basis of de Man's response to it). According to Harvard faculty members, de Man offered a thorough and more than satisfactory account of his immigration status and the nature of his political activities. While he was writing his dissertation, de Man was awarded a prestigious appointment at the Harvard Society of Fellows. In 1960, because his thesis was unsatisfactory to his mentors on several counts, and especially its philosophical approach, they were prepared to dismiss him, but he moved immediately to an advanced position at Cornell University, where he was highly valued.  Peter Brooks, who was de Man's undergraduate student at Harvard, and later became his friend and colleague at Yale, wrote that rather than brand de Man as a confidence man, as his critics were inclined to do: "One might consider this a story of remarkable survival and success following the chaos of war, occupation, postwar migration, and moments of financial desperation: without any degrees to his name, de Man had impressed, among others, Georges Bataille, Macdonald, McCarthy, and Levin, and entered the highest precincts of American academia. During the following decade, he contributed nine articles to the newly established "New York Review": astute and incisive short essays on major European writers—Hölderlin, Gide, Camus, Sartre, Heidegger, as well as Borges—that display notable cultural range and critical poise.  In 1966, de Man attended a conference on structuralism held at Johns Hopkins University, where Jacques Derrida delivered his celebrated essay, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"; de Man and Derrida soon became fast friends. Both were to become identified with Deconstruction. De Man came to reflect the influence primarily of Heidegger and used deconstruction to study Romanticism, both English and German, as well as French literature, specifically the works of William Wordsworth, John Keats, Maurice Blanchot, Marcel Proust, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, G.W. F. Hegel, Walter Benjamin, William Butler Yeats, Friedrich Hoelderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke.  Following an appointment to a professorship in Zurich, de Man returned to the United States in the 1970s to teach at Yale University, where he served for the rest of his career. At the time of his death of cancer at age 64, he was a Sterling Professor and chairman of the department of comparative literature at Yale.

Contributions to literary theory.

Although de Man's work in the 1960s differs from his later deconstructive endeavors, considerable continuity can also be discerned. In his 1967 essay "Criticism and Crisis," he argues that because literary works are understood to be fictions rather than factual accounts, they exemplify the break between a sign and its meaning: literature "means" nothing, but critics resist this insight: "When modern critics think they are demystifying literature, they are in fact being demystified by it. But since this necessarily occurs in the form of a crisis, they are blind to what takes place within themselves. What they call anthropology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, is nothing but literature reappearing like the hydra's head in the very spot where it had been suppressed. The human mind will go through amazing feats to avoid facing 'the nothingness of human matters'."De Man would later observe that, due to this resistance to acknowledging that literature does not "mean", English departments had become "large organizations in the service of everything except their own subject matter" ("The Return to Philology"). He said that the study of literature had become the art of applying psychology, politics, history, philology or other disciplines to the literary text, in an effort to make the text "mean" something.  Among the central threads running through de Man's work is his attempt to tease out the tension between rhetoric (which de Man uses as a term to mean figural language and trope) and meaning, seeking moments in the text where linguistic forces "tie themselves into a knot which arrests the process of understanding." De Man's earlier essays from the 1960s, collected in "Blindness and Insight", represent an attempt to seek these paradoxes in the texts of New Criticism and move beyond formalism. One of De Man's central topoi is of the blindness on which these critical readings are predicated, that the "insight seems instead to have been gained from a negative movement that animates the critic's thought, an unstated principle that leads his language away from its asserted stand... as if the very possibility of assertion had been put into question." Here de Man tries to undercut the notion of the poetic work as a unified, atemporal icon, a self-possessed repository of meaning freed from the intentionalist and affective fallacies. In de Man's argument, formalist and New Critical valorization of the "organic" nature of poetry is ultimately self-defeating: the notion of the verbal icon is undermined by the irony and ambiguity inherent within it. Form ultimately acts as "both a creator and undoer of organic totalities," and "the final insight...annihilated the premises which led up to it."  In "Allegories of Reading", de Man further explores the tensions arising in figural language in Nietzsche, Rousseau, Rilke, and Proust. In these essays, he concentrates on crucial passages which have a metalinguistic function or metacritical implications, particularly those where figural language has a dependency on classical philosophical oppositions (essence/accident, synchronic/diachronic, appearance/reality) which are so central to Western discourse. Many of the essays in this volume attempt to undercut figural totalization, the notion that one can control or dominate a discourse or phenomenon through metaphor. In de Man's discussion of Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy", for instance, he claims that "genetic" conceptions of history appearing in the text are undercut by the rhetorical strategies Nietzsche employs: "the deconstruction does not occur between statements, as in a logical refutation or a dialectic, but happens instead between, on the one hand, metalinguistic statements about the rhetorical nature of language and, on the other hand, a rhetorical praxis that puts these statements into question." For de Man, an "Allegory of Reading" emerges when texts are subjected to such scrutiny and reveal this tension; a reading wherein the text reveals its own assumptions about language, and in so doing dictates a statement about undecidability, the difficulties inherent in totalization, their own readability, or the "limitations of textual authority."  De Man is also known for his readings of English and German romantic and post-romantic poetry and philosophy ("The Rhetoric of Romanticism"), and concise and deeply ironic essays. Specifically noteworthy is his critical dismantling of the Romantic ideology and the linguistic assumptions which underlie it. His arguments follow roughly as follows. First, de Man seeks to deconstruct the privileged claims in Romanticism of symbol over allegory, and metaphor over metonymy. In his reading, because of the implication of self-identity and wholeness which is inherent in the Romantics' conception of metaphor, when this self-identity decomposes, so also does the means of overcoming the dualism between subject and object, which Romantic metaphor sought to transcend. In de Man's reading, to compensate for this inability, Romanticism constantly relies on allegory to attain the wholeness established by the totality of the symbol.  In addition, in his essay "The Resistance to Theory", which explores the task and philosophical bases of literary theory, de Man uses the example of the classical "trivium" of grammar, rhetoric, and logic to argue that the use of linguistic sciences in literary theory and criticism (i.e. a structuralist approach) was able to harmonize the logical and grammatical dimension of literature, but only at the expense of effacing the rhetorical elements of texts which presented the greatest interpretive demands. He posits that the resistance to theory is the resistance to reading, thus the resistance to theory is theory itself. Or the resistance to theory is what constitutes the possibility and existence of theory. Taking up the example of the title of Keats's poem "The Fall of Hyperion", de Man draws out an irreducible interpretive undecidability which bears strong affinities to the same term in Derrida's work and some similarity to the notion of incommensurability as developed by Jean-François Lyotard in "The Postmodern Condition" and "The Differend". De Man argues that the recurring motive of theoretical readings is to subsume these decisions under theoretical, futile generalizations, which are displaced in turn by harsh polemics about theory.

Influence and legacy.

De Man's influence on literary criticism was considerable, in part through his numerous and vocal disciples. Although much of his work brought to bear insights on literature drawn from German philosophers such as Kant and Heidegger, De Man also closely followed developments in contemporary French literature, criticism, and theory.  Much of de Man's work was collected or published posthumously. His book "Resistance to Theory" was virtually complete at the time of his death. A collection of essays, edited by his former Yale colleague Andrzej Warminski, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1996 under the title "Aesthetic Ideology".

Wartime journalism and posthumous controversies.

In August 1987, Ortwin de Graef, a Belgian graduate student at the University of Leuven, discovered some two hundred articles which de Man had written during World War II for "Le Soir". In 1988, a conference on Paul de Man took place at the University of Antwerp. "On the last day, Jean Stengers, a historian at the Free University of Brussels, addressed a topic pointedly titled: "Paul de Man, a Collaborator?" Then Georges Goriely, professor emeritus of sociology at the Free University of Brussels, rose to deliver what he called "A Personal Testimony":  M. Goriely began by extolling de Man, whom he had known intimately in his youth, as "a charming, humorous, modest, highly cultured" "homme de lettres" renowned in Belgian literary circles during their youth. Then the professor dropped his bombshell. De Man, he asserted, wasn't all that he appeared to be. He was "completely, almost pathologically, dishonest," a crook who had bankrupted his family. "Swindling, forging, lying were, at least at the time, second nature to him."  The European press was in an uproar. "There were stories in La "Quinzaine Litteraire", the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", The "(Manchester) Guardian". "Newsweek" juxtaposed a photograph of de Man with another of Nazis on the march. "Le Soir" described him as 'an academic Waldheim."  De Man's disciples tried to portray the attacks on de Man as a cover for his critics' dislike of Deconstruction, alleging that the attacks were a ruse that used de Man's youthful errors as evidence of what they considered the decadence at the heart of the Continental thought behind de Man and his theories. The controversies quickly spread from the pages of scholarly journals to the broader media. "The Chronicle of Higher Education" and the front page of "The New York Times" exposed the sensational details of de Man's personal life, particularly the circumstances of his marriage and his difficult relationships with his children.  In the most controversial and explicitly anti-semitic essay from this wartime journalism, titled "Jews in Contemporary Literature" (1941), de Man described how "[v]ulgar anti-semitism willingly takes pleasure in considering post-war cultural phenomenon (after the war of 14–18) as degenerate and decadent because they are [enjewished]." He notes that "Literature does not escape this lapidary judgement: it is sufficient to discover a few Jewish writers under Latinized pseudonyms for all contemporary production to be considered polluted and evil. This conception entails rather dangerous consequences... it would be a rather unflattering appreciation of western writers to reduce them to being mere imitators of a Jewish culture which is foreign to them."The article claimed that contemporary literature had not broken from tradition as a result of the First World War and that "the Jews cannot claim to have been its creators, nor even to have exercised a preponderant influence over its development. On any closer examination, this influence appears to have extraordinarily little importance since one might have expected that, given the specific characteristics of the Jewish Spirit, the later would have played a more brilliant role in this artistic production." The article concluded that "our civilization... [b]y keeping, in spite of Semitic interference in all aspects of European life, an intact originality and character... has shown that its basic character is healthy." It concluded that "the creation of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe" as "a solution to the Jewish problem" would not entail any "deplorable consequences" for "the literary life of the west." This is the only known article in which de Man pronounced such views so openly, though two or three other articles also accept without demurral the disenfranchisement and ostracization of Jews, as some contributors to "Responses" have noted.  De Man's colleagues, students, and contemporaries tried to respond to his early writings and his subsequent silence about them in the volume "Responses: On Paul de Man's Wartime Journalism" (edited by Werner Hamacher, Neil Hertz, and Thomas Keenan; Nebraska, 1989). His longtime friend, Jacques Derrida, who was Jewish, published a long piece responding to De Man's critics, declaring: "To judge, to condemn the work or the man on the basis of what was a brief episode, to call for closing, that is to say, at least figuratively, for censuring or burning his books is to reproduce the exterminating gesture which one accuses de Man of not having armed himself against sooner with the necessary vigilance. It is not even to draw a lesson that he, de Man, learned to draw from the war."Some readers objected to what they considered as Derrida's effort to relate criticism of de Man to the greater tragedy of extermination of the Jews.  Fredric Jameson lengthily defended de Man in "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" (1991), observing about de Man's critics that "it does not seem to me that North American intellectuals have generally had the kind of experience of history that would qualify them to judge the actions and choices of people under military occupation." According to Jameson, the efforts to implicate de Man in the Holocaust hinged on a fundamental misunderstanding of Nazi anti-Semitism:  The exclusive emphasis on anti-Semitism ignores and politically neutralizes its other constitutive feature in the Nazi period: namely, anticommunism. [The] very possibility of the Judeocide was absolutely at one with and inseparable from the anticommunist and radical right-wing mission of National Socialism (...). But put this way, it seems at once clear that DeMan was neither an anticommunist nor a right-winger: had he taken such positions in his student days (...), they would have been public knowledge.  Turning to the content and ideology of de Man's wartime journalism, Jameson contended that it was "devoid of any personal originality or distinctiveness," simply rehearsing corporatist commonplaces found in a broad range of European political movements. From this, Jameson concluded that none of the wartime articles "had any relevance to Paul De Man, for whom the thing dramatically called 'collaboration' was simply a job, in a Europe henceforth and for the foreseeable future united and German, and who as long as I knew him personally was simply a good liberal."  Since the late 1980s, some of de Man's followers, many of them Jewish, have pointed out that de Man at no time in his life displayed personal animus against Jews. Shoshana Felman, recounted that "about a year after the journalistic publication of his compromising statement, he and his wife sheltered for several days in their apartment the Jewish pianist Esther Sluszny and her husband, who were then illegal citizens in hiding from the Nazis. During this same period, de Man was meeting regularly with Georges Goriely, a member of the Belgian Resistance. According to Goriely's own testimony, he never for one minute feared denunciation of his underground activities by Paul de Man."But, his disciples and defenders have failed to agree about the nature of de Man's silence about his wartime activities. His critics, on the other hand, point out that throughout his life de Man was not only passively silent but also engaged in an active coverup through lies and misdirections about his past.  The question of de Man's personal history has continued to fascinate scholars, as evidenced by Evelyn Barish's 2014 biography "The Double Life of Paul de Man". In an advance review published in "Harper's Magazine", Christine Smallwood concludes that de Man, as portrayed by Barish, was: "a slippery Mr. Ripley, a confidence man, and a hustler who embezzled, lied, forged, and arreared his way to intellectual acclaim." In response to these claims, Peter Brooks, who succeeded to de Man's post as Sterling professor at Yale, stated that some of Barish's accusations were overblown, identifying several errors in her footnotes: "One could do a review of Barish's footnotes that would cast many doubts on her scholarship". For example, he cites the footnote Barish provides to support her claim that in 1942 de Man planned to launch a Nazi literary magazine: "I shared this information, and it has since been previously published in Belgian sources not now available to me", noting that this sort of thing "does not pass any sort of muster." Harvard professor Louis Menand, on the other hand, in his review in "The New Yorker", finds Barish's biography important and credible, notwithstanding the presence of occasional errors and exaggerations. Menand writes "[h]er book is a brief for the prosecution. But it is not a hatchet job, and she has an amazing tale to tell. In her account, all guns are smoking. There are enough to stock a miniseries."

Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983), born Paul Adolph Michel Deman, was a Belgian-born literary critic and literary theorist. At the time of his death, de Man was one of the most prominent literary critics in the United States—known particularly for his importation of German and French philosophical approaches into Anglo-American literary studies and critical theory. Along with Jacques Derrida, he was part of an influential critical movement that went beyond traditional interpretation of literary texts to reflect on the epistemological difficulties inherent in any textual, literary, or critical activity. This approach aroused considerable opposition, which de Man attributed to "resistance" inherent in the difficult enterprise of literary interpretation itself.

Paul Adolph Michel de Man (* 6. Dezember 1919 in Antwerpen; † 21. Dezember 1983 in New Haven) war ein aus Belgien stammender Literaturtheoretiker, -kritiker und Philosoph.


Successor to Senzangakhona.

When Senzangakhona (Shaka's father) died in 1816, Shaka's younger half-brother Sigujana assumed power as the legitimate heir to the Zulu chiefdom. Sigujana's reign was short, however, as Dingiswayo, anxious to confirm his authority, lent Shaka a regiment so that he was able to put Sigujana to death, launching a relatively bloodless coup that was substantially accepted by the Zulu. Thus Shaka became Chief of the Zulu clan, although he remained a vassal of the Mthethwa empire until Dingiswayo's death in battle a year later at the hands of Zwide, powerful chief of the Ndwandwe (Nxumalo) nation. When the Mthethwa forces were defeated and scattered temporarily, the power vacuum was filled by Shaka. He reformed the remnants of the Mthethwa and other regional tribes and later defeated Zwide in the Zulu Civil War of 1819–20.  When Dingiswayo was murdered by Zwide, Shaka sought to avenge his death. At some point, Zwide barely escaped Shaka, though the exact details are not known. In that encounter, Zwide's mother Ntombazi, a Sangoma (Zulu seer or shaman), was killed by Shaka. Shaka chose a particularly gruesome revenge on her, locking her in a house and placing jackals or hyenas inside: they devoured her and, in the morning, Shaka burned the house to the ground. Despite carrying out this revenge, Shaka continued his pursuit of Zwide. It was not until around 1825 that the two military leaders met, near Phongola, in their final meeting. Phongola is near the present day border of KwaZulu-Natal, a province in South Africa. Shaka was victorious in battle, although his forces sustained heavy casualties, which included his head military commander, Umgobhozi Ovela Entabeni.  In the initial years, Shaka had neither the influence nor reputation to compel any but the smallest of groups to join him, and upon Dingiswayo's death, Shaka moved southwards across the Thukela River, establishing his capital Bulawayo in Qwabe territory; he never did move back into the traditional Zulu heartland. In Qwabe, Shaka may have intervened in an existing succession dispute to help his own choice, Nqetho, into power.

Expansion of power and conflict with Zwide.

As Shaka became more respected by his people, he was able to spread his ideas with greater ease. Because of his background as a soldier, Shaka taught the Zulus that the most effective way of becoming powerful quickly was by conquering and controlling other tribes. His teachings greatly influenced the social outlook of the Zulu people. The Zulu tribe soon developed a warrior outlook, which Shaka turned to his advantage.  Shaka's hegemony was primarily based on military might, smashing rivals and incorporating scattered remnants into his own army. He supplemented this with a mixture of diplomacy and patronage, incorporating friendly chieftains, including Zihlandlo of the Mkhize, Jobe of the Sithole, and Mathubane of the Thuli. These peoples were never defeated in battle by the Zulu; they did not have to be. Shaka won them over by subtler tactics, such as patronage and reward. As for the ruling Qwabe, they began re-inventing their genealogies to give the impression that Qwabe and Zulu were closely related in the past. In this way a greater sense of cohesion was created, though it never became complete, as subsequent civil wars attest.  Shaka still recognised Dingiswayo and his larger Mthethwa clan as overlord after he returned to the Zulu but, some years later, Dingiswayo was ambushed by Zwide's amaNdwandwe and killed. There is no evidence to suggest that Shaka betrayed Dingiswayo. Indeed, the core Zulu had to retreat before several Ndwandwe incursions; the Ndwandwe was clearly the most aggressive grouping in the sub-region.  Shaka was able to form an alliance with the leaderless Mthethwa clan and was able to establish himself amongst the Qwabe, after Phakathwayo was overthrown with relative ease. With Qwabe, Hlubi and Mkhize support, Shaka was finally able to summon a force capable of resisting the Ndwandwe (of the Nxumalo clan). Historian Donald Morris states that Shaka's first major battle against Zwide, of the Ndwandwe, was the Battle of Gqokli Hill, on the Mfolozi river. Shaka's troops maintained a strong position on the crest of the hill. A frontal assault by their opponents failed to dislodge them, and Shaka sealed the victory by sending his reserve forces in a sweep around the hill to attack the enemy's rear. Losses were high overall but the efficiency of the new Shakan innovations was proved. It is probable that, over time, the Zulu were able to hone and improve their encirclement tactics.  Another decisive fight eventually took place on the Mhlatuze river, at the confluence with the Mvuzane stream. In a two-day running battle, the Zulu inflicted a resounding defeat on their opponents. Shaka then led a fresh reserve some to the royal kraal of Zwide, ruler of the Ndwandwe, and destroyed it. Zwide himself escaped with a handful of followers before falling foul of a chieftainess named Mjanji, ruler of a baBelu clan. (He died in mysterious circumstances soon afterwards.) Zwide's general Soshangane (of the Shangaan) moved north towards what is now Mozambique to inflict further damage on less resistant foes and take advantage of slaving opportunities, obliging Portuguese traders to give tribute. Shaka later had to contend again with Zwide's son Sikhunyane in 1826.  Shaka granted permission to Europeans to enter Zulu territory on rare occasions. In the mid-1820s Henry Francis Fynn provided medical treatment to the king after an assassination attempt by a rival tribe member hidden in a crowd (see account of Nathaniel Isaacs). To show his gratitude, Shaka permitted European settlers to enter and operate in the Zulu kingdom. This would open the door for future British incursions into the Zulu kingdom that were not so peaceful. Shaka observed several demonstrations of European technology and knowledge, but he held that the Zulu way was superior to that of the foreigners.

Death and succession.

Dingane and Mhlangana, Shaka's half-brothers, appear to have made at least two attempts to assassinate Shaka before they succeeded, with perhaps support from Mpondo elements and some disaffected iziYendane people. While the British colonialists considered his regime to be a future threat, allegations that European traders wished him dead were problematic given that Shaka had granted concessions to Europeans prior to his death, including the right to settle at Port Natal (now Durban). Shaka had made enough enemies among his own people to hasten his demise. It came relatively quickly after the death of his mother Nandi in October 1827, and the devastation caused by Shaka's subsequent erratic behavior. According to Donald Morris, Shaka ordered that no crops should be planted during the following year of mourning, no milk (the basis of the Zulu diet at the time) was to be used, and any woman who became pregnant was to be killed along with her husband. At least 7,000 people who were deemed to be insufficiently grief-stricken were executed, although the killing was not restricted to humans: cows were slaughtered so that their calves would know what losing a mother felt like.  The Zulu monarch was killed by three assassins sometime in 1828; September is the most frequently cited date, when almost all available Zulu manpower had been sent on yet another mass sweep to the north. This left the royal kraal critically lacking in security. It was all the conspirators needed—they being Shaka's half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, and an iNduna called Mbopa. A diversion was created by Mbopa, and Dingane and Mhlangana struck the fatal blows. Shaka's corpse was dumped by his assassins in an empty grain pit, which was then filled with stones and mud. The exact location is unknown. A monument was built at one alleged site. Historian Donald Morris holds that the true site is somewhere on Couper Street in the village of Stanger, South Africa.  Shaka's half-brother Dingane assumed power and embarked on an extensive purge of pro-Shaka elements and chieftains, running over several years, in order to secure his position. The initial problem Dingane faced was maintaining the loyalty of the Zulu fighting regiments, or amabutho. He addressed this by allowing them to marry and set up homesteads (which was forbidden during Shaka's rule) and they also received cattle from Dingane. Loyalty was also maintained through fear, as anyone who was suspected of rivaling Dingane was killed. He set up his main residence at Mmungungundlovo and established his authority over the Zulu kingdom. Dingane ruled for some twelve years, during which time he fought, disastrously, against the Voortrekkers, and against another half-brother, Mpande, who, with Boer and British support, took over the Zulu leadership in 1840, ruling for some 30 years.

Social and military revolution.

Some older histories have doubted the military and social innovations customarily attributed to Shaka, denying them outright, or attributing them variously to European influences. More modern researchers argue that such explanations fall short, and that the general Zulu culture, which included other tribes and clans, contained a number of practices that Shaka could have drawn on to fulfill his objectives, whether in raiding, conquest or hegemony. Some of these practices are shown below.

Weapons changes.

Shaka is often said to have been dissatisfied with the long throwing assegai, and is credited with having introduced a new variant of the weapon: the "iklwa", a short stabbing spear with a long, broad, and indeed sword-like, spearhead.  Though Shaka probably did not invent the "iklwa", according to Zulu scholar John Laband, the leader did insist that his warriors train with the weapon, which gave them a "terrifying advantage over opponents who clung to the traditional practice of throwing their spears and avoiding hand-to-hand conflict." The throwing spear was not discarded but used as an initial missile weapon before close contact with the enemy, when the shorter stabbing spear was used in hand-to-hand combat.  It is also supposed that Shaka introduced a larger, heavier version of the Nguni shield. Furthermore, it is believed that he taught his warriors how to use the shield's left side to hook the enemy's shield to the right, exposing the enemy's ribs for a fatal spear stab. In Shaka's time, these cowhide shields were supplied by the king, and they remained the king's property. Different coloured shields distinguished different "amabutho" within Shaka's army. Some had black shields, others used white shields with black spots, and some had white shields with brown spots, while others used pure brown or white shields.

Mobility of the army.

The story that sandals were discarded to toughen the feet of Zulu warriors has been noted in various military accounts such as "The Washing of the Spears," "Like Lions They Fought," and "Anatomy of the Zulu Army." Implementation was typically blunt. Those who objected to going without sandals were simply killed. Shaka drilled his troops frequently, in forced marches that sometimes covered more than a day in a fast trot over hot, rocky terrain. He also drilled the troops to carry out encirclement tactics.  Historian John Laband dismisses these stories as myth, writing: "What are we to make, then, of [European trader Henry Francis] Fynn's statement that once the Zulu army reached hard and stony ground in 1826, Shaka ordered sandals of ox-hide to be made for himself?"  Laband also dismissed the idea of a march in a single day as ridiculous. He further claims that even though these stories have been repeated by "astonished and admiring white commentators," the Zulu army covered "no more than a day, and usually went only about." Furthermore, Zulus under Shaka sometimes advanced more slowly. They spent two whole days recuperating in one instance, and on another they rested for a day and two nights before pursuing their enemy. Several other historians of the Zulu, and the Zulu military system, however, affirm the mobility rate of up to 50 miles per day.

Logistic support by youths.

Boys and girls aged six and over joined Shaka's force as apprentice warriors ("udibi") and served as carriers of rations, supplies like cooking pots and sleeping mats, and extra weapons until they joined the main ranks. It is sometimes held that such support was used more for very light forces designed to extract tribute in cattle and slaves from neighbouring groups. Nevertheless, the concept of "light" forces is questionable. The fast-moving Zulu raiding party, or "ibutho lempi," on a mission invariably travelled light, driving cattle as provisions on the hoof, and were not weighed down with heavy weapons and supply packs.

Age-grade regimental system.

Age-grade groupings of various sorts were common in the Bantu culture of the day, and indeed are still important in much of Africa. Age grades were responsible for a variety of activities, from guarding the camp, to cattle herding, to certain rituals and ceremonies. Shaka organised various grades into regiments, and quartered them in special military kraals, with regiments having their own distinctive names and insignia. The regimental system clearly built on existing tribal cultural elements that could be adapted and shaped to fit an expansionist agenda.

"Bull horn" formation.

Most historians credit Shaka with initial development of the famous "bull horn" formation." It was composed of three elements:

Shakan methods versus European technology.

The expanding Zulu power inevitably clashed with European hegemony in the decades after Shaka's death. In fact, European travellers to Shaka's kingdom demonstrated advanced technology such as firearms and writing, but the Zulu monarch was less than convinced. There was no need to record messages, he held, since his messengers stood under penalty of death should they bear inaccurate tidings. As for firearms, Shaka acknowledged their utility as missile weapons after seeing muzzle-loaders demonstrated, but he argued that in the time a gunman took to reload, he would be swamped by charging spear-wielding warriors.  The first major clash after Shaka's death took place under his successor Dingane, against expanding European Voortrekkers from the Cape. Initial Zulu success rested on fast-moving surprise attacks and ambushes, but the Voortrekkers recovered and dealt the Zulu a severe defeat from their fortified wagon laager at the Battle of Blood River. The second major clash was against the British during 1879. Once again, most Zulu successes rested on their mobility, ability to screen their forces and to close when their opponents were unfavourably deployed. Their major victory at the Battle of Isandlwana is well known, but they also forced back a British column at the Battle of Hlobane mountain, by deploying fast-moving regiments over a wide area of rugged ravines and gullies, and attacking the British who were forced into a rapid disorderly fighting retreat, back to the town of Kambula.

Creator of a revolutionary warfare style.

A number of historians argue that Shaka "changed the nature of warfare in Southern Africa" from "a ritualised exchange of taunts with minimal loss of life into a true method of subjugation by wholesale slaughter." Others dispute this characterization (see Scholarship section below). A number of writers focus on Shaka's military innovations such as the "iklwa" – the Zulu thrusting spear, and the "buffalo horns" formation. This combination has been compared to the standardisation implemented by the reorganised Roman legions under Marius.  Much controversy still surrounds the character, methods and activities of the Zulu king. From a military standpoint, historian John Keegan notes exaggerations and myths that surround Shaka, but nevertheless maintains:

As borrower not innovator.

Some scholars hold that popular depictions of Shaka as a suddenly appearing genius creating innovation are overstated, and that to the contrary, Shaka was a borrower and imitator of indigenous methods, customs and even ruler-lineages already in place. They also argue that Shaka's line was relatively short-lived and receives undue attention, compared to other, longer established lines and rulers in the region.  Shaka's triumphs did not succeed in obliterating or diminishing the memories of his better-born rivals. The hypothesis that several states of a new kind arose about the same time does not take account of the contrast between the short line of Shaka and the long pedigrees of his most important opponents – especially the coalition grouped around his deadly enemy Zwide (d. 1822). The founders of the states which Omer-Cooper called "Zulu-type states," including the Ndebele, the Gasa, the Ngoni, and the Swazi had all been closely associated with Zwide. Instead of hypothesizing that they all chose to imitate Shaka, it is easier to imagine that he modeled his state on theirs. And as they stemmed from ancient families it is entirely possible that states of that type existed in a more remote past. Soga and Bryant related each of them to a larger grouping they called Mho."

Scholarship studies.

Biographical sources.

Scholarship in recent years has revised views of the sources on Shaka's reign. The earliest are two eyewitness accounts written by European adventurer-traders who met Shaka during the last four years of his reign. Nathaniel Isaacs published his "Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa" in 1836, creating a picture of Shaka as a degenerate and pathological monster, which survives in modified forms to this day. Isaacs was aided in this by Henry Francis Fynn, whose diary (actually a rewritten collage of various papers) was edited by James Stuart only in 1950.  Their accounts may be balanced by the rich resource of oral histories collected around 1900 by the same James Stuart, now published in six volumes as "The James Stuart Archive". Stuart's early 20th century work was continued by D. McK. Malcolm in 1950. These and other sources such as A.T. Bryant gives us a more Zulu-centred picture. Most popular accounts are based on E.A. Ritter's novel "Shaka Zulu" (1955), a potboiling romance that was re-edited into something more closely resembling a history. John Wright (history professor at University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg), Julian Cobbing and Dan Wylie (Rhodes University, Grahamstown) are among a number of writers who have modified these stories.  Various modern historians writing on Shaka and the Zulu point to the uncertain nature of Fynn and Isaac's accounts of Shaka's reign. A standard general reference work in the field is Donald Morris's "The Washing of The Spears", which notes that the sources, as a whole, for this historical era are not the best. Morris nevertheless references a large number of sources, including Stuart, and A. T. Bryant's extensive but uneven "Olden Times in Zululand and Natal", which is based on four decades of exhaustive interviews of tribal sources. After sifting through these sources and noting their strengths and weaknesses, Morris generally credits Shaka with a large number of military and social innovations, and this is the general consensus in the field.  A 1998 study by historian Carolyn Hamilton summarizes much of the scholarship on Shaka towards the dawn of the 21st century in areas ranging from ideology, politics and culture, to the use of his name and image in a popular South African theme park, "Shakaland." It argues that in many ways, the image of Shaka has been "invented" in the modern era according to whatever agenda persons hold. This "imagining of Shaka" it is held, should be balanced by a sober view of the historical record, and allow greater scope for the contributions of indigenous African discourse.  Military historians of the Zulu War must also be considered for their description of Zulu fighting methods and tactics, including authors like Ian Knight and Robert Edgerton. General histories of Southern Africa are also valuable including Noel Mostert's "Frontiers" and a detailed account of the results from the Zulu expansion, J.D. Omer-Cooper's "The Zulu Aftermath", which advances the traditional Mfecane theory.

The Mfecane.

History and legacy.

The increased military efficiency led to more and more clans being incorporated into Shaka's Zulu empire, while other tribes moved away to be out of range of Shaka's "impis". The ripple effect caused by these mass migrations would become known (though only in the twentieth century) as the "Mfecane" (annihilation).  Shaka's army set out on a massive programme of expansion, killing or enslaving those who resisted in the territories he conquered. His "impis" (warrior regiments) were rigorously disciplined: failure in battle meant death.  At the time of his death, Shaka ruled over 250,000 people and could muster more than 50,000 warriors. His 10-year-long kingship resulted in a massive number of deaths, mostly due to the disruptions the Zulu caused in neighbouring tribes, although the exact death toll is a matter of scholarly dispute. Further unquantifiable deaths occurred during mass tribal migrations to escape his armies.  The Mfecane produced Mzilikazi of the Khumalo, a general of Shaka's. He fled Shaka's employ, and in turn conquered an empire in Zimbabwe, after clashing with European groups like the Boers. The settling of Mzilikazi's people, the AmaNdebele or Matabele, in the south of Zimbabwe with the concomitant driving of the AmaShona into the north caused a tribal conflict that still resonates today. Other notable figures to arise from the Mfecane include Soshangane, who expanded from the Zulu area into what is now Mozambique.

Disruptions of the Mfecane.

The theory of the Mfecane holds that the aggressive expansion of Shaka's armies caused a brutal chain reaction across the southern areas of the continent, as dispossessed tribe after tribe turned on their neighbours in a deadly cycle of fight and conquest. Some scholars contend that this theory must be treated with caution as it generally neglects several other factors such as the impact of European encroachment, slave trading and expansion in that area of Southern Africa around the same time. Normal estimates for the death toll range from 1 million to 2 million. These numbers are, however, controversial.  According to Julian Cobbing, the development of the view that Shaka was the monster responsible for the devastation is based on the need of apartheid era historians to justify the apartheid regime's racist policies. Other scholars acknowledge distortion of the historical record by apartheid supporters and shady European traders seeking to cover their tracks, but dispute the revisionist approach, noting that stories of cannibalism, raiding, burning of villages, or mass slaughter were not developed out of thin air but based on the clearly documented accounts of hundreds of black victims and refugees. Confirmation of such accounts can also be seen in modern archaeology of the village of Lepalong, an entire settlement built underground to shelter remnants of the Kwena people from 1827–36 against the tide of disruption that engulfed the region during Shakan times.  William Rubinstein wrote that "Western guilt over colonialism, have also accounted for much of this distortion of what pre-literate societies actually were like, as does the wish to avoid anything which smacks of racism, even when this means distorting the actual and often appalling facts of life in many pre-literate societies". Rubinstein also notes:  Fynn complies, and Wylie notes that he had an additional motive to distort Shaka's image—he applied for a huge grant of land—an area allegedly depopulated by Shaka's savagery.  Michal Lesniewski has criticised Wylie for some of his attempts to revise Western thinking about Shaka.

Physical descriptions.

Though much remains unknown about Shaka's personal appearance, sources tend to agree he had a strong, muscular body and was not fat. He was tall and his skin tone was dark brown.  Shaka's enemies described him as ugly in some respects. He had a big nose, according to Baleka of the Qwabe, as told by her father. He also had two prominent front teeth. Her father also told Baleka that Shaka spoke as though "his tongue were too big for his mouth." Many said that he spoke with a speech impediment.  There is an anecdote that Shaka joked with one of his friends, Magaye, that he could not kill Magaye because he would be laughed at. Supposedly if he killed Magaye, it would appear to be out of jealousy because Magaye was so handsome and "Shaka himself was ugly, with a protruding forehead".

In Zulu culture.

The figure of Shaka still sparks interest among not only the contemporary Zulu but many worldwide who have encountered the tribe and its history. The current tendency appears to be to lionise him; popular film and other media have certainly contributed to his appeal. Certain aspects of traditional Zulu culture still revere the dead monarch, as the typical praise song below attests. The praise song is one of the most widely used poetic forms in Africa, applying not only to spirits but to men, animals, plants and even towns.  Other Zulu sources are sometimes critical of Shaka, and numerous negative images abound in Zulu oral history. When Shaka's mother Nandi died for example, the monarch ordered a massive outpouring of grief including mass executions, forbidding the planting of crops or the use of milk, and the killing of all pregnant women and their husbands. Oral sources record that in this period of devastation, a singular Zulu, a man named "Gala", eventually stood up to Shaka and objected to these measures, pointing out that Nandi was not the first person to die in Zululand. Taken aback by such candid talk, the Zulu king is supposed to have called off the destructive edicts, rewarding the blunt teller-of-truths with a gift of cattle.  The figure of Shaka thus remains an ambiguous one in African oral tradition, defying simplistic depictions of the Zulu king as a heroic, protean nation builder on one hand, or a depraved monster on the other. This ambiguity continues to lend the image of Shaka its continued power and influence, almost two centuries after his death.

Shaka kaSenzangakhona (c. 1787 – 1828), also known as Shaka Zulu (), was the leader of the Zulu Kingdom from 1816 to 1828. He was one of the most influential monarchs of the Zulu Kingdom.

Shaka (* um 1787 in der Nähe des heutigen Ortes Melmoth im späteren Natal; † 22. September 1828 in KwaDukuza, beides im heutigen Südafrika; auch Shaka Zulu, Shaka ka Senzangakhona, d. h. „Shaka, Sohn des Senzangakhona“) war ein König der Zulu. Unter seine Herrschaft fiel der Aufstieg der Zulu von einem kleinen Clan zu einem mächtigen Volk mit Macht über einen großen Teil des Gebiets des heutigen Südafrika. Seinem Erfolg bei der militärischen Überwindung seiner Feinde und seinem Geschick bei der Eingliederung der Unterworfenen verdankt Shaka den Ruf eines der herausragenden Könige der Zulu.


Biography.

Kiffmeyer was born in California on July 11, 1969. His first exposure in the punk scene was as the drummer of the band Isocracy. The group was popular in the East Bay, and mainstays at the famed club, 924 Gilman Street.  Kiffmeyer is most well known for his time in Green Day; after Isocracy broke up, he joined Mike Dirnt and Billie Joe Armstrong in 1987 to replace original drummer Raj Punjabi and form Sweet Children, which was later renamed Green Day. Because of his experience and knowledge of the underground community, Kiffmeyer was able to get the young band on its feet by placing calls to friends, among them prominent figure of the East Bay Larry Livermore. The first few performances took place at Contra Costa College, where Kiffmeyer was a journalism student. On the strength of an early performance, Livermore vowed to release a Green Day record on his Lookout! Records. The group's first full-length effort, "39/Smooth", would feature a Kiffmeyer original, "I Was There", which documented the band at that place in time. Being a fan of Ozzy Osbourne, it was he who inspired the mini-covers of some famous songs, such as "I Don't Know" by Ozzy Osbourne and "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd during the bridge of "Disappearing Boy," a practice that is still carried out today.  In 1990, he attended college at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. While Kiffmeyer was attending college, Green Day members Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt accepted drummer Tré Cool into the band, which Kiffmeyer "graciously accepted". In 1991, he worked as executive producer for Green Day album "Kerplunk". Kiffmeyer later joined the band The Ne'er Do Wells, leaving abruptly in 1994. Following a stint with punk band The Ritalins, he became manager of The Shruggs until their split. In 1998 he was the executive producer of "The Great Lost Trouble Makers Album" by The Troublemakers, a garage band from Sacramento, California.  He now lives in San Francisco and is married to experimental filmmaker and San Francisco State University professor Greta Snider. He works as a Director of Photography, specializing in green screen and producing mainly commercial work.  On April 16, 2015, Kiffmeyer joined Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt on stage during a Green Day concert at The House of Blues Cleveland, Ohio where the trio performed as Sweet Children, playing songs that they had not performed since the 1990s including "Sweet Children", "Green Day", "I Was There", "Don't Leave Me" and "Dry Ice".

Discography.

With Isocracy  - El Sob Demo (1987)  - Bedtime For Isocracy (1988)  With Green Day  "Studio Albums"  - 39/Smooth (1990)  "Other Releases"  - 1,000 Hours (1989)  - Slappy (1990)  - Sweet Children (1990)  - 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours (1991)  With The Ne'er Do Wells  - Hello, It Is I, Three Intolerable Bastard, Child Genius (1993)  Other Appearances  - "Various" - Turn It Around! (1987)  - "Various" - The Big One (1991)  Production Discography  - Green Day - Kerplunk (1991) as Executive Producer  - Screeching Weasel - My Brain Hurts (1991)  - The Trouble Makers - The Great Lost Trouble Makers Album (1998)

John Kiffmeyer (born July 11, 1969), known professionally in music as Al Sobrante, is an American record producer and retired musician and songwriter, best known as the second drummer for the punk rock band Green Day. His stage name is a reference to his hometown, El Sobrante.

John Kiffmeyer alias Al Sobrante (* 11. Juli 1969 in Kalifornien) ist ein US-amerikanischer Musiker und ehemaliger Schlagzeuger der Punk-Rockband Green Day. Der Künstlername wurde ihm aufgrund seiner Heimatstadt El Sobrante verliehen.


Early life.

Menjou was born on February 18, 1890, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a French father, Albert Menjou (1858–1917), and an Irish mother from Galway, Nora (née Joyce 1869–1953). His brother, Henry Arthur Menjou (1891–1956), was a year younger. He was raised Catholic, attended the Culver Military Academy, and graduated from Cornell University with a degree in engineering. Attracted to the vaudeville stage, he made his movie debut in 1916 in "The Blue Envelope Mystery". During World War I, he served as a captain in the United States Army Ambulance Service, for which he trained in Pennsylvania before going overseas.

Career and stardom.

After returning from the war, Menjou became a star in such films as "The Sheik" and "The Three Musketeers". When he starred in 1923's "A Woman of Paris", he solidified the image of a well-dressed man-about-town, and was voted Best Dressed Man in America nine times. In 1929, he attended the preview of Maurice Chevalier's first Hollywood film "Innocents of Paris", and personally reassured Chevalier that he would enjoy a great future, despite the mediocre screenplay. His own career stalled with the coming of talkies, but in 1930, he starred in "Morocco", with Marlene Dietrich. He was nominated for an Academy Award for "The Front Page" (1931).

Political beliefs.

Menjou was a staunch Republican who equated the Democratic Party with socialism. He supported the Hoover administration's policies during the Great Depression. Menjou told a friend that he feared that if a Democrat won the White House, they "would raise taxes [and] destroy the value of the dollar," depriving Menjou of a good portion of his wealth. He took precautions against this threat: "I've got gold stashed in safety deposit boxes all over town... They'll never get an ounce from me." In the 1944 presidential election, he joined other celebrity Republicans at a rally in the Los Angeles Coliseum, organized by studio executive David O. Selznick, to support the Dewey–Bricker ticket and Governor Earl Warren of California, who would be Dewey's running mate in 1948. The gathering drew 93,000, with Cecil B. DeMille as the master of ceremonies and short speeches by Hedda Hopper and Walt Disney. Despite the rally's large turnout, most Hollywood celebrities who took public positions supported the Roosevelt–Truman ticket.  In 1947, Menjou cooperated with the House Committee on Un-American Activities saying that Hollywood "is one of the main centers of Communist activity in America". He added: "it is the desire and wish of the masters of Moscow to use this medium for their purposes" which is "the overthrow of the American government". Menjou was a leading member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group formed to oppose communist influence in Hollywood, whose other members included John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck (with whom Menjou costarred in "Forbidden" in 1932 and "Golden Boy" in 1939) and her husband, actor Robert Taylor.  Because of his political leanings, Menjou came into conflict with actress Katharine Hepburn, with whom he appeared in "Morning Glory", "Stage Door", and "State of the Union" (also starring Spencer Tracy). Hepburn was strongly opposed to the HUAC hearings, and their clashes were reportedly instant and mutually cutting. During a government deposition, Menjou said, "Scratch a do-gooder, like Hepburn, and they'll yell, 'Pravda'." To this, Hepburn called Menjou "wisecracking, witty—a flag-waving super-patriot who invested his American dollars in Canadian bonds and had a thing about Communists." In his book "Kate", Hepburn biographer William Mann said that during the filming of "State of the Union", she and Menjou spoke to each other only while acting.

Later years and death.

Menjou ended his film career with such roles as French General George Broulard in Stanley Kubrick's film "Paths of Glory" (1957).  In 1955, Menjou played Dr. Elliott Harcourt in "Barrier of Silence", episode 19 of the first season of the television series "Science Fiction Theatre". He guest-starred as Fitch, with Orson Bean and Sue Randall as John and Ellen Monroe, in a 1961 episode, "The Secret Life of James Thurber", based on the works of American humorist James Thurber, in the CBS anthology series "The DuPont Show with June Allyson". He also appeared in the Thanksgiving episode of NBC's "The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford," which aired on November 22, 1956. His final film role was that of the town curmudgeon in Disney's "Pollyanna" (1960).  Menjou died on October 29, 1963 of hepatitis in Beverly Hills, California. He is interred beside Verree at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Personal life.

Menjou was married to Verree Teasdale from 1934 until his death on October 29, 1963; they had one adopted son. He previously married Kathryn Carver in 1928; they divorced in 1934. A prior marriage to Kathryn Conn Tinsley also ended in divorce.  In 1948, Menjou published his autobiography, "It Took Nine Tailors".

Legacy.

For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Menjou has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6826 Hollywood Boulevard.

Cultural references.

Because of Menjou's public support of HUAC, the propaganda of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) often depicted their western opponents with Menjou-style moustaches, and it was considered a statement of political opposition to trim one's moustache that way. The style became a symbol for the resourceful criminal, and in Germany is still called (Menjou beardlet). In German film and theatre, dubious men, opportunists, corrupt politicians, fraudulent persuaders, marriage impostors and other "slick" criminals often wear "Menjou-Bärtchen". In real life, the style is often associated with opportunism.  Salvador Dalí admired Adolphe Menjou. He declared "la moustache d'Adolphe Menjou est surréaliste" and began offering fake mustaches from a silver cigarette case to other people with the words "Moustache? Moustache?" Moustache?"  One of the most famous photographs by the avant-garde photographer Umbo is titled "Menjou En Gros" ca. 1928.

Adolphe Jean Menjou (February 18, 1890 – October 29, 1963) was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies. He appeared in such films as Charlie Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris", where he played the lead role; Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" with Kirk Douglas; Ernst Lubitsch's "The Marriage Circle"; "The Sheik" with Rudolph Valentino; "Morocco" with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper; and "A Star Is Born" with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and was nominated for an Academy Award for "The Front Page" in 1931.

Adolphe Jean Menjou (* 18. Februar 1890 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; † 29. Oktober 1963 in Beverly Hills, Kalifornien) war ein US-amerikanischer Schauspieler, der zwischen 1914 und 1960 in knapp über 150 Kinofilmen spielte und vor allem elegante Gentlemen verkörperte.


Early career.

Johanna Wagner was born in Seelze, Hanover. She was the natural daughter of a soldier named Bock von Wülfingen, and was adopted by Albert Wagner (1799–1874) (eldest brother of Richard) and his wife Elise (1800–1864). They had two other daughters. From Seelze the family moved to Würzburg in 1830, where both parents worked in the Royal Bavarian Theatre, father being an actor, singer and stage-manager. She received piano lessons from her mother, a Roman Catholic, and sang duets with the Landgräfin of Hessen, who took singing lessons from her father. Richard Wagner visited in 1833 (while composing "Die Feen") and often accompanied her singing Carl Loewe's ballad "Edward". Johanna knew the young Marie Seebach (later wife of Wagnerian singer Albert Niemann), who attended the same confirmation class.  She showed aptitude for the stage as a child. Owing to poor health she went to stay with her aunt Christine Gley, a singer and mother of the Vienna actress (1809–1866). In 1842 she accepted a contract as actress at Bernburg and Ballenstedt, and her father undertook her training as a singer. After appearing as a page in the new opera "Les Huguenots" at Ballenstedt, she began to give concerts with much success. In Bernburg she gained favourable notice by standing in to take the role of Marguerite de Valois in a performance attended by Duke Leopold.  The managing director moved his company to Halle during the summer, and Johanna studied Friedrich Schiller roles for the theatre, and operatic roles with her father in Daniel Auber's "Maurer und Schlosser", Albert Lortzing's "Der Wildschütz" and in "Don Giovanni". Her first important operatic appearance was as Catherina Cornaro in Fromental Halévy's "La reine de Chypre". In May 1844 Richard Wagner arranged an audition for her at the Dresden Royal Opera, where she gave guest appearances in these operas and received a three-year contract, being engaged as a Royal Saxon "Kammersängerin" before the age of 18.

Dresden and Paris.

At the time of her arrival in 1844, Dresden had recently witnessed the world premieres of "Rienzi" (1842) and "Der fliegende Holländer" (1843), and the singers Josef Tichatschek (tenor, the first Rienzi)), the baritone Anton Mitterwurzer, bass, and the celebrated dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (the original Adriano and Senta) were the principals with whom she worked. The latter (whom Johanna had first met in Ballenstedt) was an especially inspiring example, and Tichatschek became a lifelong friend. She also befriended Ferdinand Heine, an actor with great knowledge of theatrical costume, and Countess Helene Kaminska, who made several portraits of her.  Johanna studied several roles with her uncle, especially Irene in "Rienzi", and as her family moved to the city they became part of Richard Wagner's circle there. As he was now composing "Tannhäuser", following his new musical conceptions, Johanna and Tichatschek sang the music of Elisabeth and Tannhäuser for him as it evolved. He had intended to premiere the opera to mark her 17th birthday, 13 October 1845, but she was ill, which forced its postponement for six days. The first performance, on 19 October, a six-hour staging beside Devrient as Venus, and with Dettmer and Mitterwurzer, was followed by a shortened version, with altogether eight repeats by the following January.  In 1846, after singing excerpts from Christoph Willibald Gluck's "Orpheus" in concert, with financial support from the King of Saxony she left for Paris to study with Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García (and/or with Pauline García-Viardot) for whom she sang Agathe's first aria in "Der Freischütz" to audition. After hearing Giulia Grisi as "Norma" she studied the role with him (in Italian), and also Valentine in "Les Huguenots" (in French), though his attempt to teach her Rosina met with less success. He suggested she should sing in Paris: she declined, but while there she saw Frédéric Chopin play, saw Rachel as Jean Racine's Phèdre, and Habeneck conduct Ludwig van Beethoven's 7th Symphony. At the end of the year she returned to Dresden, to perform Norma and Valentine, under a new contract.

Hamburg, Berlin and touring.

The Dresden revolution of 1848/49, which resulted in Richard Wagner's exile and Mme Schröder-Devrient's temporary imprisonment, found Johanna singing in Hamburg, as Valentine and Leonore. Dresden vacillated so she accepted a contract at Hamburg where, as Fides in "Le prophète" she attracted Giacomo Meyerbeer's attention. He brought her to Berlin State Opera to sing it for her début there in May 1851, which she followed (June 1851) with Donna Anna, Reiza and a repeat of Fides. She also sang Fides in Vienna in 1850. Her Hamburg obligations discharged, she brought her famous interpretation of Bellini's Romeo to Berlin with great success.  In May 1852 Johanna accepted an invitation from Benjamin Lumley to sing at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. However the Royal Opera House management (Frederick Gye) sought to tempt her away, an offer which Albert Wagner (always Johanna's agent) accepted. In the ensuing row, including two famous lawsuits and equitable proceedings – "Lumley v Gye" and "Lumley v Wagner" – Albert Wagner offended H. F. Chorley and others by a widely quoted remark (from private correspondence which was produced in court) that "one only "could" go to England to get money": and Johanna went home without singing at all. However she returned in June and July 1856 (to Her Majesty's) and appeared repeatedly in her best roles, beginning (14 June) as Romeo, and then in "Lucrezia Borgia", Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice" and Gioachino Rossini's "Tancredi". She gave a Court concert, after which Queen Victoria broke her rule and attended this theatre to hear her on stage.  In 1856 she sang in Weimar under Franz Liszt's direction, as Orfeo, Romeo, Lucrezia Borgia, in Gluck's "Iphigénie en Tauride", and in concert. After a Romeo she was given a standing ovation by the orchestra and crowned with a laurel wreath, and she had to give repeat performances for the Grand Duke and Duchess. Liszt, whose interest was not only musical, presented her with his portrait. Throughout the 1850s she sang repeatedly at Cologne, and at Stettin. In 1858 she made a debut at Leipzig, as Lucrezia, and performed Romeo, "Tancredi", "Tannhäuser" and "Orfeo", before going on to Dresden, where she rejoiced to sing "Tannhäuser" again with Tichatschek and Mitterwurzer.  Wagner, not then on friendly terms with Johanna, had intended her for his Brünnhilde in early plans for the Nibelungen operas, but it was in Heinrich Dorn's opera "Die Nibelungen" at Berlin, during Richard's exile, that she performed the role of this name. She also made some effect in the little-known "Macbeth" of Wilhelm Taubert, as Lady Macbeth. However, it was in the Berlin premieres of "Tannhäuser", in January 1856, that she rediscovered her place in Richard's pantheon, with such success that permission was also granted for the (belated) first Berlin production of "Lohengrin" in 1859, with Johanna as Ortrud. She also trained Luise Harriers-Wippern (1826–1878) as Elsa. For these productions Botho von Hülsen was the manager, Albert Wagner the stage-manager and (in "Lohengrin") Wilhelm Taubert the conductor.

A new career.

In May 1859 Johanna married Alfred Jachmann of Königsberg, diplomat, of an eminent Prussian family whom she had assisted financially at the collapse of their interests in 1858. Her first daughter was born in March 1860. After a very busy and triumphant tour of German towns in 1860 and a visit to Warsaw in rebellion (where she was first hissed, and then sang under police protection), she decided to make her farewell from the opera stage and to continue her career as a tragédienne. Her contract renegotiated, she studied the role of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Iphigenie under the guidance of, the actress whose mantle she was to inherit, and performed it in September 1861 at the Royal Theatre, Berlin, for Queen Augusta's birthday, and soon afterwards was Friedrich Schiller's "Mary Stuart", and Countess Orsina in "Emilia Galotti".  She now took the name Johanna Jachmann-Wagner for her new career. She was soon compared to Fanny Janauschek, the dramatic power of her performances giving hope of a rebirth of the German classic drama. Having sung at the coronation concert at Königsberg, her operatic farewell was as Orfeo in December 1861, but she repeated it at a centenary performance in October 1862. She did however continue to sing in various German towns through the 1860s, notably in concert and recital, in the performance of lieder. She made a return visit to Würzburg in 1866. From 1861 to 1869 she lived part of each year at Berlin and part at Trutenau. In 1868 and 1869 she gave the first performances of two dramas, "Phädra" and "Catharina Voisin" by "Georg Conrad", the pen-name of Prince George of Prussia. Her performances as Goethe's Iphigenie and in the classical drama, as Phädra and (Sophocles') Antigone became particularly her own. Her retirement became necessary after a paralysis of one side of her face, which occurred in 1869. After her dramatic farewells in 1871 and 1872, eulogised by Theodor Fontane, she was awarded a gold medal by the Emperor.

Bayreuth and after.

In May 1872 Johanna fulfilled a promise to her uncle Richard Wagner, singing alto in the solo quartet in the performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony at the foundation-stone laying of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. She also participated in the first Bayreuth Festival of 1876, taking the role of Schwertleite in "Die Walküre" and First Norn in "Götterdämmerung" in the original first full production of "Der Ring des Nibelungen". She was not now capable of Brünnhild as originally intended, but as the Valkyr, her dramatic control of the scenes, and the energy she infused into them, in rehearsal and performance, realised the composer's true intentions, and set a precedent which was later imitated. Her Norn similarly was invested with her full dramatic resources.  Alfred Jachmann's fortune crashed again after the Franco-Prussian War, and at Würzburg Johanna, with her pension from the Berlin Hochspielhaus, continued her work as a singing teacher, and retained the friendship of kings and princes which she had long held. Her last public performance was at Würzburg in scenes from "Orfeo" in 1882. She moved then to Munich, where, in close contact with the Royal Court Theatre, she accepted the post of instructor in singing at the Royal Conservatoire of Music and the title Professor. Ludwig II of Bavaria presented her with a free seat in the Munich opera, and invited her to a private performance of "Parsifal" in his own theatre. She had many pupils, but, eventually dissatisfied with Munich, she returned to Berlin in 1888 and continued to teach, arranging public concerts for her pupils. She died in Würzburg of heart illness three days after her 66th birthday.

Descriptions of her voice.

A London reviewer is quoted to have written, "Her range comprises the soft female loveliness of a soprano and is equally fine in the low tones of a contralto. On each occasion that a peculiarly fine change from one range to another was accomplished by this incomparable singer the effect was as overwhelming as it was unexpected... Deceit, passion, love, fear and despair were expressed in each note." Another is quoted: "She is one of those rare artists who fills the stage with her attractive personality.... her voice is one of the rarest beauty. One feels inclined to say that she is a soprano, but her range is so wide that the full tone covers three registers, from the high soprano to the alto range. Certainly no living singer can be compared in fullness of tone to Johanna Wagner."  H.F. Chorley, embittered by Albert Wagner's national insult, found little to like in Johanna: "Considered as a singer, the claims of Mademoiselle Wagner were very meagre. She must have had originally a fine "mezzo soprano" voice. She can never have learned how to produce, or how to use it. Whether as "Romeo", or "Tancredi", or "Lucrezia Borgia", the insubordinate toughness of the organ could not be concealed. Though she dashed at every difficulty, with an intrepidity only to be found in German singers, none was, in very deed, mastered.' Chorley, however, had no liking for German stagecraft, which he considered mannered and formulaic, nor for German theatrical singing, which he called "tasteless declamation accompanied by an orchestra".  On the other hand, Benjamin Lumley wrote of her 1856 appearance as "Romeo" in terms that make one imagine the Brünnhilde she ought to have been: "She appeared: tall, stately, self-possessed, clothed in glittering gilded mail, with her fine fair hair flung in masses upon her neck: a superb air that seemed to give full earnest of victory, and a step revealing innate majesty and grandeur in every movement... She sang! The sonorous voice, which heralded the mission of the young warrior to his enemies, rang through the house as penetrating and awakening as the summons of a clarion."

Johanna Jachmann-Wagner or Johanna Wagner (13 October 1828 – 16 October 1894) was a mezzo-soprano singer, tragédienne in theatrical drama, and teacher of singing and theatrical performance who won great distinction in Europe during the third quarter of the 19th century. She was a niece of the composer Richard Wagner and was the original performer, and in some respects the inspiration, of the character of Elisabeth in "Tannhäuser". She was also the original intended performer of Brünnhilde in "Der Ring des Nibelungen", but in the event assumed other roles.

Johanna Wagner (auch "Johanna Jachmann-Wagner"; * 13. Oktober 1828 in Seelze; † 16. Oktober 1894 in Würzburg) war eine deutsche Opernsängerin (Sopran) und Nichte des Komponisten Richard Wagner.


Sinking Spring.

In the late fall of 1808, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln settled on Sinking Spring Farm. Two months later on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born there in a one-room log cabin. Today this site bears the address of 2995 Lincoln Farm Road, Hodgenville, Kentucky. A cabin, symbolic of the one in which Lincoln was born, is preserved within a 1911 memorial building at the site.  Also on the property is the privately owned Nancy Lincoln Inn.

Memorial Building.

A Beaux-Arts neo-classical Memorial Building was designed by John Russell Pope for the birthplace site. On February 12, 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, the cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt and the building was dedicated on November 9, 1911, by President William Howard Taft. Almost a hundred years after Thomas Lincoln moved from Sinking Spring Farm, a similar log cabin was placed inside the Memorial Building. The Memorial Building features 16 windows, 16 rosettes on the ceiling, and 16 fence poles, representing Lincoln being the 16th president. The 56 steps leading up to the building entrance represent his age at his death.

The log cabin.

The original log cabin that Lincoln was reputed to have been born in was dismantled sometime before 1865. Local tradition held that some of the logs from the cabin were used in construction of a nearby house. New York businessman Alfred W. Dennett purchased the Lincoln farm in November 1894 and used the logs from this house to construct a cabin similar in appearance to the original cabin where Lincoln was born. Soon the cabin was dismantled and re-erected for exhibition in many cities. Eventually the logs for this cabin, along with logs incorrectly reputed to have belonged to Jefferson Davis' birthplace and possibly a third cabin, were purchased by the Lincoln Farm Association or (LFA), which believed they had acquired only Lincoln logs. When workers tried to reconstruct the cabin, they discovered the problem. The LFA bought a one-room cabin similar to the one reconstructed by Dennett. When the last rebuilt cabin was placed in the Memorial Building, its size made visitor circulation difficult. The LFA reduced the cabin's size from 16-by-18 feet to 12-by-17 feet.  Today, historians recognize that the former claim that these logs were from Lincoln's birth cabin was essentially inaccurate. In his book "It All Started With Columbus", satirical writer Richard Armour stated that Lincoln had been born in three states and also "in two cabins - the original, and the reconstructed."

Knob Creek.

Lincoln lived at Sinking Spring until he was two years old, before moving with his family to another farm a few miles to the northeast along Knob Creek, near present-day U.S. Highway 31E, where he lived until the age of seven.  The Knob Creek site was added to the park in November 2001 after the Larue County Fiscal Court purchased it through the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves' Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund. It features a 19th-century log cabin and a historic 20th century tavern and tourist site. The log cabin is not original to the site, but may have belonged to neighbors of the Lincolns. It was moved to the approximate location of the Lincolns' home. One of Abraham Lincoln's earliest memories was his near drowning in Knob Creek, and being saved by the neighbor's son.  Lincoln lived here until the age of seven, when his family moved to Indiana, to the site now commemorated as the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial.

Administrative history.

The original Memorial was constructed by the Lincoln Farm Association. In 1916, they donated the Memorial to the Federal government, which established the Abraham Lincoln National Park on July 17, 1916. The War Department administered the site until August 10, 1933, when it was transferred to the National Park Service. It was designated as the Abraham Lincoln National Historical Park on August 11, 1939. It was renamed and redesignated Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site on September 8, 1959. As with all historic sites administered by the National Park Service, the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, effective on October 15, 1966. The historic site's definition was expanded to include the Knob Creek site on November 6, 1998. On March 30, 2009, the two sites were again designated a National Historical Park.

Facilities.

The Sinking Spring site, which contains the 1911 memorial, has a visitor center museum, theater and bookstore. The Knob Creek site has interpretive staff during certain days in summer months. Both sites have hiking and picnic areas.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park preserves two separate farm sites in LaRue County, Kentucky where Abraham Lincoln was born and lived early in his childhood. He was born at the Sinking Spring site south of Hodgenville and remained there until the family moved to the Knob Creek Farm northeast of Hodgenville when he was 2 years old, living there until he was 7 years old. The Sinking Spring site is the location of the park visitor center.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park ist eine Gedenkstätte der Vereinigten Staaten in Hodgenville "(Sinking Spring Farm)" im nördlichen US-Bundesstaat Kentucky. Sie erinnert an die Geburt von Abraham Lincoln, dem 16. Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten am 12. Februar 1809.