Max Samuel

Max Samuel (born 9 January 1883 in the Kuyavian town of Argenau, Province of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia, Germany, died on 2 September 1942 in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom) was a businessman and self-made man, founder and managing-director of the "EMSA-Werke", chair of the Jewish congregation in Rostock and head deputy of the Israelite Upper Council of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (board of deputies of Mecklenburg Jews).
Life.
Years until 1920.
Max Samuel was born into a poor family as penultimate child of seven siblings. His parents were Jacob Itzig and Rosalie Schrubski (1849–1934). When Max was five years old the Itzig family altered its surname to Samuel, as on 2 June 1888 the Royal Bromberg Regional Government granted the family's request. He left primary education on Easter 1897 at the age of 14 and went to live and work with his elder brother James Samuel (1871–1933) in Güstrow (Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin) where the latter had opened a shoe business (Schuhwaarenhaus J. Samuel). In Güstrow Max Samuel was educated in the trades of shoemaking and business and then also worked as a travelling salesman.
He was very ambitious and tried to develop many inventions using the early opportunity provided by his brother's shoemaking workshop. For example, in 1907 he invented a brush for maintaining suede shoes which was patented in Germany in 1926 and in the United States in 1931, as Max Samuel's business was export-oriented. Max Samuel called in specialists to contribute their medical or orthopedic expertise for new inventions, such as Willi Sawitz (1893–1957), Joseph May or Paul Lengemann.
On 1 June 1906 his brother gave him control of the shoe business which Max Samuel renamed the "EMSA-Werke". Later that year Max Samuel and Berta Geßner (1878–1937) married, and their children, Herbert Gerson (, transliterated ; 1907–1992) and Käte Gitel (; 1910–1987; later Kate), were born in Güstrow. Rosa and Jacob Samuel came to Herbert's briss on 25 May 1907 to Güstrow, where they served as kvatters.
The conditions in Güstrow were not opportune for Max Samuel's expanding business. In 1916 he therefore rented a plot on Rostock's Friedrichstraße 28 in Rostock's neighbourhood and had his factory moved there, where, at the company's zenith, about 150 people were employed. On 17 October 1918 Max Samuel attended as groomsman his cousin Gustav Schrubski's (1879–1971) wedding with Toska Gunkel (1884–1967) in Stettin.
In 1919 Max Samuel purchased the said premises on Friedrichstraße from their owner Kurt Orth. At the factory was also a training centre for salespeople, shoe artisans and chiropodists. Max Samuel usually concerned himself directly with factory matters.
At first the Samuels lived in a rented flat on Schröderstraße 20, as of 1919 they rented a flat in the house on Stephanstraße 8a on the corner of Schillerplatz. Their landlords there were (1872–1943, Theresienstadt) and his wife Margarete (née Salomon; 1881–1943, Theresienstadt). Richard Siegmann was majority shareholder and director of the , running the trams in Rostock.
Max Samuel and Richard Siegmann became friends, and when in October 1919 Samuel had a dangerous car accident Siegmann replaced him as managing director till his reconvalescence in November 1920. On 11 April 1921 Samuel acquired from Gustav Adolf Reinbeck, lord of the manor of Röstenberg, as his home a which was erected in 1912 and designed by (1875–1945, suicide) for the professor of physiology (1879–1963). In the famine years during the war and the inflation, Max Samuel donated to supply emergency kitchens.
Max Samuel's commitment to humans and society.
Max Samuel did not really observe the sabbath rest and did not maintain a kosher diet, but diligently avoided snubbing feelings of those who did, such as his father-in-law Jakob Geßner (1848–1937). However, he was very and authentically Jewish in appreciating and valuing human life, aiming to support, maintain, rescue, or protect it, he wanted to take away problems from humans so that they could truly live, thus he sanctified life, the highest Jewish value. According to Herbert, Max Samuel was very impulsive and generous, and he was excited by opportunities to help people. He was very compassionate and his sympathy could be quickly excited. In religious matters he wanted to support the troubled Jewish congregation, which – having lost all its savings in the inflation between 1914 and 1924 as so many private people and charities – was brought back into solvency with his financial acumen.
In January 1923, the Rostock Jewish Congregation () had amended its constitution, accounting for the separation of state and religion in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, as prescribed by her new constitution of April 1919, "Constitution of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin" (), mainly authored by the liberal Jewish lawyer (1853–1929) from Schwerin in Mecklenburg. In February 1923 Max Samuel succeeded Siegmund Bernhard (1846–1934) as chair of Rostock's Jewish congregation which was the largest in the contemporary two Mecklenburgs. He reformed the congregation's taxes (member dues).
While a businessman in Rostock, Max Samuel liked playing football with his dog (a competition he referred to as the "dog team" vs. "EMSA-Werke"). He wanted his children to be extensively educated, as he had left school at the age of 14 and did not want his children to experience that. Although he was not academically trained, he was very pragmatic and socially intelligent. As his granddaughter Ruth Kaiser Nelson recalled – when he had time for himself, he enjoyed being engrossed in reading newspapers. In politics he also joined and supported the new German Democratic Party (DDP), founded in 1918. In 1930 he was elected a member of Mecklenburg-Schwerin's five-person state executive committee of the German State Party (DStP) which was the DDP's successor.
He often had visitors in his home and enjoyed socialising. Every two weeks he collected an economic and political 'club' to his fireplace room for coffee, cognac, and cigars. This group was a circle of democrats, among them the liberal local chief postmaster Heinrich Greve (1868–1936), Ludwig Klein (insurance broker), (1881–1963; publisher und art patron), (1876–1950; owner of the "Haliflor" perfume and cosmetics factory), (1864–1938; chemical manufacturer), and seldomly Otto Hörsing (Social Democratic Party of Germany [SPD]).
Occasionally joining them was Herbert Samuel's classmate and Greve's son Otto Heinrich Greve (1908–1968), who was then member of the German central board of the Young Democrats (DDP's youth wing) and speaker of Rostock's General Students Committee. He later, as a lawyer and Lower Saxon delegate to the Parliamentary Council co-authored the West German constitution, the Grundgesetz, and was elected into the Bundestag for the SPD, strongly advocating the West German Wiedergutmachung legislation.
As the chair of Mecklenburg-Schwerin's biggest Jewish congregation (counting about 350 souls), directly elected for the first time in 1923 and re-elected for the last time on 17 February 1937, he managed to combine the German members of more liberal western mainstream Jewish observance, among which were many of Mecklenburg's long-established families, with the newcomers from Poland and Russia who were of more traditional Jewish leaning. These immigrants had been arriving since the 1890s, and there was an increase in immigration after the First World War.
Also the Mecklenburg-Schwerin , the 1764-founded Israelitische Landesgemeinde Mecklenburg-Schwerin, ILM (literally: Mecklenburg-Schwerin State(wide) Israelite Community), lost its status as an estate of the realm with semi-governmental authority thus needing constitutional reforms which started in 1924. So Max Samuel with Löwenthal, Siegmann and further allies, since long campaigning for all kinds of reforms in backward Mecklenburg, excelled in reconstituting the "Israelitische Landesgemeinde Mecklenburg-Schwerin" from a body of compulsory membership for all Jews in the pre-1918 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, into a statewide umbrella body of Jewish congregations of voluntary membership, but maintaining its statutory corporation status.
As part of the reforms, inspired by those of the , the members were directly, instead of indirectly, represented in the umbrella body by its new 14-person general assembly (), established in 1926. ILM's four-person executive "Israelite Upper Council" (, additionally the chief rabbi was an ex officio member), also established in 1764, became responsible to the new general assembly.
Inspired by Erichson, Max Samuel helped finance the 1930 reprint of the Esther Scroll which was originally printed in the 1700s and acquired for the Rostock university library through then chief librarian Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734–1815). Mecklenburg-Schwerin's chief rabbi and historian wrote the introduction to the reprint of this Megillath Esther. Another circle of friends consisted of city councillor Fritz Dahse (1876–1931), Richard Siegmann, director of Rostock's trams (1898 to 1919, and again 1920 to 1935) and coalyard accountant Otto Wiechmann, who met at the Samuels' house to listen to sports programmes with Max on his radio.
On 7 March 1926 Max Samuel won eight votes over five in the general assembly in Schwerin to decide the transferral of ILM's chief rabbinate (; from 1910 to 1934 held by Silberstein, 1866-1935) and upper council from Schwerin in Mecklenburg to Rostock. In 1929 he helped found the Jewish youth federation 'Ivria ' in Rostock. In 1926 the general assembly elected him a deputy of the upper council, which again elected him its president in 1930, succeeding Silberstein, and once more for a second term until 1938.
As member, and later president of the Upper Council, Max Samuel was, for example, busy with protests at the Mecklenburg-Schwerin ministry of education against an anti-Semitic poem and image in the 1929-issued new reader for German lessons or welcoming Jewish intellectuals like Harry Torczyner (future Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai) at a seminar on Jewish Biblical exegesis at the foundation "Akademische Gesellschaft Hausmann-Stiftung Arendsee" in Arendsee in Mecklenburg in August 1932.
He was societally engaged via membership in the association of Rostock's University (, a booster club, from 1927 to 1933) and the fraternity of businesspeople (, from 1918 to 1933). As head of the Rostock congregation Max Samuel called upon his fellow members to vote for Siegmann (Reich Party of the German Middle Class) in the elections for the Rostock city parliament on 13 November 1927.
Just before the Great Depression, the EMSA-Werke exported items from a catalogue of hundreds of shoes, shoe accessories, and orthopedic devices to stores in, among other countries, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Palestine, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. On 23 June 1930 Max Samuel changed his private business into a stock company, but all the shares remained his private possession. In 1931 Max Samuel and his brother-in-law Hermann Geßner (1875–1950) travelled together to Italy. When in Rome both incapable of Italian, Geßner with his education in classical languages was unable to make himself understood whereas the practical Max Samuel succeeded communicating with shop assistants by gestures and mimics.
The EMSA-Werke suffered an economic decline during the Great Depression, but survived the crisis intact. Instead of firing staff, Max Samuel maintained the previous levels of employment and production, accumulating stocks and causing shrinking profits in 1931 and a net loss in 1932, the first ever recorded for EMSA, which Max Samuel compensated with reserve capital formed in earlier profitable years. He even helped other firms in calamities, such as Paul Bründel's "Herren-Wäsche und feine Herren-Artikel" on then Hopfenmarkt 3 (now named Kröpeliner Straße 20) in Rostock, which was a men's underwear shop patronised by Max Samuel.
Berta Geßner, Max Samuel's wife, was very musically-oriented and well-read. She was the daughter of the teacher and hazzan Jakob Geßner, who, as a widower, had lived with his daughter and her husband since 1906. The Geßners were a well-educated, but rather poor, middle-class family from Lower Franconia. Thus she was still not considered worthy by old-established Mecklenburg Jews of manor-owning background, like the Samuels' neighbour Margarete Siegmann, née Salomon (1881–1943, Theresienstadt), wife of Richard Siegmann.
Despite this, the husbands of Margarete und Berta were friends. In 1932 Max Samuel employed as an unskilled office worker Richard's son Hans [John Bernard] Siegmann (1905–1992), who since 1923 had been unproductive and something like a perpetual student. The Samuels' relations with Lutheran neighbours, such as the Senator Gustav Adolf Fuhrmann (1881–1960) and his family in Schillerplatz 9, who had moved there in the 1920s, were friendly. The Fuhrmanns competed with the Siegmanns to annually host the best ball in Rostock's high society.
Also living near Schillerplatz were several other Jews, namely Leo Glaser (owner of the perfume company "Haliflor" and, between 1924 and 1928, president of the Mecklenburg Chamber of Commerce in Rostock), Prof. David Katz and (1885–1976; pioneers of psychology at Rostock's University), Friedrich Rubensohn (lawyer), Richard Josephy (1890–1944; lawyer), and Franz Josephy (1893–1944, Auschwitz; lawyer), who had worked in Rostock, the venue of Mecklenburg's main courthouses. Rubensohn (1893–1978), an SPD-member, was also a colleague in the board of directors of Rostock's Jewish congregation and in the Israelite Upper Council.
Between 1933 and 1938.
On 21 February 1933 the Nazi government of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, ministry of the interior, in office since 13 July 1932, banned the "Mecklenburgische Blätter", a 1928-founded liberal biweekly magazine which Max Samuel helped finance and was edited by his friend Heinrich Greve (1868–1936), after it published an article critical of Hitler's government. Greve's lawyers Gustav Goldstaub (1878–1963) and Rubensohn could do nothing against this despite attempting to defend him.
After the Nazis' seizure of power in 1933, during the first weeks after issuing the Reichstag Fire Decree on 28 February, they intimidated their actual and alleged opponents with temporary arrests. Max Samuel's neighbour Rubensohn, who was warned by detective constable Meyer a few weeks after the Nazis came to power that he was in imminent danger because he was a social democrat (that is, a member of the SPD), fled with his son Eli Rubensohn and wife Alice, née Guggenheim, to her family in Basel and wrote a letter to Max Samuel on 18 March 1933.
In this letter he explained his flight and made clear his opinion that he had needed to flee due to being a social democrat, not due to being a Jew. He thought that Jews were not in such danger, and Max Samuel agreed in his answer on 21 March: “I think that as long as we live in a lawful state like Germany, which has been built on correctness for centuries and has a claim to culture, hardly anything serious can happen to us.” By the end of March 1933 the police had warned Max Samuel that he would be arrested, so he had to hide for some weeks with his friend Hörsing in Berlin.
The government-imposed segregation of Jews, even where not provided by new anti-Semitic laws, was often performed with preëmptive obedience, and this excluded Max Samuel from the university booster club and the fraternity of businesspeople. In April 1933 the Rostock tax office presented its demand for back taxes for the years 1927 and 1932, however, accelerating them for immediate execution and thus indicating how fast the treatment of Jewish taxpayers had changed. Therefore the tax office charged a compulsory mortgage on Max Samuel's private villa on Schillerplatz 10.
At the same time his son-in-law Hermann Kaiser (1904–1992) was deprived of his attorney's certificate at the Berlin Kammergericht due to new anti-Semitic laws and joined the EMSA-Werke as Max Samuel's proxy agent and member of the company's supervisory board. Thus he and his wife Käte moved to Rostock, Alexandrinenstraße 8a. Max limited his societal activity to the Jewish community. As president of the upper council he was concerned with the maintenance and protection of Jewish graveyards in Mecklenburg, where congregations – mostly due to the general rural exodus of Mecklenburgers since the 1870s – had ceased to exist.
With the ever-increasing anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany, Max Samuel became very active in efforts to help persecuted Jews. The EMSA-Werke's audit report for 1934 reported that Max Samuel had given reichsmarks (ℛℳ) 19,000 in 'loans' which were to be written off, as they were meant to support fleeing Jewish Germans who would likely not be able to repay him.
Like other foreign-currency earning companies, the EMSA-Werke were obliged to provide the Nazi government with the convertible foreign exchange in return for inconvertible paper reichsmarks (ℛℳ). Due to this regulation, the EMSA-Werke did not see an increase in convertible currency even though export profits were rising. However, since the company could provide foreign exchange, it enjoyed a certain precarious protection from damaging arbitrary government acts.
In early 1934, Herbert, who was a graduate with a doctorate in law but – as a Jew – denied a career as a lawyer, had left Germany and was granted immigration to the United Kingdom on the grounds of investing and creating jobs in a poor area. Before emigrating he worked with his father to learn the trades of shoemaking and business. Herbert then founded in 1934 "Herbert Foot Appliance Ltd.", redistributing EMSA products received through "S. Kogel leder en schoenfournituren" (leather and shoe fittings), Amsterdam, EMSA's central distributor abroad.
Max Samuel advised hundreds of people seeking consultation (sometimes ten per day) and helped them acquire foreign currencies or immigration papers to refuge countries. He also paid emigration fees, and thereby he was able by November 1935 to have helped 45 people flee Germany. After this he continued to help people, but the number is unknown. Many Jewish workers who had been fired due to religion came to work in his factory. The number of EMSA's employees grew from 54 in 1933 to 64 in 1936.
These various aid activities were financially supported by the company funds of the EMSA-Werke as well as by Herbert Samuel. Also, the increasingly difficult paperwork of the ILM was carried out by clerks in the EMSA-Werke. The company thus fell under increasing financial duress even though export profits were rising. Max Samuel reacted by running the EMSA-Werke on deteriorating machinery which he saw no point in replacing in view of the difficulties imposed by the Nazi government, and the factory building was also decaying.
On 30 and 31 August 1935, Max Samuel and ILM's syndic Richard Josephy visited many of Mecklenburg's Jewish congregations, especially all those recently dissolved or on the verge of dissolution, in order to collect all religious objects from defunct synagogues. Max Samuel concluded from these visits to the congregations that their financial situations, like that of the ILM, were terrible and continuously deteriorating. The anti-Semitic discriminations made the congregations' well-earning contributors lose their incomes and/or emigrate, while more destitute members increasingly needed aid. The congregations and their umbrella ILM were running out of money because dues had dropped to a third of their pre-1933 level. So in 1935 the Upper Council had to increase ILM's religious tax, a surplus on the regular state income tax progressing with rising income, by 10 to 20 percent (also progressing).
In 1935 Max Samuel's engagement in the ILM, including its paperwork and correspondence by his staff in the EMSA-Werke, aroused criticism in the upper council from the deputy Max Marcus (1876–1945), a lawyer from Güstrow, reproaching Max Samuel for acting without authorisation and in contradiction to the principle of collegiality in the upper council, thus entering disputes about his leadership. Richard Josephy pleaded with Marcus to cooperate with rather than confront Max Samuel.
Marcus ended the disputes after Max Samuel, Richard Siegmann, and Richard Josephy presented their plan for how to continue the ILM's activity under financial and personal stress under the ongoing Nazi discrimination and combined their suggestions with their joint offer to resign if the general assembly would not agree. This offer must have seemed to the members of ILM's general assembly to be a threat. Max Samuel further pleaded to the general assembly to vote for the ILM to apply for accession to the Prussian State(wide) Association of Jewish Congregations (), hoping for monetary support from the bigger and financially stronger Prussian umbrella body.
In November 1935, the upper council under Max Samuel fulfilled a request from Rubensohn by sending Torah scrolls from the dissolved Teterow congregation to Pardes Hanna for a new congregation there. Later [1945 to 1950] Rubensohn (, transliterated ) became mayor of that town and a candidate for the 2nd Knesset running for the Progressives.
Also in November 1935 Käte travelled to Herbert and gave birth to her daughter Ruth in London, meaning she was born a British subject, the first Briton in the Samuel family. On 7 December 1935 the Rostock tax office sent Käte an order to provide collateral funds amounting to ℛℳ 29,500, presuming that she and her husband's emigration was pending, in order to secure for the tax office the flight tax on capital. They avoided this payment by returning to Rostock.
On 12 January 1936 at ILM's general assembly in Güstrow, Max Samuel, as head of the upper council, gave a farewell address to his friend and neighbour Richard Siegmann, who was resigning from membership and presidency of ILM's general assembly after, with effect of 31 December 1935, the Rostock tram company had dismissed him as its chief executive. On 6 April 1936 the ILM and the Prussian Landesverband agreed that the latter would contribute 20% to the ℛℳ 5,000 retirement grant of the chief rabbi's widow Helene Silberstein, née Weißbrem (1879–1952). In the same year Helene and daughter Edith Sarah Silberstein (1906–2000) emigrated to Palestine, where the other daughter lived.
Since by corporate law (Handelsgesetzbuch § 248 in its version of 1936) employees could not simultaneously be in the supervisory board of their employer company, on 30 September 1936 Kaiser left the board and was succeeded by the Rostock lawyer Paul Bernhard (1883–1974). The other members were Berta Samuel and the chairing Samson Kogel (1884–1967), Amsterdam, EMSA's central distributor abroad and a major creditor of the EMSA-Werke.
On behalf of the Upper Council Max Samuel, accompanied by Richard Josephy and – at times – the latter's son Albrecht, travelled overland, officially dissolving depopulated rural Jewish congregations such as those in Tessin bei Rostock on 2 May 1937 or later that year in Waren upon Müritz and collecting religious objects (such as Torah scrolls, menorot, etc.) and archival material and depositing them with Mecklenburg-Schwerin's . This is why these objects and archival matters are mostly preserved while so many Jews were murdered and their institutions destroyed by German anti-Semites and their helpers.
In 1937 the three Kaisers moved into the villa on Schillerplatz 10, Käte nursing her fatally ill mother. Seven months after her father had deceased, Berta died on 18 August 1937 from breast cancer, from which she had suffered since 1930 and which had been unsuccessfully treated among others in Marienbad. Herbert returned to Rostock for the last time to attend her funeral in , during which he was under Gestapo surveillance.
On 30 April 1937 Max Samuel sold his villa on Schillerplatz to his EMSA-Werke for ℛℳ 80,000 (double the then usual price for premises of this size in this location), thus effectively tapping money from his company for his free disposal without losing his home. However, he concealed this sale from the authorities by not registering it with the land registry, probably for good reasons, as the city of Rostock had had a right of preëmption on every piece of land in the area around the train station since the time of its urban development.
In September 1937 Otto Heinrich Greve visited Herbert and Ilse Samuel in London, delivering important company documents. Also, Hermann Kaiser occasionally travelled abroad for the EMSA-Werke until at one point the German authorities tried to blackmail him by saying that they would deny the prolongation of his passport unless he would report about activities of other Germans travelling abroad and German exiles. He said he would think it over and left Germany immediately, staying in various countries as long as visitor's visas would allow him until Herbert obtained a British entry permit for him.
Scraping all the money together they had tenaciously saved in the previous four years, in 1938 Herbert and Ilse Samuel bought used machinery and moved their company to the "Paterson Street Mill" (now a scrapyard) between the homonymous street and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, in Blackburn (Lancashire), renaming it as "EMSA Works & Herbert Foot Appliance Ltd.", extending from solely selling to also producing EMSA products. In early summer 1937 Max Samuel travelled to Amsterdam, where he also met his son Herbert who persuaded him not to return to Germany. Max Samuel then left Germany through Italy embarking in Genoa the Marnix van St. Aldegonde, debarking her in Southampton on 27 November 1937.
Käte concealed her father's and husband's emigration in order to prevent a pending flight tax on capital from becoming due by claiming that he would only visit, and that she and her daughter were still in Rostock. Käte didn't want to leave Rostock, as she was worried about the future of the many Jewish employees of the EMSA-Werke. She also helped the Lutheran Otto Heinrich Greve, hiring him on 1 September 1938 for the EMSA-Werke as a clerk after his dismissal as assessor from the public prosecution department (he had rejected to join the Nazi party) on 31 July, however, he had to leave by the end of September 1939, when the 'Arianisers' fired confidants of the actual Jewish owner and the Jewish employees.
On 5 September 1938 Käte took in her uncle Hermann Geßner, the medical doctor, and his wife Julie Stern (1875–1940), who had been given notice to vacate their flat in Nuremberg after Geßner had to shut down his medical practice following the Nazi government's revocation of approbations of Jewish physicians as of 5 August that year. Also in August 1938 the Nazi government banned Jews from working as manufacturers' representatives, till then a loophole in the anti-Semitic vocational bans much used by Jews barred from other earlier jobs, and within three months the EMSA-Werke effectively lost their distribution networks in Germany and abroad, dramatically reducing sales.
In mid September a Berlin notary informed the Rostock police that Käte's imminent emigration was likely, and simultaneously asked them not to issue a passport for her unless she would pay his bill for a service provided in June. However, she had not even applied for a passport. Thus the police were made aware of this and began processing a file on not issuing her passport before she even applied for it. According to Herbert, the family members in Wembley telegraphed her, explaining that her father was very ill and that they wanted her to see him. But Kate worried about the family, Jewish friends, and employees to be left behind, and so Max Samuel sent EMSA's Danish and Norwegian representatives to his daughter to help her understand the gravity of the situation. A few days later the notary sent a letter explaining that the bill had been paid so he would no longer object issuing her passport. So soon after when Käte applied for her passport she received it and left with her daughter Ruth, arriving in Britain on 30 September 1938.
On 18 September 1938, after his previous plenipotentiary and son-in-law Hermann Kaiser had left for Britain by May, Max Samuel commissioned his proxy agent Dr. Paul Hoffmann (1896–1969), one of the clerks employed in the EMSA-Werke after they had been fired as Jews in the mid-1930s, to liquidate the EMSA-Werke. Thus Hoffmann directed the EMSA-Werke and fulfilled the obligations of an executive, however, it remains unclear if he ever took action to liquidate since the anti-Semitic atrocities performed by the Nazi regime on 9 November 1938 (November Pogrom, aka Kristallnacht) accelerated the government-imposed dispossession of Jewish enterprises.
In the villa at Schillerplatz only Julie and Hermann Geßner, and the Lutheran cook Miss Lange, nicknamed Grössing, remained. They had to live through the atrocities of Kristallnacht, when Hermann Geßner was arrested like tens of thousands of other Jewish German men in that night and on 11 November at 1 o'clock in the night he was committed with others to the in Neustrelitz. He was released from imprisonment on 19 November 1938. Max Samuel's villa was so vandalised that the Geßners could not stay. Rostock's renowned author Walter Kempowski (1929–2007), then attending the conservatory on Schillerplatz, recalled that music records (Herbert was a passionate collector of Jazz records) lay in the front garden and curtains flew in the wind through the broken windows of the villa.
The Geßners returned to Nuremberg, where they found refuge in the Jewish home for the elderly led by his future second wife Selma Stern (1893–1975) from , a locality of today's Suhl. On 11 February 1939 the Samuels in Britain obtained British residence permits for Hermann and Julie Geßner, but these were restricted to six months only. According to the purchase contract of 3 May 1939 for the sequestered villa on Schillerplatz 10 it was then still uninhabited and had not yet been cleared of the Samuels' furniture and household items. Max Samuel's EMSA-Werke were subsequently seized in 1939 and 'Aryanised'. Meanwhile Herbert travelled to Scandinavia and gained faithful EMSA clients to redirect their orders to Blackburn.
Last years in Britain.
Among the Samuel family the three Kaisers were the first to find a new home in Britain, a house near Corporation Park, Blackburn, taking in Ilse Samuel and in the course of 1939 Hermann Kaiser's parents Simon Kaiser (1876–1950) and Fanny Wertheim (1875–1948) from , their other son Hugo, daughter-in-law Dinah and the latters' twin sons, while Herbert first stayed in London preparing the move of the company office. Max Samuel first lived in a hotel in Blackburn until in 1939 he found a house on 2, Azalea Road to move in with Julie and Hermann Geßner, having arrived in Britain after a two day journey on 30 June 1939, first staying with the Kaisers. By the time of the British 1939 National Registration also Hoffmann lived with Max Samuel.
Kate, her husband, and their daughter left in January 1940 for Tulsa, Oklahoma, receiving Affidavits of Support and Sponsorship by the Kaisers' relatives there. Soon after, the German and Soviet invasion of Poland had been followed by the German occupation of much of western and central Europe and the Soviet occupation of much of eastern Europe. The British government, alone in its military resistance to Nazi Germany, ordered the internment of enemy aliens. Hugo Kaiser was interned and only released shortly before emigrating with his wife to Tulsa in May 1940, while Herbert Samuel was spared from internment on the grounds of his task as business manager and Max Samuel due to his bad heart condition.
On 16 May 1940 a fire broke out in the rooms of Lancashire Manufacturers Ltd. on the floor above the EMSA-works in the Paterson Street Mill premises, with Herbert and Max Samuel racing to help, fighting damages by leaking quench water with machinery and stocks of the EMSA-Works, while Hermann Geßner attended his dying wife at the Herbert's and Ilse's, then on Barker Lane.
In his last years in Britain Max Samuel became very gloomy, melancholic, and pessimistic. Denaturalised, like about 250,000 other Jewish Germans, by a German decree issued on 25 November 1941, Max Samuel remained stateless until his death. Not long before his death he received the information about the birth of his grandson George Kaiser. Max Samuel died in Blackburn at the age of 59. He was buried in the Jewish section of the Blackburn Old Cemetery. The "Friends of Blackburn Old Cemetery" take care of his grave and those of his relatives (brother-in-law Geßner and the latter's two wives) buried in the same cemetery.
Family.
His parents Jacob Itzig and Rosalie (Rosa), née Schrubski from Inowrazlaw, were pious Jews and very poor. His father was a pedlar of everyday items who travelled between villages with a horse-drawn cart. Eventually the children had to leave, which is why Max Samuel's school education stopped when he was 14 years old. Max Samuel had five brothers and one sister, and their surname at birth was Itzig, but the family changed their name to Samuel when he was five years old.
After giving control of the shoe business to Max Samuel in 1906, Isidor 'James' Samuel (1871–1933) kept his 1905-founded rubber factory in Güstrow, which supplied rubber parts for the EMSA-Werke, and operated it until his death from diabetes. James Samuel was active as the treasurer in Güstrow's Jewish congregation () and worked with his partner Paul Eggert, who took control of the factory after James' death. In 1938 Max Samuel's sister Frieda (1886–1965) emigrated to Chile with her Dutch husband John Joseph Meibergen (1875–1958) and his sister Karoline (1877–1953), who was James Samuel's widow.
Two of Max Samuel's brothers perished in the Shoah: the tailor Gustav Samuel (1881–1943, Bełżec Camp) was deported on 12 February 1940 from Stettin to Bełżyce Ghetto and on 15 August 1941 onwards to Bełżec Camp, and the watchmaker Julius Samuel (1878–1943, Sobibór Camp) with wife Gertrude, née Gellhorn (1878–1943, Sobibór Camp), and son Kurt (1905–1942, Auschwitz), all the three and the surviving elder son Heinz Samuel (1904–1993) having moved to Delmenhorst in 1920, when their home place Argenau had been seized by Poland, and the former three escaped from Delmenhorst to the Netherlands, where they were deported from Westerbork in 1943, whereas Heinz Samuel survived in Britain. Max and his siblings' brother Feo(dor) Samuel survived in the French Foreign Legion and lived as a pensioner in Strasbourg in Alsace. His daughter Carla Claudie survived hidden in a French nunnery. The brother Wilhelm 'William' Samuel (1876–1948), who had lived with his first wife Paula Dreyfus, their three sons, and his widowed mother Rosalie (1849–1934) in Cologne, later escaped with his sons to New York, where he remarried in 1946.
Before his marriage Max Samuel lived with his elder brother James and his wife Karoline Meibergen in their flat right above the shoe shop on Pferdemarkt 57 in Güstrow. On 14 August 1906 Max Samuel and Berta Geßner (1878–1937) married in Halberstadt, whose Jewish community () formed a centre of Modern Orthodoxy, where at times her father Jakob Geßner (1848–1937) had served as the hazzan. Jakob Geßner was a Bavarian teacher, long serving in Hammelburg, where Max Samuel, travelling as a salesman, got to know Berta. While living in Güstrow the members of the Jewish congregation there elected Jakob Geßner their vice chair. Berta's and Max Samuel's son Herbert (1907–1992) and daughter Käte (1910–1987, later altered to Kate) were born in Güstrow. In Rostock on 17 March 1930 Käte married Hermann Georg Kaiser (1904–1992, later altered to Herman Geo. Kaiser) from Mardorf in Hesse. One of Käte's grandchildren is Tim Blake Nelson.
On 5 December 1936 Herbert Samuel married Ilse Steinfeld, whom he had known for two years. Between Christmas 1936 and New Year 1937 they then visited family in Rostock and Berlin, where their families bought them real furniture with paper reichsmarks and exported it to furnish their recently found two-room flat in 139, Empire Court, Wembley. Both working, they saved every penny to establish themselves and help friends escaping Germany. From their first Blackburn home on Barker Lane they moved in 1943 with the Geßners to their last home on 73, Higher Croft Road in Lower Darwen.
They were naturalised as British subjects only in 1946, thus between 1941 and the end of the war they were stateless. During the war Herbert and Ilse housed many refugees, three to seven at a time, and gave them funds and employment. Although they suffered many difficulties, including Security Service (MI5) surveillance (1932 to 1951) due to Ilse's acquaintance to Germans who, once in British refuge, sided with the Soviet Union, Hitler's war ally in subjecting eastern Europe, they were glad to have escaped the Nazis. Between 1959 and 1963 Ilse studied at Manchester's university Germanistics, philosophy and Russian, receiving a BA in 1962, adding comparative literature without MA in the end, then working as a teacher at Darwen Grammar School (1963 to 1973).
Expropriation of the Samuels in Germany.
After the emigration of the Samuel family became obvious to the authorities, the tax office issued a flight tax demand amounting to ℛℳ 200,000, based on the ℛℳ 900,000 company value of the EMSA-Werke as estimated by the tax office in 1932. On 3 January 1939 the Mecklenburg State Administration took the EMSA-Werke under custody, appointing auditor Karl Deutler as custodian commissioned to sell them in order to recover the tax demand.
On 21 January Deutler 'Aryanised' the EMSA-Werke AG stock company () by selling it to the EMSA-Werke KG, a limited partnership () the foundation of which had officially only been concluded on 17 April 1939. Its new owners were two Rostock investors, department store owner Erich Voß and bank director Harry Helmers, who paid only ℛℳ 146,000 for the EMSA-Werke. The 'Arianisers' of EMSA shamelessly sent the tax bills to England, hoping Max Samuel would pay them.
Voß and Helmers appointed Otto Schröder and manager Wilhelm Eder, a foreman of Max Samuel who was to meet Herbert in London in 1939, but never appeared, as executives with procuration. The Jewish employees were fired within the following months. On 10 July 1939 Voß and Helmers gave Eder a 10% share in the EMSA-Werke, only effective as of 9 January 1940, as confidants of Jewish businessmen were excluded from 'Aryanisations' probably due to suspicion that they would conceal a continued proprietorship of the previous Jewish owner.
Due to supply shortages during the war, production declined after 1939, and exports continued only to Sweden and Switzerland. Production was concentrated on orthopedics. In 1941 the EMSA-Werke were renamed "Voß-Werke KG", however the usage of the trademark "EMSA" was continued.
Deutler also found an 'Aryaniser' for the villa, and on 3 May 1939 he signed a contract with the newly-founded (institute of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft for research in animal breeding), represented by its administrator Julius Ost, paying ℛℳ 70,000. The contract would only become effective once the city waived its right of preëmption and once various Nazi authorities would confirm it, such as the authority rationing convertible foreign exchange () and the price control office (), established in 1935, dictating prices in order to repress the surging inflation caused by the Nazis' steady money printing. The Rostock tax office was to be paid its tax demand against the EMSA-Werke, which since June 1933 was partially secured by a mortgage of ℛℳ 50,000 on Max Samuel's private premises on Schillerplatz 10.
However, Deutler did not know that the villa was legally not under his custodianship, since its sale to the EMSA-Werke had not been registered in the land registry, so it still documented Max Samuel personally as the proprietor. Once aware of this Deutler achieved his official appointment as custodian of the villa with effect of 24 July in order to fulfill the requirements of the purchase contract of 3 May. On 5 September 1939 the Mecklenburg state government approved the sale of Schillerplatz 10. After the tax office had confirmed its demand was fulfilled, its mortgage on the villa was cancelled on 22 April 1940 and the land registrar registered the Reich's Ministry for Nutrition and Agriculture, the legal representative of the institute for animal breeding, as proprietor of Schillerplatz 10.
In 1945 Rostock became part of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. The Soviet-appointed new pro-communist administration expropriated the absent Voß, who had fled Rostock before the Soviet invasion on 1 May 1945, and Helmers, who then followed Voß to the British zone. The business' name was changed to "Rostocker Schuhfabrik" (Rostock shoe factory). The minority holder Eder successfully reclaimed his share. After the foundation of the East German Democratic Republic (1949; GDR) he was expropriated too in 1951.
The Mecklenburg government then made the shoe factory a part of the combine called "Vereinigung volkseigener Betriebe Textil-Bekleidung-Leder des Landes Mecklenburg" (union of publicly owned companies for textiles, clothing, and leather of the state of Mecklenburg), which was combined with other businesses in 1957 to make the even bigger combine "Rostocker Elektro-Gerätebau" (Rostock electric equipment manufacturing), which later was changed again into the "Deutsche Handelszentrale für Pharmazie- und Krankenhausbedarf" (German trade centre for pharmaceutical und hospital supplies). Presumably through all these name changes the same or similar orthopedic products continued to be produced. This combine withdrew from its location in the Friedrichstraße 28 and on 25 March 1966 the city of Rostock reallocated the premises to its "VEB Stadtbeleuchtung Rostock" (Rostock street lighting).
In July 1945 the institute for animal breeding was ordered to evacuate the villa and the Rostock local branch of the Cultural Federation for Germany's democratic renewal moved in with the cultural office of the city and tenants in the attic flat. In 1955 Ilse-Dore Eckardt, a child nurse then in charge of furnishing and installations of daycares, converted the villa for its usage into "Kinderkrippe Schillerplatz", as more and more mothers were employed in the communist production system. However, the Schillerplatz 10 premises remained state property, and Rostock's public daycare department () was not the proprietor.
Legacy and restitution.
Starting 1952 Herbert Samuel, judicially supported by his friend "Magnus", as Otto Heinrich Greve was nicknamed, successfully requested recompense from West Germany for foregoing the use of the EMSA-Werke and the villa in Rostock, East Germany. In 1960 Herbert sold the "EMSA Works & Herbert Foot Appliance" to an international rubber company. and, as his 1929 German law degree was not accepted in the United Kingdom, worked as freelance consultant agent.
In 1982, after lengthily searching, the West German August-Wilhelm Bründel, son of Paul Bründel, found Herbert Samuel in Lower Darwen in order to learn about the fate of the Samuels after they had left Rostock. As a collector of information of historical interest on Rostock, then behind the Iron Curtain, Bründel shared copies of articles about the Samuels authored by Frank Schröder (1958–2014) with his fellow ex-Rostocker Herbert Samuel in December 1986. Also, Ilse[marie] Sawitz (1912–2006), niece of Willi Sawitz, in Manchester, shared the articles of Schröder, then city archivist of Rostock, with the Samuels. So Herbert Samuel came into contact with a group of activists in Rostock trying to reconstruct the events of the Nazi period beyond the doctrines of the communists, who unilaterally valorised their comrades as antifascist fighters.
The villa at Schillerplatz in Rostock was reacquired by Herbert Samuel via a restitution request, with – confronted with that claim – the "Rostock street lighting" offering him recompense in order to remain in the premises, which was only possible after the end of the communist dictatorship in East Germany in 1989, as this allowed Schröder and his fellow activists to found an association for the research and presentation of Jewish history and culture in Rostock and then formalise their effort in June 1990.
Herbert Samuel and Schröder developed the idea of the Schillerplatz 10 villa becoming a home for this association after February 1991. Then the Samuels envoyed Greve's eldest daughter Julia Asher-Greve to research on the Samuels' former homes and enterprises in Güstrow and Rostock. In mid-July of 1991, the foundation was able to move into a first room in the villa's attic flat.
Max-Samuel-Haus in Rostock.
By his signature on 22 August 1991, shortly before his death, Herbert Samuel donated the villa to the "Stiftung Begegnungsstätte für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur in Rostock" (literally: Foundation of the Meeting Place for Jewish History and Culture in Rostock), as the foundation is officially termed. Herbert Samuel decided to donate the villa in an effort towards reconciliation between Jews and others, as he explained to the attending Schröder and Prof. Dieter Neßelmann, Senator of finances of Rostock city between 1990 and 1997. In October 1991 Herbert Samuel informed the staff of the Max-Samuel-Haus that his brother-in-law Herman Geo. Kaiser fully supported Herbert's idea to donate the villa to the foundation.
On 2 September 1991, the 49th anniversary of Max Samuel's death, the foundation's board held its opening session. The daycare moved out and on 2 October 1991 the villa, named since, was dedicated to its new purpose as the Rostock Jewish Heritage Centre, a meeting place, cultural venue and research institute, run by the foundation. In the beginning the foundation was also seen as a counter project to the Lichtenhagen riots of 1992 in Rostock.
On 7 July 1991 Herbert Samuel was compensated for the loss of the former EMSA-Werke at Friedrichstraße 28 with DM 200,000. The book collection of Herbert and his wife Ilse, née Steinfeld (1911–1992), including books of his parents from Rostock (and of hers), was donated to the Max-Samuel-Haus after her death through Elsie Peel. The first Samuel family members visiting the villa since its reopening as Max-Samuel-Haus were Ruth Kaiser Nelson and her niece Emily Kaiser in mid-August 1993.
In memory and honour of Max Samuel and his works, the foundation arranged four events in the Max-Samuel-Haus, first in 1991 on the occasion of naming of the villa after him, second from 17 February to 17 March 2006 (the exhibition: "Max Samuel: Unternehmer – Gemeindevorsitzender – Flüchtling"), third from 2 September 2010 to 6 February 2011 (the exhibition: "Die Familie Samuel: Ein jüdischer Unternehmer in Rostock"), and fourth from 20 September to 20 October 2016 (presentation of the rediscovered 1920 portrait of Max Samuel by Egon Tschirch). This was supplemented on the evening of the vernissage by an eyewitness interview with Ruth Kaiser Nelson, Max Samuel's granddaughter.


Sylvester Tung Kiem San

Silvester San is a Bishop in Denpasar, Indonesia since 2008.
Biography.
San Silvester was born in Mauponggo, Nagekeo Regency, Flores, on August 14, 1961. He was the son of Roben Robo (father) and Katharina No'o Nore (mother). He graduated from the SDK Maukeli, Seminary High St. John Berkmans Todabelu Mataloko Ngada (SMP-SMA), Philosophy of Catholic High School (STFK) Ledalero Maumere, and was ordained a priest of the archdiocese of Ende on July 29, 1988 by Msgr. Donatus Djagom, SVD, Archbishop of Ende.
After his ordination as a priest he was assigned as assistant parish priest of the Holy Spirit, and taught at the Mataloko Todabelu seminary. In 1990 he studied at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome, specializing in Biblical Theology. and in 1992 earned his licentiate with the thesis of "The Mercy of God in the Parables of Luke 15". After becoming coach of the seminarians and teaching at Maumere Ritapiret STFK Ledalero from 1992–1995, he returned to University and earned his doctorate at Urbaniarum Biblical Theology in 1997 with a dissertation on "The Experience of the Risen Lord in Luke 24:1 -35". In 1998 he returned to Indonesia and became a staff coach at the Ritapiret Seminary and a teacher at STFK Ledalero. In 2004 he was appointed Praeser at Ritapiret Seminary.
San Silvester was appointed Bishop of Denpasar by Pope Benedict XVI as published by the Holy See on November 22, 2008.


Panjpeer Shrine

The Panjpeer (literally: five peers) shrine in Abohar, Punjab, India is a dargah dedicated to the five peers who are said in local legends to have destroyed the ancient city of Abunagar that formerly occupied the place now known as Abohar. The shrine is considered holy by members of various religions.
Legend.
In the twelfth century, King Hari Chand was the ruler of Abunagar. The king fell ill with leprosy, and was advised that only the holy blood of the horses of the Panjpeers of Multan could cure his disease. With the king was on the verge of death, his only daughter decided to go to the Panjpeers. She stole the 81 horses of the Panjpeers and brought them back to Abunagar. Unfortunately, the king had succumbed to the disease before she could return. The Panjpeers sent requests that their horses be returned, but the princess refused, so the Panjpeers traveled in person to Abunagar to plead for their return. Again, in spite of many humble requests by the Panjpeers, the princess refused to give back the horses. Thus angered, the Panjpeers destroyed the place with their holy powers. Due to their curse the region became deserted.
Devotions.
Devotees offer kheer, "chaddar", salt and milk. A huge fair is held every year on the 15th of Sawan.


Shaolin Temple UK

Shaolin Temple UK is a martial arts school and centre for study of Shaolin culture, in particular Gong Fu-Ch'an, Qigong and Ch'an Buddhist Meditation. It was founded in 2000 by Shaolin monk Shi Yanzi, and is located in North London, England, between the Tufnell Park and Archway Northern Line tube stations.
Shaolin Temple UK is an official emissary of the 1,500-year-old Shaolin Temple in Henan Province in China, by direct mandate from the Abbot Venerable Shi Yong Xin.
Classes are taught by Shi Yanlei and 35th generation disciples: Shi Hengdao, Hengjiu, Hengshang and Hengdi..
The school emphasises balanced training both in the external and internal martial arts. Students typically train both in Gong Fu and Qigong.
Gong Fu-Ch'an.
Shaolin Temple UK is most well known for Gong Fu (or Kung Fu), and participates in national and international fighting competitions, as well as interclub fights with Muay Thai fighters.
Gong Fu classes focus on Sanshou training - one to one hand-to-hand combat - which can be considered to be China's form of kickboxing. This is the style of fighting which the temple's students use in competition. The temple's founder and main teacher Shifu Yanzi was Chinese National Champion for 15 years in the art.
Students first train for three months in "Preparation" class, with a focus on building strength, stamina, flexibility, and learning fundamentals. Beginner level students train without contact. Students are encouraged to try to pass a quarterly grading exam at their first opportunity. Shaolin Temple UK's higher classes are semi-contact and full-contact, students train with gloves and pads, and also spar.
Qigong.
There are beginners and advanced Qigong classes. Beginners practice a form (sequence of movements) called Ba Duan Jin, which translates as "Eight Pieces of Brocade", so called because the form consists of 8 movements. While advanced students will practice body conditioning using bamboo sticks, and an advanced form featuring 12 movements.
Ch'an Buddhism.
Ch'an is a branch of Chinese Buddhism in which talking in teaching is not encouraged, instead students are encouraged to be sharp and quick learning observers. These qualities are shared with fighters and martial artists.
Ch'an Buddhist training involves sitting meditation (Zazen in Japanese) and walking meditation.
Although there are also separate Ch'an Meditation classes held, it is also emphasised that Gong Fu training is in fact inseparable from Ch'an Buddhism in its essence and goal.
Other activities.
Other activities taught at Shaolin Temple UK include:
Sources and reference materials.
Combat Magazine (UK) April 2000, May 2000, Nov 2001
Front Magazine (UK) July 2003


Fenggang Yang

Fenggang Yang (; born 1962) is professor of sociology and founding director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. He was elected and served as the president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 2014–15, the first Chinese American, nonwhite president since the founding of the association in 1949. He is also the founding president of the East Asian Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 2018–2020. He has been listed in the Marquis' "Who's Who in America" since 2002. Fenggang Yang is openly Christian and has spoken critically and frequently in international media about China's lack of religious freedom. His theories based on the social scientific methods have been criticized as biased in favor of Christianity by many other scholars of Chinese religion who are in religious studies, anthropology or sinology. He is known for his theory of a triple "religious market" in China.
Triple "religious market" theory.
In 2006, Yang advanced the theory that, under heavy regulation, various religions are divided into three "markets": a "red market" of recognized religions, including the five officially approved religions of Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestant Christianity, a "gray market" of unrecognized and legally undefined religions, including folk religions and others, and a "black market" of illegal religions, including what the Chinese government has called "xiejiao" (evil cults). According to him, the more the red market is controlled and co-opted by the state, the more this leads to the growth of the black and the gray markets.
"Shortage Economy" theory.
In 2010, Yang further articulates a theory of "shortage economy," arguing that when religious supply was suppressed by the state, religious demand was reduced to some extent, but also expressed as forced substitution, semi-forced substitution, searching for alternatives, and searching for religion. He claims that he borrows the shortage economic concepts by economist Janos Kornai, but Kornai's economics focus on the supply-side. In contrast, Yang's theory focus on the demand side, claiming that the shortage economy of religion explains the churning of alternative spiritualities as well as conventional religions in Communist China. The supply-side theorists, such as sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, and economist Lawrence Iannoccone, strongly disagree on this theory.
Criticism.
The Center on Religion and Chinese Society is funded by the Templeton Foundation, an American organization accused of promoting Christian-biased research in the field of religious studies. Fenggang Yang was granted $9.5 million by the Templeton Foundation to develop his projects. His statistics and projections about Christianity in China have been disputed by authorities in China and scholars including Shen Guiping. In 2014 he claimed that "China will be home to the world's largest Christian congregation by 2030", despite in 2010 he said that "Christians remain a small minority in China today", based on a survey which found that they were "33 million, much less than most of the popular speculations". Surveys conducted in 2014 by Chinese research institutes found a similar number of Christians, or around 2% of the population. The 2014 claim was, as proclaimed by Yang himself, "based on the Pew Research Center's report of Global Christianity", another project backed by the Templeton Foundation.
Many scholars of Chinese religion, including Lu Yunfeng, Ji Zhe, Stephan Feuchtwang, Wang Mingming, Adam Chau, Yang Der-ruey, Qu Jingdong, Chen Jinguo, Liang Yongjia and Cao Nanlai, have been critic of Fenggang Yang's theories about religion in China. According to them, Yang's theories are modeled on Christianity, reduce religion to a mere social phenomenon (he defines religion as "a unified system of beliefs and practices about life and the world relative to the supernatural") and miss the Chinese and English anthropological research of the last century.
Ji Zhe has criticized them as "a projection of fantasy with a certain kind of Christian root". According to Liang Yongjia, Yang's "religious market" theory rests upon a distinction of "politics" and "religion" that is typical of liberal systems but not of Chinese culture. The theory also has an intrinsic idea of "competition" between religions that is typical of Abrahamic religions such as Christianity, but unknown to the nature of Chinese society, in which grassroots non-institutional religions prevail. Furthermore, Yang wrongly considers post-1949 China's governance of religion to be different from that of pre-1949 China. Another critique expressed by Liang is that Yang's theories imply that folk religions are an "inferior" form of religion, while his definition of "(true) religion" is a Biblical/Christian one. Ultimately, Yang's "religious market" theory is regarded as functional to the neoliberal construction of the market economy.
The limitations of Yang's theories have also been illustrated by Vincent Goossaert, a scholar of Chinese religion at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He speaks of a "total absence of historical reflexion", in Yang's studies, about Buddhism and Taoism, but especially Chinese folk religions. The latter, which comprise cultual communities devoted to local deities and individual spiritual techniques, are classified by Yang as the legally undefined "gray market" of "semi-, quasi- and pseudo-religions", standing between the fully legal "red market" of what Yang considers "true religions" (whose prototype is Christianity) and the illegal "black market" of religions forbidden by the Chinese government (such as Falun Gong and Eastern Lightning). Yang claims that contemporary China's policies on religion hamper the growth of the red and black markets while leaving free space for the gray market to develop, and if China will liberalize religion completely, the "religious consumers" would mostly turn to "true religions". Goossaert rebuts that folk religions are not inferior forms of religion, have deep historical roots and a history of negotiation with the government, and are the largest form of religion in contemporary China, far from being "consumer goods" ready to be replaced by better ones.
The Chinese scholar Mou Zhongjian advanced an alternative paradigm to that of the "religious market", actually preceding the latter in time. In 2006, Mou put forward the model of "religious ecology" for the study of religion in China, which has been welcomed ad developed by a number of other scholars, including Chen Xiaoyi and Li Xiangping. Mou's theory is based upon Julian Steward's idea of multilinear evolution and views Chinese religions as a self-contained and internally structured "social life system", which continuously develops through internal renewal and external interactions, with no distinction between the "religious" and the "secular" realm.


Senad Podojak

Senad Podojak (born 31 May 1966 in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a Bosnian Qur'an reciter, currently living in Austria.
Podojak graduated from the Gazi Husrev-beg Medresa in Sarajevo. He is internationally known as a qari. He participated at the International Competition for Quran recitation in Mecca in 1987, where he finished in 5th place. In Tehran, Podojak reached 4th place and 1st place in Vienna. In the 90s, he recorded an album of nashids about the Bosnian War with Yusuf Islam, Dino Merlin and Aziz Alili.
Podojak is chairman of the Islamic Community in Austria in Wels. Since 2005, he has served as a specialist inspector for religious education in Islamic religion at the Pedagogical Institute.
Podojak lives and works in Wels. He is married and has two children.


Samuel Drew

Samuel Drew (6 March 1765 – 29 March 1833) was a Cornish Methodist theologian. A native of Cornwall, England, he was nicknamed the "Cornish metaphysician" for his works on the human soul, the nature of God, and the deity of Christ. He also wrote on historical and biographical themes.
Early life and education.
Drew was born in the parish of St Austell, in Cornwall. His father was a poor farm labourer, and could not afford to send him to school long enough even to learn to read and write. At ten he was apprenticed to a shoe-maker, and at twenty he settled in the town of St Austell, first as manager for a shoe-maker, and in 1787 began business on his own account. He had already gained a reputation in his narrow circle as a keen debater and a jovial companion, and it is said that he had several smuggling adventures.
He was first aroused to serious thought in 1785 by a funeral sermon preached over his elder brother by Adam Clarke. He joined the Methodists, was soon employed as a class leader and local preacher, and continued to preach till a few months before his death. His opportunities of gaining knowledge were very scanty, but he strenuously set himself to make the most of them. It is stated that an accidental introduction to Locke's great essay on human understanding determined the ultimate direction of his studies.
Literary career.
In 1798 the first part of Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" was put into his hands; and in the following year he made his first appearance as an author by publishing his "Remarks" on that work. The book was favourably received, and was republished in 1820. Drew had begun to meditate a greater attempt before he wrote his "Remarks on Paine"; and, encouraged by the antiquary John Whitaker, he published his "Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul" in 1802.
This work made the "Cornish metaphysician," as he was called, widely known, and for some time it held a high place in the judgment of the religious world as a conclusive argument on its subject. A fifth edition appeared in 1831. Drew continued to work at his trade till 1805, when he entered into an engagement with Dr Thomas Coke, a prominent Wesleyan official, which enabled him to devote himself entirely to literature.
In 1809 he published his "Essay on the Identity and General Resurrection of the Human Body", perhaps the most original of his works, which reached a second edition in 1822. In 1814 he completed a history of Cornwall begun by Fortescue Hitchins. In 1819 he removed to Liverpool, being appointed editor of the "Imperial Magazine", then newly established, and in 1821 to London, the business being then transferred to the capital. Here he filled the post of editor till his death, and had also the supervision of all works issued from the Caxton Press.
He was an unsuccessful competitor for the Burnett prize offered in 1811 for an essay on the existence and attributes of God. The work which he then wrote, and which in his own judgment was his best, was published in 1820, under the title of "An Attempt to demonstrate from Reason and Revelation the Necessary Existence, Essential Perfections, and Superintending Providence of an Eternal Being, who is the Creator, the Supporter, and the Governor of all Things" (2 vols 8vo). This procured him the degree of MA from the university of Aberdeen.
Among Drew's lesser writings are a "Life of Dr Thomas Coke" (1817), and a work on the deity of Christ (1813).
He died at Helston in Cornwall on 29 March 1833. He was a man of strong mind, honourable spirit and affectionate disposition, energetic both in speech and in writing.
A memoir of his life by his eldest son appeared in 1834.


Bodha


Roman Catholic Diocese of Nha Trang

The diocese of Nha Trang () is a Roman Catholic diocese of Vietnam. The current bishop is Joseph Võ Đức Minh, since December 4, 2009.
The creation of the diocese in present form was declared November 24, 1960.
The diocese covers an area of 9,486 km², and is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Huế.
By 2013, the diocese of Nha Trang had about 200,385 Catholics (11.2% of the population), 191 priests and 90 parishes.
Christ the King Cathedral in Nha Trang has been assigned as the Cathedral of the diocese.


Islamic terrorism in Croatia


Sylvestre de Laval

Sylvestre de Laval (15701616) was a French Catholic theologian.
Life and Works.
He lived most of life in Paris, France. He was the author of two controversial books. He was a teacher of theology and philosophy. He did a lot of missionary work as well.


Chico Mapenda

Chico Tomo Antonio Mapenda (born 1969) was the first Mozambican convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was a key figure in the establishment of a firm base for the church in Mozambique in the 1990s.
Biography.
In 1982, Mapenda left his home town of Beira to go study in the German Democratic Republic. At the time, many people in Mozambique had strong Marxist-Leninist political views which had caused the country to align with Communist bloc countries.
In 1989, Mapenda met LDS Church missionaries and received from them a copy of the Book of Mormon in Portuguese. He was baptized into the LDS Church on 14 January 1990 in East Germany. He was also ordained a priest while he was still in East Germany.
With the reunification of Germany, Mapenda was forced to return to Mozambique. He had married a fellow Mozambican while in Germany and on returning to Mozambique introduced the restored gospel of Jesus Christ to his father-in-law Francisco Dique Sousa.
Mapenda's brother, Gimo Mapenda, who was a Protestant minister, also listened to the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, believed it and helped spread the church's teachings in Mozambique.
In 2003, when the Beira Mozambique District was organized, Chico Mapenda became the first counselor in the district presidency.


Daniel Alm

Daniel Karl-Olov Alm (born December 15, 1971, in Björköby, Sweden) is a Swedish pastor and leader within the Swedish Pentecostal movement.
Alm is the General Superintendent of the Pentecostal Alliance of Independent churches (since 2016) and head pastor of the Pentecostal church in Västerås (since 2006). Alm has been head pastor of the Pentecostal churches in Oskarström (1994–1999 and 2000–2006).
Alm has written several books about Christian faith, and been a contributor to papers and magazines including Dagen, Världen idag, and Vestmanlands Läns Tidning.


Gong Shengliang

Pastor Gong Shengliang (龚圣亮) is the founder and leader of the South China Church, an evangelical house-church fellowship with some 50,000 members across several provinces. In December 2001, he was convicted and sentenced to death under China's anti-cult legislation. Responding to international pressure, China dropped the religious charge and the death penalty and ordered a re-trial. Pastor Gong was convicted of multiple counts of rape and given a life sentence.
Religious persecution.
He was sentenced to death in 2001, but because of international pressure, the sentence was reduced to life. Some who testified against Gong later stated that they were tortured into doing so by Communist officials. Liu Xianzhi, a former leader in the South China Church, has sought asylum in the United States and gives extensive testimony on the details of Pastor Gong Shengliang's case. There are also reports that he has been beaten and mistreated in prison. Over several weeks in late May and early June 2003, it was reported that he lapsed in and out of a coma and was bleeding internally, and that he nearly died from a savage beating in prison in June 2003.
In 2013 Pastor Shengliang's daughter in an open letter to Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, asked for his help. According to her, her father had not received medical treatment over the past ten years. His condition is now life-threatening. A heart attack at the end of 2012 left him unable to walk or speak. His daughter is asking for his release to receive urgent medical treatment.
External links.
PrisonerAlert.com


Baba Mondi

Edmond Brahimaj or Dedebaba Hajji Mondi () (born May 19, 1959) is an Albanian religious leader and the world leader ("Kryegjysh") of the Bektashi Order, an Islamic Sufi order based in Tirana (Albania) and the Balkans.
He finished the middle school in his hometown Vlore and is a graduate of the Military Academy. Beginning in 1982, he was an officer of the Albanian Armed Forces. After January 2nd 1992, he studied at the "Dedebabalik" and became a dervish in May 16, 1996.
Following the death of "Baba" Tahir Emini, the "dedelik" of Tirana appointed "Baba" Edmond Brahimaj (Baba Mondi), formerly head of the Turan Tekke of Korçë, to oversee the Harabati baba tekke in Tetovo, Republic of Macedonia. On June 11, 2011 Baba Edmond Brahimaj was chosen as the head of the Bektashi order by a council of Albanian babas.


Nicolas Thyrel de Boismont

Abbé Nicolas Thyrel de Boismont (12 June 1715 – 20 December 1786) was a French abbot and a pulpit orator.


Christianity in Serbia

Christianity is the predominant religion in Serbia. The Constitution of Serbia defines it as a secular state with guaranteed religious freedom. Eastern Orthodox Christians comprise 84.5% of country's population with 6,079,396 members. The Serbian Orthodox Church is the largest and traditional church of the country, adherents of which are overwhelmingly Serbs. Public schools in Serbia allow religious teaching, most commonly with the Serbian Orthodox Church. Serbian public holidays include the religious celebrations of Eastern Orthodox Christians. Other Orthodox Christian communities in Serbia include Montenegrins, Romanians, Vlachs, Macedonians and Bulgarians. The Catholic Church is prominent in north Vojvodina amongst the Hungarian minority. Protestantism is most largely found in Slovak populations within Bački Petrovac and Kovačica. Christianity first arrived in Serbia in the 9th century. It became state-religion in the 9th century when Serbia began to identify as a Christian country. In a 2011 census, 91.22% of Serbians identified as Christian.
History.
Early Christianity.
Saints Florus and Laurus are venerated as Christian martyrs, and lived in the 2nd century in Ulpiana (Lipljan), in modern Serbia. According to traditions, they were twin brothers from Constantinople who were employed to build a pagan temple. They gave their salaries to the poor and are said to have cured the son of Mamertin, the local pagan priest, who then converted to Christianity. The temple was reconstructed into a Church, which prompted local pagans to kill the 300 Christians, including all aforementioned.
During the Diocletianic Persecution in 304, Sirmium became a place of martyrdom for saint Irenaeus, Anastasia and Fausta. Not much before 313 while emperor Licinius was present in Singidunum, he oversaw trial and murder of deacon Hermylus and Stratonicus whose bodies were thrown in the Danube but resurfaced downriver and were later buried by Christians and venerated as saints. Successor of Irenaeus as bishop of Sirmium was Domnus who attended the First Council of Nicaea. By the mid 4th century, Christian communities on territory of modern-day Serbia were numerous and influential. Sirmium, Singidunum, Naissus, Viminacium, Remesiana, Horreum Margi, Margum and Ulpiana are all mentioned as bishoprics by 343. Bishops Germinius of Sirmium and Ursacius of Singidunum were influential in then ongoing Arian controversy. Four ecclesiastical Councils of Sirmium were important events for whole Christendom. Bishop Nicetas of Remesiana during his long tenure (366-420) contributed much to the spread of Christianity in the region and earliest mention of monastic communities dates from his time.
After the Edict of Milan (313), Kosovo and Metohia came under the jurisdiction of the Thessalonian vicariate; indicated in a letter from Pope Innocent I to the Thessalonian vicar Rufus in 412 that the vicariate included the area of Dardania. Bishopric of Sirmium lost much influence once Huns raided the city in 441/442. In 535 a new archdiocese of Justiniana Prima was formed and was given jurisdiction over most of aforementioned bishoprics. Many new churches and basilicas were built during the reign of emperor Justinian I. However mere decades later entire established ecclesiastic structure collapsed under the impact of Avar raids and Slavic settlement that followed. The last known archbishop of Justiniana Prima and indeed of any bishopric on territory of modern-day Serbia for centuries to come was Ioannes (c. 595-602/3)
Early Middle Ages.
The Serbs were baptised during the reign of Heraclius (610–641) by "elders of Rome" according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his annals (r. 913–959).
In 733, Leo III attaches Illyricum to Patriarch Anastasius of Constantinople.
The forming of Christianity as state-religion dates to the time of Eastern Orthodox missionaries (Saints) Cyril and Methodius during Basil I (r. 867–886), who baptised the Serbs sometime before sending imperial admiral Nikita Orifas to Knez Mutimir for aid in the war against the Saracens in 869, after acknowledging the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire. The fleets and land forces of Zahumlje, Travunia and Konavli were sent to fight the Saracens who attacked the town of Ragusa ("Dubrovnik") in 869, on the immediate request of Basil I, who was asked by the Ragusians for help.
A Serbian bishopric (Diocese of Ras) may have been founded in Stari Ras in 871 by Serbian Knez Mutimir, confirmed by the Council of Constantinople in 879–80.
The adherence is evident in the tradition of theophoric names in the next generation of Serbian monarchs and nobles; Petar Gojniković, Stefan Mutimirović, Pavle Branović. Mutimir maintained the communion with the Eastern Church (Constantinople) when Pope John VIII invited him to recognize the jurisdiction of the bishopric of Sirmium. The Serbs and Bulgarians adopt the Old Slavonic liturgy instead of the Greek.
Notable early church buildings include the Monastery of Archangel Michael in Prevlaka (Ilovica), built at the beginning of the 9th century, on the location of older churches of three-nave structure with three apses to the East, dating from the 3rd and 6th centuries, Bogorodica Hvostanska (6th century) and Church of Saints Peter and Paul.
A Seal of Strojimir (died between 880 and 896), the brother of Mutimir, was bought by the Serbian state in an auction in Germany. The seal has a Patriarchal cross in the center and Greek inscriptions that say: "Strojimir" ("CTPOHMIP") and "God, Help Serbia".
In 1019, the Archbishopric of Ohrid is formed after the Byzantines conquers the First Bulgarian Empire. The Greek language replaces the Slavic. Serbia is ecclesiastically administered into several dioceses; The Diocese of Ras, mentioned in 1019, becomes part of the Ohrid archbishopric and encompassed the areas of central Serbia, by the rivers Raska, Ibar and Lim, evident in the second charter of Basil II (r. 976–1025). Among the first bishops are Leontius (fl. 1123–1126), Cyril (fl. 1141–1143), Euthemius (fl. 1170) and Kalinik (fl. 1196). It joined the autocephalous Archbishopric of Zica in 1219, at the time of Saint Sava.
The Diocese (Eparhy) of Prizren is mentioned in 1019, in the first charter of Basil II.
Denominations.
Eastern Orthodoxy.
Most of the citizens of Serbia are adherents of the Serbian Orthodox Church, while the Romanian Orthodox Church is also present in parts of Vojvodina inhabited by ethnic Romanian minority. Besides Serbs, other adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy include: Romanians, Macedonians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Russians, Greeks and Vlachs.
The identity of ethnic Serbs was historically largely based on Eastern Orthodoxy and on the Serbian Orthodox Church, to the extent that some Serb nationalists claimed that those who are not its faithful are not Serbs. However, the conversion of the south Slavs from paganism to Christianity took place before the Great Schism, the split between the Greek East and the Latin West. After the Schism, those who lived under the Eastern Orthodox sphere of influence became Orthodox and those who lived under the Catholic sphere of influence became Catholic. Some ethnologists consider that the distinct Serb and Croat identities relate to religion rather than ethnicity. With the arrival of the Ottoman Empire, some Serbs and Croats converted to Islam. This was particularly, but not wholly, so in Bosnia. The best known Muslim Serb is probably either Mehmed Paša Sokolović or Meša Selimović.
Serbian Orthodox Church.
The church is one of the autocephalous Orthodox Christian churches, ranking sixth in order of seniority after Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Russia. It is the second oldest Slavic Orthodox Church in the world (after the Bulgarian Orthodox Church).
The Eastern Orthodox Church is the dominant church in Serbia, Montenegro and Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with more than 84% of the population being adherents in all three. It is organized into metropolises and eparchies located primarily in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia, but also in surrounding countries, and all over the world. Since many Serbs have emigrated to foreign countries, there are now Serbian Orthodox communities worldwide.
The Serbian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous, or ecclesiastically independent, member of the Eastern Orthodox communion. The Serbian Patriarch serves as first among equals in his church; the current patriarch is Irinej. The Church achieved autocephalous status in 1219 under the leadership of St. Sava, becoming independent Archbishopric of Žiča. Its status was elevated to that of a patriarchate in the 14th century, and was known afterwards as the Patriarchate of Peć. This patriarchate was abolished by the Ottoman Turks in the 1766 century. The modern Serbian Orthodox Church was established in 1920 after the unification of the Patriarchate of Karlovci and the Metropolitanate of Belgrade.
The Serbian Orthodox Church owns many significant Christian relics, such as the right hand of John the Baptist, Saint George's hand and skull parts, Holy Cross segments, St. Paraskevi's finger and body of St. Basil of Ostrog, among others.
Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is present mostly in the northern part of Vojvodina, notably in the municipalities with Hungarian ethnic majority and in the polyethnic municipalities of Subotica and Bečej. The ethnic groups whose members are mostly adherents of the Catholic Church are: Hungarians, Croats, Bunjevci, Germans, Slovenes, Czechs, Šokci, Poles, etc. A smaller number of Romani, Yugoslavs, and Slovaks are also adherents of the Catholic Church. In the disputed region of Kosovo, Catholics constitute 2.2% of the population, according to the 2011 census. The ethnic Rusyns and a smaller part of the ethnic Ukrainians are adherents of the Eastern Catholic Church.
Protestant Christianity.
The largest concentration of the Protestant Christians in Serbia is in the municipalities of Bački Petrovac and Kovačica, where the absolute or relative majority of the population are ethnic Slovaks, most of them adherents of Protestant Christianity. Some members of other ethnic groups (especially Serbs in absolute terms and Hungarians and Germans in proportional terms) are also adherents of various forms of Protestant Christianity.
There are various Protestant groups in the country, including Methodists, Seventh-day Adventists and Evangelical Baptists (Nazarene). Many of these groups are situated in the culturally diverse province of Vojvodina. Prior to World War II, the number of Protestants in the region was larger.
Western Orthodox Church.
The Western Orthodox (before 1985 known as Old Catholic) Church existed in Yugoslavia since 1921.
Nowadays, the only representative of Old Catholic Churches in Serbia is Orthodox - Old Catholic General vicariate of St. Methodius, a canonically established organ of World Council of National Old Catholic Churches (distinct from The Utrecht Union). It is a member of World Council of Churches and was granted autonomy. In 2015., General Vicariate of St. Methodius was recognized as a legal successor of former Western Orthodox Church in Yugoslavia, because they share the same dogmas.
Serbian Orthodox Church doesn't look at General Vicariate as its sister church, but as an opponent.
Jehovah's Witnesses.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are active in Serbia since 1930. This community have its seat in Zemun. In 1937, the authorities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia banned the activity of the community, but it was reestablished in 1953. According to 2002 census, there was 2,191 Jehovah's Witnesses in Serbia, while according to 2009 estimation their number was 3,871.
Latter Day Saints.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) are active in Serbia since 1992 and Seat of the LDS community in Serbia is in Belgrade. There is also LDS meetinghouse in Novi Sad. The Book of Mormon is also translated into Serbian language and printed in Serbian Cyrillic script.


Sisters of the Resurrection

The Congregation of the Sisters of the Resurrection was founded in Rome, Italy, in 1891 by a widow, Celine Borzecka, and her daughter, Hedwig Borzecka. This was the first time in the history of the Roman Catholic Church that a religious institute of women was founded jointly by a mother and daughter.


Yakan people

The Yakan people are among the major indigenous Filipino ethnolinguistic groups in the Sulu Archipelago. Also known as dream weaver having a significant number of followers of Islam, it is considered as one of the 13 Moro groups in the Philippines. The Yakans mainly reside in Basilan but are also in Zamboanga City. They speak a language known as "Bissa Yakan", which has characteristics of both Sama-Bajau Sinama and Tausug (Jundam 1983: 7-8). It is written in the Malayan Arabic script, with adaptations to sounds not present in Arabic (Sherfan 1976).
The Yakan have a traditional horse culture. They are renowned for their weaving traditions. Culturally, they are Sama people who eventually led a life on land, mostly in Basilan and Zamboanga city. They are included as part of the Sama ethnic group, which includes the Bajau, Dilaut, Kalibugan, and other Sama groups.
History.
The Yakans reside in the Sulu Archipelago, situated to the west of Zamboanga in Mindanao. Traditionally they wear colorful, handwoven clothes. The women wear tight fitting short blouses and both sexes wear narrowcut pants resembling breeches. The women covers it partly with a wrap-around material while the man wraps a sash-like cloth around the waist where he places his weapon – usually a long knife.
Nowadays most Yakans wear western clothes and use their traditional clothes only for cultural festivals.
The Spaniards called the Yakan, "Sameacas" and considered them an aloof and sometimes hostile hill people (Wulff 1978:149; Haylaya 1980:13).
In the early 1970s, some of the Yakan settled in Zamboanga City due to political unrest that led to armed conflict between militant Moro groups and government soldiers. The Yakan Village in Upper Calarian is famous among local and foreign tourists because of their art of weaving. Traditionally, they have used plants such as pineapple and abaca converted into fibers as basic material for weaving. Using herbal extracts from leaves, roots and barks, the Yakans dyed the fibers and produced colorful combinations and intricate designs.
The "Seputangan" is the most intricate design worn by the women around their waist or as a head cloth. The Palipattang is patterned after the color of the rainbow while the "bunga-sama", after the python. Almost every Yakan fabric can be described as unique since the finished materials are not exactly identical. Differences may be seen in the pattern or in the design or in the distribution of colors.
Contacts with settlers from Luzon, Visayas, and the American Peace Corps brought about changes in the art and style of weaving. Many resorted to using chemical dyes, which are more convenient, and started weaving table runners, placemats, wall decor, purses, and other items that are not present in a traditional Yakan house. In other words, Yakan communities, for economic reason, catered to the needs of their customers, demonstrating their trading acumen. New designs were introduced, such as "kenna-kenna", patterned after a fish; "dawen-dawen", after the leaf of a vine; "pene mata-mata", after the shape of an eye or the "kabang buddi", a diamond-shaped design.


Egyptian Council of Churches

The Egyptian Council of Churches is an organization representing different churches in Egypt, including the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, as well as Catholic, Evangelical, Episcopal, Armenian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox churches. The council's formation was announced in January 2013. Its first meeting was held on February 18, 2013, at Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, and was chaired by Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria. Representatives chose Tawadros II as the council's first president. The presidency is set to rotate every three years between the different church leaders.
The council aims to unite Egypt's Christian churches, while retaining the independence of each, to facilitate Muslim-Christian dialogue, and to discuss various social and political issues from a Christian perspective, such as abortion, the constitution and the personal status law. Marking the first anniversary of its formation in February 2014, the council stated that it has no political goals and that it would back no candidate in the country's 2014 presidential election. When it was announced, the idea received widespread support from Egypt's different Christian communities, and its formation was praised by Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land.


Davide Lazzeretti

Davide Lazzaretti (6 November 1834 – 18 August 1878) was an Italian preacher.


Abdelhalim Bensmaia

Abdelhalim Bensmaia (1866-1933) was a prominent Islamic scholar. He was also a reformist, humanist and musician.
Personal life.
Bensmaia was born in Algiers into a family of Turkish origin. His father, Ali Ben Abderrahmane Khodja, was the last mufti Malikite of Algiers. His nephew, Omar Bensmaia, was a prominent visual artist and successful tobacco merchant.
He taught in Madrasa Thaalibia since its inuaguration in 17 october 1904.
After his death in 1933, he was buried in the Thaalibia Cemetery of the Casbah of Algiers.