Fritz Lang Fritz Lang Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best-known "émigrés" from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. His most famous films include the groundbreaking futuristic "Metropolis" (1927) and the also influential "M" (1931), a film noir precursor that he made before he moved to the United States. Lang was born in Vienna as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940), an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline
The Law that Never Was for each amendment, whether the ratification must be by each state's legislature or by a constitutional convention in each state; for the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress specified ratification by the legislatures. There were 48 states in the Union in 1913 — the year when the Sixteenth Amendment was finally ratified — which meant that the Amendment required ratification by the legislatures of 36 states to become effective. In February 1913, Secretary of State Philander C. Knox issued a proclamation that 38 states had ratified the amendment. (According to Congressional analysis, a total of 42 states had ratified the amendment as of