title: Manipal Institute of Technology

text: In the last week of May 2021, MIT released a revised schedule for the upcoming months. This was a very chaotic, tough schedule. This caused outrage amongst the students, who were already not pleased with the college due to unpopular decisions taken by them over the course of the pandemic. The protests by the students of MIT were initially ignored by the administration of MIT and MAHE. But, on 8 June, 2021, MIT cancelled the end-semester examinations and opted to prorate the marks based on previous semester performances.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is the main character in a series of mystery novels written by Canadian author Louise Penny. The series is set around the life of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force for Quebec. Books in the series have been nominated for and received numerous awards.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: The first book in the series, "Still Life", was released in 2006 and won the New Blood Dagger award, Arthur Ellis Award, the Dilys Award, 2007 Anthony Award, and the Barry Award. All subsequent novels in the series have won major crime-writing awards in three countries. Many have also made the New York Times Best-Seller List, debuting as high as #1.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: The Chief Inspector Armand Gamache book series is written by Louise Penny. Prior to writing full-time, she worked 20 years as a radio journalist and host for CBC Radio in Thunder Bay, Ontario and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Penny originally began writing a historical novel, but changed to mystery writing after finding trouble finishing. She entered the first book of the series, "Still Life", in the "Debut Dagger" competition in the United Kingdom, placing second out of 800 entries.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: The series revolves around the character of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The stories take place usually in the village of Three Pines, with Gamache investigating the murders of various people in each novel. The native French speaker Gamache speaks English with a British accent. In the first book "Still Life", he is said to have learned English while he was an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge, where according to "A Great Reckoning" he read for a degree in History.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: The books have been described as "character-driven" mysteries that explore the relationships between characters with each book in the series. Three Pines is a fictional location set in the province of Quebec, with Penny setting up the characters using the history of old Canada to show their personalities and backgrounds. In the series, a few of the plots are set outside of Three Pines.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: The Chief Inspector Armand Gamache book series contains little or no sex or violence and has been referred to as a kinder and gentler alternative to modern crime fiction. Penny herself stated that ""The Murder Stone", like all the Gamache novels, is about love and friendship. About belonging and hope. And finding kindness buried. In the wilderness. In the marrow".


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: In "How the Light Gets In", Penny writes that: "Armand Gamache had always held unfashionable beliefs. He believed the light would banish the shadows. That kindness was more powerful than cruelty, and that goodness existed, even in the most desperate places. He believed that evil had its limits". In many of the books from "Still Life" onwards Gamache tells new detectives joining his team "four sayings that can lead to wisdom": "I was wrong. I'm sorry. I don't know. I need help".


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: More of Gamache's approach is shared in "A Better Man", when he shares with one of his colleagues advice he himself was given at the start of his career: "Before speaking ... you might want to ask yourself three questions ... Is it true? Is it kind? Does it need to be said?".


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: There are a total of 18 books in the series, all published by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press. The first book was released in 2005, in the U.S., with the most recent in 2022. There is also a short novella called "The Hangman" which features Inspector Gamache and is set in Three Pines. This does not form part of the series and was written as a simple story for adults learning to read English. Gamache also appears briefly as a minor character in "State of Terror" (2021), a political thriller co-written with Hillary Clinton.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: In addition to numerous books making it to the New York Times Bestseller List, Penny has won multiple awards for the book series. She has won the Anthony and the Agatha Awards 5 times each and the Canadian Arthur Ellis Award twice. She was also a finalist for the Edgar Award for "How The Light Gets In". The books have also earned her numerous Macavity Awards, and been nominated for numerous others.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: "Still Life" was adapted as a film for CBC Television in 2013, with Gamache being played by British actor Nathaniel Parker.


title: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

text: Alfred Molina will play Gamache in the upcoming Amazon Prime series "Three Pines", which began filming in September 2021.


title: 2023 Southeast Asian Games

text: The 2023 Southeast Asian Games (), commonly known as the 32nd Southeast Asian Games, or the 32nd SEA Games, and commonly known as Cambodia 2023, will be the 32nd edition of the Southeast Asian Games, a biennial sports multi-sport event which will be held from 5 to 17 May 2023 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.


title: 2023 Southeast Asian Games

text: The announcement was made at the SEA Games Federation Council meeting at Singapore, in conjunction with the 2015 Southeast Asian Games, by the President of the National Olympic Committee of Cambodia, Thong Khon. The Philippines was originally slated to host the Games, but was pushed forward to 2019 after Brunei withdrew its original hosting rights. This will be the first time that Cambodia will host the games, as the 3rd Southeast Asian Peninsular (SEAP) Games in 1963 was cancelled due to the political situation in the country at the time. The event will feature 40 sports.


title: 2023 Southeast Asian Games

text: Following the host selection announcement, Prime Minister Hun Sen approved the final design of the Games’ main stadium. During a state visit by Hun Sen to Beijing in May 2014, China's leader Xi Jinping (also Communist party general secretary) promised to fund the construction of the main stadium of the new multi-purpose sports complex on the Satellite City of Phnom Penh in Khan Chroy Jong Va. The 60,000-seat main stadium, which is estimated to cost about $157 million and will be built by a Chinese construction firm, will be completed between 2019 and 2020 with a Chinese grant covering the entire project. A multipurpose arena, the Morodok Techo National Sports Complex will house an Olympic swimming pool, an outdoor football pitch, a running track, tennis courts and dormitories for athletes.


title: 2023 Southeast Asian Games

text: All 11 members of Southeast Asian Games Federation (SEAGF) are expected to take part in the 2023 SEA Games. Below is a list of all the participating NOCs.


title: 2023 Southeast Asian Games

text: The official logo and slogan for the 2023 Southeast Asian Games were decided on 2 July 2020 by the 2023 Cambodian SEA Games Organizing Committee and was officially unveiled on 7 August. A design competition for the games' logo was held in 2019 with the final design reportedly consists of the Angkor Wat and four dragons as its main motifs. The initial slogan for the games unveiled was "Sport Into Peace" () The logo was later slightly revised so it could also be used for the 2023 ASEAN Para Games. The slogan in English was revised to Sport: Live in Peace"


title: 2023 Southeast Asian Games

text: A mascot design competition was also organized in 2019 which was open to Cambodian citizens who are at least 15 years of age. The contest required applicants to submit designs that followed a rabbit theme and reflected Cambodian culture. The deadline for the competition was on 30 November 2019. The winning design consists of two rabbits wearing traditional Cambodian attire; a female in red named Rumduol () and a male in blue named Borey (). Red and blue are colors from the Cambodian flag.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: Javorius Tykies Scott (July 15, 1998 – July 27, 2022), known professionally as JayDaYoungan, was an American rapper and singer. He was best known for his singles "23 Island", "Elimination", and "Opps", which have received 73, 35, and 40 million respective streams on SoundCloud as of November 2022. Scott released the mixtapes "Forever 23" (2018), "Endless Pain" (2019), and his debut commercial mixtape "Misunderstood" (2019), which peaked at number 43 on the US "Billboard" 200. His debut studio album, "Baby23", was released on June 5, 2020. He was first exposed to the mainstream with his mixtapes "Ruffwayy" and "The Real Jumpman 23", which included the tracks "Sliding Freestyle" and "Muddy Situation".


title: JayDaYoungan

text: Scott was born on July 15, 1998, in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He began his rapping career at the age of 18 and dropped out of high school to pursue his career.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: In February 2017, Scott released his mixtape "Ruffwayy", which became a regional success and gave him local recognition; his song "Interstate" broke 4 million views on YouTube in under a month. He was then considered for a spot on the "XXL" freshman list in 2018, a list of up-and-coming rappers.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: Following that project, Scott issued the mixtape "The Real Jumpman 23", which had 13 tracks totaling 32 minutes, including the songs "Sliding Freestyle" and "Muddy Situation". He then released mixtapes "Wake Up" and "Taking Off", the latter of which featured rappers FG Famous and NBA 3Three.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: His first nationwide hit came with the song "Elimination" on the mixtape "23", which has over 62.8 million streams on Spotify as of November 2022. He was interviewed by the lyric company Genius to break down the meaning of the song. The mixtape had 10 tracks at 28 minutes with no features. He then released the mixtape "Forever 23", including the tracks "Thot Thot" and "Purge", which have garnered 43.9 and 22 million streams respectively on Spotify and helped push him into international recognition. The critic site AllMusic rated the mixtape 3.5/5 stars, and despite it having no features, the mixtape reached number 86 on the "Billboard" 200 becoming his first entry on that chart. It also hit number 37 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: Following this, JayDaYoungan released the mixtape "Endless Pain", which became known for the tracks "Repo" and "War Ready" which stand at 6.5 and 4 million streams respectively on SoundCloud as of January 5, 2020. The album peaked at number 70 and number 37 on "Billboard" 200 and the Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums, respectively. He and rapper Yungeen Ace then released the collaborative mixtape "Can't Speak On It", which included the songs "Opps" and "Creep Behind". He then released another mixtape titled "Misunderstood", which included the single "23 Island", which garnered 17.8 million streams on Spotify as of January 5, 2020, and reached number 9 of the Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Chart. The mixtape had features from YFN Lucci, Boosie Badazz, FG Famous, JetSoo, and Lil Durk. Durk remixed the track "Dum" which was featured on the mixtape "Endless Pain". It featured 19 tracks at 53 minutes, and charted on the "Billboard" 200, peaking at number 43. JayDaYoungan and rapper Yung Bans had an online feud over the title of the album, as Bans released his debut album earlier in the year, also titled "Misunderstood".


title: JayDaYoungan

text: In May 2020, JayDaYoungan released "Touch Your Toes" featuring rapper Latto, as a single from his debut album "Baby23", which was released on June 5, 2020, and named after his first child who was also born the same night. The album included the singles "23 Island", "Perky Activated" and "38k", and featured Dej Loaf, Moneybagg Yo, and Kevin Gates.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: Scott stated he grew up listening to Kevin Gates, Boosie Badazz, and Chief Keef. Musically, his flow and style has been compared to Boosie and Youngboy Never Broke Again. He said, "[I] don't see me sounding similar to nobody else", and that he is not trying to imitate anybody else. He was noted for a style similar to that of Lil Wayne and Kevin Gates by critic Fred Thomas.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On his goals, Scott said "Later on in my career, when I get to a certain point, I will be signing artists, starting my own label. Just perfecting my craft each and every day."


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On May 11, 2019, Scott was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance without a prescription after being pulled over by Florida Highway Patrol in Gadsden County, Florida. When pulled over, police officers found 20 grams of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and oxycodone pills. Someone riding with him was also found to be in possession of a firearm. The people riding with him were given various other charges relating to the drugs and firearm. On May 12, Scott was released on a $2,500 bail. Scott was scheduled to perform at the Rolling Loud Music Festival and was unable to due to his arrest.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: In March 2020, after it was alleged he assaulted a pregnant woman, police raided Scott's house, seizing $24,000 in cash, promethazine, oxycodone, and multiple firearms. Police arrested Scott after he was allegedly "found hiding in an attic." Scott was charged with assaulting a pregnant woman and illegal drug possession, with bail set at $20,000. Another man at his house, Kardell Robertson, was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm and granted a $100 bail.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On September 16, 2021, Scott was arrested on charges of accessory to second-degree murder and obstruction of justice, stemming from a fatal shooting that occurred in August 2020. Four days later, Scott was released on a $175,000 bond.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On October 30, 2021, Scott was arrested during a traffic stop in Washington Parish, Louisiana on multiple charges including child desertion, driving without proof of insurance, drug possession, and evidence tampering. On November 4, 2021, Scott was released from jail on bond.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On November 4, 2021—hours after posting bond in his Washington Parish case—Scott was arrested by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agents on federal charges.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On June 16, 2022, Scott pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm while under indictment or felony charges and was sentenced to time served, as well as one year of supervised release. He was also fined $5,500 and a $100 mandatory special assessment fee.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On July 27, 2022, Scott and his father, Kenyatta Scott were sitting in the front lawn of their Bogalusa home when a black truck arrived and three armed gunmen got out. Scott and his father tried running inside the home, but two additional gunmen came from the side of the house and opened fire. Scott Sr. produced his own firearm and shot back in self-defense. Scott was shot at least eight times and died at a local Bogalusa hospital not too far from the scene of the shooting. Scott Sr. was shot twice in the arm and was in stable condition.


title: JayDaYoungan

text: On August 7, 2022, Scott was laid to rest. His funeral was held in the auditorium of his former high school in Bogalusa.


title: Molecule Man

text: The Molecule Man (Owen Reece) is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He first appeared in "Fantastic Four" #20 in November 1963 and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He is often portrayed as a supervillain, but sometimes takes the role of a reformed outlaw or reluctant hero.


title: Molecule Man

text: Owen Reece was a timid child from Brooklyn, New York who obsessively clung to his mother. He grew into a weak-willed adult, made bitter and lonely by his mother's death, and full of fear and hatred of what he regarded as a deeply unfriendly world. Reece became a lowly laboratory technician working at a nuclear plant owned by the Acme Atomics Corporation. He was disgruntled by his job's long hours and low pay. One day, Reece accidentally activated an experimental particle generator, which bombarded him with an unknown form of radiation. The radiation had a mutagenic effect on Reece, releasing his potential for psionic powers on a cosmic scale. Reece could now control all matter, even down to the molecular level, and all energy. The radiation also left markings resembling lightning bolts across Reece's face. Reece named himself the "Molecule Man" after his power to control molecules.


title: Molecule Man

text: The tremendous forces released by the accident also opened a wormhole between Earth's dimension and the dimension containing the immensely powerful entity later known as the Beyonder. During the following years, the Beyonder observed Earth and its multiverse through the interdimensional pinhole.


title: Molecule Man

text: The day after the accident, the president of Acme Atomics fired Reece for his carelessness, not even knowing his name after his twelve years of work there. Angered, Molecule Man covered the president and his desk with ice that he formed from molecules in the air. Reece became a criminal and set out to use his powers to take revenge on a world he believed had belittled and persecuted him. However, Reece's self-doubt, fear, and self-hatred subconsciously restricted his powers. He believed he was unable to affect organic molecules, and that his power resided in a metal wand.


title: Molecule Man

text: Uatu the Watcher recognized the threat that the Molecule Man posed and alerted the Fantastic Four. The Molecule Man easily defeated the Fantastic Four, forcing them to retreat. He created a glass barrier around Manhattan Island, saying the people would be trapped until the Fantastic Four were brought to him. Mister Fantastic, realizing Reece had only affected inorganic molecules, had Alicia Masters lure him to her apartment with the Fantastic Four flare. The Fantastic Four pretended to be statues by covering themselves with plaster. When Reece found himself unable to affect the statues, he dropped his wand in shock, allowing Mister Fantastic to grab it. The Watcher transported the Molecule Man to confinement in an other-dimensional world where time passed at an accelerated rate.


title: Molecule Man

text: Believing himself unable to escape, Reece created a humanoid construct to serve as his companion and, through unknown means, endowed it with consciousness. Reece let the construct believe itself to be his son. Before dying, Reece transferred his consciousness and powers into the wand his son carried. Not bound by human limitations, the construct, known as the new Molecule Man, escaped to Earth. In an attempt to avenge his father, the new Molecule Man battled both the Man-Thing and the Thing of the Fantastic Four. Dependent on the metal wand to maintain his existence in this dimension, the new Molecule Man disintegrated when the wand was taken from him.


title: Molecule Man

text: However, the consciousness and powers of the original Molecule Man remained within the wand, and Molecule Man could overpower the minds of whoever touched the wand and take control of their bodies. He took mental possession of Cynthia McClellan, and through her, battled Iron Man. Molecule Man then took mental possession of Aaron Stankey and Mister Fantastic.


title: Molecule Man

text: The wand passed through the hands of a succession of holders until Reece's mind recreated his mutated body and transferred his consciousness and powers out of the wand and into the body. He threatened to destroy the world, but was persuaded by Tigra to give himself up and seek psychiatric help.


title: Molecule Man

text: Reece did so, and soon began to change. He now had simple goals: true love, friendship, and a good home. However, Reece found himself sent to Battleworld, the planet created by the Beyonder, as part of the small army of criminal superhuman beings that were to engage in the first Secret War. Impressed by the charismatic dictator Doctor Doom, Reece agreed to help fight the superheroes also brought to Battleworld. During the course of the war, Reece and a superhuman called Volcana fell in love. Doctor Doom eventually succeeded in temporarily stealing the power of the Beyonder and transferring it into himself. Believing himself abandoned by Doctor Doom, Reece threatened to kill him. But Doctor Doom helped Reece break through his mental blocks and realize that his power was greater than he had believed. No longer angry at Doctor Doom, Reece transported himself, Volcana, and most of the criminals back to Earth. On Earth, Reece and Volcana began living together quietly in a Denver suburb, and Reece took a job as a worker in an atomic plant.


title: Molecule Man

text: Months later, the Beyonder, again in possession of his full power, came to Earth in humanoid form seeking emotional fulfillment. When he failed, the Beyonder decided to rid himself of the problem by obliterating the multiverse. Reece attempted to save the universe by destroying the Beyonder, but the Beyonder's immense power far surpassed even Reece's own. Reece joined forces with many of Earth's superhuman champions to battle him. But the Molecule Man exhausted himself fighting the Beyonder, who unleashed an immensely powerful blast of energy to destroy Reece and his allies. The blast ripped open Earth's crust in the area of the Rocky Mountains, and would have caused incredible planet-wide instability if not for Molecule Man's power. Molecule Man used his power to shield himself and his allies, and to remove every living thing from the path of the blast to safety. As a result of his monumental efforts, Reece severely injured himself internally.


title: Molecule Man

text: His foes appearing to have been defeated, the Beyonder proceeded with his new plan to find fulfillment by using a complex machine to transform himself into a mortal being with his full power. The machine drained the Beyonder's power into itself, transformed him into a mortal baby, and then began transferring the energy back into him. The infant would soon again become an adult. Molecule Man and his allies found the machine, and Reece, believing they could not take the chance that the newly reborn Beyonder would not someday destroy the multiverse, decided to kill him while he was vulnerable. Reece destroyed the machine, causing the infant's death, and diverted the Beyonder's immense power, which the machine released, through an interdimensional portal into the dimension from which the Beyonder had originally come. There the energy created a new universe.


title: Molecule Man

text: The injured Molecule Man and the Silver Surfer, uniting their power temporarily, repaired all the damage done to the Earth, restoring the mountains and the part of the crust that the Beyonder had destroyed. Reece, believing that Earth's superhuman champions would always worry about his misusing them, pretended his powers had been burned out. Only Volcana and Silver Surfer know that Reece still has his powers. Reece lived quietly for a time with Rosenberg in their Denver suburb.


title: Molecule Man

text: Reece was briefly merged with the Beyonder to take part in the creation of the complete Cosmic Cube being known as Kosmos. The Cube expelled him and he returned to Earth. He was then defeated in combat by Klaw, and separated from Volcana. The Molecule Man was later placed under the mental control of the Puppet Master. The Puppet Master used Reece to combat Aron the Rogue Watcher, but Aron defeated him. The now generally benevolent Reece accidentally releases his "darkest aspect", which takes separate form and attacks Kosmos in search of revenge upon the Beyonder, and it extracts and fights this part of the whole in a more than three-dimensional battle. After it defeats the Beyonder, Kubik and the original Molecule Man stop it from delivering the death blow, as this would also kill the peaceful Kosmos. Owen reabsorbs it, and as farewell, Kubik states that Owen's true self's full potential is far greater than that of his dark side.


title: Molecule Man

text: Doc Samson stumbles upon the Molecule Man while searching for the missing Bruce Banner. Owen mistakenly thinks that he is being stalked, and captures Samson to explain himself. After She-Hulk gets involved, they clear up the misunderstanding. He reveals that his relationship with Marsha has hit a road bump, leading to temporary separation that makes him depressed. Samson convinces Owen to display his affection more openly, whereupon the latter decides to repair areas destroyed by recent terrorist activity in Marsha's honor, including rebuilding Mount Rushmore with the addition of her own likeness, which his girlfriend apparently finds touching.


title: Molecule Man

text: A series of disappearances in the small town of Dinosaur, Colorado, causes Norman Osborn's "Dark Avengers" to visit the area. Sentry arrives first and is instantly disintegrated. Owen, isolated from everyone, has lost the ability to differentiate between hallucinations and reality, and secluded himself near the area he was born. After the other Avengers are defeated, Victoria Hand convinces Reece to restore everyone and everything he destroyed and to stop being a threat, in return for being left alone in the future. Sentry returns at this point, attacks the Molecule Man, and pulls him into the air, but is destroyed again. Sentry immediately reforms, and takes advantage of Owen's distraction from an incoming missile to take control of his body. Apparently unaware that Owen had already promised to do so, Sentry tells the Molecule Man to restore everything or be killed. Owen does so, but Sentry still disintegrates his body in return.


title: Molecule Man

text: Reece's body was reformed and imprisoned by Dr. Doom, who intended to use him, as his energy frequency matched with the beacon of the Mapmakers, to oppose whatever was the origin of the Incursions and the decay of the universe. The Molecule Man took Doom elsewhere, a blank void from where they subsequently traveled backwards through the mists of time.


title: Molecule Man

text: Doom and the Molecule Man arrived twenty-five years into the past of another universe, where they witnessed the origin of said reality's Molecule Man..The journey affected Molecule Man's mind, restoring it from its chaotic state which enables Reece to inform Doom that his accident was caused by the Beyonders, who created the Molecule Man in the first place as a singularity across every reality, to have the function of a "bomb", which would destroy its universe if he died. To prove his point the Molecule Man killed his counterpart, which set off the early death of his counterpart's universe, and is the default origin of the Incursions. The Molecule Man convinced Doom that to thwart the plans of the Beyonders, he had to embark on a mission to kill every one of the Molecule Men.


title: Molecule Man

text: During the 2015 "Secret Wars" storyline, the nearly omnipotent Doctor Doom kept the Molecule Man in a special chamber in his castle after using him to kill the Beyonders, absorb their power, and form of his Battleworld. During the attack on Castle Doom, the two Spider-Men (Peter Parker and Miles Morales) found the chamber that the Molecule Man is in. Like every visitor before him, the Molecule Man asks if they had any food with them. Miles gives him a hamburger from his pocket, for which Reece states he is in debt to Miles. Upon learning that the Molecule Man is the source of Doom's powers, the two Spider-Men leave. Mister Fantastic and Maker (the Earth-1610 version of Mister Fantastic) enter the Molecule Man's chamber where Maker is seemingly killed by the Molecule Man while Mister Fantastic fights God Emperor Doom. To make the fight between Mister Fantastic and Doctor Doom fair, the Molecule Man depowered Doom. During the fight, Doom admits that Mister Fantastic would have done better with the godlike powers, and in response, the Molecule Man gives the power of the Beyonders to Mister Fantastic, causing Battleworld to fall apart. With his newfound omnipotence in conjunction with Franklin Richards' ability to shape entire universes, Mister Fantastic begins to reconstruct the Multiverse. As each new reality is recreated, a portion of the Molecule Man attached to it as an "anchor", which has the effect of restoring his sanity. In gratitude to Miles, the Molecule Man transfers him, his family (including his now-resurrected mother), and his friends to Earth-616, now known as The Prime Earth. Their entire life histories are merged with this new Prime Earth, and have no memory of having originated from a different universe, except the participants of the Battleworld who still have their former respective original universes' memories intact.


title: Molecule Man

text: The Molecule Man was later seen with Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Franklin Richards, Valeria Richards, and the Future Foundation on a world where he has noticed that Franklin's reality-warping abilities are depleting. When the Griever at the End of All Things attacked, she killed the Molecule Man and had her Endlings feed off his energies.


title: Molecule Man

text: Owen Reece originally had the ability to mentally manipulate molecules, allowing for a variety of effects, such as the creation of force fields, energy beams, and hyperspace portals. However, Reece later gained the power to warp reality itself on a multiversal scale.


title: Molecule Man

text: Originally, he subconsciously imposed mental blocks on himself which prevented him from affecting organic molecules, which has since been overcome. He was also dependent on using a steel rod to focus his powers, but subsequently learned how to direct his powers without it.


title: Molecule Man

text: When the Molecule Man extracted the Beyonder from Kosmos, their battle took place in more than three spatial dimensions and threatened to cause a multiversal scale of destruction.


title: Molecule Man

text: According to Doctor Doom, Reed Richards, and Owen Reece himself, he is a "multiversal composite entity": a single creature that manifests "fractions" of its entire being in each universe of the Marvel Multiverse.


title: Molecule Man

text: The actual, primary function of Owen Reece, is to serve as a living bomb, one capable of destroying the entire universe that he is inhabiting if he dies for any reason, in accordance with the deliberate design of the Beyonders (who placed one "slice" of him into each universe simultaneously). He is, apparently, utterly unable to stop his own death from happening (at the hands of the Beyonders) even with his vast powers.


title: Molecule Man

text: In an issue of "Ultimates", Galactus, having recently evolved into a more powerful form, hears a voice he recognizes as belonging to someone who can destroy him "with a thought," and passes through a doorway into a quasi-reality constructed by Owen Reece. Reece explains that he chose the name Molecule Man out of a love of alliteration even though his power makes even atoms seem "clunky," and that his abilities function at deeper levels, with him going through a list of more appropriate names "Proton Man, or Quark Man. Superstring Man. Information Man." The next panel is drawn from an angle that causes Reece to appear to be looking out of the panel at the reader as he describes himself as "Editing and ordering the base information of reality. Owen Reece, Narrative Man. Heh.", implying that he may realize that he is a character in a story, and that it is the narrative elements of the story itself that he is manipulating.


title: Molecule Man

text: Counter-intuitively, the less divided that he is across the multiverse, the more mentally unstable (and potentially dangerous) Reece becomes.


title: Molecule Man

text: In "JLA/Avengers", the Molecule Man is seen among the enthralled villains defending Krona's stronghold. He is shown encased in stone. When Firestorm asks who did this, the Wasp tells him it was Sersi.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, and scientific racism; and he has been described as a "racialist writer". His best-known book, the two-volume "Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" ("The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century"), published 1899, became highly influential in the pan-Germanic "Völkisch" movements of the early 20th century, and later influenced the antisemitism of Nazi racial policy. Indeed, Chamberlain has been referred to as "Hitler's John the Baptist".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Born in Hampshire, Chamberlain emigrated to Dresden in adulthood out of an adoration for composer Richard Wagner, and was later naturalised as a German citizen. He married Eva von Bülow, Wagner's daughter, in December 1908, twenty-five years after Wagner's death.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in Southsea, Hampshire, England, the son of Rear Admiral William Charles Chamberlain, RN. His mother, Eliza Jane, daughter of Captain Basil Hall, RN, died before he was a year old, leading to his being brought up by his grandmother in France. His elder brother was Japanologist and Tokyo Imperial University professor Basil Hall Chamberlain. Chamberlain's poor health frequently led him to being sent to the warmer climates of Spain and Italy for the winter. This constant moving about made it hard for Chamberlain to form lasting friendships.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's education began at a "lycée" in Versailles and continued mostly on the continent, but his father had planned a military career for his son. At the age of eleven he was sent to Cheltenham College, an English boarding school that produced many Army and Navy officers. Chamberlain grew up in a self-confident, optimistic, Victorian atmosphere that celebrated the nineteenth century as the "Age of Progress"; a time of growing wealth, scientific discoveries, technological advances and democratic political reforms; a world that many Victorians expected to get progressively better and better with Britain leading the way for the rest of the world.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain grew up supportive of the Liberal Party, and shared the general values of 19th-century British liberalism such as a faith in progress, of a world that could only get better, of the greatness of Britain as a liberal democratic and capitalist society.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain deeply disliked Cheltenham College, and felt lonely and out of place there. The young Chamberlain was "a compulsive dreamer", more interested in the arts than in the military, and he developed a fondness for nature and a near-mystical sense of self.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's major interests in his studies at Cheltenham were the natural sciences, especially astronomy. Chamberlain later recalled: "The starlight exerted an indescribable influence on me. The stars seemed closer to me, more gentle, more worthy of trust, and more sympathetic – for that is the only word which describes my feelings – than any of the people around me in school. For the stars, I experienced true "friendship"".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During his youth, Chamberlain – while not entirely rejecting at this point his liberalism – became influenced by the romantic conservative critique of the Industrial Revolution. Bemoaning the loss of "Merry Old England", this view argued for a return to a highly romanticized portrait of a mythic, bucolic period of English history that had never existed, with the people living happily in harmony with nature on the land overseen by a benevolent, cultured elite. In this critique, the Industrial Revolution was seen as a disaster which forced people to live in dirty, overcrowded cities, doing dehumanizing work in factories while society was dominated by a philistine, greedy middle class.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The prospect of serving as an officer in India or elsewhere in the British Empire held no attraction for him. In addition, he was a delicate child with poor health. At the age of fourteen he had to be withdrawn from school. After Cheltenham, Chamberlain always felt out of place in Britain, a society whose values Chamberlain felt were not his values, writing in 1876: "The fact may be regrettable but it remains a fact; I have become so completely un-English that the mere thought of England and the English makes me unhappy". Chamberlain then travelled to various spas around Europe, accompanied by a Prussian tutor, Mr Otto Kuntze, who taught him German and interested him in German culture and history. Fascinated by Renaissance art and architecture, Chamberlain learned Italian and planned to settle in Florence for a time.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain attended the University of Geneva, in French-speaking Switzerland. There he studied under Carl Vogt, who was a supporter of racial typology, as well as under chemist Carl Gräbe, botanist Johannes Müller Argoviensis, physicist and parapsychologist Marc Thury, astronomer Emile Plantamour, and other professors. Chamberlain's main interests as a student revolved around systematic botany, geology, astronomy, and later the anatomy and physiology of the human body. In 1881, he earned a "baccalauréat ès sciences physiques et naturelles" ("baccalaureate in physical and natural sciences").


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In Geneva, Chamberlain continued working towards a doctorate in botany, but he later abandoned that project due to ill health. The text of what would have been Chamberlain's doctoral dissertation was published in 1897 as "Recherches sur la sève ascendante" ("Studies on rising sap"), but this publication did not culminate in any further academic qualifications. In his preface, Chamberlain quoted from a letter by Prof. Julius Wiesner of the University of Vienna praising Chamberlain's work.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's book was based on his own experimental observations of water transport in various vascular plants. Against the conclusions of Eduard Strasburger, Julius von Sachs, and other leading botanists, he argued that his observations could not be explained by the application of the fluid mechanical theories of the day to the motion of water in the plants' xylem conduits. Instead, he claimed that his results evidenced other processes, associated with the action of living matter and which he placed under the heading of a "force vitale" ("vital force").


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain summarised his thesis in the book's introduction: In response to Strasburger's complaint that a vitalistic explanation of the ascent of sap "sidesteps the difficulties, calms our concerns, and thus manages to seduce us", Chamberlain retorted that "life is not an explanation, nor a theory, but a fact". Although most plant physiologists currently regard the ascent of sap as adequately explained by the passive mechanisms of transpirational pull and root pressure, some scientists have continued to argue that some form of active pumping is involved in the transport of water within some living plants, though usually without referring to Chamberlain's work on the subject.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During his time in Geneva, Chamberlain, who always despised Benjamin Disraeli, came to hate his country more and more, accusing the Prime Minister of taking British life down to what Chamberlain considered to be his extremely low level. During the early 1880s, Chamberlain was still a Liberal, "a man who approached issues from a firmly Gladstonian perspective and showed a marked antipathy to the philosophy and policies of British Conservatism". Chamberlain often expressed his disgust with Disraeli, "the man whom he blamed in large measure for the injection of selfish class interest and jingoism into British public life in the next decades". In 1881, he wrote to his family in Britain, praising William Ewart Gladstone for introducing the Land Bill to bring in "fair rents" in Ireland and withdrawing from the Transvaal.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: An early sign of his anti-Semitism came in 1881 when he described the landlords in Ireland affected by the Land Bill as "blood-sucking Jews ("sic")". The main landowning classes in Ireland then were Anglo-Irish gentiles, though at this stage of his life his anti-Semitic remarks were few and far between.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain was an early supporter of Hanns Hörbiger's "Welteislehre" ("World Ice Theory"), the theory that most bodies in our Solar System are covered with ice. Due in part to Chamberlain's advocacy, this became official cosmological dogma during the Third Reich.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's attitude towards the natural sciences was somewhat ambivalent and contradictory – he later wrote: "one of the most fatal errors of our time is that which impels us to give too great weight to the so-called 'results' of science." Still, his scientific credentials were often cited by admirers to give weight to his political philosophy. Chamberlain rejected Darwinism, evolution and social Darwinism and instead emphasized "Gestalt" which he said derived from Goethe.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: An ardent Francophile in his youth, Chamberlain had a marked preference for speaking French over English. It was only at the age of twenty three in November 1878, when he first heard the music of Richard Wagner—which struck him with all the force of a religious revelation—that Chamberlain became not only a Wagnerite, but an ardent Germanophile and Francophobe. As he put later, it was then he realized the full "degeneracy" of the French culture that he had so admired compared to the greatness of the German culture that had produced Wagner, whom Chamberlain viewed as one of the great geniuses of all time. In the music of Wagner, Chamberlain finally found the mystical, life-affirming spiritual force that he had been unsuccessfully seeking to find in British and French cultures. Further increasing his love of Germany was that he had fallen in love with a German woman named Anna Horst, and she with him. As Chamberlain's wealthy, elitist family back in Britain objected to him marrying the lower middle-class Horst on the grounds that she was socially unsuitable for him, this further estranged him from Britain, a place whose people Chamberlain regarded as cold, unfeeling, callous and concerned only with money. By contrast, Chamberlain regarded Germany as the romantic "land of love", a place whose people had human feelings like love, and whose culture was infused with a special spirituality that brought out the best in humanity. In 1883–1884, Chamberlain lived in Paris and worked as a stockbroker. Chamberlain's attempts to play the Paris bourse ended in failure as he proved to be inept at business, and much of his hatred of capitalism stemmed from his time in Paris. More happily for him, Chamberlain founded the first Wagner society in Paris and often contributed articles to the "Revue wagnérienne", the first journal in France devoted to Wagner studies. Together with his friend, the French writer Édouard Dujardin, Chamberlain did much to introduce Wagner to the French, who until then had largely ignored Wagner's music.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Thereafter he settled in Dresden, where "he plunged heart and soul into the mysterious depths of Wagnerian music and philosophy, the metaphysical works of the Master probably exercising as strong an influence upon him as the musical dramas". Chamberlain immersed himself in philosophical writings, and became a "Völkisch" author, one of those concerned more with a highly racist understanding of art, culture, civilisation and spirit than with quantitative physical distinctions between groups. This is evidenced by his huge treatise on Immanuel Kant with its comparisons. His knowledge of Friedrich Nietzsche is demonstrated in that work (p. 183) and in "Foundations" (p. 153n). It was during his time in Dresden that Chamberlain came to embrace "völkisch" thought through his study of Wagner, and from 1884 onwards, anti-Semitic and racist statements became the norm in his letters to his family in Britain. In 1888, Chamberlain wrote to his family proclaiming his joy at the death of the Emperor Friedrich III, a strong opponent of anti-Semitism whom Chamberlain called a "Jewish liberal", and rejoicing that his anti-Semitic son Wilhelm II was now on the throne. June 1888 was an auspicious month for Chamberlain. Besides the death of the "Jew-lover" Friedrich III, June 1888 also saw Chamberlain's first visit to the Wahnfried to meet Cosima Wagner, the reclusive leader of the Wagner cult. Chamberlain later recalled that Cosima Wagner had "electrified" him as he felt the "deepest love" for Wagner's widow while Wagner wrote to a friend that she felt a "great friendship" with Chamberlain "because of his outstanding learning and dignified character". Wagner came to regard Chamberlain as her surrogate son. Under her influence, Chamberlain abandoned his previous belief that art was a separate entity from other fields and came to embrace the "völkisch" belief of the unity of race, art, nation and politics.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Saxony was a center of "völkisch" activity in the late 19th century, and in the elections to the Saxon "Landtag" in 1893, "völkisch" candidates won 6 out of the 16 seats. Chamberlain's status as an immigrant to Germany always meant he was to a certain extent an outsider in his adopted country – a man who spoke fluent German, but always with an English accent. In a classic case of being "plus royaliste que le roi" (more royalist than the king), Chamberlain tried very hard to be more German than the Germans, and it was his efforts to fit in that led him to "völkisch" politics. Likewise, his anti-Semitism allowed him to define himself as a German in opposition to a group that allegedly threatened all Germans, thereby allowing him to integrate better into the Wagnerian circles with whom he socialized most of the time. Chamberlain's friend Hermann Keyserling later recalled that Chamberlain was an eccentric English "individualist" who "never saw Germany as it really is", instead having an idealized, almost mythic view of Germany and the Germans. This was especially the case as initially the German Wagnerites had rejected Chamberlain, telling him that only Germans could really understand Wagner, statements that very much hurt Chamberlain. To compensate, Chamberlain became "überdeutsch", the man who wanted to be more German than the Germans.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: By this time Chamberlain had met his first wife, the Prussian Anna Horst, whom he would divorce in 1905 after 28 years of marriage. Chamberlain was an admirer of Richard Wagner, and wrote several commentaries on his works including "Notes sur Lohengrin " ("Notes on Lohengrin") (1892), an analysis of Wagner's drama (1892), and a biography (1895), emphasising in particular the heroic Teutonic aspects in the composer's works. Stewart Spencer, writing in "Wagner Remembered", described Chamberlain's edition of Wagner letters as "one of the most egregious attempts in the history of musicology to misrepresent an artist by systematically censoring his correspondence". In particular, Wagner's lively sex life presented a problem for Chamberlain. Wagner had abandoned his first wife Minna, had an open affair with the married woman Mathilde Wesendonck and had started sleeping with his second wife Cosima while she was still married to her first husband. Chamberlain in his Wagner biography went to considerable lengths to distort the Master's love-life such as implying that Wagner's relationship with Cosima von Bülow only started after the death of her first husband.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During his time in Dresden, Chamberlain like many other "völkisch" activists became fascinated with Hindu mythology and legend, and learned Sanskrit in order to read the ancient Indian epics like the "Vedas" and the "Upanishads" in their original form. In these stories about ancient Aryan heroes conquering the Indian subcontinent, Chamberlain found a very appealing world governed by a rigid caste system with social inferiors firmly locked into their place; full of larger-than-life Aryan gods and aristocratic heroes and a world that focused on the spiritual at the expense of the material. Since by this time, historians, archaeologists and linguists had all accepted that the Aryans ("light ones") of Hindu legend were an Indo-European people, Chamberlain had little trouble arguing that these Aryans were in fact Germanic peoples, and modern Germans had much to learn from Hinduism, stating "in the night of the inner life ... the Indian ... finds his way in the dark more surely than anyone". For Chamberlain the Hindu texts offered a body of pure Aryan thought that made it possible to find the harmony of humanity and nature, which provided the unity of thought, purpose and action that provided the necessary spirituality for Aryan peoples to find true happiness in a world being destroyed by a soulless materialism. The popularity of the Hindu texts with the "völkisch" movement explains why the swastika, an ancient Indian symbol, was adopted by the "völkisch" activists as one of their symbols.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In 1889, he moved to Austria. During this time it is said his ideas on race began taking shape, influenced by the concept of Teutonic supremacy he believed embodied in the works of Richard Wagner and the French racist writer Arthur de Gobineau. In his book "Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines", the aristocratic Gobineau, who had an obsessive hatred of commoners, had developed the theory of an Aryan master race as a way of bolstering his social standing as he believed that French aristocrats like himself were the descendants of the Germanic Franks who had conquered the Roman province of Gaul while ordinary French people were the descendants of racially inferior Latin and Celtic peoples. Wagner had met Gobineau while on vacation in Rome in 1876, and the two had become friends. Wagner was greatly influenced by Gobineau's theories, but could not accept Gobineau's theory of inevitable racial decay amongst what was left of the "Aryan race", instead preferring the idea of racial regeneration of the Aryans. The Franco-Israeli historian Saul Friedländer opined that Wagner was the inventor of a new type of anti-Semitism, namely "redemptive anti-semitism", a type of "völkisch" anti-semitism that could explain all in the world in regards to Jew-hatred and offer a form of "redemption" for the anti-Semitic. Chamberlain had attended Wagner's Bayreuth Festival in 1882 and struck up a close correspondence with his widow Cosima. In 1908, twenty-five years after Wagner's death, he married Eva von Bülow-Wagner, Franz Liszt's granddaughter and Richard Wagner's daughter (Wagner had started fathering children by Cosima while she was still married to Hans von Bülow – despite her surname, Eva was actually Wagner's daughter). The next year he moved to Germany and became an important member of the "Bayreuth Circle" of German nationalist intellectuals. As an ardent Wagnerite, Chamberlain saw it as his life's mission to spread the message of racial hatred which he believed Wagner had advocated. Chamberlain explained his work in promoting the Wagner cult as an effort to cure modern society of its spiritual ills that he claimed were caused by capitalism, industrialisation, materialism, and urbanisation. Chamberlain wrote about modern society in the 1890s:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Like a wheel that spins faster and faster, the increasing rush of life drives us continually further apart from each other, continually further from the 'firm ground of nature'; soon it must fling us out into empty nothingness.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: If we do not soon pay attention to Schiller's thought regarding the transformation from the state of Need into the Aesthetic State, then our condition will degenerate into a boundless chaos of empty talk and arms foundries. If we do not soon heed Wagner's warning—that mankind must awaken to a consciousness of its "pristine holy worth"—then the Babylonian tower of senseless doctrines will collapse on us and suffocate the moral core of our being forever.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In Chamberlain's view, the purpose of the Wagner cult was nothing less than the salvation of humanity. As such, Chamberlain became engulfed in the "redemptive anti-semitism" that was at the core of both Wagner's worldview and of the Wagner cult.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In September 1891, Chamberlain visited Bosnia and Herzegovina as a journalist. In 1878, the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina had been occupied by Austria-Hungary; though the two provinces remained nominally Ottoman until 1908, in practice they were part of the Austrian empire from 1878 onwards. Because Bosnia-Herzegovina was still officially part of the Ottoman Empire, neither province was represented in the Austrian "Reichsrat" or the Hungarian Diet, and instead the two provinces were in practice a colony of Austria-Hungary. Chamberlain had been commissioned by the Austrian government to write propaganda glorying its colonial rule of Bosnia-Herzegovina for a Geneva newspaper. Chamberlain's articles about Bosnia reveal his increasing preference for dictatorship over democracy, with Chamberlain praising the Austrians for their utterly undemocratic rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Chamberlain wrote that what he had seen in Bosnia-Herzegovina was the perfect example of Wagner's dictum: "Absolute monarch – free people!" Chamberlain declared that the Bosnians were extremely lucky not to have the shambles and chaos of a democratic "parliamentary regime", instead being ruled by an idealist, enlightened dictatorship that did what was best for them. Equally important in Chamberlain's Bosnian articles was his celebration of "natural man" who lived on the land as a small farmer as opposed to what Chamberlain saw as the corrupt men who lived in modern industrial, urban society. At the time Chamberlain visited Bosnia-Herzegovina, the provinces had been barely touched by modernization, and for the most part, Bosnians continued to live much as their ancestors had done in the Middle Ages. Chamberlain was enchanted with what he saw, and forgetting for the moment that the purpose of his visit was to glorify Austrian rule, expressed much sadness in his articles that the "westernization" being fostered by the Austrians would destroy the traditional way of life in Bosnia. Chamberlain wrote about the average Bosnian:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: [The Bosnian peasant] builds his house, he makes his shoes, and plough, etc.; the woman weaves and dyes the stuffs and cooks the food. When we have civilized these good people, when we have taken from them their beautiful costumes to be preserved in museums as objects of curiosity, when we have ruined their national industries that are so perfect and so primitive, when contact with us has destroyed the simplicity of their manner—then Bosnia will no longer be interesting to us.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's awe and pride in the tremendous scientific and technological advances of the 19th century were always tempered with an extremely strong nostalgia for what he saw as the simpler, better and more innocent time when people lived on the land in harmony with nature. In his heart, Chamberlain was always a romantic conservative who idealised the Middle Ages and was never quite comfortable with the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. In Bosnia, Chamberlain saw an essentially medieval society that still moved to the ancient rhythm of life that epitomized his pastoral ideal. Remembering Bosnia several years later, Chamberlain wrote:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The spirit of a natural man, who does everything and must create everything for himself in life, is decidedly more universal and more harmoniously developed than the spirit of an industrial worker whose whole life is occupied with the manufacturing of a single object ... and that only with the aid of a complicated machine, whose functioning is quite foreign to him. A similar degeneration is taking place amongst peasants: an American farmer in the Far West is today only a kind of subordinate engine driver. Also among us in Europe it becomes every day more impossible for a peasant to exist, for agriculture must be carried out in "large units"—the peasant consequently becomes increasingly like an industrial worker. His understanding dries up; there is no longer an interaction between his spirit and surrounding Nature.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's nostalgia for a pre-industrial way of life that he expressed so strongly in his Bosnia articles earned him ridicule, as many believed that he had an absurdly idealized and romanticized view of the rural life that he never experienced first-hand.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In 1893, after receiving a letter from Cosima Wagner telling him that he had to read Gobineau's "Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines", Chamberlain, who was fluent in French, duly complied with her request. Chamberlain accepted Gobineau's belief in an Aryan master-race, but rejected his pessimism, writing that Gobineau's philosophy was "the grave of every attempt to deal practically with the race question and left only one honorable solution, that we at once put a bullet through our heads". Chamberlain's time in Vienna shaped his anti-Semitism and Pan-Germanism. Despite living in Vienna from 1889 to 1909, when he moved to Bayreuth, Chamberlain had nothing but contempt for the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Habsburg empire, taking the viewpoint that the best thing that could happen to the Austrian empire would be for it to be annexed by Germany to end the "Völkerchaos" (chaos of the peoples). Vienna had a large Jewish population (until 1938, Vienna was about 10% Jewish), and Chamberlain's time in Vienna may have been the first time in his life when he actually encountered Jews. Chamberlain's letters from Vienna constantly complain about how he was having to meet and deal with Jews, every one of whom he detested. In 1894 after visiting a spa, Chamberlain wrote: "Unfortunately like everything else ... it has fallen into the hands of the Jews, which includes two consequences: every individual is bled to the utmost and systematically, and there is neither order nor cleanliness." In 1895, he wrote:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In another letter of 1895, Chamberlain wrote he was still influenced by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's critique of the Jews as mindlessly materialistic, writing that Proudhon was "one of the most acute minds of the century" and "I find many points of contact between the Wagner-Schiller mode of thought and the anarchism of Proudhon." At the same time, Chamberlain's marriage to Anna began to fall apart, as his wife was frequently sick and though she assisted her husband with his writings, he did not find her very intellectually stimulating. Chamberlain started to complain more and more that his wife's frequent illnesses forced him to tend to her and were holding back his career.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Though Chamberlain consistently remained supportive of German imperialism, he frequently expressed hostile views towards the British Empire; Chamberlain viewed Britain as world's most frequent aggressor, a view he expressed more vehemently at the tail end of the 19th century. In 1895, Chamberlain wrote to his aunt about the Hamidian massacres in the Ottoman Empire during 1894–96:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The Armenian insurrection [of 1894] with the inevitable retaliation of massacres and persecution (of course "enormously exaggerated" by those greatest liars in creation, backed by their worthy friends the English journalists) was all got up at the precise moment when English politics required a "diversion".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The English press is the most insufferably arrogant, generally ignorant, the most passionately one-sided and narrow-minded in its judgments that I know; it is the universal "bully", always laying down the law for everybody, always speaking as if it were umpire of the universe, always abusing everybody all round and putting party spirit in all its judgments, envenoming thus the most peaceful discussions. It is this and this only which has made England hated all the world over. During the whole year 1895, I never opened an English newspaper without finding "War" predicated or threatened—No other nation in the world has wanted war or done anything but pray for peace—England alone, the world's bully, has been stirring it up on all sides.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During the 1890s, Chamberlain was an outspoken critic of British policies in South Africa, writing to his uncle in 1898:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: At the time of the Second Boer War, Chamberlain privately expressed support for the cause of the Boers, although he also expressed regret over "white men" fighting each other at a time when Chamberlain believed that white supremacy around the world was being threatened by the alleged "Yellow Peril". In July 1900, Chamberlain wrote to his aunt:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: One thing I can clearly see, that is, that it is criminal for Englishmen and Dutchmen to go on murdering each other for all sorts of sophisticated reasons, while the Great Yellow Danger overshadows us white men and threatens destruction … The fact that a tiny nation of peasants absolutely untrained in the conduct of war, has been able to keep the whole united empire at bay for months, and has only been overcome—and "has" it been overcome?—by sending out an army superior in number to the whole population including women and children, has lowered respect for England beyond anything you can imagine on your side of the water, and will certainly not remain lost on the minds of those countless millions who have hitherto been subdued by our prestige only.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain seized upon the fact that some of the Randlords were Jewish to argue in his letters to Cosima Wagner that the war was a case of Anglo-Jewish aggression against the Germanic Afrikaners. Wagner wrote back to Chamberlain: "This extermination of one of the most excellent Germanic races is so horrible that I know of nothing I have experienced which is comparable to it."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: As a leading Wagnerite in Vienna, Chamberlain befriended a number of other prominent Wagnerites, such as Prince Hohenhohe-Langenburg, Ludwig Schemann, Georg Meurer, and Baron Christian von Ehrenfels. The most important friendship that Chamberlain made during his time in Vienna was with German Ambassador to Austria-Hungary, Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg, who shared Chamberlain's love of Wagnerian music. Besides being a passionate Wagnerite, Eulenburg was also an anti-Semite, an Anglophobe and a convinced enemy of democracy who found much to admire in Chamberlain's anti-Semitic, anti-British and anti-democratic writings.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In February 1896, the Munich publisher Hugo Bruckmann, a leading "völkisch" activist who was later to publish "Mein Kampf" commissioned Chamberlain to write a book that was intended to summarize all of the achievements of the 19th century.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In October 1899 Chamberlain published his most famous work, "Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts," in German. "The Foundations" is a pseudo-scientific "racial history" of humanity from the emergence of the first civilizations in the ancient Near East to the year 1800. It argues that all of the "foundations" of the great 19th century, which saw huge economic, scientific and technological advances in the West, were the work of the "Aryan race". "Die Grundlagen" was only the first volume of an intended three-volume history of the West with the second and third volumes taking up the story of the West in the 19th century and the looming war for world domination in the coming 20th century between the Aryans on one side vs. the Jews, blacks and Asians on the other side.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain never wrote the third volume, much to the intense annoyance of Cosima Wagner, who was upset that "Die Grundlagen" stopped in 1800 before Wagner was born, and thus omitted her husband. The book argued that Western civilisation is deeply marked by the influence of Teutonic peoples.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain grouped all European peoples – not just Germans, but Celts, Slavs, Greeks, and Latins – into the "Aryan race", a race built on the ancient Proto-Indo-European culture. In fact, he even included the Berber people of North Africa in the Aryan race: "The noble Moor of Spain is anything but a pure Arab of the desert, he is half a Berber (from the Aryan family) and his veins are so full of Gothic blood that even at the present day noble inhabitants of Morocco can trace their descent back to Teutonic ancestors."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: At the helm of the Aryan race, and, indeed, all races, according to Chamberlain, were the Germanic or Teutonic peoples, who had best preserved the Aryan blood. Chamberlain used the terms Aryan, Indo-European and Indo-Germanic interchangeably, but he went out of his way to emphasise that purest Aryans were to be found in Central Europe and that in both France and Russia miscegenation had diluted the Aryan blood. The Russians in particular had become a semi-Asian people on the account of the rule of the Golden Horde. Much of Chamberlain's theory about the superiority of the Aryan race was taken from the writings of the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau, but there was a crucial difference in that Gobineau had used the Aryan race theory as a way of dividing society between an Aryan nobility vs. racially inferior commoners whereas Chamberlain used the Aryan racial theory as a way of uniting society around its supposed common racial origins.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Everything that Chamberlain viewed as good in the world was ascribed to the Aryans. For an example, in "The Foundations" Chamberlain explained at considerable length that Jesus Christ could not possibly be a Jew, and very strongly implied that Christ was an Aryan.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's tendency to see everything good as the work of the Aryans allowed him to claim whoever he approved of for the Aryan race, which at least was part of the appeal of the book in Germany when it was published in 1899. Chamberlain claimed all of the glories and achievements of ancient Greece and Rome as due entirely to Aryan blood. Chamberlain wrote that ancient Greece was a "lost ideal" of beautiful thought and art that the modern Germans were best placed to recover if only the German people could embrace Wagner.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain praised Rome for its militarism, civic values, patriotism, respect for the law and reverence for the family as offering the best sort of Aryan government. Reflecting his opposition to feminism, Chamberlain lamented how modern women were not like the submissive women of ancient Rome whom he claimed were most happy in obeying the wills of their husbands. Chamberlain asserted that Aryans and Aryans alone are the only people in the entire world capable of creating beautiful art and thinking great thoughts, so he claimed all of the great artists, writers and thinkers of the West such as Homer, Dante, Giotto, Donatello, Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Martin Luther, William Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Ludwig van Beethoven, Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as part of one long glorious tradition of beautiful Aryan art and thought, which Chamberlain planned to have culminate with the life-changing, racially regenerating music of Richard Wagner in the 19th century. As the British historian George Peabody Gooch wrote, here was "a glittering vision of mind and muscle, of large scale organization, of intoxicating self-confidence, of metallic brilliancy, such as Europe has never seen".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The antithesis of the heroic Aryan race with its vital, creative life-improving qualities was the "Jewish race", whom Chamberlain presented as the inverse of the Aryan. Every positive quality the Aryans had, the Jews had the exact opposing negative quality. The American historian Geoffrey Field wrote:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: To each negative "Semitic" trait Chamberlain counter-posed a Teutonic virtue. Kantian moral freedom took the place of political liberty and egalitarianism. Irresponsible Jewish capitalism was sharply distinguished from the vague ideal of Teutonic industrialism, a romantic vision of an advanced technological society which had somehow managed to retain the "Volksgemeinschaft", cooperation and hierarchy of the medieval guilds. The alternative to Marxism was "ethical socialism", such as that described by Thomas More, "one of the most exquisite scholars ever produced by a Teutonic people, of an absolutely aristocratic, refined nature". In the rigidly elitist, disciplined society of "Utopia" with its strong aura of Christian humanism, Chamberlain found an approximation of his own nostalgic, communal ideal. "The gulf separating More from Marx," he wrote, "is not the progress of time, but the contrast between Teuton and Jew."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain announced in "The Foundations" that "all the wars" in history were "so peculiarly connected with Jewish financial operations". Chamberlain warned that the aim of the Jew was "to put his foot upon the neck of all nations of the world and be Lord and possessor of the whole earth".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: As part of their plans to destroy Aryan civilization, Chamberlain wrote: "Consider, with what mastery they use the law of blood to extend their power." Chamberlain wrote that Jewish women were encouraged to marry Gentiles while Jewish men were not, so the male line "remained spotless ... thousands of side-branches are cut off and employed to infect Indo-Europeans with Jewish blood." In his account of the Punic wars between "Aryan Rome" and "Semitic Carthage", Chamberlain praised the Romans for their total destruction of Carthage in 146 BC at the end of the Third Punic War as an example of how Aryans should deal with Semites.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Later, Chamberlain argued that the Romans had become too tolerant of Semites like the Jews, and this was the cause of the downfall of the Roman empire. Chamberlain argued that it was due to miscegenation that the Jews had caused the Aryan Roman Empire to go into decline and collapse. Chamberlain wrote that the "African half breed soldier emperor" Caracalla had granted Roman citizenship to all the subjects in the Empire regardless of race or religion in 212 AD, and as result of this, the Romans had freely mixed with Semitic and African peoples, leading Chamberlain to conclude: "Like a cataract the alien blood poured down into the depopulated city of Rome and soon the Romans ceased to exist." As such, the destruction of the Western Roman Empire by the Germanic peoples was merely an act of liberation from the "Völkerchaos" ("Chaos of the Peoples") that the Roman empire had become.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The ultimate aim of the Jew, according to Chamberlain, was to create a situation where "there would be in Europe only a single people of pure race, the Jews, all the rest would be a herd of pseudo-Hebraic mestizos, a people beyond all doubt degenerate physically, mentally and morally."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: As part of their plans to destroy the Aryans, Chamberlain claimed that the Jews had founded the Roman Catholic Church, which only preached a "Judaized" Christianity that had nothing to do with the Christianity created by the Aryan Christ.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: At least some historians have argued that "The Foundations" are actually more anti-Catholic than anti-Semitic, but this misses the point that the reason why Chamberlain attacked the Catholic Church so fiercely was because he believed the Papacy was controlled by the Jews.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain claimed that in the 16th century the Aryan Germans under the leadership of Martin Luther had broken away from the corrupt influence of Rome, and so laid the foundations of a "Germanic Christianity".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain claimed that the natural and best form of government for Aryans was a dictatorship, and so he blamed the Jews for inventing democracy as part of their plans for destroying the Aryans. In the same way, Chamberlain blamed capitalism – which he saw as a very destructive economic system – as something invented by the Jews to enrich themselves at the expense of the Aryans while at the same time crediting the Jews with inventing socialism with its message of universal human equality as a cunning Jewish stratagem to divert attention away from all the economic devastation wrought by Jewish financiers.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain had a deep dislike of the Chinese, and in "The Foundations" he announced that Chinese civilization had been founded by the Jews because just like the Jews the Chinese had "... the total absence of all culture and the one-sided emphasizing of civilization". For Chamberlain, this was more than sufficient proof that the Jews had created Chinese civilization.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The Franco-Israeli historian Saul Friedländer described "The Foundations" – with its theory of two "pure" races left in the world, namely the German and Jewish locked into a war for world domination which could only end with the complete victory of one over the other – as one of the key texts of "redemptive anti-semitism". Because Chamberlain viewed Jews as a race, not a religion, Chamberlain argued the conversion of Jews was not a "solution" to the "Jewish Question", stating Jewish converts to Christianity were still Jews. In taking this stance, Chamberlain was going beyond his hero Wagner. Dutch journalist Ian Buruma wrote:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Wagner himself, like Luther, still believed that a Jew could, as he put it with his customary charm, "annihilate" his Jewishness by repudiating his ancestry, converting and worshiping at the shrine of Bayreuth. So in theory a Jew could be a German ... But to the mystical chauvinists, like Chamberlain, who took a tribal view of Germanness, even radical, Wagnerian assimilation could never be enough: the Jew was an alien virus to be purged from the national bloodstream. The more a Jew took on the habits and thoughts of his gentile compatriots, the more he was to be feared.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain did not advocate the extermination of Jews in "The Foundations"; indeed, despite his determination to blame all of the world's problems on the Jews, Chamberlain never proposed a solution to this perceived problem. Instead, Chamberlain made the cryptic statement that after reading his book, his readers would know best about how to devise a "solution" to the "Jewish Question".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Friedländer has argued that if one were to seriously take up the theories of "redemptive anti-semitism" proposed in "The Foundations", and push them to their logical conclusion, then inevitably one would reach the conclusion that genocide might be a perfectly acceptable "solution" to the "Jewish Question". Friedländer argued that there is an implied genocidal logic to "The Foundations" as Chamberlain argued that Jews were a race apart from the rest of humanity; that evil was embedded within the genes of the Jews, and so the Jews were born evil and remained evil until they died, indeed a Jew could never stop being evil even if he or she wanted to; and that for these biological reasons alone, the Jews would never cease their endless attempts to destroy all that was good within the world.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Inspired by "The Foundations", one "völkisch" writer, Josef Remier, published "Ein Pangermanisches Deutschland" ("A Pan-Germanic Germany") in 1905, which used "The Foundations" to advocate that Germany conquer the Russian Empire, after which special commissions of doctors, anthropologists and "breeding experts" were to divide the population into three categories; ethnic Germans, those capable of being "Germanized", and those incapable of "improvement", with all Slavs and Jews being included in the last category.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Field wrote that Remier's vision anticipated the "war of extermination" that was Operation Barbarossa in 1941 in "many horrifying aspects".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: "The Foundations" sold well: eight editions and 60,000 copies within 10 years, 100,000 copies by the outbreak of World War I and 24 editions and more than a quarter of a million copies by 1938.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The success of "The Foundations" after it was published in October 1899 made Chamberlain into a celebrity intellectual. The popularity of "The Foundations" was such that many "Gymnasium" (high school) teachers in the Protestant parts of Germany made " Die Grundlagen" required reading for their students.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: One teacher remembered: "I myself read the whole book in one go when as a young "Gymnasium" teacher in Nürnberg it fell into my hands. And with a flushed face I put it aside full of excitement. I can picture the scene today [1927] and can reawaken the old feeling." The book sold very well, but reviews in Germany were very mixed.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Conservative and National Liberal newspapers gave generally friendly reviews to "The Foundations". "Völkisch" newspapers gave overwhelming positive reviews to "The Foundations" with many "völkisch" reviewers calling "Die Grundlagen" one of the greatest books ever written.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: German universities were hotbeds of "völkisch" activity in the early 20th century, and "The Foundations" was extremely popular on university campuses with many university clubs using "The Foundations" as a reason to exclude Jewish students from joining.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Likewise, military schools were centers of "völkisch" thought in the early 20th century, and so "The Foundations" was very popular with officer cadets; though since neither the Navy nor the Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon and Württemberg armies accepted Jewish officer candidates, "Die Grundlagen" did not lead to Jews being excluded. The only exceptions to the otherwise total exclusion of German Jews from the officer corps were the Bavarian and Saxon armies, which were prepared to accept Jews as reserve officers. Liberal and Social Democratic newspapers gave the book extremely poor reviews with reviewers complaining of an irrational way of reasoning in "The Foundations", noting that Chamberlain quoted the writings of Goethe out of context in order to give him views that he had not held, and that the entire book was full of an obsessive anti-Semitism which they found extremely off-putting.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Because of Chamberlain's anti-Catholicism, Catholic newspapers all published very hostile reviews of "The Foundations", though Catholic reviewers rarely faulted "Die Grundlagen" for its anti-Semitism.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Protestant "völkisch" newspapers gave "The Foundations" very good reviews, while more orthodox Protestant newspapers were disturbed by Chamberlain's call for a racialized Christianity.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: One Protestant reviewer, Professor Baentsch of Jena, wrote that Chamberlain had systematically distorted the Book of Job, the Psalms, the Prophets, and other books of the Old Testament, leading him to conclude that it was no surprise that Chamberlain found so little common ground between Christianity and Judaism given the way he had misrepresented the entire Old Testament.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: One German Jewish reviewer, the Berlin banker Heinrich Meyer-Cohn, wrote that "The Foundations" was "bad, unclear, and illogical in its train of thought and unpleasing in style, full of false modesty and genuine superciliousness, full of real ignorance and false affectation of learning".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: German Jewish groups like the "Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens" and the "Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus" repeatedly issued statements in the early 20th century that the popularity of "The Foundations" was a major source of concern for them, noting that "Die Grundlagen" had caused a major increase in anti-Semitism with many German Jews now finding themselves the objects of harassment and sometimes violence.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The German Jewish journalist Moritz Goldstein wrote in 1912 that he had become a Zionist because he believed there was no future for Jews in Germany, and one of the reasons for that belief was: "Chamberlain believes what he says and for that very reason his distortions shock me. And thousands more believe as he does for the book goes one edition after another and I would still like to know if many Germanic types, whose self-image is pleasantly indulged by this theory, are able to remain critical enough to question its countless injustices and errors?"


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Goldstein added that the case of Chamberlain showed his views as typical of those of "the best spirits, clever, truth-loving men who, however, as soon they speak of Jews, fall into a blind, almost rabid hatred".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In 1900, for the first time in decades, Chamberlain visited Britain, a place he disparagingly called "the land of the Boer-eaters". Writing to Cosima Wagner from London, Chamberlain stated sadly that "his" Britain, the Britain of aristocratic rule, hard work and manly courage, the romanticized "Merry Old England" of his imagination was no more; it had been replaced by what Chamberlain saw as a materialist, soulless society, atomized into individuals with no sense of the collective purpose and entirely dominated by greed. Chamberlain wrote that since the 1880s Britain had "chosen the service of Mammon", for which he blamed the Jews, writing to Wagner: "This is the result, when one has studied politics with a Jew for a quarter century." The "Jew" Chamberlain was referring to was Disraeli, whom Chamberlain had always hated with a passion. Chamberlain concluded: "My old England was nowhere recognizable." Chamberlain declared in his letter that all British businessmen were now dishonest; the middle class, smug and stupid; small farmers and shops were no longer able to compete with Jewish-owned big business; and the monarchy was "irretrievably weakened" by social change. In short, for Chamberlain Britain was no longer his country.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In the summer of 1900, Chamberlain wrote an essay in the magazine "Jugend", where he declared that: "The reign of Wilhelm II has the character of the dawning of a new day." Chamberlain went on to write that Wilhelm was "in fact the first German Kaiser" who knew his mission was to "ennoble" the world by spreading "German knowledge, German philosophy, German art and—if God wills—German religion. Only a Kaiser who undertakes this task is a true Kaiser of the German people." To allow Germany to become a world power, Chamberlain called for the "Reich" to become the world's greatest sea power, as Chamberlain asserted that whatever power rules the seas also rules the world. Chamberlain wrote that "without a fleet nothing can be done. But equipped with a great fleet, Germany is embarking on the course to which Cromwell showed England the way, and she can and must steer resolutely towards the goal of becoming the first power in the world. She has the moral justification for it and therefore also the duty."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In early 1901, the German Emperor Wilhelm II read "The Foundations" and was immensely impressed with the book. The Imperial Grand Chamberlain at the court, Ulrich von Bülow, the brother of the Chancellor Prince Bernhard von Bülow, wrote in a letter to a friend in January 1901 that the Kaiser was "studying the book a second time page by page". In November 1901, Chamberlain's friend, the German diplomat and courtier Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg, who happened to be the best friend of Wilhelm II, introduced Chamberlain to the Kaiser. Chamberlain and Wilhelm first met at Eulenburg's estate at Liebenberg and soon became very good friends, maintaining a regular correspondence which continued until Chamberlain's death in 1927.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: To reach Liebenberg from Vienna, Chamberlain had first to take a train to Berlin, and then board another train to Liebenberg. Chamberlain's meeting with the Kaiser was considered so important that when Chamberlain reached Berlin, he was met by the Chancellor Prince Bernhard von Bülow, who joined him on the trip to Liebenberg. During the train ride, Bülow and Chamberlain had a long discussion about "The Foundations" and then French literature. Upon reaching the gates of Liebenberg in the evening, Chamberlain and Bülow were met by Wilhelm and Eulenburg who were surrounded by servants carrying torches. When he met Chamberlain for the first time, Wilhelm told him: "I thank you for what you have done for Germany!" The next day, Eulenburg wrote to a friend that the Emperor "stood completely under the spell of this man [Chamberlain], whom he understood better than any of the other guests because of his thorough study of "The Foundations"".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Until Chamberlain's death, he and Wilhelm had what the American historian Geoffrey Field called "a warm, personal bond", which was expressed in a series of "... elaborate, wordy letters, full of mutual admiration and half-baked ideas". The Wilhelm–Chamberlain letters were full of "the perplexing thought world of mystical and racist conservatism". They ranged far and wide in subject matter: the ennobling mission of the Germanic race, the corroding forces of Ultramontanism, materialism and the "destructive poison" of "Judentum" were favorite themes. Other subjects often discussed in the Wilhelm-Chamberlain letters were the dangers posed to the "Reich" by the "Yellow Peril", "Tartarized Slavdom", and the "black hordes".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In 1901, Wilhelm informed Chamberlain in a letter that: "God sent your book to the German people, just as he sent you personally to me, that is my unshakably firm conviction." Wilhelm went on to praise Chamberlain as his "comrade-in-arms and ally in the struggle for Teutons against Rome, Jerusalem, etc." In 1902, Wilhelm wrote another letter in which he told Chamberlain: "May you save our German "Volk", our "Germanentum", for God has sent you as our helper!" Chamberlain in his turn advised Wilhelm to create "a racially aware ... centrally organised Germany with a clear sense of purpose, a Germany which would 'rule the world'".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In 1903, Chamberlain wrote to Wilhelm to claim that as in the last decadent days of Rome, "the "civis britannicus" is now become a purely political concept" with no racial content being involved. Chamberlain wrote with disgust how for two shillings and a sixpence, "every Basuto nigger" could now carry a British passport. Chamberlain went on to predict within the next fifty years "the English aristocracy will be nothing but a money oligarchy, without a shred of racial solidarity or relation to the throne." Chamberlain went on to deplore the practice of raising businessmen to the peerage in Britain, contemptuously declaring that in Britain mere "brewers, ink manufacturers and ship-owners" now sat in the House of Lords. Chamberlain ended his letter to the Kaiser by calling the general British public "a herd which has no will and which a few newspapers and handful of politicians manipulate as they wish". Wilhelm's later concept of "Juda-England", of a decaying Britain sucked dried by Jewish capitalists, owed much to Chamberlain.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The Dutch journalist Ian Buruma described Chamberlain's letters to the Kaiser as pushing his "… Anglophobic, anti-Semitic, Germanophile ideas to the point of murderous lunacy". The liberal "Berliner Zeitung" newspaper complained in an editorial of the close friendship between Wilhelm II and such an outspoken racist and anti-Semite as Chamberlain, stating this was a real cause for concern for decent, caring people both inside and outside Germany.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: For Wilhelm, all pride about being German had a certain ambivalence, as he was in fact half-British. In an age of ultra-nationalism with identities being increasingly defined in racial terms, his mixed heritage imposed considerable psychological strain on Wilhelm, who managed at one and the same time to be both an Anglophile and Anglophobe; he was a man who both loved and hated the British, and his writings about the land of his mother displayed both extreme admiration and loathing. Buruma observed that for all his much-vaunted beliefs in public about the superiority of everything German, in private Wilhelm often displayed signs of an inferiority complex to the British, as if he really felt deep down that it was Britain, not Germany, that was the world's greatest country. For Wilhelm, someone like Chamberlain, the Englishman who came to Germany to praise the Fatherland as the world's greatest nation, and who had "scientifically" proven that "fact" in "The Foundations", was a "dream come true" for him. Writing about the Chamberlain-Wilhelm relationship, Field stated:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain helped place Wilhelm's tangled and vaguely formulated fears of Pan Slavism, the black and yellow "hordes", Jews, Ultramontanes, Social Democrats, and free-thinkers to a global and historical framework copiously footnoted and sustained by a vast array of erudite information. He elevated the Emperor's dream of a German mission into an elaborate vision of divinely ordained, racial destiny. The lack of precision, the muddle, and logical flaws that are so apparent to modern readers of "The Foundations" did not bother Wilhelm: he eagerly submitted to its subjective, irrational style of reasoning. ... And if the Kaiser was a Prussian with an ingrained respect for English values and habits, Chamberlain was just as much an Englishman who was deeply ambivalent about his own birthplace and who revered German qualities and Prussian society. Almost unconsciously, as his vast correspondence shows, he adopted an obsequious, scraping tone when addressing the lowliest of Prussian army officers. If Wilhelm was drawn to the very Englishness of Chamberlain, the author of "The Foundations" saw in the Hohenzollern prince—at least until the World War—the very symbol of his idealized "Deutschtum".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain, who in the words of Buruma was "an English fetishist of German blood" who wrote long pseudo-scientific articles about how "Germanic racial genius" manifested itself in the cultural works of Richard Wagner, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig van Beethoven, and William Shakespeare (Chamberlain considered Shakespeare to be a "Germanic playwright" who properly belonged to Germany), was the "perfect match" for Wilhelm. Chamberlain frequently wrote to an appreciative and admiring Wilhelm telling him that it was only the noble "German spirit" which was saving the world from being destroyed by a "deracinated Yankee-Anglo-Jewish materialism". Finally, Wilhelm was also a Wagnerite and found much to admire in Chamberlain's writings praising Wagner's music as a mystical, spiritual life-force that embodied all that was great about the "German spirit".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The success of "The Foundations" made Chamberlain famous all over the world. In 1906, the Brazilian intellectual Sílvio Romero cited Chamberlain together with Otto Ammon, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Arthur de Gobineau as having proved that the blond "dolichocephalic" people of northern Europe were the best and greatest race in the entire world, and urged that Brazil could become a great nation by a huge influx of German immigrants who would achieve the "embranquecimento" (whitening) of Brazil. Chamberlain received invitations to lecture on his racial theories at Yale and Johns Hopkins universities, but turned them down on the grounds that he had no wish to visit what he viewed as a culturally and spiritually debased nation like the United States.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: When the book was first published, reviewers often asked who this Chamberlain was, and there was much fevered speculation in the German press as to whether Chamberlain was related to Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary who, as the principal author of the British forward policy in South Africa, was one of the most detested men in the "Reich". Several German magazines mistakenly printed pictures of Joseph Chamberlain's sons, Austen Chamberlain and Neville Chamberlain, identifying them as the author of "The Foundations". Many Germans breathed a sigh of relief when it was established that Houston Stewart Chamberlain was not related to the famous Chamberlain family of Birmingham.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: After the success of "The Foundations", a Chamberlain "Kreis" (circle) appeared in Vienna that comprised the Indologist Leopold von Schroeder, Count Ulrich von Bülow; Countess Melanie Metternich-Zichy, Countess Marietta von Coundenhove, Baroness Emma von Ehrenfels, the music critic and Wagnerite Gustav Schonaich, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count Hermann Keyserling and Rudolf Kassner who met weekly at Chamberlain's home to discuss his racial theories.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: It was during this period that Chamberlain had an affair with Baroness von Ehrenfels, the wife of his friend Baron Christian von Ehrenfels and another affair with a Viennese showgirl, Lili Petri. In 1906, his marriage to Anna ended in divorce.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Besides the income from sales of "The Foundations" and the essays he was constantly writing for newspapers and journals, Chamberlain was supported financially by a wealthy German piano-manufacturer, August Ludowici (who liked Chamberlain so much that he purchased a house for him), and by the Swiss industrialist Agénor Boissier, giving an annual income of about 30,000–40,000 marks (by contrast a German school-teacher had an annual income of 1,000 marks, while a professor made about 12,000 marks per year). In 1908, after Cosima Wagner suggested the match, Chamberlain married Wagner's daughter Eva von Bülow. He was extremely happy to be married to the daughter of his hero Wagner.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain, the self-proclaimed "Evangelist of Race", saw himself as a prophet, writing to the Kaiser: "Today, God relies only on the Germans. That is the knowledge, the sure truth, which has filled my soul for years; I have sacrificed my peace in serving it; for it I shall live and die." Eulenburg recalled that under his quiet demeanor Chamberlain had a "fiery spirit with those eyes and looks which speak volumes". The few who knew Chamberlain well described him as a quiet, reserved man full of urbane erudition and charm; a modest, genial character with elegant manners dressed in expensive suits who could talk brilliantly and with much wit about a great number of subjects for hours. But under his polished surface, Chamberlain had a "fanatical and obsessive" side. His copious notebooks and letters show a man with "a profoundly irrational mind", a markedly sadistic and deeply paranoid individual who believed himself to be the victim of a monstrous worldwide Jewish conspiracy to destroy him. Chamberlain's status as a semi-recluse came about because of his fear that the Jews were plotting his murder.