user: IN: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema,  (; born Lourens Alma Tadema Dutch pronunciation: ['l^ur@ns 'alma: 'ta:d@,ma:]; 8 January 1836 - 25 June 1912) was a Dutch painter of special British denizenship.

Alma-Tadema's output decreased with time, partly on account of health, but also because of his obsession with decorating his new home, to which he moved in 1883. Nevertheless, he continued to exhibit throughout the 1880s and into the next decade, receiving a plentiful amount of accolades along the way, including the medal of Honour at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, election to an honorary member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society in 1890, the Great Gold Medal at the International Exposition in Brussels of 1897. In 1899 he was Knighted in England, only the eighth artist from the Continent to receive the honour. Not only did he assist with the organisation of the British section at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, he also exhibited two works that earned him the Grand Prix Diploma. He also assisted with the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 where he was well represented and received.  During this time, Alma-Tadema was very active with theatre design and production, designing many costumes. He also spread his artistic boundaries and began to design furniture, often modelled after Pompeian or Egyptian motifs, illustrations, textiles, and frame making. His diverse interests highlight his talents. Each of these exploits were used in his paintings, as he often incorporated some of his designed furniture into the composition, and must have used many of his own designs for the clothing of his female subjects. Through his last period of creativity Alma-Tadema continued to produce paintings, which repeat the successful formula of women in marble terraces overlooking the sea such as in Silver Favourites (1903). Between 1906 and his death six years later, Alma-Tadema painted less but still produced ambitious paintings like The Finding of Moses (1904).  On 15 August 1909 Alma-Tadema's wife, Laura, died at the age of fifty-seven. The grief-stricken widower outlived his second wife by less than three years. His last major composition was Preparation in the Coliseum (1912). In the summer of 1912, Alma Tadema was accompanied by his daughter Anna to Kaiserhof Spa, Wiesbaden, Germany where he was to undergo treatment for ulceration of the stomach. He died there on 28 June 1912 at the age of seventy-six. He was buried in a crypt in St Paul's Cathedral in London.

Did he still paint?

OUT: Alma-Tadema continued to produce paintings,


IN: Ludendorff was born on 9 April 1865 in Kruszewnia near Posen, Province of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (now Poznan County, Poland), the third of six children of August Wilhelm Ludendorff (1833-1905). His father was descended from Pomeranian merchants who had achieved the prestigious status of Junker. Erich's mother, Klara Jeanette Henriette von Tempelhoff (1840-1914), was the daughter of the noble but impoverished Friedrich August Napoleon von Tempelhoff (1804-1868) and his wife Jeannette Wilhelmine von Dziembowska (1816-1854), who came from a Germanized Polish landed family on the side of her father Stephan von Dziembowski (1779-1859). Through Dziembowski's wife Johanna Wilhelmine von Unruh (1793-1862), Erich was a remote descendant of the Counts of Donhoff, the Dukes of Duchy of Liegnitz and Duchy of Brieg and the Marquesses and Electors of Brandenburg.

In 1885, Ludendorff was commissioned as a subaltern into the 57th Infantry Regiment, then at Wesel. Over the next eight years, he was promoted to lieutenant and saw further service in the 2nd Marine Battalion, based at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, and in the 8th Grenadier Guards at Frankfurt on the Oder. His service reports reveal the highest praise, with frequent commendations. In 1893, he entered the War Academy, where the commandant, General Meckel, recommended him to the General Staff, to which he was appointed in 1894. He rose rapidly and was a senior staff officer at the headquarters of V Corps from 1902 to 1904.  Next he joined the Great General Staff in Berlin, which was commanded by Alfred von Schlieffen, Ludendorff directed the Second or Mobilization Section from 1904-13. Soon he was joined by Max Bauer, a brilliant artillery officer, who became a close friend. By 1911, Ludendorff was a full colonel. His section was responsible for writing the mass of detailed orders needed to bring the mobilized troops into position to implement the Schlieffen Plan. For this they covertly surveyed frontier fortifications in Russia, France and Belgium. For instance, in 1911 Ludendorff visited the key Belgian fortress city of Liege.  Deputies of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which became the largest party in the Reichstag after the German federal elections of 1912, seldom gave priority to army expenditures, whether to build up its reserves or to fund advanced weaponry such as Krupp's siege cannons. Instead, they preferred to concentrate military spending on the Imperial German Navy. Ludendorff's calculations showed that to properly implement the Schlieffen Plan the Army lacked six corps.  Members of the General Staff were instructed to keep out of politics and the public eye, but Ludendorff shrugged off such restrictions. With a retired general, August Keim, and the head of the Pan-German League, Heinrich Class, he vigorously lobbied the Reichstag for the additional men. In 1913 funding was approved for four additional corps but Ludendorff was transferred to regimental duties as commander of the 39th (Lower Rhine) Fusiliers, stationed at Dusseldorf. "I attributed the change partly for my having pressed for those three additional army corps."  Barbara Tuchman characterizes Ludendorff in her book The Guns of August as Schlieffen's devoted disciple who was a glutton for work and a man of granite character but who was deliberately friendless and forbidding and therefore remained little known or liked. It is true that as his wife testified, "Anyone who knows Ludendorff knows that he has not a spark of humor...". He was voluble nonetheless, although he shunned small talk. John Lee, states that while Ludendorff was with his Fusiliers, "he became the perfect regimental commander ... the younger officers came to adore him." His adjutant, Wilhelm Breucker, became a devoted lifelong friend.

Who did he work with?

OUT:

assistant: With a retired general, August Keim, and the head of the Pan-German League, Heinrich Class, he vigorously lobbied the Reichstag for the additional men.