title: Desperado (Eagles album)

text: The photo shoot took place at the Paramount Ranch, an old film set for Western movies in Malibu Canyon. It was, however, an expensive shoot, and to justify the cost a promotional film for the album was also made at the same time. The film was shot on Super-8, then sepia-tinted, and transferred to videotape. In each process a little video quality is lost, which Frey described as a "nice accident" as it made the video appear aged and more realistic. Henley described the promotional film, like the album itself, as "a commentary on [their] loss of innocence with regard to how the music business really worked".


title: Desperado (Eagles album)

text: Paul Gambaccini of "Rolling Stone" gave the album a positive review on its release in 1973. He wrote: "The beautiful thing about it is that although it is a unified set of songs, it is not a rock opera, a concept album, or anything pretending to be much more than a set of good tunes that just happen to fit together." In conclusion, he wrote: ""Desperado" won't cure your hangover or revalue the dollar, but it will give you many good times. With their second consecutive job well done, the Eagles are on a winning streak." Robert Christgau, however, took the view that "with its barstool-macho equation of gunslinger and guitarschlonger, its on-the-road misogyny, its playing-card metaphors, and its paucity of decent songs, this soundtrack to an imaginary Sam Peckinpah movie is "concept" at its most mindless." AllMusic editor William Ruhlmann praised that Henley had more involvement with the album, but wrote that it "was simultaneously more ambitious and serious-minded than its predecessor and also slighter and less consistent."


title: Desperado (Eagles album)

text: The album is now considered by some critics to be the one of the significant albums of country rock. Music writer John Einarson argued in his book "Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock" that despite its weak initial sales, the album "would set the tone for all the later soft country rock sounds, and impact what would become the foundation of "new country", in both image and music."


title: Desperado (Eagles album)

text: Released in April 1973, the album was not a commercial success initially. It debuted on the US Billboard 200 chart at a lowly number 145 on its week of its release, rising to number 41 in its eighth week on the chart, It remains Eagles' lowest charting album and it produced no hit song, as both singles released from the album, "Tequila Sunrise" and "Outlaw Man", failed to reach top 50 on the main singles chart.


title: Desperado (Eagles album)

text: However, the success of their next album release, "On the Border", as well as subsequent releases, spurred on the sales of the album. It was certified Gold on September 23, 1974 by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) after the release of "On the Border", followed by a double platinum certification on March 20, 2001, indicating shipment of 2 million copies in the United States.


title: Panzerschreck

text: Panzerschreck (lit. "tank fright", "tank's fright" or "tank's bane") was the popular name for the "Raketenpanzerbüchse" 54 ("Rocket Anti-armor Rifle Model 54", abbreviated to RPzB 54), an 88 mm reusable anti-tank rocket launcher developed by Nazi Germany in World War II. Another earlier, official name was "Ofenrohr" ("stove pipe").


title: Panzerschreck

text: The "Panzerschreck" was designed as a lightweight infantry anti-tank weapon and was an enlarged copy of the American bazooka. The weapon was shoulder-launched and fired a fin-stabilized rocket with a shaped-charge warhead. It was made in smaller numbers than the "Panzerfaust", which was a light, disposable anti-tank weapon that used a system not unlike those of recoilless rifles.


title: Panzerschreck

text: The "Panzerschreck" development was initially based on the American "bazooka", captured during the Tunisian campaign, November 1942. The "Panzerschreck" was larger and heavier than its American counterpart – the "Panzerschreck" had an 88 mm calibre, compared to the 60 mm calibre of the bazooka – which meant that it could penetrate thicker armor, but also produced more smoke when firing.


title: Panzerschreck

text: Calibre 88 mm was selected as the existing RPzB. Gr. 4312 for "8.8 cm Raketenwerfer 43" was reused for "Panzerschreck". Warhead and fuzing was carried over, but the rocket motor's housing needed lengthening from to to accommodate the longer rocket motor. "Raketenwerfer 43" had percussion firing, whereas for the "Panzerschreck" an electrical priming was selected, forming standard grenade RPzB. Gr. 4322. Other munitions were developed, including drill dummy, practice live rocket with inert warhead and standard grenade with improved contact system.


title: Panzerschreck

text: The earliest production model of the RPzB 54 was long and weighed about when empty. Unlike the rockets used in American bazookas which extinguished before leaving the tube, the RPzB rockets kept burning for about after exiting the tube. Users were instructed to wear heavy gloves, a protective poncho and a gas mask without a filter to protect them from the heat of the backblast when the weapon was fired. Improvised shields were made to protect the user and in February 1944, the RPzB 54 was fitted with an official blast shield to protect the operator which made the weapon heavier, weighing empty. Small numbers of the shortened "RPzB 54/1" were later produced. It had an improved rocket, a shorter barrel, and a range increased to about .


title: Panzerschreck

text: Firing the RPzB generated copious amounts of smoke both in front of and behind the weapon. Because of the weapon's tube and smoke produced, official documentation named the weapon the "Ofenrohr" ("stove pipe"). This also meant that anti-tank teams were revealed once they fired, making them targets and, therefore, required them to shift positions after firing. This type of system also made it problematic to fire the weapon from inside closed spaces (such as bunkers or houses), filling the room with toxic smoke and revealing the firing location immediately.


title: Panzerschreck

text: Late war German tactical doctrine called for "Panzerschreck" and/or "Panzerfaust" teams to set up in staggered trenches no further than apart. In this way, attacking armor would face anti-tank fire from multiple directions at a distance of no more than . Anti-tank teams were instructed to aim for the thinner side or rear armor whenever possible. Allied armored units frequently attempted to add improvised protection to their tanks, e.g., sandbags, spare track units, logs and so on to protect against HEAT rounds. Another defense was to rig metal mesh and netting around the tank, resembling the German "Schürzen" auxiliary plates. In practice about 1 meter of air gap were required to substantially reduce the penetrating capability of RPzB, thus skirts and sandbags were entirely ineffective against RPzB and Panzerfaust.


title: Panzerschreck

text: In 1944, Germany provided the "Panzerschreck" to Finland, which used it to great effect against Soviet armour. The Finnish name for the weapon was "Panssarikauhu" (literal translation of the German name).


title: Panzerschreck

text: The Italian Social Republic and Hungary also used the "Panzerschreck". Several Italian units became known as skilled anti-tank hunters and the Hungarians used the "Panzerschreck" extensively during Operation Spring Awakening.


title: Khwarazm

text: Khwarazm (; Old Persian: "Hwârazmiya"; , "Xwârazm" or "Xârazm") or Chorasmia () is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by the Karakum Desert, and on the west by the Ustyurt Plateau. It was the center of the Iranian Khwarezmian civilization, and a series of kingdoms such as the Afrighid dynasty and the Anushtegin dynasty, whose capitals were (among others) Kath, Gurganj (now Konye-Urgench) and – from the 16th century on – Khiva. Today Khwarazm belongs partly to Uzbekistan and partly to Turkmenistan.


title: Khwarazm

text: Khwarazm has been known also as "Chorasmia", "Khaurism", "Khwarezm", "Khwarezmia", "Khwarizm", "Khwarazm", "Khorezm", "Khoresm", "Khorasam", "Kharazm", "Harezm", "Horezm", and "Chorezm".


title: Khwarazm

text: The Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi in his "Muʿǧam al-buldan" wrote that the name was a Persian compound of ' (), and ' (), referring to the abundance of cooked fish as a main diet of the peoples of this area.


title: Khwarazm

text: C.E. Bosworth, however, believed the Persian name to be made up of ' ( 'the sun') and ' ( 'earth, land'), designating 'the land from which the sun rises', although a similar etymology is also given for Khurasan. Another view is that the Iranian compound stands for 'lowland' from ' 'low' and ' 'land'. Khwarazm is indeed the lowest region in Central Asia (except for the Caspian Sea to the far west), located on the delta of the Amu Darya on the southern shores of the Aral Sea. Various forms of "" are commonly used also in the Persian Gulf to stand for tidal flats, marshland, or tidal bays (e.g., Khor Musa, Khor Abdallah, Hor al-Azim, Hor al-Himar, etc.)


title: Khwarazm

text: The name also appears in Achaemenid inscriptions as "Huvarazmish", which is declared to be part of the Persian Empire.


title: Khwarazm

text: Some of the early scholars believed Khwarazm to be what ancient Avestic texts refer to as ('; later Middle Persian '). These sources claim that Old Urgench, which was the capital of ancient Khwarazm for many years, was actually Ourva, the eighth land of Ahura Mazda mentioned in the Pahlavi text of Vendidad. However, Michael Witzel, a researcher in early Indo-European history, believes that Airyanem Vaejah was in what is now Afghanistan, the northern areas of which were a part of ancient Khwarazm and Greater Khorasan. Others, however, disagree. University of Hawaii historian Elton L. Daniel believes Khwarazm to be the "most likely locale" corresponding to the original home of the Avestan people, and Dehkhoda calls Khwarazm "the cradle of the Aryan tribe" ().


title: Khwarazm

text: says that the land belonging to the mythical king Afrasiab was first colonised 980 years before Alexander the Great (thus c. 1292 BC, well before the Seleucid era) when the hero of the Iranian epic "Siyavash" came to Khwarazm; his son Kay Khusraw came to the throne 92 years later, in 1200 BC Al-Biruni starts giving names only with the Afrighid line of Khwarazmshahs, having placed the ascension of Afrighids in 616 of the Seleucid era, i.e. in 305 AD


title: Khwarazm

text: Like Sogdia, Khwarazm was an expansion of the Bactria–Margiana culture during the Bronze Age, which later fused with Indo-Iranians during their migrations around 1000 BC. Early Iron Age states arose from this cultural exchange. List of successive cultures in Khwarazm region 3000–500 BC:


title: Khwarazm

text: During the final Saka phase, there were about 400 settlements in Khwarezm. Ruled by the native Afrighid dynasty. It was at this point that Khwarezm entered the historical record with the Achaemenid expansion.


title: Khwarazm

text: An East Iranian language, Khwarezmian was spoken in Khwarezm proper (i.e., the lower Amu Darya region) until soon after the Mongol invasion, when it was replaced by Turkic languages. It was closely related to Sogdian. Other than the astronomical terms used by the native Iranian Khwarezmian speaker Al-Biruni, our other sources of Khwarezmian include al-Zamakhshari's Arabic-Persian–Khwarezmian dictionary and several legal texts that use Khwarezmian terms to explain certain legal concepts.


title: Khwarazm

text: For most of its history, up until the Mongol conquest, the inhabitants of the area were from Iranian stock and they spoke an Eastern Iranian language called Khwarezmian. The famous scientist Al-Biruni, a Khwarezm native, in his "Athar ul-Baqiyah", specifically verifies the Iranian origins of Khwarezmians when he wrote (in Arabic):


title: Khwarazm

text: The area of Khwarezm was under Afrighid and then Samanid control until the 10th century before it was conquered by the Ghaznavids. The Iranian Khwarezmian language and culture felt the pressure of Turkic infiltration from northern Khwarezm southwards, leading to the disappearance of the original Iranian character of the province and its complete Turkicisation today, but Khwarezmian speech probably lasted in upper Khwarezm, the region round Hazarasp, till the end of the 8th/14th century.


title: Khwarazm

text: The Khwarezmian language survived for several centuries after Islam until the Turkification of the region, and so must some at least of the culture and lore of ancient Khwarezm, for it is hard to see the commanding figure of Al-Biruni, a repository of so much knowledge, appearing in a cultural vacuum.


title: Khwarazm

text: The Achaemenid Empire took control of Chorasmia possibly during the reign of Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC, and certainly by the time of King Darius I (ruled 550–486 BC). The son of Cyrus Smerdis/Bardiya became the governor of the region, along with Bactriana, Carmania, and the other eastern provinces of the empire. And the Persian poet Ferdowsi mentions Persian cities like Afrasiab and Chach in abundance in his epic Shahnama. The contact with the Achaemenid Empire had a great influence on the material culture of Chorasmia, starting a period of rich economic and cultural development.


title: Khwarazm

text: Chorasmian troops participated in the Second Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes in the 480 BC, under the command of Achaemenid general and later satrap Artabazos I of Phrygia. By the time of the Persian king Darius III, Khwarazm had already become an independent kingdom.


title: Khwarazm

text: Chorasmia was involved in the conquests of Alexander the Great in Central Asia. When the king of Khwarezm offered friendship to Alexander in 328 BC, Alexander's Greek and Roman biographers imagined the nomad king of a desert waste, but 20th-century Russian archeologists revealed the region as a stable and centralized kingdom, a land of agriculture to the east of the Aral Sea, surrounded by the nomads of Central Asia, protected by its army of mailed horsemen, in the most powerful kingdom northwest of the Amu Darya (the Oxus River of antiquity). The king's emissary offered to lead Alexander's armies against his own enemies, west over the Caspian towards the Black Sea (e.g. Kingdom of Iberia and Colchis). Alexander politely refused.


title: Khwarazm

text: Khwarezm was largely independent during the Seleucid, Greco-Bactrian and Arsacid dynasties. Numerous fortresses were built, and the Khwarazm oasis has been dubbed the "Fifty fortresses oasis". Chorasmia remained relatively sheltered from the interests of the Seleucid Empire or Greco-Bactria, but various elements of Hellenistic art appear in the ruins of Chorasmian cities, particularly at Akchakhan-Kala, and the influence of the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, reflecting the rise of Kushan Empire, appears at Toprak-Kala. The early rulers of Chorasmia first imitated the coinage of the Greco-Bactrian ruler Eucratides I. Parthian artistic influences have also been described.


title: Khwarazm

text: From the 1st century BC, Chorasmia developed original coins inspired from Greco-Bactrian, Parthian, and Indo-Scythian types. Artav (Artabanus), a Chorasmian ruler of the 1st–2nd century AD, whose coins were discovered in the capital city of Toprak-Kala, imitated the type of the Kushan Heraios and were found together with coins of the Kushan rulers Vima Kadphises and Kanishka.


title: Khwarazm

text: From the 2nd century AD, Chorasmia became part of the vast cultural sphere corresponding to the rise of the Kushan Empire in the east.


title: Khwarazm

text: Under Shapur I, the Sasanian Empire spread as far as Khwarezm. Yaqut al-Hamawi verifies that Khwarezm was a regional capital of the Sassanid empire. When speaking of the pre-Islamic ""khosrau" of Khwarezm" (), the Islamic "amir of Khwarezm" (), or even the Khwarezmid Empire, sources such as Al-Biruni and Ibn Khordadbeh and others clearly refer to Khwarezm as being part of the Iranian (Persian) empire. During the reign of Khosrow II, extensive areas of Khwarezm were conquered.


title: Khwarazm

text: The fact that Pahlavi script which was used by the Persian bureaucracy alongside Old Persian, passed into use in Khwarezmia where it served as the first local alphabet about the AD 2nd century, as well as evidence that Khwarezm-Shahs such as ʿAlā al-Dīn Tekish (1172–1200) issued all their orders (both administrative and public) in Persian language, corroborates Al-Biruni's claims. It was also a vassal kingdom during periods of Kushans, Hephthalites and Gokturks power before the coming of the Arabs.


title: Khwarazm

text: Per Al-Biruni, the Afrighids of Kath () were a native Khwarezmian Iranian dynasty which ruled as the Shahs of Khwarezm from 305 to 995 AD. At times they were under Sassanian suzerainty.


title: Khwarazm

text: In 712, Khwarezm was conquered by the Arab Caliphate (Umayyads and Abbasids). It thus came vaguely under Muslim control, but it was not till the end of the 8th century and the beginning of the 9th century that an Afrighid Shah first converted to Islam appearing with the popular convert's name of ʿAbdullah ('slave of God'). In the course of the 10th century—when some geographers such as Istakhri in his "Al-Masalik wa-l-mamalik" mention Khwarezm as part of Khorasan and Transoxiania—the local Ma'munids, based in Gurganj on the left bank of the Amu Darya, grew in economic and political importance due to trade caravans. In 995, they violently overthrew the Afrighids and themselves assumed the traditional title of Khwarazm-Shah.


title: Khwarazm

text: Briefly, the area was under Samanid suzerainty, before it passed to Mahmud of Ghazni in 1017. From then on, Turko-Mongolian invasions and long rule by Turko-Mongol dynasties supplanted the Iranian character of the region although the title of Khwarezm-Shah was maintained well up to the 13th century.


title: Khwarazm

text: The date of the founding of the Khwarazmian dynasty remains debatable. During a revolt in 1017, Khwarezmian rebels murdered Abu'l-Abbas Ma'mun and his wife, Hurra-ji, sister of the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud. In response, Mahmud invaded and occupied the region of Khwarezm, which included Nasa and the "ribat" of Farawa. As a result, Khwarezm became a province of the Ghaznavid Empire from 1017 to 1034. In 1077, the governorship of the province, which since 1042/1043 belonged to the Seljuqs, fell into the hands of Anush Tigin Gharchai, a former Turkic slave of the Seljuq sultan. In 1141, the Seljuq Sultan Ahmed Sanjar was defeated by the Qara Khitai at the battle of Qatwan, and Anush Tigin's grandson Ala ad-Din Atsiz became a vassal to Yelü Dashi of the Qara Khitan.


title: Khwarazm

text: Sultan Ahmed Sanjar died in 1156. As the Seljuk state fell into chaos, the Khwarezm-Shahs expanded their territories southward. In 1194, the last Sultan of the Great Seljuq Empire, Toghrul III, was defeated and killed by the Khwarezm ruler Ala ad-Din Tekish, who conquered parts of Khorasan and western Iran. In 1200, Tekish died and was succeeded by his son, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, who initiated a conflict with the Ghurids and was defeated by them at Amu Darya (1204). Following the sack of Khwarizm, Muhammad appealed for aid from his suzerain, the Qara Khitai who sent him an army. With this reinforcement, Muhammad won a victory over the Ghorids at Hezarasp (1204) and forced them out of Khwarizm.


title: Khwarazm

text: The Khwarezmid Empire ruled over all of Persia in the early 13th century under Shah ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muhammad II (1200–1220). From 1218 to 1220, Genghis Khan conquered Central Asia including the Kara-Khitai Khanate, thus ending the Khwarezmid Empire. Sultan Muhammad died after retreating from the Mongols near the Caspian Sea, while his son Jalal ad-Din, after being defeated by Genghis Khan at the Battle of Indus, sought refuge with the Delhi Sultanate, and was later assassinated after various attempts to defeat the Mongols and the Seljuks.


title: Khwarazm

text: In 1360 there arose in Ḵwarazm an independent minor dynasty of Qunghrat Turks, the Ṣūfīs, but Solaymān Ṣūfī was crushed by Timur in 1388.


title: Khwarazm

text: The Islamization of Khwarazm was reflected in the creation of literary, scientific and religious works and in the translation of Arabic works into the Turkic language. In the Suleymaniye Library in Istanbul, the Koran is kept with an interlinear translation into Turkic, written in Khwarazm and dated (January – February 1363).


title: Khwarazm

text: The region of Khwarezm was split between the White Horde and Jagatai Khanate, and its rebuilt capital Gurganj (modern Kunya Urgench, "Old Gorganj" as opposed to the modern city of Urgench some distance away) again became one of the largest and most important trading centers in Central Asia. In the mid-14th century Khwarezm gained independence from the Golden Horde under the Sufid dynasty. However, Timur regarded Khwarezm as a rival to Samarkand, and over the course of five campaigns, destroyed Urganch in 1388.


title: Khwarazm

text: Control of the region was disputed by the Timurids and the Golden Horde, but in 1511 it passed to a new, local Uzbek dynasty, the ʿArabshahids.


title: Khwarazm

text: This, together with a shift in the course of the Amu-Darya, caused the center of Khwarezm to shift to Khiva, which became in the 16th century the capital of the Khanate of Khiva, ruled over by the dynasty of the Arabshahids.


title: Khwarazm

text: Khiva Khanate is the name of Khwarazm adopted in the Russian historical tradition during the period of its existence (1512–1920). The Khiva Khanate was one of the Uzbek khanates. The term "Khiva Khanate" was used for the state in Khwarazm that existed from the beginning of the 16th century until 1920. The term "Khiva Khanate" was not used by the locals, who used the name Khvarazm. In Russian sources the term Khiva Khanate began to be used from the 18th century.


title: Khwarazm

text: The rumors of gold on the banks of the Amu Darya during the reign of Russia's Peter the Great, together with the desire of the Russian Empire to open a trade route to the Indus (modern day Pakistan), prompted an armed trade expedition to the region, led by Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky, which was repelled by Khiva.


title: Khwarazm

text: During the reign of the Uzbek Khan Said Muhammad Khan (1856–1864) in the 1850s, for the first time in the history of Khwarazm, a general population census of Khwarazm was carried out.


title: Khwarazm

text: It was under Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III that serious efforts to annex the region started. One of the main pretexts for Russian military expeditions to Khiva was to free Russian slaves in the khanate and to prevent future slave capture and trade.


title: Khwarazm

text: Early in The Great Game, Russian interests in the region collided with those of the British Empire in the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839.


title: Khwarazm

text: The Khanate of Khiva was gradually reduced in size from Russian expansion in Turkestan (including Khwarezm) and, in 1873, a peace treaty was signed that established Khiva as a quasi-independent Russian protectorate.


title: Khwarazm

text: In 1912, the Khiva Khanate numbered up to 440 schools and up to 65 madrasahs with 22,500 students. More than half of the madrasahs were in the city of Khiva (38).


title: Khwarazm

text: After the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution, a short-lived Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (later the Khorezm SSR) was created out of the territory of the old Khanate of Khiva, before in 1924 it was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union, with the former Khanate divided between the new Turkmen SSR, Uzbek SSR and Karakalpakstan ASSR (initially part of Kazakh ASSR as Karakalpak Oblast).


title: Khwarazm

text: The larger historical area of Khwarezm is further divided. Northern Khwarezm became the Uzbek SSR, and in 1925 the western part became the Turkmen SSR. Also, in 1936 the northwestern part became the Kazakh SSR. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these became Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan respectively. Many of the ancient Khwarezmian towns now lie in Xorazm Region, Uzbekistan.


title: Khwarazm

text: Today, the area that was Khwarezm has a mixed population of Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Turkmens, Tajiks, Tatars, and Kazakhs.


title: Khwarazm

text: Khwarezm and her cities appear in Persian literature in abundance, in both prose and poetry. Dehkhoda for example defines the name Bukhara itself as "full of knowledge", referring to the fact that in antiquity, Bukhara was a scientific and scholarship powerhouse. Rumi verifies this when he praises the city as such.


title: Khwarazm

text: Other examples illustrate the eminent status of Khwarezmid and Transoxianian cities in Persian literature in the past 1500 years:


title: Khwarazm

text: Yaqut al-Hamawi, who visited Khwarezm and its capital in 1219, wrote: "I have never seen a city more wealthy and beautiful than Gurganj". The city, however, was destroyed during several invasions, in particular when the Mongol army broke the dams of the Amu Darya, which flooded the city. He reports that for every Mongol soldier, four inhabitants of Gurganj were killed. Najmeddin Kubra, the great Sufi master, was among the casualties. The Mongol army that devastated Gurganj was estimated to have been near 80,000 soldiers. The verse below refers to an early previous calamity that fell upon the region:


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of "Lieder" (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine was born on 13 December 1797, in Düsseldorf, in what was then the Duchy of Berg, into a Jewish family. He was called "Harry" in childhood but became known as "Heinrich" after his conversion to Lutheranism in 1825. Heine's father, Samson Heine (1764–1828), was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as "Betty"), "née" van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heinrich was the eldest of four children. He had a sister, Charlotte (later ), and two brothers, Gustav (later Baron Heine-Geldern and publisher of the Viennese newspaper ""), and Maximilian, who became a physician in Saint Petersburg. Heine was also a third cousin once removed of philosopher and economist Karl Marx, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland, with whom he became a frequent correspondent in later life.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Düsseldorf at the time was a town with a population of around 16,000. The French Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars involving Germany complicated Düsseldorf's political history during Heine's childhood. It had been the capital of the Duchy of Jülich-Berg, but was under French occupation at the time of his birth. It then passed to the Elector of Bavaria before being ceded to Napoleon in 1806, who turned it into the capital of the Grand Duchy of Berg, one of three French states he established in Germany. It was first ruled by Joachim Murat, then by Napoleon himself. Upon Napoleon's downfall in 1815 it became part of Prussia.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Thus Heine's formative years were spent under French influence. The adult Heine would always be devoted to the French for introducing the Napoleonic Code and trial by jury. He glossed over the negative aspects of French rule in Berg: heavy taxation, conscription, and economic depression brought about by the Continental Blockade (which may have contributed to his father's bankruptcy). Heine greatly admired Napoleon as the promoter of revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality and loathed the political atmosphere in Germany after Napoleon's defeat, marked by the conservative policies of Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich, who attempted to reverse the effects of the French Revolution.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine's parents were not particularly devout. They sent him as a young child to a Jewish school where he learned a smattering of Hebrew, but thereafter he attended Catholic schools. Here he learned French, which became his second language – although he always spoke it with a German accent. He also acquired a lifelong love for Rhenish folklore.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In 1814 Heine went to a business school in Düsseldorf where he learned to read English, the commercial language of the time. The most successful member of the Heine family was his uncle Salomon Heine, a millionaire banker in Hamburg. In 1816 Heine moved to Hamburg to become an apprentice at Heckscher & Co, his uncle's bank, but displayed little aptitude for business. He learned to hate Hamburg, with its commercial ethos, but it would become one of the poles of his life alongside Paris.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: When he was 18 Heine almost certainly had an unrequited love for his cousin Amalie, Salomon's daughter. Whether he then transferred his affections (equally unsuccessfully) to her sister Therese is unknown. This period in Heine's life is not clear but it seems that his father's business deteriorated, making Samson Heine effectively the ward of his brother Salomon.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Salomon realised that his nephew had no talent for trade, and it was decided that Heine should enter law. So, in 1819, Heine went to the University of Bonn (then in Prussia). Political life in Germany was divided between conservatives and liberals. The conservatives, who were in power, wanted to restore things to the way they were before the French Revolution. They were against German unification because they felt a united Germany might fall victim to revolutionary ideas. Most German states were absolutist monarchies with a censored press. The opponents of the conservatives, the liberals, wanted to replace absolutism with representative, constitutional government, equality before the law and a free press.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: At the University of Bonn, liberal students were at war with the conservative authorities. Heine was a radical liberal and one of the first things he did after his arrival was to take part in a parade which violated the Carlsbad Decrees, a series of measures introduced by Metternich to suppress liberal political activity.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine was more interested in studying history and literature than law. The university had engaged the famous literary critic and thinker August Wilhelm Schlegel as a lecturer and Heine heard him talk about the "Nibelungenlied" and Romanticism. Though he would later mock Schlegel, Heine found in him a sympathetic critic for his early verses. Heine began to acquire a reputation as a poet at Bonn. He also wrote two tragedies, "Almansor" and "William Ratcliff", but they had little success in the theatre.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: After a year at Bonn, Heine left to continue his law studies at the University of Göttingen. Heine hated the town. It was part of Hanover, ruled by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the power Heine blamed for bringing Napoleon down.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Here the poet experienced an aristocratic snobbery absent elsewhere. He hated law as the Historical School of law he had to study was used to bolster the reactionary form of government he opposed. Other events conspired to make Heine loathe this period of his life: he was expelled from a student fraternity due to anti-Semitism reasons and he heard the news that his cousin Amalie had become engaged. When Heine challenged another student, Wiebel, to a duel (the first of ten known incidents throughout his life), the authorities stepped in and he was suspended from the university for six months. His uncle then decided to send him to the University of Berlin.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine arrived in Berlin in March 1821. It was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city he had ever visited (its population was about 200,000). The university gave Heine access to notable cultural figures as lecturers: the Sanskritist Franz Bopp and the Homer critic F. A. Wolf, who inspired Heine's lifelong love of Aristophanes. Most important was the philosopher Hegel, whose influence on Heine is hard to gauge. He probably gave Heine and other young students the idea that history had a meaning which could be seen as progressive. Heine also made valuable acquaintances in Berlin, notably the liberal Karl August Varnhagen and his Jewish wife Rahel, who held a leading salon.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Another friend was the satirist Karl Immermann, who had praised Heine's first verse collection, "Gedichte", when it appeared in December 1821. During his time in Berlin Heine also joined the "Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden", a society which attempted to achieve a balance between the Jewish faith and modernity. Since Heine was not very religious in outlook he soon lost interest, but he also began to investigate Jewish history. He was particularly drawn to the Spanish Jews of the Middle Ages. In 1824 Heine began a historical novel, "Der Rabbi von Bacherach", which he never managed to finish.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In May 1823 Heine left Berlin for good and joined his family at their new home in Lüneburg. Here he began to write the poems of the cycle "Die Heimkehr" ("The Homecoming"). He returned to Göttingen where he was again bored by the law. In September 1824 he decided to take a break and set off on a trip through the Harz mountains. On his return he started writing an account of it, "Die Harzreise".


title: Heinrich Heine

text: On 28 June 1825 Heine converted to Protestantism. The Prussian government had been gradually restoring discrimination against Jews. In 1822 it introduced a law excluding Jews from academic posts and Heine had ambitions for a university career. As Heine said in self-justification, his conversion was "the ticket of admission into European culture". In any event, Heine's conversion, which was reluctant, never brought him any benefits in his career.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine now had to search for a job. He was only really suited to writing but it was extremely difficult to be a professional writer in Germany. The market for literary works was small and it was only possible to make a living by writing virtually non-stop. Heine was incapable of doing this so he never had enough money to cover his expenses. Before finding work, Heine visited the North Sea resort of Norderney which inspired the free verse poems of his cycle "Die Nordsee".


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In Hamburg one evening in January 1826 Heine met , who would be his chief publisher for the rest of his life. Their stormy relationship has been compared to a marriage. Campe was a liberal who published as many dissident authors as he could. He had developed various techniques for evading the authorities. The laws of the time stated that any book under 320 pages had to be submitted to censorship (the authorities thought long books would cause little trouble as they were unpopular). One way around censorship was to publish dissident works in large print to increase the number of pages beyond 320.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: The censorship in Hamburg was relatively lax but Campe had to worry about Prussia, the largest German state and largest market for books (it was estimated that one-third of the German readership was Prussian). Initially, any book which had passed the censor in a German state was able to be sold in any of the other states, but in 1834 this loophole was closed. Campe was reluctant to publish uncensored books as he had bad experiences with print runs being confiscated. Heine resisted all censorship; this issue became a bone of contention between the two.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: However, the relationship between author and publisher started well: Campe published the first volume of "Reisebilder" ("Travel Pictures") in May 1826. This volume included "Die Harzreise", which marked a new style of German travel-writing, mixing Romantic descriptions of nature with satire. Heine's "" followed in 1827. This was a collection of already published poems. No one expected it to become one of the most popular books of German verse ever published, and sales were slow to start with, picking up when composers began setting Heine's poems as Lieder. For example, the poem "Allnächtlich im Traume" was set to music by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. It contains the ironic disillusionment typical of Heine:


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Starting from the mid-1820s, Heine distanced himself from Romanticism by adding irony, sarcasm, and satire into his poetry, and making fun of the sentimental-romantic awe of nature and of figures of speech in contemporary poetry and literature. An example are these lines:


title: Heinrich Heine

text: The blue flower of Novalis, "symbol for the Romantic movement", also received withering treatment from Heine during this period, as illustrated by the following quatrains from "Lyrisches Intermezzo":


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine became increasingly critical of despotism and reactionary chauvinism in Germany, of nobility and clerics but also of the narrow-mindedness of ordinary people and of the rising German form of nationalism, especially in contrast to the French and the revolution. Nevertheless, he made a point of stressing his love for his Fatherland:


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Plant the black, red, gold banner at the summit of the German idea, make it the standard of free mankind, and I will shed my dear heart's blood for it. Rest assured, I love the Fatherland just as much as you do.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: The first volume of travel writings was such a success that Campe pressed Heine for another. "Reisebilder II" appeared in April 1827. It contains the second cycle of North Sea poems, a prose essay on the North Sea as well as a new work, "Ideen: Das Buch Le Grand", which contains the following satire on German censorship:


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine went to England to avoid what he predicted would be controversy over the publication of this work. In London he cashed a cheque from his uncle for £200 (equal to £ today), much to Salomon's chagrin. Heine was unimpressed by the English: he found them commercial and prosaic, and still blamed them for the defeat of Napoleon.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: On his return to Germany, Cotta, the liberal publisher of Goethe and Schiller, offered Heine a job co-editing a magazine, "Politische Annalen", in Munich. Heine did not find work on the newspaper congenial, and instead tried to obtain a professorship at Munich University, with no success. After a few months he took a trip to northern Italy, visiting Lucca, Florence and Venice, but was forced to return when he received news that his father had died. This Italian journey resulted in a series of new works: "Die Reise von München nach Genua" ("Journey from Munich to Genoa"), "Die Bäder von Lucca" ("The Baths of Lucca") and "Die Stadt Lucca" ("The Town of Lucca").


title: Heinrich Heine

text: "Die Bäder von Lucca" embroiled Heine in controversy. The aristocratic poet August von Platen had been annoyed by some epigrams by Immermann which Heine had included in the second volume of "Reisebilder". He counter-attacked by writing a play, "Der romantische Ödipus", which included anti-Semitic jibes about Heine. Heine was stung and responded by mocking Platen's homosexuality in "Die Bäder von Lucca". This back-and-forth ad hominem literary polemic has become known as the .


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine left Germany for France in 1831, settling in Paris for the remainder of his life. His move was prompted by the July Revolution of 1830 that had made Louis-Philippe the "Citizen King" of the French. Heine shared liberal enthusiasm for the revolution, which he felt had the potential to overturn the conservative political order in Europe. Heine was also attracted by the prospect of freedom from German censorship and was interested in the new French utopian political doctrine of Saint-Simonianism. Saint-Simonianism preached a new social order in which meritocracy would replace hereditary distinctions in rank and wealth. There would also be female emancipation and an important role for artists and scientists. Heine frequented some Saint-Simonian meetings after his arrival in Paris but within a few years his enthusiasm for the ideology – and other forms of utopianism – had waned.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine soon became a celebrity in France. Paris offered him a cultural richness unavailable in the smaller cities of Germany. He made many famous acquaintances (the closest were Gérard de Nerval and Hector Berlioz) but he always remained something of an outsider. He had little interest in French literature and wrote everything in German, subsequently translating it into French with the help of a collaborator.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In Paris, Heine earned money working as the French correspondent for one of Cotta's newspapers, the "Allgemeine Zeitung". The first event he covered was the Salon of 1831. His articles were eventually collected in a volume entitled "Französische Zustände" ("Conditions in France"). Heine saw himself as a mediator between Germany and France. If the two countries understood one another there would be progress. To further this aim he published "De l'Allemagne" ("On Germany") in French (begun 1833). In its later German version, the book is divided into two: "Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland" ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany") and "Die romantische Schule" ("The Romantic School"). Heine was deliberately attacking Madame de Staël's book "De l'Allemagne" (1813) which he viewed as reactionary, Romantic and obscurantist. He felt de Staël had portrayed a Germany of "poets and thinkers", dreamy, religious, introverted and cut off from the revolutionary currents of the modern world. Heine thought that such an image suited the oppressive German authorities. He also had an Enlightenment view of the past, seeing it as mired in superstition and atrocities. "Religion and Philosophy in Germany" describes the replacement of traditional "spiritualist" religion by a pantheism that pays attention to human material needs. According to Heine, pantheism had been repressed by Christianity and had survived in German folklore. He predicted that German thought would prove a more explosive force than the French Revolution.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine had had few serious love affairs, but in late 1834 he made the acquaintance of a 19-year-old Paris shopgirl, Crescence Eugénie Mirat, whom he nicknamed "Mathilde". Heine reluctantly began a relationship with her. She was illiterate, knew no German, and had no interest in cultural or intellectual matters. Nevertheless, she moved in with Heine in 1836 and lived with him for the rest of his life (they were married in 1841).


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine and his fellow radical exile in Paris, Ludwig Börne, had become the role models for a younger generation of writers who were given the name "Young Germany". They included Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg. They were liberal, but not actively political. Nevertheless, they still fell foul of the authorities.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In 1835, Gutzkow published a novel, "Wally die Zweiflerin" ("Wally the Sceptic"), which contained criticism of the institution of marriage and some mildly erotic passages. In November of that year, the German Diet consequently banned publication of works by the Young Germans in Germany and – on Metternich's insistence – Heine's name was added to their number. Heine, however, continued to comment on German politics and society from a distance. His publisher was able to find some ways of getting around the censors and he was still free, of course, to publish in France.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine's relationship with his fellow dissident Ludwig Börne was troubled. Since Börne did not attack religion or traditional morality like Heine, the German authorities hounded him less although they still banned his books as soon as they appeared.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Börne was the idol of German immigrant workers in Paris. He was also a republican, while Heine was not. Heine regarded Börne, with his admiration for Robespierre, as a puritanical neo-Jacobin and remained aloof from him in Paris, which upset Börne, who began to criticise him (mostly semi-privately). In February 1837, Börne died. When Heine heard that Gutzkow was writing a biography of Börne, he began work on his own, severely critical "memorial" of the man.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: When the book was published in 1840 it was universally disliked by the radicals and served to alienate Heine from his public. Even his enemies admitted that Börne was a man of integrity so Heine's "ad hominem" attacks on him were viewed as being in poor taste. Heine had made personal attacks on Börne's closest friend Jeanette Wohl so Jeannette's husband challenged Heine to a duel. It was the last Heine ever fought – he received a flesh wound in the hip. Before fighting, he decided to safeguard Mathilde's future in the event of his death by marrying her.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine continued to write reports for Cotta's "Allgemeine Zeitung" (and, when Cotta died, for his son and successor). One event which really galvanised him was the 1840 Damascus Affair in which Jews in Damascus had been subject to blood libel and accused of murdering an old Catholic monk. This led to a wave of anti-Semitic persecution.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: The French government, aiming at imperialism in the Middle East and not wanting to offend the Catholic party, had failed to condemn the outrage. On the other hand, the Austrian consul in Damascus had assiduously exposed the blood libel as a fraud. For Heine, this was a reversal of values: reactionary Austria standing up for the Jews while France temporised. Heine responded by dusting off and publishing his unfinished novel about the persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages, "Der Rabbi von Bacherach".


title: Heinrich Heine

text: German poetry took a more directly political turn when the new Frederick William IV ascended the Prussian throne in 1840. Initially it was thought he might be a "popular monarch" and during this honeymoon period of his early reign (1840–42) censorship was relaxed. This led to the emergence of popular political poets (so-called "Tendenzdichter"), including Hoffmann von Fallersleben (author of "Deutschlandlied", the German anthem), Ferdinand Freiligrath and Georg Herwegh. Heine looked down on these writers on aesthetic grounds – they were bad poets in his opinion – but his verse of the 1840s became more political too.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine's mode was satirical attack: against the Kings of Bavaria and Prussia (he never for one moment shared the belief that Frederick William IV might be more liberal); against the political torpor of the German people; and against the greed and cruelty of the ruling class. The most popular of Heine's political poems was his least typical, "Die schlesischen Weber" ("The Silesian Weavers"), based on the uprising of weavers in Peterswaldau in 1844.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In October 1843, Heine's distant relative and German revolutionary, Karl Marx, and his wife Jenny von Westphalen arrived in Paris after the Prussian government had suppressed Marx's radical newspaper. The Marx family settled in Rue Vaneau. Marx was an admirer of Heine and his early writings show Heine's influence. In December Heine met the Marxes and got on well with them. He published several poems, including "Die schlesischen Weber", in Marx's new journal "Vorwärts" ("Forwards"). Ultimately Heine's ideas of revolution through sensual emancipation and Marx's scientific socialism were incompatible, but both writers shared the same negativity and lack of faith in the bourgeoisie.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In the isolation he felt after the Börne debacle, Marx's friendship came as a relief to Heine, since he did not really like the other radicals. On the other hand, he did not share Marx's faith in the industrial proletariat and remained on the fringes of socialist circles. The Prussian government, angry at the publication of "Vorwärts", put pressure on France to deal with its authors, and Marx was deported to Belgium in January 1845. Heine could not be expelled from the country because he had the right of residence in France, having been born under French occupation. Thereafter Heine and Marx maintained a sporadic correspondence, but in time their admiration for each other faded. Heine always had mixed feelings about communism. He believed its radicalism and materialism would destroy much of the European culture that he loved and admired.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In the French edition of "Lutetia" Heine wrote, one year before he died: "This confession, that the future belongs to the Communists, I made with an undertone of the greatest fear and sorrow and, oh!, this undertone by no means is a mask! Indeed, with fear and terror I imagine the time, when those dark iconoclasts come to power: with their raw fists they will batter all marble images of my beloved world of art, they will ruin all those fantastic anecdotes that the poets loved so much, they will chop down my Laurel forests and plant potatoes and, oh!, the herbs chandler will use my Book of Songs to make bags for coffee and snuff for the old women of the future – oh!, I can foresee all this and I feel deeply sorry thinking of this decline threatening my poetry and the old world order – And yet, I freely confess, the same thoughts have a magical appeal upon my soul which I cannot resist ... In my chest there are two voices in their favour which cannot be silenced ... because the first one is that of logic ... and as I cannot object to the premise "that all people have the right to eat", I must defer to all the conclusions...The second of the two compelling voices, of which I am talking, is even more powerful than the first, because it is the voice of hatred, the hatred I dedicate to this common enemy that constitutes the most distinctive contrast to communism and that will oppose the angry giant already at the first instance – I am talking about the party of the so-called advocates of nationality in Germany, about those false patriots whose love for the fatherland only exists in the shape of imbecile distaste of foreign countries and neighbouring peoples and who daily pour their bile especially on France".


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In October–December 1843, Heine made a journey to Hamburg to see his aged mother and to patch things up with Campe with whom he had had a quarrel. He was reconciled with the publisher who agreed to provide Mathilde with an annuity for the rest of her life after Heine's death. Heine repeated the trip with his wife in July–October 1844 to see Uncle Salomon, but this time things did not go so well. It was the last time Heine left France. At the time, Heine was working on two linked but antithetical poems with Shakespearean titles: "Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen" ("Germany. A Winter's Tale") and "Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum" ("Atta Troll: A Midsummer Night's Dream"). The former is based on his journey to Germany in late 1843 and outdoes the radical poets in its satirical attacks on the political situation in the country. "Atta Troll" (actually begun in 1841 after a trip to the Pyrenees) mocks the literary failings Heine saw in the radical poets, particularly Freiligrath. It tells the story of the hunt for a runaway bear, Atta Troll, who symbolises many of the attitudes Heine despised, including a simple-minded egalitarianism and a religious view which makes God in the believer's image (Atta Troll conceives God as an enormous, heavenly polar bear). Atta Troll's cubs embody the nationalistic views Heine loathed.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: "Atta Troll" was not published until 1847, but "Deutschland" appeared in 1844 as part of a collection "Neue Gedichte" ("New Poems"), which gathered all the verse Heine had written since 1831. In the same year Uncle Salomon died. This put a stop to Heine's annual subsidy of 4,800 francs. Salomon left Heine and his brothers 8,000 francs each in his will. Heine's cousin Carl, the inheritor of Salomon's business, offered to pay him 2,000 francs a year at his discretion. Heine was furious; he had expected much more from the will and his campaign to make Carl revise its terms occupied him for the next two years.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In 1844, Heine wrote series of musical feuilletons over several different music seasons discussing the music of the day. His review of the musical season of 1844, written in Paris on 25 April of that year, is his first reference to Lisztomania, the intense fan frenzy directed toward Franz Liszt during his performances. However, Heine was not always honorable in his musical criticism. That same month, he wrote to Liszt suggesting that he might like to look at a newspaper review he had written of Liszt's performance "before" his concert; he indicated that it contained comments Liszt would not like. Liszt took this as an attempt to extort money for a positive review and did not meet Heine. Heine's review subsequently appeared on 25 April in "Musikalische Berichte aus Paris" and attributed Liszt's success to lavish expenditures on bouquets and to the wild behaviour of his hysterical female "fans". Liszt then broke relations with Heine. Liszt was not the only musician to be blackmailed by Heine for the nonpayment of "appreciation money". Meyerbeer had both lent and given money to Heine, but after refusing to hand over a further 500 francs was repaid by being dubbed "a music corrupter" in Heine's poem "Die Menge tut es".


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In May 1848, Heine, who had not been well, suddenly fell paralyzed and had to be confined to bed. He would not leave what he called his "mattress-grave" ("Matratzengruft") until his death eight years later. He also experienced difficulties with his eyes. It had been suggested that he suffered from multiple sclerosis or syphilis, although in 1997 it was confirmed through an analysis of the poet's hair that he had suffered from chronic lead poisoning. He bore his sufferings stoically and he won much public sympathy for his plight. His illness meant he paid less attention than he might otherwise have done to the revolutions which broke out in France and Germany in 1848. He was sceptical about the Frankfurt Assembly and continued to attack the King of Prussia.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: When the revolution collapsed, Heine resumed his oppositional stance. At first he had some hope Louis Napoleon might be a good leader in France but he soon began to share the opinion of Marx towards him as the new emperor began to crack down on liberalism and socialism. In 1848 Heine also returned to religious faith. In fact, he had never claimed to be an atheist. Nevertheless, he remained sceptical of organised religion.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: He continued to work from his sickbed: on the collections of poems "Romanzero" and "Gedichte (1853 und 1854)", on the journalism collected in "Lutezia", and on his unfinished memoirs. During these final years Heine had a love affair with the young Camille Selden, who visited him regularly. He died on 17 February 1856 and was interred in the Paris Cimetière de Montmartre.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: His tomb was designed by Danish sculptor Louis Hasselriis. It includes Heine's poem "Where?" () engraved on three sides of the tombstone.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Among the thousands of books burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following the Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, were works by Heinrich Heine. To memorialize the event, one of the most famous lines of Heine's 1821 play "Almansor", spoken by the Muslim Hassan upon hearing that Christian conquerors burned the Quran at the marketplace of Granada, was engraved in the ground at the site: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." ("That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.")


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In 1835, 98 years before Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power in Germany, Heine wrote in his essay "The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany":


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Christianity – and that is its greatest merit – has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ...


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Do not smile at my advice – the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine's writings were abhorred by the Nazis and one of their political mouthpieces, the "Völkischer Beobachter", made noteworthy efforts to attack him. Within the pantheon of the "Jewish cultural intelligentsia" chosen for anti-Semitic demonization, perhaps nobody was the recipient of more National Socialist vitriol than Heinrich Heine. When a memorial to Heine was completed in 1926, the paper lamented that Hamburg had erected a "Jewish Monument to Heine and Damascus...one in which "Alljuda" ruled!". Editors for the "Völkischer Beobachter" referred to Heine's writing as degenerate on multiple occasions as did Alfred Rosenberg. Correspondingly, as part of the effort to dismiss and hide Jewish contribution to German art and culture, all Heine monuments were removed or destroyed during Nazi Germany and Heine's books were suppressed and, from 1940 on, banned.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: The popularity of many songs to Heine's lyrics represented a problem for the policy of silencing and proposals such as bans or rewriting the lyrics were discussed. However, in contrast to an often-made claim, there is no evidence that poems such as "" were included in anthologies as written by an "unknown author".


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Many composers have set Heine's works to music. They include Robert Schumann (especially his Lieder cycle "Dichterliebe"), Friedrich Silcher (who wrote a popular setting of "Die Lorelei", one of Heine's best known poems), Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Edward MacDowell, Sophie Seipt, Charlotte Sporleder, Maria Anna Stubenberg, Clara Schumann and Richard Wagner; and in the 20th century Nikolai Medtner, Lola Carrier Worrell, Hans Werner Henze, Carl Orff, Lord Berners, Paul Lincke, Yehezkel Braun, and Marcel Tyberg.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Heine's play "William Ratcliff" was used for the libretti of operas by César Cui ("William Ratcliff") and Pietro Mascagni ("Guglielmo Ratcliff"). Frank Van der Stucken composed a "symphonic prologue" to the same play.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In 1964, Gert Westphal and the Attila-Zoller Quartet released the vinyl "Heinrich Heine Lyrik und Jazz". In 2006 Philips/Universal launched a republication on CD.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Wilhelm Killmayer set 37 of his poems in his song book "", subtitled "Ein Liederbuch nach Gedichten von Heinrich Heine", in 1994.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Morton Feldman's "I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstemberg" was inspired by a vision he had of the dead Heine as he walked through Heine's old neighborhood in Paris: "One early morning in Paris I was walking along the small street on the Left Bank where Delacroix's studio is, just as it was more than a century ago. I'd read his journals, where he tells of Chopin, going for a drive, the poet Heine dropping in, a refugee from Germany. Nothing had changed in the street. And I saw Heine up at the corner, walking toward me. He almost reached me. I had this intense feeling for him, you know, the Jewish exile. I saw him. Then I went back to my place and wrote my work, "I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstemberg"."


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In the 1890s, amidst a flowering of affection for Heine leading up to the centennial of his birth, plans were made to honor Heine with a memorial; these were strongly supported by one of Heine's greatest admirers, Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria. The empress commissioned a statue from the sculptor Louis Hasselriis. This statue, originally located at Achilleion, Empress Elisabeth's palace in Corfu, was later removed by Kaiser Wilhelm II after he acquired Achilleion in 1907, but it eventually found a home in Toulon. This became the inspiration for Tony Harrison's 1992 film-poem, "The Gaze of the Gorgon".


title: Heinrich Heine

text: Another memorial, a sculpted fountain, was commissioned for Düsseldorf. While at first the plan met with enthusiasm, the concept was gradually bogged down in anti-Semitic, nationalist, and religious criticism; by the time the fountain was finished, there was no place to put it. Through the intervention of German American activists, the memorial was ultimately transplanted into the Bronx, New York City (in Philadelphia already in 1855 was printed the complete edition of Heine's works in German language). While the memorial is known in English as the Lorelei Fountain, Germans refer to it as the Heinrich Heine Memorial. Also, after years of controversy, the University of Düsseldorf was named Heinrich Heine University. Today the city honours its poet with a boulevard (Heinrich-Heine-Allee) and a modern monument.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: In Israel, the attitude to Heine has long been the subject of debate between secularists, who number him among the most prominent figures of Jewish history, and the religious who consider his conversion to Christianity to be an unforgivable act of betrayal. Due to such debates, the city of Tel Aviv delayed naming a street for Heine, and the street finally chosen to bear his name is located in a rather desolate industrial zone rather than in the vicinity of Tel Aviv University, suggested by some public figures as the appropriate location.


title: Heinrich Heine

text: "Ha-‘Ir" ("העיר" – "The City", a left-leaning Tel Aviv magazine) sarcastically suggested that "The Exiling of Heine Street" symbolically re-enacted the course of Heine's own life. Since then, a street in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem and, in Haifa, a street with a beautiful square and a community center have been named after Heine. A Heine Appreciation Society is active in Israel, led by prominent political figures from both the left and right camps. His quote about burning books is prominently displayed in the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. (It is also displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and in the pavement in Frankfurt am Main.)


title: Google Nest

text: Google Nest is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks.


title: Google Nest

text: The Nest brand name was originally owned by Nest Labs, co-founded by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers in 2010. Its flagship product, which was the company's first offering, is the Nest Learning Thermostat, introduced in 2011. The product is programmable, self-learning, sensor-driven, and Wi-Fi-enabled: features that are often found in other Nest products. It was followed by the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in October 2013. After its acquisition of Dropcam in 2014, the company introduced its Nest Cam branding of security cameras beginning in June 2015.


title: Google Nest

text: The company quickly expanded to more than 130 employees by the end of 2012. Google acquired Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion in January 2014, when the company employed 280. As of late 2015, Nest employs more than 1,100 and added a primary engineering center in Seattle.


title: Google Nest

text: After Google reorganized itself under the holding company Alphabet Inc., Nest operated independently of Google from 2015 to 2018. However, in 2018, Nest was merged into Google's home-devices unit led by Rishi Chandra, effectively ceasing to exist as a separate business. In July 2018, it was announced that all Google Home electronics products will henceforth be marketed under the brand Google Nest.


title: Google Nest

text: Nest Labs was founded in 2010 by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers. The idea came when Fadell was building a vacation home and found all of the available thermostats on the market to be inadequate, motivated to bring something better on the market. Early investors in Nest Labs included Shasta Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.


title: Google Nest

text: On January 13, 2014, Google announced plans to acquire Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash. Google completed the acquisition the next day, on January 14, 2014. The company would operate independently from Google's other businesses.


title: Google Nest

text: In June 2014, it was announced that Nest would buy camera startup Dropcam for $555 million. With the purchase, Dropcam became integrated with other Nest products; if the Protect alarm is triggered, the Dropcam can automatically start recording, and the Thermostat can use Dropcam to sense for motion.


title: Google Nest

text: In September 2014, the Nest Thermostat and Nest Protect (a smoke alarm) became available in Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Initially, they were sold in approximately 400 stores across Europe, with another 150 stores to be added by the end of the year. In June 2015, the new Nest Cam, replacing the Dropcam, was announced, together with the second generation of the Nest Protect; there were internal reports that sales of the rebranded camera fell.


title: Google Nest

text: On October 24, 2014, Nest both acquired the hub service Revolv, and discontinued its product line, gaining the expertise of Revolv's staff.


title: Google Nest

text: In August 2015, Google announced that it would restructure its operations under a new parent company, Alphabet Inc., with Nest being separated from Google as a subsidiary of the new holding company.


title: Google Nest

text: In January 2016, some Nest thermostats stopped working, a fault attributed to a software update a fortnight earlier. There were no lawsuits, individual or class-action, due to an arbitration clause in the contract.


title: Google Nest

text: All Revolv smart hubs, costing several hundred dollars, were deliberately remotely bricked on May 15, 2016; notice was posted on the company's website in February. The story became news on April 4. The "lifetime subscription" to Revolv's online service, which had been sold with the hub, was defined by Nest to be the lifetime of the device, which ended May 15.


title: Google Nest

text: Nest's decision to brick the hubs, and its "acerbic" corporate culture, faced substantial criticism from within Google/Alphabet and in press coverage. Many of Nest's staffers came from Dropcam and Revolv, and by November 2015, about 70 of about 1000 staffers had quit, causing management concern. Some countermeasures had been taken in takeover deals, to financially discourage senior people from leaving before set dates. Of the ~100 Dropcam staffers, about half had left by March 2016, when former Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy (who left 8 months after the takeover) wrote a post openly regretting selling his company to Nest. He stated that about 500 people had left (of a 1200-person staff).


title: Google Nest

text: On June 6, 2016, Tony Fadell, the Nest CEO, announced in a blog post that he was leaving the company he founded with Matt Rogers and stepping into an "advisory" role. At this point the Nest acquisition was described by some press as a "disaster" for Google. As of mid-June 2016, Nest's problems were considered symptomatic of the limited market for home automation. According to Frank Gillet of Forrester Research, only 6% of American households possessed internet-connected devices such as appliances, home-monitoring systems, speakers, or lighting. He also predicted this percentage would grow to only 15% by 2021. Furthermore, 72% of respondents in a 2016 British survey conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers did not foresee adopting smart-home technology over the next two to five years.


title: Google Nest

text: On February 7, 2018, it was announced by hardware head Rick Osterloh that Nest had been merged into Google's hardware division, directly alongside units such as Google Home and Chromecast. It would retain its separate Palo Alto headquarters, but Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz would now report to Osterloh, and there were plans for tighter integration with Google platforms and software such as Google Assistant in future products. Shortly after the announcement, co-founder and chief product officer Matt Rogers announced his plans to leave the company.


title: Google Nest

text: On July 18, 2018, Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz stepped down. Nest was merged with Google's home devices team, led by Rishi Chandra. During the Google I/O keynote on May 7, 2019, it was announced that Google Nest will now serve as the blanket branding for all of Google's home products. The Google Home Hub was retroactively renamed Google Nest Hub, while a new and larger version of the product is now available called the Nest Hub Max with both a larger screen and an amplified speaker, for a greater low-end audio experience. Also, product lines such as Chromecast, Google Home, and Google Wifi will now be marketed under the Google Nest brand. In addition, Nest began to deprecate its own internal platforms, announcing the discontinuation of the existing "Works with Nest" program in favor of Google Assistant going forward, and pushing users to migrate themselves from Nest's account system to Google accounts. Google published Nest-specific privacy information outlining a commitment to transparency, not selling personal information, and giving users control of their data.


title: Google Nest

text: In August 2020 Google announced intent to invest $450 million in ADT Inc. for a 6.6% stake in the company. The companies intend to integrate Nest devices with ADT's security monitoring services and eventually make them the “cornerstone of ADT’s smart home offering”, according to Nest. Upon the announcement, the shares of ADT doubled in value and hit all-time high of $17.21.


title: Google Nest

text: As of mid-2022, Google's newer Nest cameras will now work with Amazon Alexa devices such as Amazon Echo Show, Fire TV, and Fire Tablet to view captured security camera footage.


title: Google Nest

text: The Nest Learning Thermostat is an electronic, programmable, and self-learning Wi-Fi-enabled thermostat that optimizes heating and cooling of homes and businesses to conserve energy. It is based on a machine-learning algorithm: for the first weeks users have to regulate the thermostat in order to provide the reference data set. Nest can then learn people's schedules, at which temperature they are used to and when. Using built-in sensors and phones' locations it can shift into energy-saving mode when it realizes nobody is at home.


title: Google Nest

text: The Nest Thermostat is built around an operating system that allows interaction with the thermostat via spinning and clicking of its control wheel (or swiping and tapping on the 2020 Nest Thermostat), which brings up option menus for switching from heating to cooling, access to device settings, energy history, and scheduling. Users can control Nest without a touch screen or other input devices. As the thermostat is connected to the Internet, the company can push updates to fix bugs, improve performance and add additional features. For updates to occur automatically, the thermostat must be connected to Wi‑Fi and the battery must have at least a 3.7 V charge to give enough power to complete the download and installation of the update.


title: Google Nest

text: Nest is currently available for sale in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain. It is, however, compatible with many heating and cooling automation systems in other countries.


title: Google Nest

text: In September 2017, Nest released the Thermostat E, a lower-priced version of the original Nest Thermostat. It is similar in functionality to the standard model, except with a plastic, ceramic-like bezel ring (instead of metal) and a "frosted" overlay for its display. Unlike the original, the screen only activates when the device is being used; these design changes are intended to make the device appear more natural within a home. The Thermostat E also does not feature as many wiring connectors as the higher-end model; Nest stated that this would make it support at least 85% of homes (as opposed to 95% for the standard model).


title: Google Nest

text: In October 2020 Google released the "Nest Thermostat" for the North American market. Pricing was made more accessible and features a mirror-like face, among other significant physical changes. The rotating ring found on other Nest models was replaced with a touch-sensitive strip on the right side of the thermostat body, with swiping and tapping of the touch-sensitive strip being the input method for this model. Learning features have been removed along with support for remote sensors. HVAC compatibility is the same as the Nest Thermostat E, although the bases of the 2020 Nest Thermostat and Nest Thermostat E are not interchangeable.


title: Google Nest

text: In October 2013, Nest announced its second product, the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector. The Nest Protect is available in both black and white (the black is exclusively sold through Nest directly) and also comes in battery or AC-powered models. The Nest Protect features a multicolored light ring which is color-coded to indicate different operations, such as yellow to indicate an early warning or red if an alarm is sounding. The ring also has a motion detector which turns it white briefly when someone passes under to provide illumination. The Nest Protect warns of an alarm sounding briefly before it does. It is also able to communicate with the Nest Thermostat to provide the Auto-Away feature information that someone is present in the house, as well as to shut off the furnace in the event of a fire or carbon monoxide. It is available for sale in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands.


title: Google Nest

text: On April 3, 2014, sales of the Nest Protect were suspended, due to the potential for the alarm feature to be accidentally disabled.


title: Google Nest

text: On June 17, 2015, Nest launched a new version of the Nest Protect (officially termed the "second generation"). The differences from the first generation Nest Protect includes an improved sensor, which uses two wavelengths of light, allowing it to detect both smoldering and flaming fires. The carbon monoxide sensor lasts longer, resulting in the new Nest Protect lasting 10 years, whereas the original Nest Protect lasts seven years. The new Nest Protect can be silenced using a smart device, if not in the US or Canada. When not home, the new Nest Protect will test itself using a built-in microphone. Safety Rewards allows Nest Protect users that have their insurance through American Family and Liberty Mutual to get savings off their bill.


title: Google Nest

text: In June 2014, Nest acquired Dropcam, maker of the Dropcam security camera. In June 2015, Nest announced the Nest Cam, an upgraded and rebranded security camera based on the Dropcam. Features are a 1080p video resolution, a rotating, magnetic stand, night vision, two-way talk, sound and motion alerts, and optional Nest Aware cloud services for an additional fee. It was renamed Nest Cam Indoor following the announcement of the Nest Cam Outdoor in July 2016. In 2021, Google announced the second-generation Nest Cam Indoor, which is either battery-powered or wired.


title: Google Nest

text: Several security flaws with Nest Cam products were reported in March 2017, allowing a burglar to hack the camera's always-on Bluetooth signal and stop recording. Nest released a security update later that month that fixed the vulnerabilities.


title: Google Nest

text: Nest Cam Outdoor was announced in July 2016 and is a version of the Nest Cam adapted for outdoor monitoring. The main differences from the Nest Cam Indoor is in its design which is built to withstand outdoor conditions. In 2021, Google announced the second-generation, battery-powered Nest Cam Outdoor.


title: Google Nest

text: Nest Cam IQ was announced in June 2017 and is a more premium model of their Nest Cam Indoor. It features a 4K camera sensor with HDR. It also comes with the ability to recognize and distinguish between different faces when using the Nest Aware service. It also has several minor upgrades, such as better wi-fi connectivity, brighter infrared LEDs, a more powerful speaker in addition to added microphones, and a close-up tracking view, which zooms in on action occurring within view of the camera.


title: Google Nest

text: A weatherproof outdoor model was announced in September 2017. The indoor version of the Cam IQ also received an update to add Google Assistant functionality to the device in 2018.


title: Google Nest

text: In 2021, the Nest Cam IQ Indoor and Outdoor were both discontinued ahead of Google's planned launch of a new line of security cameras.


title: Google Nest

text: Nest Secure is a home security system announced in September 2017. The system consists of Nest Guard (an alarm, keypad, and motion sensor with embedded microphone), Nest Detect (a door/window and motion sensor), and Nest Tag (a key chain fob). The product was released in November 2017. Nest also has a partnership with Brinks Home Security for a monthly plan so that the Nest Protect system can be professionally monitored.


title: Google Nest

text: In February 2019, the Nest Guard received an update to add Google Assistant, allowing it to effectively double as a smart speaker similar to Google Home for general voice commands. This addition has faced criticism, as the presence of a microphone inside the device was not adequately disclosed in product specifications. Google stated that its inclusion of a microphone was accidentally not included in the listed specifications, and was originally intended to enable future sensor functionality.


title: Google Nest

text: On 19 October 2020, Google confirmed that the production of Nest Secure were discontinued officially. Google did not explain the reason behind discontinuation of Nest Secure, but did confirm the continuation of the service for the existing users.


title: Google Nest

text: The Nest Doorbell (originally launched as Nest Hello) is a series of smart video doorbells with facial recognition. It was originally slated to launch in February 2018 but was delayed until March in the United States and Canada, and was launched in the UK in May 2018. In 2021, Google announced the battery-powered Nest Doorbell, while the original Nest Hello was rebranded as the Nest Doorbell (wired). In October 2022, the 2nd generation Nest Doorbell (wired) was launched in the US, adding back a number of features that were missing from the Nest Doorbell (battery) even when wired, including 24/7 recording with Nest Aware Plus.


title: Google Nest

text: Nest × Yale is a smart lock produced in collaboration with Yale, released March 2018. It is connected to Nest Connect or Nest Guard. Powered by four AA batteries, the lock includes a terminal at bottom where a 9V battery can be connected for emergency access.


title: Google Nest

text: In 2021, Google announced the Nest Cam with Floodlight, a version of the Nest Cam Outdoor equipped with two floodlights on each side.


title: Google Nest

text: Works with Nest was a program that allowed third party devices to communicate with Nest products, such as virtual assistants, along with many third-party home automation platforms. Additionally, many smart device manufacturers have direct integration with the Nest platform, including Whirlpool and GE Appliances.


title: Google Nest

text: On May 7, 2019, it was announced that Works with Nest would be discontinued effective August 31, 2019. Users are being directed to migrate to Google accounts and Google Assistant integration instead; doing so will remove the ability to use Works with Nest. Google stated that this change was for security and privacy reasons; as third-party devices may only integrate with the Nest ecosystem via Google Assistant, they will be heavily restricted in the amount of personal data and access to devices they will have access to. Google stated that it would give "a small number of thoroughly vetted partners" access to additional data.


title: Google Nest

text: The change faced criticism for potentially resulting in a loss of functionality: vendors such as Lutron and SimpliSafe announced that their products' integration with the Nest platform (which allow them to be tied to the thermostat's home and away modes) would be affected by this change, while Google explicitly named IFTTT as a service that could not be integrated due to the amount of access it would need to operate. "The Verge" estimated that affected devices would also include Philips Hue, Logitech Harmony, Lutron lights, August Home, and Belkin Wemo switches. Furthermore, "The Verge" argued that this change created a closed platform, and would lead to fragmentation of the smart home market by potentially blocking integration with products that directly compete with those of Google.


title: Google Nest

text: On May 16, 2019, Google clarified its deprecation plans for Works with Nest: existing integrations will not be disabled after August 31, but users will no longer be able to add new ones, and the service will only receive maintenance updates going forward. Google also stated that it was working on replicating Nest platform functions as part of Assistant, such as integrating Nest's Home/Away triggers into the "Routines" system, and maintaining integration between Nest and Amazon Alexa.


title: Google Nest

text: In February 2012, Honeywell filed a lawsuit claiming that some of its patents had been infringed by Nest.


title: Google Nest

text: In April 2012, Nest stated they believe that none of the allegedly infringed patents were actually violated. Honeywell claimed that Nest infringed on patents pertaining to remotely controlling a thermostat, power-stealing thermostats, and thermostats designed around a circular, interactive design, similar to the Honeywell T87. However, Honeywell held patents that were almost identical to those that expired in 2004. Nest has taken the stance that they will see this through to patent court as they suspect Honeywell is trying to harass them, litigiously and financially, out of business.


title: Google Nest

text: On May 14, 2013, Allure Energy also filed a lawsuit, alleging infringement of a patent on an "Auto-adaptable energy management apparatus". First Alert sued Nest in 2014 in regards to voice alert functionality and a design trait of the Nest protect.


title: Google Nest

text: In 2016, Nest announced that the devices of Revolv customers would be bricked on May 15, as they were shutting down the necessary cloud software. Karl Bode and Emmanuel Malberg of "Vice News" compared the move to a remote deletion of purchased Xbox Fitness content by Microsoft. The Federal Trade Commission entered into an investigation of the matter.


title: Google Nest

text: In May 2016, an employee filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Nest and Google. In the charge, the employee alleged that he was terminated for posting information about Tony Fadell's poor leadership to a private Facebook page consisting of current and former employees. The charge also alleged that Nest and Google had engaged in unlawful surveillance and unlawful interrogation of employees in order to prevent them from discussing the work environment at Nest.


title: Google Nest

text: On May 7, 2014, German activist group Peng Collective released a parody website named "Google Nest", satirizing Google's privacy policies and practices with fake products imitating Google art style, supposedly created as a result of "an intensive period of studying user behavior" in response to the "public debate around privacy and government surveillance". The site described four purported new services lampooning Google's data gathering tendencies made possible with Nest's technology: "Google Trust, Google Hug, Google Bee" and "Google Bye", respectively a "data insurance" paid with personal data, a location service encouraging in-person emotional interactions, a "personal drone", and a memorial website created from automatically collected information.


title: Google Nest

text: The next day, Google trademark lawyers issued a cease-and-desist letter to Peng, asking them to change the site and to transfer the domain name to Google. The site replaced its content with a note explaining the situation, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation responded on behalf of Peng with a public letter saying that noncommercial political commentary is not prohibited under trademark law, and that the site would not likely be confused after the ample press coverage received.


title: Google Nest

text: Per the terms of service, Google will provide law enforcement with Nest data “[i]f we reasonably believe that we can prevent someone from dying or from suffering serious physical harm…for example, in the case of bomb threats, school shootings, kidnappings, suicide prevention, and missing person cases.” In certain situations, this may be done without a warrant.


title: Finnish War

text: The Finnish War (, , ) was fought between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire from 21 February 1808 to 17 September 1809 as part of the Napoleonic Wars. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden was established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire. Other notable effects were the Swedish parliament's adoption of a new constitution and the establishment of the House of Bernadotte, the new Swedish royal house, in 1818.


title: Finnish War

text: After the Russian Emperor Alexander I concluded the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit with Napoleon, Alexander, in his letter on 24 September 1807 to the Swedish King Gustav IV Adolf, informed the king that the peaceful relations between Russia and Sweden depended on Swedish agreement to abide by the limitations of the Treaty of Tilsit which in practice meant that Sweden would have been required to follow the Continental System. The king, who viewed Napoleon as the Antichrist and Britain as his ally against Napoleon's France, was apprehensive of the system's ruinous consequences for Sweden's maritime commerce. He instead entered into negotiations with Britain in order to prepare a joint attack against Denmark, whose Norwegian possessions he coveted.


title: Finnish War

text: In the meantime, the Royal Navy attacked Copenhagen and the Anglo-Russian War (1807–1812) was declared. Referring to the treaties of 1780 and 1800, the emperor demanded that Gustav Adolf close the Baltic Sea to all foreign warships. Although he reiterated his demand on November 16, 1807, it took two months before the king responded that it was impossible to honor the previous arrangements as long as the French were in control of the major Baltic ports. King Gustav Adolf did this after securing an alliance with Britain on 8 February 1808. Meanwhile, on 30 December 1807 Russia announced that should Sweden not give a clear reply Russia would be forced to act.


title: Finnish War

text: Although most Swedish officers were skeptical about their chances in fighting the larger and more experienced Russian army, Gustav Adolf had an unrealistic view of Sweden's ability to defend itself against Russia. In Saint Petersburg, his stubbornness was viewed as a convenient pretext for Russia to occupy Finland, thus pushing the Russo-Swedish frontier considerably to the west of the Russian capital and safeguarding it in case of any future hostilities between the two powers.


title: Finnish War

text: The situation was problematic for Sweden, since it once again faced both Denmark and Russia as potential enemies requiring the Swedes to split their forces. The king had thought it impossible to defend Finland should the enemy attack during the winter and chose largely to ignore the repeated warnings of the Russian threat he received in early 1808. Most of the Swedish plans assumed that warfare would be impossible during winter, disregarding the lessons from recent wars. In addition, several new good roads had been built into Finland greatly reducing the earlier dependency on naval support for any large operation in Finland.


title: Finnish War

text: The Swedish plan was to first passively defend and hold on to the fortifications in the southern coast of Finland, in which Sweden had strong garrisons, while the rest of the Swedish army retreated to the north. Then in the spring, counterattack simultaneously from north and south, when the Swedish army would have naval support and the Russian army would be spread over Finland and thus have long supply lines. The basic reason for the plan was to avoid major decisive battles.


title: Finnish War

text: Some advocates existed for taking a more active approach immediately, namely Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Möller (fi) who advocated for taking an immediate offensive and Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt who supported actively delaying the advancing enemies in co-operation with the garrisons in the southern coast.


title: Finnish War

text: In the end instructions which the new Swedish commander in Finland, General Wilhelm Mauritz Klingspor, received from the king were an unsuccessful and open-ended mixture of ideas from these very different plans.


title: Finnish War

text: Russia had gathered a wealth of information from Finland using spies and other sources. The level of detail was so great that Russian maps of Finland were in many respects more accurate than their Swedish counterparts. The Russians used the services of General Georg Magnus Sprengtporten when forming their plans. Sprengtporten suggested going on to an offensive during the winter since Finland would be mostly isolated when seas were frozen. His ideas were further developed by General Jan Pieter van Suchtelen before General Friedrich Wilhelm von Buxhoeveden was appointed as the commander of the Russian army in Finland in December 1807.


title: Finnish War

text: The plan involved using the series of fortifications built after 1790 as staging grounds for the Russian advances into Finland. In southern Finland, armies were to isolate the fortifications and first take control of the whole of southern Finland before advancing further to the north. Forces in Savolax (Finnish: "Savo") were to press hard against the Swedes and reach the Gulf of Bothnia towards Uleåborg (Finnish: "Oulu") and Vasa (Finnish: "Vaasa") to cut off the retreat of the main body of the Swedish army.


title: Finnish War

text: On February 21, 1808, 24,000 Russian troops under Friedrich Wilhelm von Buxhoevden crossed the border in Ahvenkoski and took the town of Lovisa (Finnish: "Loviisa"). Since Klingspor had not arrived, Lieutenant General Karl Nathanael af Klercker acted as Swedish commander in Finland. He was notified of the Russian invasion already on 21 February and since it was impossible to hold the predefined defense lines as the army had not yet fully assembled he ordered the army to assemble at Tavastehus (Finnish: "Hämeenlinna"). Before the engagement started Klingspor finally arrived on 2 March and assumed command. Instead of facing the Russians at Tavastehus he ordered the army to withdraw. In Savolax the Russians also forced the Swedes to withdraw. The king was quite unprepared for the attack, especially as war was not declared until April. About 21,000 Swedish troops were stationed in various fortresses in Finland, while the rest of his army was unable to leave southern Sweden for fear of Danish attack.


title: Finnish War

text: The Russian advance was swift. On the first day of the war they had captured the town of Lovisa and besieged the Swedish sea fortress of Svartholm. Borgå (Finnish: "Porvoo") was captured on 24 February and Helsingfors (Finnish: "Helsinki") on 2 March. Abandoned Swedish fortifications on the Hangö Peninsula (Finnish: "Hanko") were taken and manned on 21 March and on the same day the Russian army took Åbo (Finnish: "Turku") while a small detachment was sent to Åland. Before the end of March 1808 even Vasa was taken. In Savolax, Russians also advanced rapidly and took Kuopio on 16 March. Swedish forces had mostly just withdrawn before the advancing Russian often destroying usable materials. For example, the Swedish archipelago fleet's ships that been docked in Åbo (nearly 50 gun sloops) were torched to prevent their capture.


title: Finnish War

text: The Swedish fortress of Svartholm, commanded by Major Carl Magnus Gripenberg, was ill-prepared for a war. While the garrison was 700 men strong, only a third of the men had actually functioning weapons, while most of the fortress' guns had no carriages. The fortress had fallen into disrepair and lacked both adequate food and ammunition stores. Even the wells were found to be unusable. After starting the siege on 21 February, the Russians issued a surrender demand for the fort, but this was refused by the Swedes. The demand was repeated on 2 March but without success. After a meager Russian bombardment, Gripenberg agreed to negotiations on 10 March. The fortress surrendered to the Russians on 18 March after a siege that had lasted roughly a month, with just one man having been wounded in action.


title: Finnish War

text: Sveaborg (Finnish: "Suomenlinna") under Admiral Carl Olof Cronstedt had been well prepared for the war with a garrison of 6,000 men, over 700 cannons, and enough stores to last until the summer of 1808. Defenses were strong enough to prevent the Russians from trying to storm the fortress by surprise. Instead the Russians laid siege against Sveaborg. The fortress surrendered on 6 May 1808 after prolonged negotiations with the Russians as the commanding officer Carl Olof Cronstedt and his council believed that resistance was futile. The Russians gained the main body of the Swedish archipelago fleet intact as well as large stores of supplies and munitions.


title: Finnish War

text: The Russians had advanced considerably but they had also gained the long and vulnerable coastline with it. After the sea would be clear of ice there would be nothing to prevent Swedish forces from landing troops on the shore. With the Royal Navy supporting the Swedish battle fleet there was little the Russian battle fleet could accomplish. Capture of the main body of the Swedish archipelago fleet had resulted in a real advantage to the Russians since it allowed them to gain superiority in the narrow waters of the Finnish archipelago where large ships of the line could not operate. Even the powerful explosion at Sveaborg which destroyed several of the captured ships did little to change Russian superiority in the Finnish archipelago. The Russians utilized the guns from the burned ships, and from those which burned during the winter, and constructed several fortifications on the coast, both in Hangö as well as along narrow passages leading to Åbo.


title: Finnish War

text: Under Colonel Carl Johan Adlercreutz the Swedish army counter-attacked at Siikajoki and began to halt the Russian offensive. Soon after at the Battle of Revolax (Finnish: "Revonlahti"), the Swedish army under Colonel Johan Adam Cronstedt started an advance towards the south. These successes yielded a promotion to Field Marshal for Wilhelm Mauritz Klingspor. The Swedish advance was very slow however, as operations were often halted due to the thaw. An exception was the brigade under Colonel Johan August Sandels, which swiftly advanced towards Kuopio. Nikolay Tuchkov, a Russian general who was dispatched to the north of Finland, left garrisons in every fort along his way. This reduced his unit to 4,000 troops, which proved insufficient to pacify the hostile country. The Finns rose up in guerrilla fighting as far east as Frederikshamn (Finnish: "Hamina") within the Old Finland province of Russia.


title: Finnish War

text: In May, the Russians suffered further setbacks when they were driven from Gotland and Åland, where a Swedish flotilla, supported by the local population, compelled the small Russian force left on the main island of Fasta Åland to surrender, and then invaded the island of Kumlinge where the bulk of the Russian garrison on the Åland Islands was based. After a two-hour-long battle, the local militia, together with the Swedish landing force, overwhelmed their enemies and Colonel Vuich and his garrison were compelled to surrender.