Author Archives: mwcraig11

On the 21st October 1916 Count Karl von Stürgkh was murdered by Friedrich Wolfgang Adler. Stürgkh, whose family originated from the Upper Palatinate, had been born on 30th October 1859. The family owned vast estates in the Halbenrain region of … Continue reading →

     On 23 January 1897 Margarete Lihotozky known as Grete, was born into a comfortable bourgeois family in Vienna. Her father Erwin Lihotozky, was a manager for the municipal expansion fund for the Vienna City Council. Grete was a very … Continue reading →

On the 27th February 1920 the Expressionist film Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari premiered in Berlin. Directed by Robert Wiene and starring Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt, Das Cabinet was a horror film that became one of the most influential … Continue reading →

The start of the twentieth century saw great changes within art. The Great War had broken apart countries, communities and human bodies. For the artistic community wholeness could only come about through modernity. Expressionism was the first major artistic movement … Continue reading →

In December 1919 Leopold Jessner staged the play William Tell.  A native of Königsberg Leopold was born in 1878 and had started out as an actor before becoming a stage director in 1911. He was a member, albeit a somewhat … Continue reading →

German Law was a system of civic government that allowed the merchants and artisans of towns a degree of control in trade and town governance. There were three main types:  Lübeck Law, Nüremberg-Vienna Law and Magdeburg Law or Magdeburg Rights. … Continue reading →

In the year 1900 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin invented the great flying wonder that was the Zeppelin. The Seeberger-Otis wooden escalator won first prize at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Europe was a new and exciting place. Except for the medieval … Continue reading →

Walter Rathenau was an industrialist and founder of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG)  (electrical engineering company). He was murdered in June 1922, a prominent victim of the Organisation Consul one of the many right-wing paramilitary groups. At the outbreak of the … Continue reading →

  Elisabeth of Austria, born on the 24th December 1837 was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. Born into Bavarian royalty, Elisabeth, known as Sisi,  married Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria … Continue reading →

The Annales School of history which arose in France in 1929 has been criticised for a lack of coherent meta-narrative and lack of focus. The school has gone through three major periods of development and fragmentation such that the title … Continue reading →