title: National language

text: Quebec nationalists consider Quebec French the language of the Quebec nation and is that province's official language (and recognized minority in Ontario, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador). Acadian French, the national language of Acadians, is an official language of New Brunswick (and recognized minority in Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island). Newfoundland English dialects differ substantially from other Canadian English ones.


title: National language

text: English and French are official in Canada's three territories; two legislate a variety of Indigenous languages in addition. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.) have as official languages Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, with N.W.T. also have a further seven more (totalling eleven official languages): Cree, Dënesųłiné, Gwich’in, Inuvialuktun, North and South Slavey and Tłı̨chǫ. As these official languages are legislated at a territorial (sub-federal) level, they can be construed as national languages.


title: National language

text: Besides these there many Indigenous languages of Canada, which are the national languages of one or more First Nations, Inuit or Métis peoples; a number of First Nations and Inuit homelands at the Indigenous government level legislate their language as an official language of the Nation, such as the Nisg̱a’a language by Nisg̱a’a and Inuvialuktun by Inuvialuit. Notably the Cree language is spoken (with variations) from Alberta to Labrador, Anishinaabemowin is spoken across central Canada, and Inuktitut is spoken across the Arctic, northern Quebec and Labrador.


title: National language

text: There are many languages spoken across China, with most people speaking one of several varieties of Chinese. During successive imperial dynasties, the spoken language of the capital city served as the official spoken language and was used across the country by government officials who traveled to communicate with one another. Dialects used for this purpose in different eras included those of Xi'an, Luoyang, Nanjing, Beijing, and other historical capital cities.


title: National language

text: After the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, the Kuomintang (Chinese nationalists) founded the Republic of China. In order to promote a sense of national unity and enhance the efficiency of communications within the nation, the government decided to designate a national language. The Beijing dialect of Mandarin and Guangzhou dialect of Cantonese were each proposed as the basis for a national language for China. In the beginning, there were attempts to introduce elements from other Chinese varieties into the national language in addition to those from the Beijing dialect; this was reflected in the first official dictionary of the national language, given the name (Pinyin: , literally "national language"). But this artificial language had no native speakers and was difficult to learn, so it was abandoned in 1924. Ultimately, the Beijing dialect was chosen as the national language and it continued to be referred to as in Chinese in the Republic of China. Since then, the Beijing dialect has become the main standard for pronunciation, due to its prestigious status during the preceding Qing dynasty.


title: National language

text: Still, elements from other dialects do exist in the standard language, which is now defined as reflecting the pronunciation of Beijing, the grammatical patterns of Mandarin dialects spoken in the northern parts of China, and the vocabulary of modern vernacular Chinese literature. The People's Republic of China renamed the national language (Pinyin: Pǔtōnghuà, literally "common speech"), without otherwise changing the definition of the standard national language.


title: National language

text: The Croatian (a variety of Serbo-Croatian) language is the official language of Croatia. “The Croatian language and the Latin script shall be in official use in the Republic of Croatia” in Article 12 of the Croatian Constitution.


title: National language

text: Amharic was the national language in Ethiopian Empire. The country is composed of at least 80 different ethnic nationalities. Its people altogether speak over 80 different languages. Amharic, Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali, and Afar are the official working languages of Ethiopia. But courts, and legislations work in Amharic and the constitution of the country is written in Amharic in an official capacity. And in day-to-day basis, Amharic is used to issue driving licenses and report tax income, making it not a national language but official language of the government.


title: National language

text: Finland has two national languages: the Finnish language and the Swedish language. The Constitution of Finland guarantees the right to use Finnish and Swedish in courts and other state institutions. Despite the large difference in the numbers of users, Swedish is not officially classified as a minority language but equal to Finnish. Both national languages are compulsory subjects in school (except for children with a third language as mother tongue) and a language test is a prerequisite for governmental offices where a university degree is required. The constitution also grants the Sami and the Roma peoples the right to maintain and develop their languages: The Sami have partial right to use Sami languages in official situations according to other laws.


title: National language

text: French is the sole official language of France, according to Article 2 of the French Republic's constitution.


title: National language

text: The official language of Germany is German, with over 95% of the country's population speaking it as their first language.


title: National language

text: Haiti's official languages are Haitian Creole and French. While French is the language used in the media, government and education, 90–95% of the country speak Haitian Creole as the home language while French is learned in school.


title: National language

text: Icelandic is the official language of Iceland. Icelandic is the language used in the media, government and education, 98% of the country speak Icelandic at home.


title: National language

text: There is no national language for India as there are more than 780 languages and more than 19,000 dialects in India.


title: National language

text: The Union government uses Hindi and English as official languages, such as for parliamentary proceedings and texts of national laws. Communications between the union government and state governments are in Hindi with Region A and Region B states and in English with Region C states. State governments use their own native languages in official communications. They may adopt one or more of the 22 languages listed in the Indian constitution's eighth schedule—Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Meitei, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The Indian supreme court uses English as its sole official language; high courts in some states use other languages spoken in the state in addition to English.


title: National language

text: Since 2004, the Indian government has accorded the status of classical language to languages of great antiquity and uniqueness. As of 2021, six languages—Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Sanskrit and Telugu—have been declared classical languages.


title: National language

text: The official and national language of Indonesia is Indonesian. Indonesia has more than 700 living languages, making it the second most linguistically diverse country after Papua New Guinea. These 700+ languages, however, are without official status, and some are in danger of extinction. The largest local language is Javanese.


title: National language

text: Irish is recognised by the Constitution of Ireland as the national language and first official language of Ireland, and the English language is recognised as a second official language.


title: National language

text: Hebrew became the national language and the sole official language of Israel with the adoption of the Nation-State Bill in 2018, and Arabic was abolished as a co-official language and became recognized as a language with "special status" used in state institutions.


title: National language

text: The Italian language is the de jure and de facto official language of Italy. Italian is also referred to as national language for historical and cultural reasons, because since the 15th century, Italian became the language used in the courts of nearly every state in Italy and in general among educated Italians (scholars, writers, poets, philosophers, scientists, composers and artists) who contributed to what is nowadays the culture of Italy. Furthermore, Italian was often an official language of the various Italian states before unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as the Spaniards in the Kingdom of Naples, or the Austrians in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia).


title: National language

text: While English and Swahili are official languages, Swahili also has a special status as national language. None of the country's biggest languages (Gikuyu, Luo, Kamba, Kalenjin, etc.) have any explicit legal status on the national level, but the 2010 constitution enjoins the state to "promote and protect the diversity of language of the people of Kenya."


title: National language

text: In Lebanon, the Arabic language is the "official national" language. Modern Standard Arabic is used for official purposes, while the everyday spoken language is Lebanese Arabic. French and English are also widespread in Lebanon.


title: National language

text: Luxembourg uses three official languages: Luxembourgish, French, and German. Previously Luxembourgish had no official status, but following a constitutional revision a law was passed on 24 February 1984 making Luxembourgish the national language. Furthermore, this law recognised the three languages of Luxembourg (Luxembourgish, French and German) as administrative languages.


title: National language

text: The Malay language is the national language of Malaysia in accordance with Article 152(1) of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia.


title: National language

text: The Maltese language is the national language of Malta. It is also the official language of the island, together with English. Maltese only is recognised as "national" in Chapter 1 of the Laws of Malta.


title: National language

text: Although English is the only nationwide official language in Namibia, there are also 20 "national languages", which are each spoken by more or less sizeable portions of the population and are considered Namibia's cultural heritage. All national languages have the rights of a minority language and may even serve as a "lingua franca" in certain regions. Among Namibia's national languages are German, Afrikaans, Oshiwambo, Otjiherero, Portuguese, as well as the languages of the Himba, Nama, San, Kavango and Damara.


title: National language

text: Nepali is the official language in the federal government of Nepal. Over 123 languages are spoken in Nepal, all of which are granted constitutional status as (), officially translated as 'languages of the nation' (the word also simply means 'national language'). Some of the languages include: Nepal Bhasa, Tamang, Sherpa, Rai, Magar, Gurung, Maithili, Awadhi, English, Limbu, Bhojpuri, etc.


title: National language

text: Dutch is the official language of The Netherlands. In the province of Fryslân they speak Frisian, which is recognized as the second official language there.


title: National language

text: While the population of New Zealand is predominantly English-speaking, the language of the indigenous Polynesian people is the Māori language. Both these languages have official status in the country, along with New Zealand Sign Language, which is one of the few sign languages in the world to have such status.


title: National language

text: Besides official English (Nigerian Standard English), Nigeria recognizes three 'majority', or national, languages. These are Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, each with some 20 million speakers or more.


title: National language

text: Article 251(1) of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, titled "National language", specifies: "The National language of Pakistan is Urdu, and arrangements shall be made for its being used for official and other purposes within fifteen years from the commencing day." Although Urdu has been declared an official language, so far all government documents, legislation, legal orders, and other official records are written in Pakistani English. Most higher education instruction is in English. The National Language Authority is an organization established to make arrangements to promote Urdu since 1979.


title: National language

text: Filipino is the national language of the Philippines. The current 1987 constitution designated the Filipino language, which is based on Tagalog with the inclusion of terms from all recognized languages of the Philippines, as the national language. It also designated both Filipino and English as the official languages for purposes of communication and instruction, and designated the regional languages as auxiliary official languages in the regions to serve as auxiliary media of instruction therein.


title: National language

text: More than 170 languages are spoken in the Philippines and almost all of them belong to the Philippine subgroup of the Austronesian language family. In September 2012, La Union became the first province in Philippine history to pass an ordinance proclaiming a local language. It declared Ilocano as an official language. This move aims to protect and revitalize the use of Ilocano in various government and civil affairs within the province.


title: National language

text: The Filipino Sign Language is designated as the "national sign language of the Filipino deaf" as well as the official sign language for transactions of the Philippine government.


title: National language

text: Article 27 of the Constitution states: "Polish shall be the official language in the Republic of Poland".


title: National language

text: The Russian language is the only national language of Russia and had federal official status, but 27 other languages are considered official in different Federal subjects of Russia .


title: National language

text: The Serbian language (a variety of Serbo-Croatian) is the national language of Serbia, written in the Cyrillic script. There are 15 minority languages.


title: National language

text: Singapore has four official languages: English (Singapore English), Chinese, Malay and Tamil. Although English is the primary language of business, government, and education, Malay is designated as the national language. This is due to the geographical and historical ties to Malaysia as well as the recognition of ethnic Malays (about 14% of the population) as the indigenous people of Singapore.


title: National language

text: Traditionally, the "lingua franca" among the different ethnic groups in Singapore was Bazaar Malay, a Malay-based creole. Since independence, the government has been promoting English as the main language of Singapore. The bilingual education policy requires students to study two languages: English and a "mother tongue" corresponding to the student's ethnicity. Malay is only offered to non-Malay students as an optional third language in secondary schools. As a result, English has displaced Bazaar Malay as the common language among Singaporeans. Therefore, despite the status of Malay as the national language, the majority doesn't speak it.


title: National language

text: South Africa has 11 official languages, namely Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, Sepedi, Sesotho, siSwati, Setswana, Xitsonga, Thsivenda, isiXhosa and isiZulu.


title: National language

text: The South African constitution further explicitly supports the promotion of the indigenous Khoi, Nama, and San languages; Sign language; community languages such as German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Portuguese, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu; and languages used for religious purposes such as Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit.


title: National language

text: Spain has one national constitutional language, Spanish or Castilian, but there are four other languages that are co-official in some territories: Galician language in Galicia, Basque in Euskadi and part of Navarre, Catalan language in Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia (as Valencian), and Aranese in Val d'Aran.


title: National language

text: Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh, all of which have official status at the national level within the Federal administration of Switzerland.


title: National language

text: A majority (74%) of the population speaks German, while most of the remainder (21%) speak French, and minorities speak Italian (4%) and Romansh (1%, not monolingually). German speakers are predominant in most of the country, while French speakers occupy the western parts near the border with France, and the Italian speakers are situated to the south near the border with Italy, mostly within the Canton of Ticino. The Romansh speakers are concentrated in the Canton of Grisons in the south-east.


title: National language

text: A national language in Taiwan is legally defined as "a natural language used by an original people group of Taiwan and the Taiwan Sign Language". This includes Formosan languages, Hakka, Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien and Matsu dialect.


title: National language

text: During Japanese rule (1895 to 1945), the promoted the Japanese language. After their defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Kuomintang regime of the Republic of China retreated to the island of Taiwan, where they introduced Standard Chinese, which was spoken by few of the island population at the time, to be the "national language". Today however, the "National languages development act" recognises languages of all people groups of Taiwan to be national languages.


title: National language

text: The official language of the Tunisian state is Modern Standard Arabic. However, it is not the mother tongue of the population. Therefore, it is not often used to communicate between Tunisian people, instead Tunisian Arabic plays these roles and is the national language of Tunisia. Furthermore, even without an official status, French is also known by 63.6% of the population. It is used extensively in its written and spoken form in administration, education, and business environments. Berber minorities in the south-west and on Djerba Island also use the Tunisian Chelha language.


title: National language

text: Ukrainian is the only official language of Ukraine. A significant part of the population also speaks Russian in everyday life, especially in urban areas of Southern and Eastern Ukraine.


title: National language

text: The English language (British English) is the "de facto" official language of the United Kingdom and is the sole language of an estimated 95% of the British population. The three Home Nations outside England have national languages of their own with varying degrees of recognition, which coexist with the dominant English language. Britain also has several Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories which are to some extent self-governing, but are not recognized as independent states. Many of these have their own regional languages.


title: National language

text: In Northern Ireland, both the Gaelic Irish language and the West Germanic Ulster Scots dialects are recognized by the Good Friday Agreement as "part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland" and are promoted by the Foras na Gaeilge (Irish Institute) and Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch (the Ulster-Scots Agency) respectively.


title: National language

text: In Scotland, Scottish Gaelic is a minority language spoken by 57,375 people (1.1% of the Scottish population aged over three years old). The "Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005" gives the language a limited official status, and the Bòrd na Gàidhlig is tasked with "securing the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland commanding equal respect to the English language". Scots, generally treated as a West Germanic language related to but separate from English, has no official status but is recognized as a minority language, and is the language of much Scottish literature, including the poetry of Robert Burns.


title: National language

text: The Welsh language has official status within Wales, and as of the 2011 census, is spoken by 562,000 people, or 19% of the population. The Welsh Language Board (Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg) is legally tasked with ensuring that, "in the conduct of public business and the administration of justice, the English and Welsh languages should be treated on a basis of equality".


title: National language

text: English is "de facto" the only official language. However a few words of Manx Gaelic (the historical national language) are sometimes encountered in government institutions, largely for symbolic and ceremonial purposes, and it is the main medium of instruction in one primary school.


title: National language

text: English is the main language spoken in the county of Cumbria. Cumbric was the historical language of Cumbria, a Brythonic language closely related to Welsh. It also used to be spoken in parts of Lancashire and southern Scotland. Most say that Cumbric became extinct in the 12th or 13th century. The Cumbric numerical system is still used by many shepherds in the Lake District.


title: National language

text: English is the "de facto" main language spoken in the county of Cornwall. Historically, the main language of Cornwall was Cornish. By 1800, Cornish was endangered with some debate about a mythical last speaker of the Cornish language. Revival of the Cornish language and some recognition has occurred in the 20th century.


title: National language

text: In the United States, English (American English) is the national language only in an informal sense, by numbers and by historical and contemporary association. The United States Constitution does not explicitly declare any official language, although the constitution is written in English, as is all federal legislation.


title: National language

text: , Representative Peter T. King introduced H.R.997, the "English Language Unity Act of 2015", in the United States House of Representatives. This bill would establish English as the official language of the United States. A companion bill, S.678, was introduced by Senator Jim Inhofe in the United States Senate on 9 March 2015. Both bills were referred to committee. Similar legislation has been introduced every year since 1973.


title: National language

text: In Vietnam, the Vietnamese language had been the "de facto" national language for many years, but it was not until Decree No. 5 of the 2013 constitution that the Vietnamese language was officially described as the National Language.


title: Pickelhaube

text: The ' (pl. ; from , and , , a general word for "headgear"), also ', is a spiked helmet that was worn in the 19th and 20th centuries by Prussian and German military officers, firefighters and police. Although it is typically associated with the Prussian Army, which adopted it in 1842–43, the helmet was widely imitated by other armies during that period. It is still worn today as part of ceremonial wear in the militaries of certain countries, such as Sweden, Chile, and


title: Pickelhaube

text: The Pickelhaube was originally designed in 1842 by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, perhaps as a copy of similar helmets that were adopted at the same time by the Russian military. It is not clear whether this was a case of imitation, parallel invention, or if both were based on the earlier Napoleonic cuirassier. The early Russian type (known as "The Helmet of Yaroslav Mudry") was also used by cavalry, which had used the spike as a holder for a horsehair plume in full dress, a practice also followed with some Prussian models (see below).


title: Pickelhaube

text: Frederick William IV introduced the Pickelhaube for use by the majority of Prussian infantry on 23 October 1842 by a royal cabinet order. The use of the Pickelhaube spread rapidly to other German principalities. Oldenburg adopted it by 1849, Baden by 1870, and in 1887, the Kingdom of Bavaria was the last German state to adopt the Pickelhaube (since the Napoleonic Wars, they had had their own design of helmet called the , a Tarleton helmet). Amongst other European armies, that of Russia adopted the helmet in 1844, that of Sweden adopted the Prussian version of the spiked helmet in 1845, in Wallachia it was decided to adopt the helmet on 15 August 1845, possibly being influenced by the visit of Prince Albert of Prussia. However, its introduction to the troops took longer, while Moldavia adopted the Russian version of the spiked helmet in the same year, possibly under the influence of the Tsarist Army.


title: Pickelhaube

text: From the second half of the 19th century onwards, the armies of a number of nations besides Russia (including Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Venezuela) adopted the Pickelhaube or something very similar. The popularity of this headdress in Latin America arose from a period during the early 20th century when military missions from Imperial Germany were widely employed to train and organize national armies. Peru was the first to use the helmet for the Peruvian Army when some helmets were shipped to the country in the 1870s, but during the War of the Pacific the 6th Infantry Regiment "Chacabuco" of the Chilean Army became the first Chilean military unit to use them when its personnel used the helmets—which were seized from the Peruvians—in their red French-inspired uniforms. These sported the Imperial German eagles but in the 1900s the eagles were replaced by the national emblems of the countries that used them.


title: Pickelhaube

text: The Russian version initially had a horsehair plume fitted to the end of the spike, but this was later discarded in some units. The Russian spike was topped with a grenade motif. At the beginning of the Crimean War, such helmets were common among infantry and grenadiers, but soon fell out of place in favour of the forage cap. After 1862 the spiked helmet ceased to be generally worn by the Russian Army, although it was retained until 1914 by the Cuirassier regiments of the Imperial Guard and the Gendarmerie. The Russians prolonged the history of the pointed military headgear with their own cloth Budenovka adopted in 1919 by the Red Army.


title: Pickelhaube

text: In 1847, the Household Cavalry, along with British dragoons and dragoon guards, adopted a helmet which was a hybrid between the Pickelhaube and the traditional dragoon helmet which it replaced. This "Albert Pattern" helmet was named after Albert, Prince Consort who took a keen interest in military uniforms, and featured a falling horsehair plume which could be removed when on campaign. It was adopted by other heavy cavalry regiments across the British Empire and remains in ceremonial use. The Pickelhaube also influenced the design of the British army Home Service helmet, as well as the custodian helmet still worn by police in England and Wales. The linkage between Pickelhaube and Home Service helmet was however not a direct one, since the British headdress was higher, had only a small spike and was made of stiffened cloth over a cork framework, instead of leather. Both the United States Army and Marine Corps wore helmets of the British pattern for full dress between 1881 and 1902.


title: Pickelhaube

text: The basic Pickelhaube was made of hardened (boiled) leather, given a glossy-black finish, and reinforced with metal trim (usually plated with gold or silver for officers) that included a metal spike at the crown. Early versions had a high crown, but the height gradually was reduced and the helmet became more fitted in form, in a continuing process of weight-reduction and cost-saving. In 1867 a further attempt at weight reduction by removing the metal binding of the front peak, and the metal reinforcing band on the rear of the crown (which also concealed the stitched rear seam of the leather crown), did not prove successful.


title: Pickelhaube

text: The version of the Pickelhaube worn by Prussian artillery units employed a ball-shaped finial rather than the pointed spike, a modification ordered in 1844 because of injuries to horses and damage to equipment caused by the latter. Prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914 detachable black or white plumes were worn with the Pickelhaube in full dress by German generals, staff officers, dragoon regiments, infantry of the Prussian Guard and a number of line infantry regiments as a special distinction. This was achieved by unscrewing the spike (a feature of all Pickelhauben regardless of whether they bore a plume) and replacing it with a tall metal plume-holder known as a "trichter". For musicians of these units, and also for Bavarian Artillery and an entire cavalry regiment of the Saxon Guard, this plume was red.


title: Pickelhaube

text: Aside from the spike finial, perhaps the most recognizable feature of the Pickelhaube was the ornamental front plate, which denoted the regiment's province or state. The most common plate design consisted of a large, spread-winged eagle, the emblem used by Prussia. Different plate designs were used by Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and the other German states. The Russians used the traditional double-headed eagle.


title: Pickelhaube

text: German military Pickelhauben also mounted two round, colored cockades behind the chinstraps attached to the sides of the helmet. The right cockade, the national cockade, was red, black and white. The left cockade was used to denote the state of the soldier (Prussia: black and white; Bavaria: white and blue; etc.).


title: Pickelhaube

text: All-metal versions of the Pickelhaube were worn mainly by cuirassiers, and often appear in portraits of high-ranking military and political figures (such as Otto von Bismarck, pictured above). These helmets were sometimes referred to as lobster-tail helmets, due to their distinctive articulated neck guard. The design of these is based on cavalry helmets in common use since the 16th century, but with some features taken from the leather helmets. The version worn by the Prussian Gardes du Corps was of tombac (copper and zinc alloy) with silver mountings. That worn by the cuirassiers of the line since 1842 was of polished steel with brass mountings.


title: Pickelhaube

text: In 1892, a light brown cloth helmet cover, the M1892 Überzug, became standard issue for all Pickelhauben for manoeuvres and active service. The Überzug was intended to protect the helmet from dirt and reduce its combat visibility, as the brass and silver fittings on the Pickelhaube proved to be highly reflective. Regimental numbers were sewn or stenciled in red (green from August 1914) onto the front of the cover. Other than in units of the Prussian Guards, which never carried regimental numbers or other adornments on the Überzug. With exposure to the sun, the Überzug faded into a tan shade. In October 1916 the colour was changed to feldgrau (field grey), although by that date the plain metal Stahlhelm was standard issue for most troops.


title: Pickelhaube

text: All helmets produced for the infantry before and during 1914 were made of leather. As the war progressed, Germany's leather stockpiles dwindled. After extensive imports from South America, particularly Argentina, the German government began producing ersatz Pickelhauben made of other materials. In 1915, some Pickelhauben started to be constructed from thin sheet steel. However, the German high command needed to produce an even greater number of helmets, leading to the usage of pressurized felt and even paper to construct Pickelhauben. The Pickelhaube was discontinued in 1916.


title: Pickelhaube

text: During the early months of World War I, it was soon discovered that the Pickelhaube did not measure up to the demanding conditions of trench warfare. The leather helmets offered little protection against shell fragments and shrapnel and the conspicuous spike made its wearer a target. These shortcomings, combined with material shortages, led to the introduction of the simplified model 1915 helmet described above, with a detachable spike. In September 1915 it was ordered that the new helmets were to be worn without spikes when in the front line.


title: Pickelhaube

text: Beginning in 1916, the Pickelhaube was slowly replaced by a new German steel helmet (the "Stahlhelm") intended to offer greater head protection from shell fragments. The German steel helmet decreased German head wound fatalities by 70%. After the adoption of the Stahlhelm, the Pickelhaube was reduced to limited ceremonial wear by senior officers away from the war zones; plus the "Leibgendarmerie S.M. des Kaisers" whose role as an Imperial/Royal escort led them to retain peacetime full dress throughout the war. With the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, the Pickelhaube ceased to be part of the military uniform, and even the police adopted shakos of a Jäger style. In modified forms the new Stahlhelm helmet would continue to be worn by German troops into World War II.


title: Pickelhaube

text: The Pickelhaube is still part of the parade/ceremonial uniform of the Life Guards of Sweden, the National Republican Guard (GNR) of Portugal, King's Guard of Thailand, the military academies of Chile, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, the Military College of Bolivia, the Army Central Band and Army School Bands of Chile, the Chilean Army's 1st Cavalry and 1st Artillery Regiments, and the Presidential Guard Battalion and National Police of Colombia. The Blues and Royals, the Life Guards of the United Kingdom and traffic police in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan also use different forms of the Pickelhaube. The modern Romanian Gendarmerie ("Jandarmeria Româna") maintain a mounted detachment who wear a white plumed Pickelhaube of a model dating from the late 19th century, as part of their ceremonial uniform.


title: Pickelhaube

text: As early as 1844, the poet Heinrich Heine mocked the Pickelhaube as a symbol of reaction and an unsuitable head-dress. He cautioned that the spike could easily "draw modern lightnings down on your romantic head". The poem was part of his political satire on the contemporary monarchy, national chauvinism, and militarism, used aggressively against democratic movements, entitled "Germany. A Winter's Tale".


title: Pickelhaube

text: In the lead-up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, a molded plastic version of the Pickelhaube was available as a fanware article. The common model was colored in the black-red-gold of the German flag, with a variety of other colors also available.


title: Pickelhaube

text: The spiked helmet remained part of a clichéd mental picture of Imperial Germany as late as the inter-war period even after the headdress had ceased to be worn. This was possibly because of the extensive use of the pickelhaube in Allied propaganda before and during World War I, although the helmet had been a well known icon of Imperial Germany even prior to 1914. Pickelhauben were popular targets for Allied souvenir hunters during the early months of the war.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: Robert Thomas Bigelow (born May 12, 1944) is an American businessman. He owns the hotel chain Budget Suites of America and is the founder of Bigelow Aerospace.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: Bigelow has provided financial support for investigations of UFOs and parapsychological topics, including the continuation of consciousness after death.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: Bigelow grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, attended Highland Elementary School, and was first exposed to science through a number of the nuclear weapons tests conducted about 70 miles northwest of the city.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: At age 12, Bigelow decided that his future lay in space travel. Despite his limitations in mathematics, he resolved to choose a career that would make him rich enough that, one day, he could hire the scientific expertise required to launch his own space program.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: He enrolled in the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1962 to study banking and real estate, and he graduated from Arizona State University in 1967.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: From the late 1960s through the 1990s, Bigelow developed commercial real estate hotels, motels and apartments.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In his real estate career, Bigelow built approximately 15,000 units and purchased another 8,000. For most of his career, "he held on to almost everything he bought, but ... eventually unload much of his housing stock in the boom years immediately before the 2008 crash". In 2013, Bigelow reflected on this: "People just really wanted to throw money away, so that was lucky."


title: Robert Bigelow

text: Bigelow had indicated he planned to spend up to US$500 million to develop the first commercial space station with a goal of the station costing 33% of the US$1.5 billion that NASA expended on a single Space Shuttle mission. Bigelow Aerospace has launched two experimental space modules, "Genesis I" in 2006 and "Genesis II" in 2007, and had planned for full-scale space habitats to be used as orbital hotels, research labs and factories.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In 2013, Bigelow indicated that the reason he went into the commercial real estate business was to obtain the requisite resources to be able to fund a team developing space destinations. In October 2017, Bigelow announced that he planned to put an inflatable "space hotel" into orbit by 2022. The plan is part of partnership with United Launch Alliance, and the project is estimated to cost US$2.3 billion in total. The cost of a 3-day stay in this spatial hotel is estimated at 5 million dollars.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In April 2016, Bigelow's BEAM module was launched to the International Space Station on the eighth SpaceX cargo resupply mission.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In March 2020, Bigelow Aerospace laid off all 88 members of staff and halted operations after over 20 years of business, in a move that was partly caused by the coronavirus pandemic.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In March 2021, he sued NASA for US$1.05 million, alleging he was not paid according to contract for product testing and development.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In 1995, Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Science to fund the research and study of various fringe sciences and paranormal topics, most notably ufology. The organization researched cattle mutilation and black triangle reports, ultimately attributing the latter to secretive advanced aircraft operated by the military. The institute was disbanded in 2004.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In 1996, Bigelow purchased Skinwalker Ranch, a 480-acre cattle ranch located in Utah that is the site of purported paranormal phenomena, such as inter-dimensional shape-shifters.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In December 2017, Bigelow was reported by the "New York Times" to have urged Senator Harry Reid to initiate what became the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a government study which operated from 2007 to 2012 tasked with the study of UFOs. According to the "New York Times", Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that extraterrestrial life exists and that extraterrestrials have visited Earth.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: In June 2020, Bigelow founded the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies to support investigations into life after death. In January 2021, he put up an award of US$1 million for anyone who could demonstrate the existence of a life after death.


title: Robert Bigelow

text: Bigelow has made political donations to conservative Republican candidates. In July 2022, he donated $10 million to Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, which was the single biggest donation of his re-election bid. Bigelow has contributed over $25 million to groups and causes supporting Joe Lombardo's candidacy for governor of Nevada. Campaign finance experts believe this may be the most a single donor has spent on a statewide race in modern history.


title: Nixon (film)

text: Nixon is a 1995 American epic historical drama film directed by Oliver Stone, produced by Clayton Townsend, Stone, and Andrew G. Vajna. The film was written by Stone, Christopher Wilkinson, and Stephen J. Rievele, with significant contributions from "project consultants" Christopher Scheer and Robert Scheer. The film tells the story of the political and personal life of former U.S. President Richard Nixon, played by Anthony Hopkins.


title: Nixon (film)

text: The film portrays Nixon as a complex and, in many respects, admirable, though deeply flawed, person. "Nixon" begins with a disclaimer that the film is "an attempt to understand the truth [...] based on numerous public sources and on an incomplete historical record."


title: Nixon (film)

text: The cast includes Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, Annabeth Gish, Marley Shelton, Bai Ling, Powers Boothe, J. T. Walsh, E. G. Marshall, James Woods, Paul Sorvino, Bob Hoskins, Larry Hagman, Ed Harris and David Hyde Pierce, plus archival appearances from political figures such as President Bill Clinton in television footage from the Nixon funeral service.


title: Nixon (film)

text: The film was a box office bomb, grossing $13.7 million against a $44 million budget, but received mostly positive reviews from critics, with Hopkins' performance receiving particular praise. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Supporting Actress (Joan Allen), Best Original Score (John Williams) and Best Original Screenplay.


title: Nixon (film)

text: This was Stone's second of three films about the American presidency, made four years after "JFK", about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and followed 13 years later by "W.", about George W. Bush.


title: Nixon (film)

text: Eighteen months later in December 1973, Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, brings Nixon audio tapes for Nixon to listen to. The two men discuss the Watergate scandal and the resulting chaos. After discussing the death of J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon uses profanity when discussing John Dean, James McCord, and others involved in Watergate. As Haig turns to leave, Nixon asks Haig why he has not been given a pistol to commit suicide like an honorable soldier.


title: Nixon (film)

text: Nixon starts the taping system, which triggers memories that begin a series of flashbacks within the film. The first begins on June 23, 1972, about one week after the break-in, during a meeting with H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dean. Ehrlichman and Dean leave, and Nixon speaks the "smoking gun" tape to Haldeman.


title: Nixon (film)

text: Henry Kissinger plays a major role in the film. First, as a respected professor and later as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. Throughout the film, there is a battle with Nixon and his staff over who Kissinger actually is – is he a leaker who only cares about his reputation in the press, or is he a loyal subject who follows the president's orders? Although many cabinet members blame Kissinger for the leaks, Nixon cannot turn his back on him.


title: Nixon (film)

text: While at the height of his political career, Nixon thinks back to childhood and how his parents raised him and his brothers. Two of his brothers died of tuberculosis at a young age and this deeply impacted the president.


title: Nixon (film)

text: The film covers most aspects of Nixon's life and political career and implies that he and his wife abused alcohol and prescription medications. Nixon's health problems, including his bout of phlebitis and pneumonia during the Watergate crisis, are also shown; his heavy use of medications is sometimes attributed to these.


title: Nixon (film)

text: The film also hints at some kind of responsibility, real or imagined, that Nixon felt towards the John F. Kennedy assassination through references to the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the implication being that the mechanisms set into place for the invasion by Nixon during his term as Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice president spiraled out of control to culminate in Kennedy's assassination and, eventually, Watergate.


title: Nixon (film)

text: The film ends with Nixon's resignation and departure from the lawn of the White House on the helicopter, Marine One. Real-life footage of Nixon's state funeral in Yorba Linda, California plays out over the extended end credits, and all living ex-presidents at the time—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush—as well then-president Bill Clinton, are shown in attendance.


title: Nixon (film)

text: Eric Hamburg, former speechwriter and staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, got the idea of a film about Nixon after having dinner with Oliver Stone. Originally, Oliver Stone had been developing two projects – the musical "Evita" and a movie about Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. When they both did not get made, Stone turned his attention to a biopic about Richard Nixon. The former President's death on April 22, 1994, was also a key factor in Stone's decision to make a Nixon film. He pitched the film to Warner Bros., but, according to the director, they saw it, "as a bunch of unattractive older white men sitting around in suits, with a lot of dialogue and not enough action".


title: Nixon (film)

text: In 1993, Hamburg mentioned the idea of a Nixon film to writer Stephen J. Rivele with the concept being that they would incorporate all of the politician's misdeeds, both known and speculative. Rivele liked the idea and had previously thought about writing a play exploring the same themes. Hamburg encouraged Rivele to write a film instead and with his screenwriting partner, Christopher Wilkinson, they wrote a treatment in November 1993. They conceived of a concept referred to as "the Beast", which Wilkinson describes as "a headless monster that lurches through postwar history," a metaphor for a system of dark forces that resulted in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War, and helped Nixon's rise to power and his fall from it as well. Stone said in an interview that Nixon realizes that "the Beast" "is more powerful than he is. We can't get into it that much, but we hint at it so many times — the military-industrial complex, the forces of money". In another interview, the director elaborates,


title: Nixon (film)

text: Stone immersed himself in research with the help of Hamburg. With Hamburg and actors Hopkins and James Woods, Stone flew to Washington, D.C. and interviewed the surviving members of Nixon's inner circle: lawyer Leonard Garment and Attorney General Elliot Richardson. He also interviewed Robert McNamara, a former Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The director also hired Alexander Butterfield, a key figure in the Watergate scandal who handled the flow of paper to the President, as a consultant to make sure that the Oval Office was realistically depicted, former deputy White House counsel John Sears, and John Dean, who made sure that every aspect of the script was accurate and wrote a few uncredited scenes for the film. Butterfield also appears in a few scenes as a White House staffer. To research their roles, Powers Boothe, David Hyde Pierce and Paul Sorvino talked to their real-life counterparts, but J.T. Walsh decided not to contact John Ehrlichman because he had threatened to sue after reading an early version of the script and was not happy with how he was portrayed. Hopkins watched a lot of documentary footage on Nixon. At night, he would go to sleep with the Nixon footage playing, letting it seep into his subconscious. Hopkins said, "It's taking in all this information and if you're relaxed enough, it begins to take you over."


title: Nixon (film)

text: Stone originally had a three-picture deal with Regency Enterprises which included "JFK", "Heaven and Earth", and "Natural Born Killers". After the success of "Killers", Arnon Milchan, head of Regency, signed Stone for three more motion pictures. Stone could make any film up to a budget of $42.5 million. When Stone told Milchan that he wanted to make "Nixon", Milchan, who was not keen on the idea, told the director that he would only give him $35 million, thinking that this would cause Stone to abandon the project. Stone took the project to Hungarian financier Andrew G. Vajna who had co-financing deal with Disney. Vajna's company, Cinergi Pictures, were willing to finance the $38 million film. This angered Milchan who claimed that "Nixon" was his film because of his three-picture deal with Stone and he threatened to sue. He withdrew after Stone paid him an undisclosed amount. Stone was finalizing the film's budget a week before shooting was to begin. He made a deal with Cinergi and Disney's Hollywood Pictures in order to supply the $43 million budget. To cut costs, Stone leased the White House sets from Rob Reiner's film "The American President".


title: Nixon (film)

text: The studio did not like Stone's choice to play Nixon. They wanted Tom Hanks or Jack Nicholson – two of Stone's original choices. The director also considered Gene Hackman, Robin Williams, Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones. Stone met with Warren Beatty but the actor wanted to make too many changes to the script. Stone cast Hopkins based on his performances in "The Remains of the Day" and "Shadowlands". Of Hopkins, Stone said, "The isolation of Tony is what struck me. The loneliness. I felt that was the quality that always marked Nixon." When the actor met the director he got the impression that Stone was "one of the great bad boys of American pop culture, and I might be a fool to walk away." What convinced Hopkins to ultimately take on the role and "impersonate the soul of Nixon were the scenes in the film when he talks about his mother and father. That affected me." Hopkins wore a hair piece and false teeth "to hint at a physical resemblance to Nixon".


title: Nixon (film)

text: When Beatty was thinking about doing the film, he insisted on doing a reading of the script with an actress and Joan Allen was flown in from New York City. Afterwards, Beatty told Stone that he had found his Pat Nixon.


title: Nixon (film)

text: The film began shooting on May 1, 1995, but there was a week of pre-shooting at the end of April to film scenes that would be used as part of a mock documentary about Nixon's career. Early on during principal photography, Hopkins was intimidated by the amount of dialogue he had to learn, that was being added and changed all the time as he recalled, "There were moments when I wanted to get out, when I wanted to just do a nice "Knots Landing" or something." Sorvino told him that his accent was all wrong. Sorvino claims he told Hopkins that he thought "there was room for improvement" and that he would be willing to help him. Woods says that Sorvino told Hopkins that he was "doing the whole thing wrong" and that he was an "expert" who could help him. Woods recalls that Sorvino took Hopkins to lunch and then he quit that afternoon. Hopkins told Stone that he wanted to quit the production but the director managed to convince him to stay. According to the actors, this was all good-natured joking. Woods said, "I'd always tell him how great he was in "Psycho". I'd call him Lady Perkins all the time instead of Sir Anthony Hopkins."


title: Nixon (film)

text: In Spring of 1994, "Time" magazine reported that an early draft of the screenplay linked Nixon to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The facts contained in the script were based on research from various sources, including documents, transcripts and hours of footage from the Nixon White House. Dean said about the film's accuracy: "In the larger picture, it reflected accurately what happened." Stone addressed the criticism of fictional material in the film, saying, "The material we invented was not done haphazardly or whimsically, it was based on research and interpretation." John Taylor, head of the Nixon Presidential Library, leaked a copy of the script to Richard Helms, former Director of the CIA, who threatened to sue the production. In response, Stone cut out all scenes with Helms from the theatrical print and claimed that he did for "artistic reasons" only to reinstate this footage on the home video release.


title: Nixon (film)

text: During the post-production phase, Stone had his editors in three different rooms with the scenes from the film revolving from one room to another, "depending on how successful they were". If one editor wasn't successful with a scene then it went to another. Stone said that it was "the most intense post- I've ever done, even more intense than "JFK"" because they were screening the film three times a week, making changes in 48–72 hours, rescreening the film and then making another 48 hours of changes.


title: Nixon (film)

text: The score was composed by John Williams, who previously worked with Stone on "Born on the Fourth of July" and "JFK".


title: Nixon (film)

text: In its opening weekend, "Nixon" grossed a total of $2.2 million in 514 theaters in the United States and Canada. The film grossed a total of $13.6 million in the United States and Canada, less than its $44 million budget.


title: Nixon (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes "Nixon" has a 75% approval rating, based reviews from 63 critics, with an average score of 6.8/10. The site's consensus states: "Much like its subject's time in office, "Nixon" might have ended sooner -- but what remains is an engrossing, well-acted look at the rise and fall of a fascinating political figure." Metacritic gave the film a score of 66 based on 22 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on scale of A+ to F.


title: Nixon (film)

text: Two days before the film was released in theaters, the Richard Nixon Library and birthplace in Yorba Linda, California issued a statement on behalf of the Nixon family, calling parts of the film "reprehensible" and that it was designed to "defame and degrade President and Mrs. Nixon's memories in the mind of the American public." This statement was based on a published copy of the script. The statement also criticized Stone's depiction of Nixon's private life, that of his childhood, and his part in planning the assassination of Fidel Castro. Stone responded that his "purpose in making the film, "Nixon" was neither malicious nor defamatory", and was an attempt to gain "a fuller understanding of the life and career of Richard Nixon – the good and the bad, the triumphs and the tragedies, and the legacy he left his nation and the world." Walt Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, wrote a letter to Nixon's daughters saying that Stone had "committed a grave disservice to your family, to the Presidency, and to American history." Stone does not see his film as the definitive statement on Nixon but as "a basis to start reading, to start investigating on your own."


title: Nixon (film)

text: Some critics took Stone to task for portraying Nixon as an alcoholic, though Stone says that was based on information from books by Stephen Ambrose, Fawn Brodie, and Tom Wicker. Film critic Roger Ebert praised the film for how it took "on the resonance of classic tragedy. Tragedy requires the fall of a hero, and one of the achievements of "Nixon" is to show that greatness was within his reach." Ebert also placed the film on his list of the top ten films of the year. Janet Maslin from "The New York Times" praised Anthony Hopkins' performance and "his character's embattled outlook and stiff, hunched body language with amazing skill."


title: Nixon (film)

text: Mick LaSalle in the "San Francisco Chronicle", felt that "the problem here isn't accuracy. It's absurdity. Hopkins' exaggerated portrayal of Nixon is the linchpin of a film that in its conception and presentation consistently veers into camp". Richard Corliss, in his review for "Time", also had a problem with Hopkins' portrayal: "Hopkins, though, is a failure. He finds neither the timbre of Nixon's plummy baritone, with its wonderfully false attempts at intimacy, nor the stature of a career climber who, with raw hands, scaled the mountain and was still not high or big enough." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" wrote: "It's gripping psychodrama — just don't confuse "Nixon" with history."


title: Nixon (film)

text: It was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Joan Allen), Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen and Best Music, Original Dramatic Score.


title: Nixon (film)

text: "Entertainment Weekly" ranked "Nixon" #40 on their "50 Best Biopics Ever" list and one of the 25 "Powerful Political Thrillers".


title: Nixon (film)

text: The theatrical cut of the film was released on DVD on June 15, 1999. A director's cut was released on DVD as part of an Oliver Stone boxset in 2001, running 212 mins and including 28 minutes of previously deleted scenes restored. Much of the added time consists of two scenes: one in which Nixon meets with Central Intelligence Agency director Richard Helms (played by Sam Waterston) and another on Tricia Nixon's wedding day, where J. Edgar Hoover persuades Nixon to install the taping system in the Oval Office. The Director's Cut was released individually on DVD in 2002. The Director's Cut was re-released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (branded as Hollywood Pictures Home Entertainment) on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on August 19, 2008, with the first anamorphic widescreen version of the film in North America.


title: Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 2015

text: The "Billboard" Hot 100 is a chart that ranks the best-performing singles of the United States. Its data, published by "Billboard" magazine and compiled by Nielsen SoundScan, is based collectively on each single's weekly physical and digital sales, as well as airplay and streaming. At the end of a year, "Billboard" will publish an annual list of the 100 most successful songs throughout that year on the Hot 100 chart based on the information. For 2015, the list was published on December 9, calculated with data from December 6, 2014 to November 28, 2015.


text: The funk track "Uptown Funk" by British producer Mark Ronson, featuring American singer Bruno Mars, who co-wrote and voiced the lyrics was named the number 1 song of 2015, despite being released in late 2014. It spent the longest time at number 1 for the year, 14 weeks, and spent the entire year in the Top 40 region. This is also the joint-second longest time at number 1 for a single in the 57-year history of the Hot 100 post-1958 inception, after Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day", which spent 16 weeks atop the Hot 100 from 1995 to 1996.


title: Medea (play)

text: Medea (, "Mēdeia") is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering his new wife as well as her own two sons, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.


title: Medea (play)

text: Euripides' play has been explored and interpreted by playwrights across the centuries and the world in a variety of ways, offering political, psychoanalytical, feminist, among many other original readings of Medea, Jason and the core themes of the play.


title: Medea (play)

text: "Medea", along with three other plays, earned Euripides third prize in the City Dionysia. Some believe that this indicates a poor reception, but "the competition that year was extraordinarily keen"; Sophocles, often winning first prize, came second. The play was rediscovered with Rome's Augustan drama; again in the 16th-century; then remained part of the tragedic repertoire, becoming a classic of the Western canon, and the most frequently performed Greek tragedy in the 20th century. It experienced renewed interest in the feminist movement of the late 20th century, being interpreted as a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of Medea's struggle to take charge of her own life in a male-dominated world. The play holds the American Theatre Wing's Tony Award record for most wins for the same female lead character, with Judith Anderson winning in 1948, Zoe Caldwell in 1982, and Diana Rigg in 1994.


title: Medea (play)

text: "Medea" was first performed in 431 BC at the City Dionysia festival. Here every year, three tragedians competed against each other, each writing a tetralogy of three tragedies and a satyr play (alongside "Medea" were "Philoctetes", "Dictys" and the satyr play "Theristai"). In 431 the competition was among Euphorion (the son of famed playwright Aeschylus), Sophocles (Euripides' main rival) and Euripides. Euphorion won, and Euripides placed last.


title: Medea (play)

text: While "Medea" is considered one of the great plays of the Western canon, Euripides' place in the competition suggests that his first audience might not have responded so favorably. A scholium to line 264 of the play suggests that Medea's children were traditionally killed by the Corinthians after her escape; so Euripides' apparent invention of the filicide might have offended, as his first treatment of the Hippolytus myth did. That Euripides and others took liberties with Medea's story may be inferred from the 1st century BC historian Diodorus Siculus: "Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvellous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out." A common urban legend claimed that Euripides put the blame on Medea because the Corinthians had bribed him with a sum of five talents.


title: Medea (play)

text: In the 4th century BC, South-Italian vase painting offers a number of Medea-representations that are connected to Euripides' play — the most famous is a krater in Munich. However, these representations always differ considerably from the plots of the play or are too general to support any direct link to Euripides' play. But the violent and powerful character of Medea, and her double nature — both loving and destructive — became a standard for later periods of antiquity, and seems to have inspired numerous adaptations.


title: Medea (play)

text: With the text's rediscovery in 1st-century Rome (the play was adapted by the tragedians Ennius, Lucius Accius, Ovid, Seneca the Younger and Hosidius Geta, among others); again in 16th-century Europe; and with the development of modern literary criticism: "Medea" has provoked multifarious reactions.


title: Medea (play)

text: The form of the play differs from many other Greek tragedies by its simplicity. Most scenes involve only Medea and someone else. The Chorus, here representing the women of Corinth, is usually involved alongside them. The simple encounters highlight Medea's skill and determination in manipulating powerful male figures. The play is also the only Greek tragedy in which a kin-killer makes it unpunished to the end of the play, and the only one about child-killing in which the deed is performed in cold blood as opposed to in a state of temporary madness.


title: Medea (play)

text: The character of Medea has variously been interpreted as either fulfilling her role of "mother and wife" and as acting as a "proto-feminist".


title: Medea (play)

text: Feminist readings have interpreted the play as either a "sympathetic exploration" of the "disadvantages of being a woman in a patriarchal society", or as an expression of misogynist attitudes.


title: Medea (play)

text: In conflict with this sympathetic undertone (or reinforcing a more negative reading) is Medea's barbarian identity, which some argue could antagonize a 5th-century BC Greek audience.


title: Medea (play)

text: It can be argued that in the play Euripides portrays Medea out to be an enraged woman who kills her children to get revenge on her husband Jason because of his betrayal of their marriage. A competing interpretation is that Medea kills her children out of kindness because she cares and worries for them and their well-being. Once Medea commits to her plan to kill Kreon and Jason’s new bride, she knows her children are in danger of being murdered. Medea is not paranoid. In another version of the myth, the people of Korinth kill her children to avenge the deaths of Kreon and his daughter Glauke. At this time in myth and history, helping one’s friends and hurting one’s enemies was considered a virtue. Thus, by this ethic, the Korinthians will do right by avenging their king and princess. Conversely, a focus on Medea’s rage leads to the interpretation that “Medea becomes the personification of vengeance, with her humanity ‘mortified’ and ‘sloughed off’” (Cowherd, 129). In this view Medea is inhuman and her suffering is self-inflicted just as Jason argues in his debate with her. And yet, if we see events through Medea’s eyes, we view a wife intent on vengeance and a mother concerned about her children’s safety and the life they can be expected to live. Thus, Medea as wife kills Kreon and Glauke in the act of vengeance. Medea as a mother thinks that her children will be better off killed by her kind hand than left to suffer at the hands of an enemy, intent on vengeance. And so, Medea saves her children from this brutality and a worse fate by killing them herself, providing them with as peaceful an outcome as she can.


title: Medea (play)

text: "Medea" is centered on Medea's calculated desire for revenge against her unfaithful husband. The play is set in Corinth some time after Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, where he met Medea. The play begins with Medea in a blind rage towards Jason for arranging to marry Glauce, the daughter of king Creon. The nurse, overhearing Medea's grief, fears what she might do to herself or her children.


title: Medea (play)

text: Creon, in anticipation of Medea's wrath, arrives and reveals his plans to send her into exile. Medea pleads for one day's delay and eventually Creon acquiesces. In the next scene Jason arrives to explain his rationale for his apparent betrayal. He explains that he couldn't pass up the opportunity to marry a royal princess, as Medea is only a barbarian woman, but hopes to someday join the two families and keep Medea as his mistress. Medea, and the chorus of Corinthian women, do not believe him. She reminds him that she left her own people for him (""I rescued you [...] I betrayed both my father and my house [...] now where should I go?""), and that she saved him and slew the dragon. Jason promises to support her after his new marriage (""If you wish me to give you or the children extra money for your trip into exile, tell me; I'm ready to give it with a lavish hand""), but Medea spurns him: ""Go on, play the bridegroom! Perhaps [...] you've made a match you'll one day have cause to lament.""


title: Medea (play)

text: In the following scene Medea encounters Aegeus, king of Athens. He reveals to her that despite his marriage he is still without children. He visited the oracle who merely told him that he was instructed "not to unstop the wineskin’s neck". Medea relays her current situation to him and begs for Aegeus to let her stay in Athens if she gives him drugs to end his infertility. Aegeus, unaware of Medea's plans for revenge, agrees.


title: Medea (play)

text: Medea then returns to plotting the murders of Glauce and Creon. She decides to poison some golden robes (a family heirloom and gift from the sun god Helios, her grandfather) and a coronet, in hopes that the bride will not be able to resist wearing them, and consequently be poisoned. Medea resolves to kill her own children as well, not because the children have done anything wrong, but because she feels it is the best way to hurt Jason. She calls for Jason once more and, in an elaborate ruse, apologizes to him for overreacting to his decision to marry Glauce. When Jason appears fully convinced that she regrets her actions, Medea begins to cry in mourning of the exile. She convinces Jason to allow their two sons to give gifts to Glauce in hopes that Creon to lift the exile against the children. Eventually Jason agrees.


title: Medea (play)

text: In the next scene a messenger recounts Glauce and Creon's deaths. When the children arrived with the robes and coronet, Glauce gleefully put them on and went to find her father. The poison overtook her and she fell to the floor, dying horribly and painfully. Creon clutched her tightly as he tried to save her and, by coming in contact with the robes and coronet, was poisoned and died as well.


title: Medea (play)

text: While Medea is pleased with her current success she decides to take it one step further. Since Jason brought shame upon her for trying to start a new family, Medea resolves to destroy the family he was willing to give up by killing their sons. Medea does have a moment of hesitation when she considers the pain that her children's deaths will put her through. However, she steels her resolve to cause Jason the most pain possible and rushes offstage with a knife to kill her children. Determined to stop Medea, the chorus runs after her only to hear the children scream. Jason then rushes onto the scene to confront Medea about murdering Creon and Glauce, and he quickly discovers that his children have been killed as well. Medea then appears above the stage with the bodies of her children in a chariot given to her by the sun god Helios. When this play was put on, this scene was accomplished using the "mechane" device usually reserved for the appearance of a god or goddess. She confronts Jason, reveling in his pain at being unable to ever hold his children again:


title: Medea (play)

text: Although Jason calls Medea most hateful to gods and men, the fact that the chariot is given to her by Helios indicates that she still has the gods on her side. As Bernard Knox points out, Medea's last scene with concluding appearances parallels that of a number of indisputably divine beings in other plays by Euripides. Just like these gods, Medea “interrupts and puts a stop to the violent action of the human being on the lower level, … justifies her savage revenge on the grounds that she has been treated with disrespect and mockery, … takes measures and gives orders for the burial of the dead, prophesies the future,” and “announces the foundation of a cult.”


title: Medea (play)

text: She then escapes to Athens in the divine chariot. The chorus is left contemplating the will of Zeus in Medea's actions:


title: Medea (play)

text: This deliberate murder of her children by Medea appears to be Euripides' invention, although some scholars believe Neophron created this alternate tradition. Her filicide would go on to become the standard for later writers. Pausanias, writing in the late 2nd century AD, records five different versions of what happened to Medea's children after reporting that he has seen a monument for them while traveling in Corinth.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Lydia Marie Hearst-Shaw (born September 19, 1984) is an American fashion model, actress, socialite, and lifestyle blogger. She is a great-granddaughter of newspaper publisher and politician William Randolph Hearst and a daughter of the author and actress Patty Hearst.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Hearst-Shaw was born in 1984, the daughter of actress Patty Hearst and Bernard L. Shaw, a former San Francisco police officer. She attended Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut until 2003, when she began fashion modeling.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Photographer Steven Meisel "discovered" Hearst and shot her first magazine cover for "Vogue Italia" in April 2004. Since then, she has appeared internationally on a variety of magazine covers such as "Vogue", "Harper's Bazaar", "Elle", "Marie Claire", "GQ", "L'Officiel", and "Esquire". She has worked with several well-known photographers such as Meisel, Patrick Demarchelier, Ellen Von Unwerth, Mario Testino, Peter Lindbergh, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: In 2008, Hearst was recognized as "Model of the Year" at the Michael Awards, and chosen "Best International Supermodel" at the Madrid Glamour Awards.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Hearst has modeled for fashion designers such as Chanel, Fendi, Catherine Malandrino, Nicole Miller, and Jeremy Scott.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Hearst has appeared in advertising campaigns for Prada, Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta, Sephora, L'Oreal Ferria, DKNY, MYLA Lingerie, H&M, NARS Cosmetics, MAC Cosmetics, Miss Me Jeans, Moschino Cheap & Chic. In 2007, she appeared in Puma's French 77, which led Puma to commission her to design a line of handbags for the collection.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: In Spring of 2012, Swarovski chose Hearst to be its ambassador for its Heart Truth campaign, sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, intended to raise women's awareness about heart health.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Hearst was briefly a columnist for "Page Six", a feature of the Sunday edition of the "New York Post". She also ran a lifestyle and fashion blog.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Hearst made an appearance in the music video for the Miles Fisher cover of "This Must Be the Place". Hearst again starred in a music video in 2012 for Cisco Adler's "Song for All the Girls", where she is graphically murdered by a spin saw. She also has a minor role in Johnny Polygon's "LimoSexSuperstar" video.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Hearst served alongside Anne Vyalitsyna and Naomi Campbell as a supermodel coach for the second edition of Oxygen's "The Face" modeling reality competition. The season premiered on March 5, 2014.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Hearst married Chris Hardwick on August 20, 2016, in Pasadena, California. In August 2021, they announced they were expecting their first child, and on January 29, 2022, their daughter's birth was announced on Instagram.


title: Lydia Hearst

text: Her family's tradition of philanthropy inspired Hearst to become a Smile Ambassador for Operation Smile. In 2012, she received the Smile Award for her dedication to the organization. She also received a humanitarian award at the Catwalk For Charity 2014 event.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Welcome to Marwen is a 2018 American drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the script with Caroline Thompson. It is inspired by Jeff Malmberg's 2010 documentary "Marwencol". The film stars Steve Carell in the lead role, Leslie Mann, Diane Kruger, Merritt Wever, Janelle Monáe, Eiza González, Gwendoline Christie, Leslie Zemeckis, Siobhan Williams and Neil Jackson, and follows the true story of Mark Hogancamp, a man struggling with PTSD who, after being physically assaulted, creates a fictional village to ease his trauma.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: "Welcome to Marwen" was released by Universal Pictures on December 21, 2018. Critics praised the animated segments and performances, particularly Carell's, but criticized the inconsistent tone and screenplay. The film grossed only $13 million worldwide, becoming a box-office bomb.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: A World War II warplane piloted by a doll-like figure is hit by enemy fire and forced to ditch. The pilot's shoes are burned in the landing and he finds women's shoes, which he wears instead. The pilot is confronted by doll-like German soldiers, who taunt him for wearing women's shoes. The Germans threaten to emasculate him, but are killed by a group of doll-like women who come to the pilot's rescue and protect him.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: It is revealed that the scenario is part of an elaborate fantasy created by Mark Hogancamp, using modified fashion dolls in a model village named Marwen. Mark imagines that the dolls are alive and photographs his fantasies to help him cope with acute memory loss and post-traumatic stress disorder from a brutal attack he suffered some time earlier, when he drunkenly told a group of white supremacists about his fetish for wearing women's shoes.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: The dolls correspond to people that he knows in real life: himself as "Cap'n Hogie", the pilot; various female friends as his protectors; and his attackers as German Nazi soldiers. The main villain of Marwen Dejah Thoris, a teal-haired Belgian witch obsessed with Hogie, to the point where she would send any woman who gets too close to him 15,000,000 lightyears into the future with her magic.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Mark finally agrees to appear in court to deliver a victim impact statement after much coaxing from his attorney and friends, but upon seeing his attackers, he imagines them as Nazi soldiers shooting at him, and becomes terrified and flees, causing Judge Martha J. Harter to postpone the hearing.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Mark falls in love with a woman named Nicol who has just moved in across the street, whom he has added to his fantasy. Mark imagines that the doll Nicol is in love with Cap'n Hogie, and that they get married. In real life, Mark proposes marriage to Nicol, who tells him she wishes to remain only friends. Mark is distraught and contemplates suicide.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: In his fantasies, Nicol is shot by a Nazi, who in turn is killed by Cap'n Hogie but brought back to life, along with other Nazi soldiers, by Deja Thoris. Cap'n Hogie realizes that Deja Thoris is both a Nazi spy and the personification of Mark's addiction to the pills that he thought were helping him, but were actually hurting him. Hogie saves Mark by vanquishing Dejah 15,000,000 lightyears into the future, never to be seen again. Mark pours the pills down the sink and vows to break his addiction to them.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Mark attends the rescheduled hearing and delivers his statement. That evening he also attends the exhibition of his work and makes a date with his friend Roberta, who is a sales clerk at the hobby store where he is a frequent customer. The film ends with a photograph of the real Mark Hogancamp, who has a successful career as a photographer.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Most of the cast appears both as characters in the "real world", and as characters in the Marwen world that Mark created, using motion-capture and lending their voice for the animated character.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Ulster County Sheriffs portrayed by Fraser Aitcheson, Trevor Jones, Brad Kelly, Jeff Sanca, and Patrick Sabongui.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: On April 28, 2017, it was announced that Robert Zemeckis would next direct an untitled drama film that would star Steve Carell. On May 19, 2017, it was reported that Leslie Mann and Janelle Monáe had joined the cast, and on May 23, 2017, Eiza González was also added. In June 2017, Diane Kruger joined the cast to portray a villain, while Gwendoline Christie had also signed on. In July 2017, Merritt Wever and Neil Jackson joined the cast of the film. On August 6, 2017, the studio hired German actor Falk Hentschel to play the role of a villain, Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Topf, a Nazi captain to a squad of SS Storm Troopers who terrify the people of Marwen. On August 21, 2017, the director's wife, Leslie Zemeckis, was cast in the film; she plays an actress in a pornographic film that Hogancamp watches, and her Marwen counterpart.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Principal photography on the film began in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on August 14, 2017, and was completed around October 19, 2017.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: The film was released in the United States by Universal Pictures on December 21, 2018. The studio spent $60 million on prints and advertising for the film. The original plan was to spend $120 million, but after early test screenings went poorly, costs were cut.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: "Welcome to Marwen" grossed $10.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $2.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $13.1 million, against a production budget of around $39 million.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "Aquaman", "Second Act" and "Bumblebee", and was projected to gross $7–9 million from 1,900 theaters over its five-day opening weekend. After making $909,000 on its first day (including $190,000 from Thursday night previews), three-day weekend estimates were lowered to $3 million. The film went on to debut to $2.4 million for the weekend, finishing ninth and marking the worst opening of Zemeckis' career. It then made $490,000 on Monday and $1.3 million on Christmas Day for an "awful" five-day total gross of $4.1 million. Following its low opening, insiders estimated the film would lose Universal $50–60 million, the second straight week the studio released a film that was a box-office bomb, following "Mortal Engines". The film made $2.2 million in its second weekend, dropping 5%.


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews and an average score of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""Welcome to Marwen" has dazzling effects and a sadly compelling story, but the movie's disjointed feel and clumsy screenplay make this invitation easy to decline." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it a 57% overall positive score and a 37% "definite recommend."


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Writing for IndieWire, David Ehrlich gave the film a "C" and wrote, "In trying to celebrate the healing powers of art, Zemeckis has created a sometimes fun, often morbidly compelling, and always ill-advised testament to the ways in which those healing powers can create problems of their own." Michael Phillips of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film 1.5 out of 4 stars and said, "The way Zemeckis shapes these stop-motion animation scenes, they're meant to be exciting, funny, scary, a little of everything. But they whack the movie completely off-kilter. We lose the strange, quiet intimacy of Hogancamp's careful manipulation of this world. The real-life scenes don’t feel like Hogancamp's real life; they feel like a Hollywood falsification of it, despite Carell's and Mann's valiant efforts."


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Contrarily, Richard Roeper of "The Chicago Sun-Times" praised the film, giving it 3.5/4 stars and saying, "Leave it to the innovative and greatly skilled veteran director Robert Zemeckis to deliver a beautiful and endearingly eccentric movie based on the life and the imagination of Mark Hogancamp. And leave it to the chameleon everyman Steve Carell to deliver a subtle, layered, empathetic and memorable portrayal of Mark — both the man and the doll."


title: Welcome to Marwen

text: Glenn Garner, writing in "Out", noted that "Zemeckis’ film surprisingly features a prominent and respectful depiction of Hogancamp's gender expansive dress, making it a potentially valuable form of representation for gender nonconforming viewers. It seems a missed opportunity as that detail was largely omitted from the film's marketing."


title: Kristian Nairn

text: Kristian Nairn (born 25 November 1975) is an actor and DJ from Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He is best known for his portrayal of Hodor in the HBO fantasy series "Game of Thrones". More recently, he has played Wee John Feeney on the HBO Max series "Our Flag Means Death".


title: Kristian Nairn

text: Nairn's portrayal of Hodor on "Game of Thrones" was his first acting role; Nairn earned enough to buy his mother a house. He is a progressive house/trance DJ, and used to be the resident DJ of Kremlin, a gay club in Belfast. Since "Game of Thrones" began, Nairn has toured as a DJ with "Rave of Thrones" using musical themes and costumes from the television series. At the end of 2017, he performed the first part of the Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike concerts in Antwerp. He was the DJ during the BlizzCon 2016 anniversary party and BlizzCon 2018 closing festivities. In October 2018, Kristian Nairn appeared in a commercial for eToro that was launched on YouTube, featuring the Internet meme HODL.


title: Kristian Nairn

text: Nairn is an accomplished guitarist. He got the opportunity to play backstage with Megadeth during the Hellfest Open Air Festival in Clisson, France, during June 2018.


title: Kristian Nairn

text: In March 2014, Nairn publicly discussed his gay identity in an interview with a "Game of Thrones" fan site. He stated: "When you talk about 'the gay community,' you are talking about MY community. [...] I’ve never hidden my sexuality from anyone, my whole life in fact, and I’ve been waiting for someone to ask about it in an interview." He went on to say that his sexuality is "a very small part of who I am on the whole, but nonetheless, in this day and age, it's important to stand up and be counted." In 2015 Nairn clarified in an interview with "Chicago Go Pride" that it was really his "second coming out. I’d done it when I was 14 and didn’t think I’d have to do it again. Especially since every single person in my life knew."


title: Alevism

text: Alevism or Anatolian Alevism (; , "Anadolu Aleviliği" or "Kızılbaşlık"; ; ) is a local Islamic tradition, whose adherents follow the mystical Alevi Islamic ("bāṭenī") teachings of Haji Bektash Veli, who is supposed to have taught the teachings of Ali and the Twelve Imams. Differing from Sunnism and other Twelver Shia, Alevis have no binding religious dogmas, and teachings are passed on by a spiritual leader. They acknowledge the six articles of faith of Islam, but may differ regarding their interpretation. Adherents of Alevism are found primarily in Turkey and estimates of the percentage of Turkey's population that are Alevi include between 4% and 15%.


title: Alevism

text: "Alevi" () is generally explained as referring to Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. The name represents a Turkish form of the word "‘Alawi" () "of or pertaining to Ali".


title: Alevism

text: A minority viewpoint is that of the Ishikists, who assert, "Alevi" was derived from "Alev" ("flame" in Turkish) in reference to fire which is extensively used in Alevi rituals. According to them the use of candles is based on Quran chapter 24, verses 35 and 36: ""God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The example of His light is like a niche within which there is a lamp, the lamp is encased in a glass, the glass is like a radiant planet, which is lit from a blessed olive tree that is neither of the east nor of the west, its oil nearly gives off light even if not touched by fire. Light upon light, God guides to His light whom He pleases. And God sets forth examples for the people, and God is aware of all things. (Lit is such a Light) in houses, which God has permitted to be raised to honor; for the celebration, in them, of His name: In them is He glorified in the mornings and in the evenings, (again and again)."")


title: Alevism

text: According to scholar Soner Çağaptay, Alevism is a "relatively unstructured interpretation of Islam". Journalist Patrick Kingsley states that for some self-described Alevi, their religion is "simply a cultural identity, rather than a form of worship".


title: Alevism

text: Many teachings are based on an orally transmitted tradition, traditionally kept secret from outsiders (but now widely accessible). Alevis commonly profess the Islamic shahada, but adding "Ali is the "friend" of God".


title: Alevism

text: The basis for Alevis' most distinctive beliefs is found in the Buyruks (compiled writings and dialogues of Sheikh Safi-ad-din Ardabili, and other worthies). Also included are hymns "(nefes)" by figures such as Shah Ismail or Pir Sultan Abdal, stories of Hajji Bektash and other lore.


title: Alevism

text: The Alevi beliefs among Turkish Alevis and Kurdish Alevis diverge as Kurdish Alevis put more emphasis on Pir Sultan Abdal than Haji Bektash Veli and Kurdish Alevism is rooted more in nature veneration.


title: Alevism

text: In Alevi cosmology, God is also called Al-Haqq (the Truth) or referred to as Allah. God created life, so the created world can reflect His Being.


title: Alevism

text: Alevis believe in the unity of Allah, Muhammad, and Ali, but this is not a trinity composed of God and the historical figures of Muhammad and Ali. Rather, Muhammad and Ali are representations of Allah's light (and not of Allah himself), being neither independent from God, nor separate characteristics of Him.


title: Alevism

text: The phrase "For the love of Allah-Muhammad-Ali" "(Hakk-Muhammed-Ali aşkına)" is common to several Alevi prayers.


title: Alevism

text: Alevis believe in the immortality of the soul, the literal existence of supernatural beings, including good and bad angels ("melekler"/"şeytanlar"), bad ones as encourager of human's evil desires ("nefs"), and jinn ("cinler"), as well as the evil eye.


title: Alevism

text: Angels feature in Alevi cosmogony. Although there is no fixed creation narrative among Alevis, it is generally accepted that God created five archangels, who have been invited to the chamber of God. Inside they found a light representing the light of Muhammad and Ali. A recount of the Quranic story, one of the archangels refused to prostrate before the light, arguing, that the light is a created body just like him and therefore inappropriate to worship. He remains at God's service, but rejects the final test and turns back to darkness. From this primordial decline, the devil's enmity towards Adam emerged. (The archangels constitute of the same four archangels as within orthodox Islam. The fifth archangel namely Azazil fell from grace, thus not included among the canonical archangels apart from this story)


title: Alevism

text: Another story features the archangel Gabriel ("Cebrail"), who is asked by God, who they are. Gabriel answers: "I am I and you are you". Gabriel gets punished for his haughty answer and is sent away, until Ali reveals a secret to him. When God asks him again, he answers: "You are the creator and I am your creation". Afterwards, Gabriel was accepted and introduced to Muhammad and Ali.


title: Alevism

text: Like Islam, all Alevis acknowledge at least the four scriptures revealed from heaven. Additionally, Alevis don't mind to look to other religious books outside the four major ones as sources for their beliefs including Hadiths, Nahjul Balagha and Buyruks. Alevism also acknowledges the Islamic prophet Mohammed. Unlike Sunnis and Shia, Alevis do not regard interpretations of the Quran today as binding or infallible, since the true meaning the Quran is considered to be taken as a secret by Ali and must be taught by a teacher, who transmits the teachings of Ali ("Buyruk") to his disciple.


title: Alevism

text: The Twelve Imams are part of another common Alevi belief. Each Imam represents a different aspect of the world. They are realized as twelve services or "On İki Hizmet" which are performed by members of the Alevi community. Each Imam is believed to be a reflection of Ali ibn Abu Talib, the first Imam of the Shi'ites, and there are references to the "First Ali" "(Birinci Ali)," Imam Hasan the "Second 'Ali" "(İkinci Ali)," and so on up to the "Twelfth 'Ali" "(Onikinci Ali)," Imam Mehdi. The Twelfth Imam is hidden and represents the Messianic Age.


title: Alevism

text: There are two sides to creation, one from a spiritual center to plurality, another from plurality to the spiritual center. Plurality is the separation of pure consciousness from the divine source. It is seen as a curtain alienating creation from the divine source and an illusion which called the "Zāherī" or "exoteric" side to reality. The hidden or true nature of creation is called the "bāṭenī" or the "esoteric."


title: Alevism

text: The plurality in nature is attributed to the infinite potential energy of Kull-i Nafs when it takes corporeal form as it descends into being from Allah. During the Cem ceremony, the cantor or "aşık" sings:


title: Alevism

text: This is sung as a reminder that the reason for creation is love, so that the followers may know themselves and each other and that they may love that which they know.


title: Alevism

text: Linked to the concept of the Prototypical Human is that of the "Perfect Human Being" "(Insan-i Kamil)." Although it is common to refer to Ali and Haji Bektash Veli or the other Alevi saints as manifestations of the perfect human being, the Perfect Human Being is also identified with our true identity as pure consciousness, hence the Qur'anic concept of human beings not having original sin, consciousness being pure and perfect. The human task is to fully realize this state while still in material human form.


title: Alevism

text: The perfect human being is also defined in practical terms, as one who is in full moral control of his or her hands, tongue and loins "(eline diline beline sahip)"; treats all kinds of people equally "(yetmiş iki millete aynı gözle bakar)"; and serves the interests of others. One who has achieved this kind of enlightenment is also called ""eren"" or ""münevver" (mūnavvar)."


title: Alevism

text: According to "The President of the Islamic-Alevi Religious Services" Dede İzzettin Doğan, ""Alevism"" is simply a tasawwufī-bāṭenī interpretation "(tafsir)" of Islam.


title: Alevism

text: Alevi used to be grouped as ("redheads"), a generic term used by Sunni Muslims in the Ottoman Empire for the various Shia sects from the 15th century. Many other names exist (often for subgroupings), among them Tahtacı "Woodcutters", "Bards" and .


title: Alevism

text: Sources differ on how important formal doctrine is among contemporary Alevi. According to scholar Russell Powell there is a tradition of informal "Dede" courts within the Alevi society, but regarding Islamic jurisprudence or "fiqh" there has been "little scholarship on Alevi influences" in it.


title: Alevism

text: Other sources put more emphasis on creed and doctrine. Alevīs follow Tasawwufī-Batiniyya aqidah (creed) of Maymūn’al-Qāddāhī according to one source (Dede İzzettin Doğan). In contrast the Sunni majority of Turkey's population follows Maturidi aqidah of the Hanafi fiqh and Ash'ari aqidah of the Shafi'i fiqh. According to another source, Alevi aqidah "(creed or theological convictions)" is based upon a syncretic fiqh system called as "Batiniyya-Sufism/Ismailism" which incorporates some sentiments of "Sevener-Qarmatians," originally introduced by "Abu’l-Khāttāb Muhammad ibn Abu Zaynab al-Asadī", and later developed by Maymun al-Qāddāh and his son ʿAbd Allāh ibn Maymun, and "Mu'tazila" with a strong belief in the Twelve Imams.


title: Alevism

text: The Alevi spiritual path ("yol") is commonly understood to take place through four major life-stages, or "gates".


title: Alevism

text: These may be further subdivided into "four gates, forty levels" ("Dört Kapı Kırk Makam"). The first gate (religious law) is considered elementary (and this may be perceived as subtle criticism of other Muslim traditions).


title: Alevism

text: Most Alevi activity takes place in the context of the second gate "(spiritual brotherhood)," during which one submits to a living spiritual guide "(dede, pir, mürşid)." The existence of the third and fourth gates is mostly theoretical, though some older Alevis have apparently received initiation into the third.


title: Alevism

text: A Dede (literally meaning grandfather) is a traditional leader that is claimed to be from the lineage of Muhammad that performs ritual baptisms for newborns, officiates at funerals, and organises weekly gatherings at cemevis.


title: Alevism

text: Alevi religious, cultural and other social activities take place in assembly houses ("Cemevi"). The ceremony's prototype is the Muhammad's nocturnal ascent into heaven, where he beheld a gathering of forty saints ("Kırklar Meclisi"), and the Divine Reality made manifest in their leader, Ali.


title: Alevism

text: The Cem ceremony features music, singing, and dancing ("") in which both women and men participate. Rituals are performed in Turkish, Zazaki, Kurmanji and other local languages.


title: Alevism

text: During the "Cem ceremony" the "" plays the Bağlama whilst singing spiritual songs, some of which are centuries old and well known amongst Alevis. Every song, called a "Nefes," has spiritual meaning and aims to teach the participants important lessons. One such song goes thus:


title: Alevism

text: A family of ritual dances characterized by turning and swirling, is an inseparable part of any "cem". "Samāh" is performed by men and women together, to the accompaniment of the Bağlama. The dances symbolize (for example) the revolution of the planets around the Sun (by man and woman turning in circles), and the putting off of one's self and uniting with God.


title: Alevism

text: The Rite of Integration "(görgü cemi)" is a complex ritual occasion in which a variety of tasks are allotted to incumbents bound together by extrafamilial brotherhood "(müsahiplik)," who undertake a dramatization of unity and integration under the direction of the spiritual leader "(dede)."


title: Alevism

text: The love of the creator for the created and vice versa is symbolised in the "Cem ceremony" by the use of fruit juice and/or red wine "[Dem]" which represents the intoxication of the lover in the beloved. During the ceremony "Dem" is one of the twelve duties of the participants. (see above)


title: Alevism

text: At the closing of the cem ceremony the Dede who leads the ceremony engages the participants in a discussion "(chat)," this discussion is called a "sohbet."


title: Alevism

text: Alevis celebrate and commemorate the birth of Ali, his wedding with Fatima, the rescue of Yusuf from the well, and the creation of the world on this day. Various cem ceremonies and special programs are held.


title: Alevism

text: The Muslim month of Muharram begins 20 days after Eid ul-Adha (). Alevis observe a fast for the first twelve days. This is called "", "", "", "" or "" "(Mourning of Muharram)". This culminates in the festival of Ashura (), which commemorates the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbala. The fast is broken with a special dish (also called "aşure") prepared from a variety (often twelve) of fruits, nuts, and grains. Many events are associated with this celebration, including the salvation of Husayn's son Ali ibn Husayn from the massacre at Karbala, thus allowing the bloodline of the family of Muhammad to continue.