REPORTAGEM: Stolen heart: Why Louis XIV's death was posh but morbid

France's King Louis XIV lived an extraordinarily lavish life. But things really got interesting when he died. Little-known Elements of his bizarre and grotesque burial ritual are now on display at Versailles.

 

 

Louis XIV: The bedroom king

Despite his illness, the Sun King carried on his daily business until two days before his death. Considering that he'd always conducted a good part of his political affairs from his bedroom, he still had the opportunity to rest.

 

Certificate of death

Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715. He had been on the throne for 72 years and 110 days, and still holds the record for the longest reign in any major European country. He had six children with his wife Marie-Thérèse. Since two of them were boys, he thought he didn't have to worry about an heir. But just before the Sun King died, things all started to go wrong.

 

Portrait of Europe's longest-reigning monarch

Louis XIV's eldest son, known as the Grand Dauphin, died in 1711. The following year, his eldest son, also called Louis, also died. The crown passed to Louis XIV's great-grandson, who became Louis XV. Pictured is an oil portrait of the Sun King himself.

 

Louis XIV's 'certificate of opening'

The day after the king's death, his body was cut open and divided into three parts (body, heart and entrails). It was embalmed by doctors and surgeons in front of the principal officers of the court. The process was recorded in this official document.

 

Seat of power

The Duke of Berry, one of the royal lineages in France, built some of the greatest castles and palaces in the country, perhaps the most splendid of which was in Bourges. One of his constructions was the chapel pictured here, built at the Louvre, which was the seat of the King of France. It was King Louis XIV who moved the throne to Versailles in 1682.

Royal deaths

 

"The King is Dead" exhibition also touches on the burials of other French kings. Charles Ferdinand d'Artois, Duke of Berry (1778 - 1820) was the third child and youngest son of the future King of France, Charles X. He was assassinated at the Paris Opera in 1820 by an anti-royal Bonapartist, and his elaborate funeral procession is depicted here.

 

Moving the remains of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

One of the most famous royal deaths in France was that of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Thir beheaded bodies were thrown into a mass grave at La Madelaine in Paris after their execution but, in January 1815, after the restoration of the monarchy, their remains were exhumed and transferred to the necropolis of French kings at the Basilica of St Denis.

 

Napoleons in Les Invalides

"The King is Dead" exhibition in Versailles Palace also touches on the deaths of later French kings. Pictured is the Chapel of King Jerome (1784 - 1860), who was the youngest brother of Napoleon I and reigned as King of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813. He was buried, as Napoleon Bonaparte eventually was as well, in Les Invalides.

 

Versailles Palace

The luxurious palace built by Louis XIV and famous for its exquisite gardens was the seat of French royalty from 1682 to 1789, when the French Revolution began. Today, however, it is one of the most-visited sights near Paris. The exhibition "The King is Dead" runs though February 21, 2016.

Author: John Laurenson

In early summer 1715, French King Louis XIV complained of pain in his leg. By mid-August gangrene had set in and on September 1, he was dead.

He'd been on the throne for 72 of his 77 years. He died as he had lived - in public. And his death wasn't necessarily a sad occasion.
"During the last thirty years of Louis XIV's reign, France only had a two year respite from war," said Gérard Sabatier. The co-curator of "The King Is Dead" exhibition, now on show at Versailles Palace, has conducted three years of research into the history of royal funerals. "The French not only had to go and fight these wars, they had to pay for them, so when he died the abiding mood in France was one of relief."
Despite his illness, the "Sun King" carried on his daily rituals until two days before his death, a decision perhaps made easier by the fact that he'd always conducted a good part of France's affairs from his bedroom.
It was no ordinary bedroom, and what went on there wasn't either.

Sunrise, sunset in the Sun King's bedroom
Louis XIV's sleeping chamber was located in the exact center of the palace façade so that the view from his bed would cut straight down the middle of the magnificent, gilded entrance to the palace. It was no coincident that the path up to the residence mirrored the East-West axis of the sun.
Here, each day began with the lever du Roi when, over a period of an hour and a half, he was dressed and received visitors according to their status: He began with his brother and his son and ended with more distant courtiers and lords. By the time Louis XIV had his wig on his head and his sword fixed to his belt and was pulling on his gloves, his bedroom would be full of people.
Each day ended with the coucher du Roi, which was the exact same thing in reverse.

Three-part corpse and royal effigy
The day after the king's death, his body was cut open and divided into three parts (body, heart and entrails) and embalmed by doctors and surgeons, before being placed in a coffin made of lead, which was then placed in another coffin made of oak.
The practice of dividing dead French kings into three began with Philippe le Bel in 1314. The idea was that, instead of one, you could have three final resting places where people could pay homage to you (or, in more troubled times, desecrate the remains and pillage the metals).
Louis's double coffin stood in Versailles for eight days. In a departure from tradition, no funeral effigy was made.
Previously, following a Roman practice revived by the English, a wicker effigy of the dead king was made (in England it was wood). A wax mask and wax hands molded from the dead king's body were attached to it. The effigy was then dressed and sat up in bed where it received visits from mourners in place of the real body which, having started to reek, was safely enclosed in a coffin. The doll was even served a meal.

Versailles was designed according to carefully planned geographic principles

Versailles was designed according to carefully planned geographic principles

These effigies also played an important role in the funeral processions: They were placed on top of the kings' funeral carriages and paraded through the streets of Paris, where the people would flock to see them. However, Louis XIV's father Louis XIII put an end to this practice, which he considered unacceptably pagan.
Instead mourners paid their respects to the remains in the coffin.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, women wore mourning white but, by the 18th century, black was firmly established as the color of mourning. With one exception - the king's heir.

The trouble of dying heirs
Louis XIV had spent much of his life feeling rather good about himself in respect to his succession. Unlike his neighbors, those poor Spanish Bourbons who had all sorts of problems making heirs, he had six children with his wife Marie-Thérèse, two of whom were boys.
But just before he died, things all started to go wrong.
His eldest son Louis, known as the Grand Dauphin, died in 1711 and, the following year, his eldest son, also called Louis, also died. The Sun King's only surviving heir was his great-grandson - naturally, also called Louis - who incidentally also went on to give his name to a type of chair.
At his great-grandfather's death in 1715, the future Louis XV, just five years old, was not allowed to visit his dead relative, take part in his funeral procession, or go to the funeral.

The king is dead, long live the king
And he didn't wear black; he wore purple. This was to signify that, although kings die, the king - if you understand -, does not.
"The death of the king, both as a man and an institution, was a key moment in the construction of the public perception of the monarchy," according to "The King is Dead" website.
Black was worn by the other mourners, who came to sprinkle holy water on dead Louis XIV's coffin. But who wore what mourning attire was strictly regulated. The higher the rank of the mourner, the longer the train he was allowed to wear. The most important people wore black trains up to five meters long.
Certain rooms in Versailles were draped in black, as were carriages. Servants wore black and so did the horses.
As night set in on September 8, 1715, Louis XIV's funeral procession set out from Versailles for the basilica at St. Denis Cathedral, the ancient burial place of French kings. The basilica contains the remains of all but three of the 70-odd kings that ruled France starting with Clovis in the 5th century.
Funeral march fit for Hollywood
We don't know why they chose to slowly march for 12 hours at night. Perhaps it was the influence of Spain, where they'd developed a taste for night-time religious ritual. The effect, in any case, would have been dramatic.
The procession included 2,500 people. Many of them were king's guards, mounted and on foot around the king's three-meter high funeral carriage, which was topped with a large silver cross. At the front were 400 poor people, carrying candles, who were paid and dressed for the occasion in black cloaks with black hoods.
As they walked through the streets, with drummers keeping the slow, funereal beat, some in the crowds shouted insults as Louis's funeral coach rolled by. Many people in France were glad to see the back of France's longest-serving monarch.

Sun King's organs discovered at Notre Dame
The procession arrived at dawn at St. Denis Cathedral for the funeral, where musicians played a funeral march composed by André Philidor.

 

The five meter-long, ermine-lined cloak of blue velvet and gold fleurs de lys, his crown, and the sword that had belonged to Charlemagne were placed upon Louis' coffin. Inside were models of his shield, his spurs, and his scepter known as his "hand of justice" to symbolize authority.
The body was buried at St. Denis Cathedral. Decades later, in 1793, where it was dug up at the beginning of The Terror, a period at the start of the French Revolution marked by violence and executions, and scattered along with the remains of other kings. The copper plaque identifying his coffin was pillaged and turned into a saucepan. Straightened out again, it is on display in the "The King is Dead" exhibition.
Louis's heart was put in the Jesuits' church in the rue St. Antoine, where looters also came during the French Revolution and took the gold that encased it. Though his heart was destroyed, the exhibition contains three other royal hearts set in gold in the same way.
Only the Sun King's embalmed innards remained undesecrated by the anti-royalist Jacobins. A recent discovery allowed the identification of the exact location of the barrels containing the entrails of Louis XIV and his father at the foot of the steps to the sanctuary of Notre Dame Cathedral. Over the decades, millions of tourists to the famous Paris church had no idea what they were stepping over.
"The King is Dead" exhibition runs through February 21, 2016, at the Versailles Palace in Paris.

Fonte: Deutsche Welle (27.10.2015)

REPORTAGEM: Dresden's Church of Our Lady celebration defies xenophobia with music

Destroyed by Allied bombs in World War II, Dresden's iconic Church of Our Lady was restored 10 years ago. In a city now marked by xenophobic tendencies, the anniversary is celebrated with music that evokes community.

At Neumarkt Square in downtown Dresden, much to the delight of the children on hand, a street performer is generating huge soap bubbles. One of them glides upwards in front of the Church of Our Lady until it look like it's about to be punctured by the church tower.
This sunny October day in what some call Germany's most beautiful city center could hardly stand in greater contrast to the images from Dresden that are currently troubling the nation: mass demonstrations against refugees and foreigners.
The protests even overshadow the Church of Our Lady festivities. The house of worship is a unique symbol of peace and reconciliation, says the pastor at a noontime organ concert, but he adds, "As in wartime, we are experiencing a dangerous moment in the city. We are at a crossroads."


Jan Vogler, Wolfgang Rihm and Mira Wang go over the score

A church reborn out of ashes

Destroyed during the Allied fire-bombing on February 13, 1945, the church was largely neglected under the communist East German regime. Starting in 1989, just as the Berlin Wall fell, an initiative to restore the Dresden icon began.
It's been 10 years since the rebuilt Church of Our Lady was dedicated on October 31, 2005. Now, the city is hosting a 10-day festival to mark the anniversary, recalling the 1990 citizens' initiative, volunteers and the many foreign donors who made the restoration of the church possible.
Symbolizing that international achievement, an orchestra from the US has come to give the first European performance of a work by Wolfgang Rihm, Germany's best-known living composer. The guest performance by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has a program with references to Dresden's music history.
On the afternoon before the concert, the composer listens to the rehearsal, bent over his score. "It's a swimming match," he remarks afterward, counting seven seconds of reverberation in the bright acoustic within the stone interior under the 12,000-ton church tower. He hopes that the evening attire of the concert guests will later absorb some of the wayward sound waves.

Music about 'common effort'
Did he insert a message into the composition tailor-made for cellist Jan Vogler and his wife, violinist Mira Wang? "No," says Rihm, "this is not a symphonic poem about the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), its architecture or its history."

And yet: "One writes something in which two voices gradually come together. It stands for the will to achieve something by common effort. And maybe that sense of community will help to disentangle the confusion now spreading around this edifice in the form of certain public demonstrations."

These demonstrators probably cannot be reached by musical messages

Jan Vogler, who organized the concert on three continents, sees a social relevance to events like this nonetheless. "Cultural activity is what makes us human," he said. "I'm totally impressed when Wolfgang Rihm, one of the greatest composers of the day, sits down and thinks up a piece out of sheer fantasy. It's an instant masterpiece. Things like these are miracles of humanity."

A cohesive sound
At the evening's concert, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is in position in the altar space, facing the who's-who of Dresden and German and American diplomats. But despite the many dignitaries on hand, there are no speeches, no platitudes - just music.

The figures come to life

Jan Vogler and Mira Wang make a double appearance as soloists: in Wolfgang Rihm's "Duo Concerto" and in Saint Saëns' "The Muse and the Poet." The playbill also includes Schumann and Mendelssohn.

Rihm's concerns about the acoustic are soon dispelled; Orpheus plays with a delicate yet dynamic touch and turbo-rhythmic concision - even in that terrifyingly bright acoustic, where individual tones tend to go wayward.
A complex dialogue between violin and cello unfolds in his work, sometimes harmonic and sedate, sometimes effervescent and conflicted, before soloists and orchestra come together in an orgiastic sound just before the end.






A living backdrop: 'Heaven is here'

 

Music is as ephemeral as a soap bubble

The altar space in the Church of Our Lady does its part to enchant the concert-goers. The sculptures of Jesus at the Mount of Olives, of Moses and Aaron, Paul and Philipp and a golden triangle symbolizing the eye of God all seem to come to life. This church contains 40 percent of the original material salvaged from ruins, yet it is completely without patina, as though it were finished only yesterday. Pastel blue, green and red are the predominant interior colors, symbolizing faith, hope and charity.
The concert is followed by long ovations, yet even they soon fade into memory. Two women, having heard and seen the spectacle, pause on their way out and turn towards the altar one last time. One of them remarks, "All this has nothing to do with space or time. Heaven is here."
Wolfgang Rihm's "Duo Concerto" for violin, cello and orchestra premiered in Carnegie Hall in New York on October 15 and had its European premiere in Dresden's Church of Our Lady on October 24. A further performance is scheduled for November 14 at the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore. The complete performance can be heard for 30 days as video on demand at medici.tv.

Fonte: Deutsche Welle (26.10.2015)

REPORTAGEM: R.I.P. Berlin: Face your ghosts and tour the city's cemeteries

With 224 graveyards, Berlin is one of the world's leaders in terms of final resting places. As a new guidebook shows, a stroll through a few of the capital's cemeteries is a great way to take in some urban history.

Angels, angels everywhere

According to art historian Boris von Brauchitsch, the author of a recently published guide to Berlin's graveyards, no big city has more cemeteries than Berlin. And where there are dead people, you'll find angels. These two reside in a cemetery in the Mitte district - along with VIPs like philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, playwright Bertolt Brecht and artist John Heartfield.

Pockmarks from the past

Berlin' cemeteries not only reflect the city's history. They also bear scars from historical events. This mausoleum in the Dorotheenstädtischer-Friedrichswerderscher Cemetery in Mitte was hit by artillery fire. The damage is still amply visible.

Blood ties beyond the grave

Family plots are a common sight in Berlin graveyards. This unusual example of the genre can be admired in Georgen-Parochial Cemetery I in Prenzlauer Berg. But for how long? Parts of the cemetery have already closed, and the graveyard occupies prime real estate in this affluent and child-happy district.

 

A romantic resting place in Prenzlauer Berg

Berlin's most famous Jewish cemetery is located in the Weißensee district, but the oldest surviving (1827) and most romantic one sits on Schönhauser Allee in Prenzlauer Berg. Hard to be believe a place like this exists in a downtown big city. Among those buried here are artist Max Liebermann, composer Giacomo Meyerbeer and Moritz Manheimer, supplier of uniforms to the prussian Army.

 

The threat of extinction

Graveyards have a lot of natural enemies. Falling mortality rates, for instance, or the dwindling importance of religion in society. As a result, some of Berlin's historic cemeteries could be facing closure. That would in effect destroy parts of Berlin's history - real estate developers are rubbing their hands nonetheless.

 

Eternal sleep in wrought iron

In the latter stages of World War II, the intricate wrought-iron fences in many Berlin graveyards were melted down for badly needed ore. The ironwork that is still there, however, includes many lovely examples of traditional craftsmanship. It's also symbolic. Poppies, from which numerous opiates are derived, symbolize eternal sleep.

 

A resting place for the terminally unhappy

The Grunewald-Forst graveyard is nicknamed the "Suicides' Cemetery." Normally people who died by their own hand were excluded from hallowed ground, but in this case the guardians of the faith turned a blind eye. The crosses mark the graves of horrified tsarists after the Russian revolution. Velvet Underground collaborator Nico is also buried here.

 

Russians, Turks, Berliners

Berlin's graveyards are diverse places in a number of respects. One colorful example of that is if the Russian-Orthodox Cemetary in the district of Reinickendorf. A similar exotic flair permeates Germany's oldest Turkish cemetary on Columbiadamm in the Neukölln neighborhood. Both recall Berlin's long multi-cultural tradition.

Death in divided Berlin

Charlottenburg's Catholic Cemetery is located on the outskirts of town - so far on the outskirts that it proved the graveyard's undoing. With the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, it was cut off from the rest of West Berlin. East German officials let the cemetery, which was located in a security zone and had an unsavory Nazi past, simply go to ruin.

Author: Jefferson Chase

A mild autumn day in Berlin's Neukölln district - a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with a couple of historical graveyards. I've met up with Boris von Brauchitsch, art historian and author of a new and very amusing guide book on the capital city's graveyards.

Our miniature tour starts on Berlin's "cemetery mile" - a 2.6-kilometer (1.6-mile) stretch of road from Hermannplatz square all the way to the autobahn. There are no fewer than eight graveyards here. The reason, Brauchitsch informs me, is that in the 19th century Berliners started burying their dead outside the city, and this was where the city wall used to stand.

Our first stop is the Alter-und-Neuer-Sankt-Jakobi-Friedhof, established in 1852. It's one of those classic, romantic, slightly dilapidated graveyards with lots of cracked headstones and mossy mausoleums.

 

"Look at the exquisite ironwork on this fence," Brauchitsch says. "Decorations like this were very popular around that time, but in the late stages of World War II, people carted off a lot of the iron and melted it down."

It becomes clear to me that cemeteries not only reflect history, they are also shaped by it themselves.

Picnic in the graveyard

The further we proceed away from the old city limits, the newer and more expansive the graveyards become. The St. Michael's and St. Thomas's Cemeteries, for instance, are essentially parks laid out at right angles along long tree-lined walkways.

In the late 19th century, this was where the nouveau-riche upper middle classes interred their deceased, Brauchitsch tells me. Such cemeteries were also popular spots for rest and relaxation. Families would come out and pay their respects to dear departed Auntie X and then plop down on the well-kept grass for a picnic.

That may seem impious, but Berliners have never treated their dead with kid gloves. The phrase eternal resting place is a misnomer in the German capital.

"The current standard lease for a grave is 20 years," Brauchitsch says. "After that either your relatives pony up some more cash, or you get chucked out."

Even fame is no guarantee that one's remains will be left in peace. Cabaret star Anita Berber, the subject of the famous portrait by painter Otto Dix, was unceremoniously disinterred from St. Michael's Cemetery. An unplesant fate. But there are far worse ones on display at our next stop.

Pious inhumanity

Across the street, to the rear of the Jerusalems- und Neue Kirche Cemetery V are the remains of a barracks that used to house forced laborers from Eastern Europe, who tended Berlin's graveyards toward the end of World War II.

It was often fatal work. These hallowed grounds are located directly next to Tempelhof Airport, where the slave workers were directly exposed to Allied air-raids. Hardly very Christian of the religious communities that exploited the laborers.

Ironically, it's now the existence of the cemetery that's under threat. As mortality rates decline and more and more Berliners decide to be cremated, the need for cemeteries has dramatically decreased.

"Real-estate developers are lining up to get their hands on deconsecrated former graveyards," Brauchitsch tells me.

Perhaps that development is unavoidable, but I still find it a shame. As I've learned this afternoon, Berlin's past comes vividly alive in its many historical cemeteries.

 

Fonte: Deutsche Welle (28.10.2015)

REPORTAGEM: Jimi Hendrix's London home turned into museum

Soon, you can discover the flat where Jimi Hendrix used to live and rock in London. The building was also shared by another musical genius: George Frideric Handel - some 200 years earlier.

Some revere Jimi Hendrix as the best rock guitarist ever. Others prefer their music a bit more Baroque: In this case, the German-born British composer George Frideric Handel remains one of the leading musical figures. Despite the differences in musical style, both of them shared more than an exceptional career: They lived in the same building in London, located at 23-25 Brook Street.
"It is hard to think of another home in the world with such a concentration of musical genius," said Alistair Starnack, chairman of the Handel House Trust.
As of February 10, 2016, visitors will be able to feel the walls which surrounded both musicians. The Handel House has been open to the public since November 2001, and Hendrix's flat was until recently used by the Handel House Trust as an office.
The foundation has restored Hendrix's bedroom to reproduce the way it looked when he was living there and developed an exhibition on the musician - a project which cost 2.4 million pounds (3.3 million euros, $3.7 million).

His only real home
Jimi Hendrix spent part of the year 1968 recording and on tour in the US, but in the summer he moved in with his then girlfriend Kathy Etchingham to the top floor of 23 Brook Street, in the district of Mayfair in London. They paid 30 pounds a week for the flat.

In 1997, 23 Brook Street obtained an English Heritage Blue Plaque commemorating Jimi Hendrix

Although the legendary musician stayed there less than a year, it is his only officially recognized residence in the world. Hendrix is said to have described it as "The only home he ever had."

According to the organizers of the exhibition, Hendrix used the apartment as his base: He would write new songs and give interviews there. When he found out that Handel used to live next door, he went out and bought some of his albums, such as his "Messiah," which was composed there.
Brook Street used to be right in the middle of London's music scene in the late 60s, just a short walk away from a series of legendary clubs, like the Marquee, the Speakeasy and The Scotch of St James, where Jimi Hendrix would show up and play.

Fonte: Deutsche Welle (28.10.2015)

NOTÍCIA: O comércio lucrativo com bens culturais da Antiguidade

Escavações ilegais destroem o patrimônio cultural da humanidade. Não somente gangues de ladrões, mas também terroristas ganham com esse negócio. Colecionadores muitas vezes desconhecem a origem das peças.

No meio do deserto, o cenário parece mais o de um massacre: partes de crânio, fêmur e costelas estão espalhados pelo entorno; ossos humanos estão sobrepostos descuidadamente uns sobre os outros. Entre eles, um pequeno pedaço de madeira pintada, um caco de cerâmica, restos de bandagens.
Abu Sir al-Malaq, a cerca de 90 quilômetros do Cairo: aqui, os arqueólogos alemães Otto Rubensohn e Georg Möller escavaram uma necrópole no início do século 20. Os trabalhos de escavação terminaram em 1908. Posteriormente, as tumbas foram encobertas novamente pela areia. Hoje são os ladrões de sepulturas que aqui tentam a sua sorte. Por toda parte, veem-se cascalho e buracos cavados na areia; muitos deles adentram as profundezas.
"A região de Abu Sir era famosa por seus sarcófagos pintados", explica a arqueóloga egípcia Monica Hanna. Ela documenta as escavações ilegais e sabe que mais de 90% da necrópole já foi saqueada. Com a venda dos objetos, os ladrões esperam obter um alto lucro.

Mercado de antiguidades em expansão
O negócio com bens culturais roubados já floresce há 25 anos. Escavações ilegais já havia em muitos países, mas elas estão aumentando desde o início dos tumultos políticos no Oriente Médio e no Norte da África. Desde 2011, o número de artefatos escavados ilegalmente ou roubados dobrou no Egito, e esse não é um caso isolado. Também o Iraque vem sendo sistematicamente saqueado nos últimos 25 anos, afirma Markus Hilgert, diretor do Museu do Oriente Próximo (Vorderasiatisches Museum) em Berlim.
Os saqueadores atendem a um mercado ganancioso, que vem aumentando vertiginosamente desde os anos 1990. Naquela época, ações de empresas perderam valor, e muitas pessoas procuraram novas possibilidades de investimento. Muitos aplicaram o seu dinheiro na arte – e em antiguidades. Atualmente, pagam-se preços elevados por objetos antigos.

Escavação ilegal em Abu Sir, no Egito

 

Por exemplo, em agosto de 2014, uma estátua egípcia de 75 centímetros de tamanho foi vendida por 14 milhões de libras (cerca de 85 milhões de reais) num leilão em Londres.
Em dezembro de 2007, uma escultura de arenito de oito centímetros, proveniente do atual Iraque, alcançou num leilão da Sotheby's em Nova York a soma de 57 milhões de dólares (por volta de 228 milhões de reais).

Gangues e terroristas organizados
Montantes tão elevados atraem quadrilhas organizadas. Se antes o roubo era praticado somente por agricultores de vilarejos, hoje essa tarefa é executada por gangues organizadas que têm especialistas à sua disposição e sabem exatamente onde escavar, afirma a arqueóloga Monica Hanna. "Elas utilizam equipamentos de ultrassom para encontrar os dutos subterrâneos das sepulturas, e empregam máquinas pesadas", relata. Os saqueadores não se deixam intimidar por nada. Hanna conta que já foi vítima de ataque a tiros.
Além das gangues, grupos terroristas também se financiam com a venda de peças escavadas ilegalmente. Está mais do que provado que o "Estado Islâmico" não somente destrói o patrimônio cultural, mas também saqueia e obtém altos lucros com a venda dos bens culturais roubados.

Colecionadores sem noção
O colecionador que compra uma antiguidade numa casa de leilões ou numa galeria quase nunca tem conhecimento dessas práticas, pois os artefatos muitas vezes são oferecidos com falsas identificações de origem. Foi o que aconteceu, em meados de 2015, numa galeria da cidade alemã de Oberhausen: uma estatueta de marfim de cinco centímetros do período tardio do Egito faraônico (664 a 332 a.C.) fora escavada, de acordo com o seu certificado de origem, supostamente por volta de 1900, indo então para Nova York e, desde 1960, integrava uma coleção particular. Na verdade, a escultura fora roubada em 2013 de uma escavação na ilha egípcia de Elefantina.
Confrontados com tais exemplos, os negociantes tentam minimizar a situação e falam de casos isolados. Segundo eles, a maioria das antiguidades no mercado provém de antigas coleções. Friederike Fless, presidente do Instituto Arqueológico Alemão, discorda: "Não existem tantas coleções antigas que justifiquem a grande quantidade de objetos ofertados." Os colecionadores devem estar cientes, assinala Fless, que a maioria dos artefatos entrou na Alemanha de forma ilegal e vem de escavações ilícitas.

Venda de arte roubada não é delito trivial

Ladrões deixam somente buracos para trás

O contrabando de objetos roubados ou escavados ilegalmente não é nenhum delito trivial, esclarece Sylvelie Karfeld, do Departamento Federal de Investigações da Alemanha (BKA). Segundo Karfeld, a receita proveniente do comércio ilegal de antiguidades varia anualmente entre seis bilhões e oito bilhões de dólares (por volta de 24 bilhões a 32 bilhões de reais). Isso coloca o comércio de bens roubados numa das primeiras posições na lista dos negócios ilegais mais lucrativos.

Para os arqueólogos, no entanto, não é o valor das antiguidades que está em primeiro plano. Eles enfatizam sobretudo que as escavações ilegais destroem o passado de um povo: pois, fora do contexto da escavação, um objeto isolado não conta história nenhuma – eles são como páginas soltas de uma biblioteca incendiada.

Lei de proteção cultural é insuficiente
O papel da Alemanha nesse negócio ilegal é inglório. A ministra alemã da Cultura, Monika Grütters, admite a existência de "regras de importação relativamente frouxas na Alemanha". Ela pretende mudar isso com a prevista alteração da Lei de Defesa da Propriedade Cultural, mas muitos arqueólogos afirmam que as mudanças são insuficientes.
A Sociedade Alemã de Pré e Proto-história adverte que "muitas das planejadas disposições do projeto de lei são imprecisas em determinados pontos, além de ineficazes."

NOTÍCIA: O difícil restauro da máscara de Tutancâmon

Fonte: Deutsche Welle
Autor: -
Data: 28.10.2015

Um remendo feito às pressas fixou a barba do faraó após um acidente no ano passado. Agora, restauradores alemães tentam remover a cola, unir as partes novamente e, quem sabe, desvendar mistérios sobre a peça.

Christian Eckmann e a máscara mortuária

Bastou uma única desatenção num dia de agosto de 2014 para que um patrimônio cultural fosse quebrado. Lá fora, o calor escaldante do Cairo. Dentro do Museu Egípcio, expressões faciais de ouro: a máscara mortuária do faraó Tutancâmon, intacta e protegida por vidros à prova de bala. Até aquele momento.

A lâmpada do mostruário precisava ser trocada, e o impensável aconteceu. Quando a peça de mais de 12 quilos foi içada para retornar à base, a longa barba, artisticamente trabalhada e mundialmente famosa, quebrou. Pânico no museu. Os pedaços do faraó foram rapidamente, e de forma um tanto desleixada, colados de volta. Agora, especialistas alemães se debruçam sobre a máscara para restaurar o restaurado.
"Acidentes acontecem", diz Christian Eckmann, restaurador do Museu Central Romano-Germânico em Mainz, na Alemanha. Um holograma ocupa o lugar do tesouro do museu, enquanto o original está nas mãos dos especialistas.
A cola, feita de uma resina epóxi insolúvel, "deve ser removida mecanicamente", explica a restauradora Katja Broschat, colega de Eckmann em Mainz. Todos os dias, Eckmann e Broschat trabalham numa sala do museu que mais parece um centro cirúrgico: equipamentos, luzes e um microscópio voltados para o paciente Tutancâmon e sua barba.

Máscara de Tutancâmon pesa mais de 12 quilos e foi descoberta em 1922

Para não danificar o ouro, os dois raspam, milímetro por milímetro, a cola entre a barba e o queixo com pauzinhos de madeira. Em poucos dias, eles querem ter separado a barba da máscara – foi assim que ela veio para o museu, após o egiptólogo Howard Carter descobrir, em 1922, a tumba de Tutancâmon, falecido há cerca de 3.300 anos, no Vale dos Reis, em Luxor, no Egito. Há evidências de que a máscara do falecido e a barba eram mantidas juntas somente por um conector destacável.

As duas partes foram coladas uma a outra pela primeira vez após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, quase 70 anos antes de acontecer o que Eckmann chama de "o acidente". Pode ser que a remontagem da máscara só seja concluída no final do ano. Ainda não se sabe se a ligação entre a estrutura e a barba será feita com um conector, um ímã ou uma cola especial.
O acidente, no entanto, tornou-se uma boa oportunidade: a de investigar a máscara mortuária, incluindo a busca por possíveis evidências que sustentem a teoria de que ela não foi feita originalmente para Tutancâmon, mas sim para uma mulher. Além disso, ninguém sabe com o que a barba do faraó é preenchida. Eckmann e Broschat poderão ser os primeiros a saber.
A pressão e as expectativas são enormes. "Devo admitir que ter a máscara à minha frente foi um momento muito marcante na minha carreira", diz Eckmann. "Eu dormiria melhor se a bela peça já estivesse na vitrine outra vez."

Vikings: Secrets of the Vikings: Shield Maidens

NOTÍCIA: Na Ucrânia, Darth Vader substitui estátua de Lenin

Fonte: Deutsche Welle
Autor: -
Data: 23.10.2015

Desde a deferida lei da "descomunização", símbolos e insígnias que remetem ao passado comunista são proibidos no país. Em Odessa, escultor transforma uma estátua do ex-líder soviético em uma do vilão da saga "Star Wars".

Em tempo para o lançamento do mais recente filme "Star Wars: O Despertar da Força", ucranianos transformaram uma estátua do ex-líder soviético Vladimir Lenin em uma do vilão Darth Vader, curiosamente uma figura proeminente na política da Ucrânia. A estátua foi formalmente apresentada nesta sexta-feira (23/10), em Odessa.
O fundador da União Soviética, fortemente desprezado na maioria das partes não-separatistas da Ucrânia, foi vítima de uma lei aprovada em abril, que ordenou a remoção de todos os símbolos e insígnias que lembravam o passado comunista do país.
E, apesar de personificar o mal nos filmes de George Lucas, Darth Vader é uma figura um tanto mais popular no país, onde a cultura ocidental está sendo abraçada pela população e, consequentemente, se distanciando do passado comunista – uma transição que enfurece a Rússia.
Na corrida presidencial no ano passado, um homem mascarado tentou concorrer ao cargo, mas teve seu registro negado porque se recusou a revelar seu nome a apresentar documentos reais de identidade. No mesmo ano, Darth Vaders concorreram como candidatos a prefeito de Kiev e Odessa, cidade portuária no Mar Negro.
Outros personagens da saga "Star Wars", como o gigante peludo Chewbacca, o mestre Jedi Yoda e a princesa Amidala, também tentaram a sorte na eleição parlamentar de novembro, em trajes oficiais, mas todos sem sucesso.

Homem vestido como o Lorde Negro dos Sith contempla a estátua de Darth Vader, em Odessa

A maioria desses candidatos representa o minúsculo Partido Pirata da Ucrânia – um dos mais de 40 grupos que surgiram mundo afora em defesa das liberdades da internet e do limite nas leis de direitos autorais. Neste domingo, outro Darth Vader concorrerá ao cargo de prefeito de Odessa.

"Após a lei de 'descomunização' ter sido aprovada no início deste ano, tivemos que decidir o que fazer com o monumento [de Lenin]", disse o escultor da nova estátua, Oleksandr Milov. "Honestamente, não gosto da ideia de destruí-la, por isso decidimos por uma solução mais flexível."
Novos elementos foram adicionados à estátua original de gesso, sem causar danos. "A ideia era óbvia, já que o movimento Darth Vader tem estado no centro das atenções ucranianas nos últimos anos", disse Milov, acrescentando que há planos para construir um roteador Wi-Fi na cabeça da estátua.
Em uma cena notória, uma estátua de granito de Lenin foi derrubada por manifestantes no centro de Kiev durante a revolução de três meses, que derrubou o governo pró-Moscou em fevereiro de 2014.
Nomeada como capital pelos rebeldes separatistas, Donetsk está atualmente repleta de cartazes de Josef Stalin, o ditador sanguinário que comandou a União Soviética, oficialmente, por 13 anos.

NOTÍCIA: Revenge, Psyche, The Final Girl: How Wes Craven Redefined The Slasher Genre

Fonte: Think Progress
Autor: Jéssica Goldstein
Data: 01.09.2015



CREDIT: AP Photo/Matt SaylesCREDIT: AP Photo/Matt Sayles

Legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven died on Sunday at the age of 76. Craven was responsible for some of the most indelible images and ideas in the slasher canon. He created Freddy Krueger, sparked the sprawling Scream franchise — he was executive producing MTV’s new series based on the films, nearly 20 years after Craven’s original film debuted — and, in a career that spanned decades, provided moviegoers with enough nightmare fodder to last several lifetimes.

“He’s gone to that big last house on the left in the sky,” said Adam Lowenstein, director of the film studies program and associate professor of English and film studies at the University of Pittsburgh; he teaches classes on horror film and is the author of a number of books on cinema, including Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film. Lowenstein shared his thoughts by phone on why horror is a vital genre, how Craven’s work was thoughtful and brutal in equal measure, and why knew the scariest things are the things closest to home.

For the uninitiated/scaredy-cats among us, why is Wes Craven’s work so important?
Just point to his three most influential films, and see how each of them is a watershed in the history of the modern horror film. And the modern horror film itself is a genre that people take more seriously because of directors like Wes Craven. Wes Craven was able to combine a real brutality with a real thoughtfulness that has really shaped what the modern horror film can be. So the three films I’m talking about are, his very first film, from 1972, Last House on the Left, and secondly, A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, and Scream, in 1996. These are the undisputed blockbusters of Wes’ career, and they all deserve the reputation that they have.

Before Craven made Last House, what was the horror movie landscape like? What was the context in which he was starting to make these movies?
Wes Craven was part of a generation of American horror film directors that really popularized the modern horror film as we know it: George Romero, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper. What I think Wes Craven really brought out, even within that pantheon of extraordinary directors, was this ability to combine the brutal and the thoughtful. So Last House, on the one hand, it’s a very cerebral, high-minded remake of an Ingmar Bergman film, The Virgin Spring. On the other hand, it is a completely, uncompromisingly horrific, nightmarish take on the worst case scenarios of the Vietnam era. And some of the stories that Wes would often tell is how he would run into people he knew and liked and trusted, and after they saw Last House, they didn’t want to have anything to do with him. And Wes was a very mild-mannered person — he was an English teacher before he was a film director, and he grew up in a very conservative, religious environment — and he was a gentle soul. But the films are not gentle. And I think that gives you a sense of what he was trying to accomplish. He was trying to get at us both through our hearts, our minds, and our guts.

Can you talk a bit more about Last House as addressing Vietnam?
Coming out in 1972, Last House was a product of the anguish of the Vietnam era. And it’s basically a revenge story. Two young girls go from the Connecticut suburbs into New York City, try to get pot at a rock concert, and wind up in the hands of the Mansons. They are brutally raped, tortured, and murdered. But then the Mason-esque group falls into the hands of one of the girls’ parents, and what the parents do to them once they find out what was done to their daughter makes the initial round of cruelty seem almost tame by comparison. And you emerge with: There is no difference between the civilized and the uncivilized. It’s a matter of a society completely broken down, untrustworthy and terrifying. And you can’t look to the young to be trusted over the old, or the middle class to be trusted over the working class. It leaves you with a very upsetting sense of the place America has gotten to at this juncture. It’s a terrifying film, still today. I do teach it periodically, and it’s one of the films that students still have a difficult time with.

Do you ever think, watching these films, that they are so violent and gory, they get in the way of this deeper idea they’re trying to get across?
It really feels like a film carefully and thoughtfully designed to shock us in ways that are maybe not pleasant, but that’s the point. It’s about unpleasant things, and it’s about confronting us with that unpleasantness, and asking us to think about it. And it’s true, though, I think the sense that Craven himself learned a lesson from Last House: He never made a movie again that was that confrontational. He made films that were, I think, equally smart and important, but never that confrontational. And I think his seeking of a broader audience made that imperative, because Last House, still, is not for everyone. Don’t recommend it to people if you haven’t seen it yourself.

So he had that in mind when he made Nightmare on Elm Street?
The important thing to remember, in terms of the landscape in which it emerged, by the time 1984 rolled around, the market was already glutted with imitations of Halloween and Friday the 13th, movies we refer to as slasher movies. Lots of the imitators of those films are not very imaginative; they’re really paint-by-numbers. And what Craven brought to the slasher subgenre was a really fresh sense of imagination and feeling. The whole trope of a killer that invades your dreams, rather than a killer that’s wielding a hatchet or a knife in the real world, is a brilliant innovation. It really opened up the subgenre to more interesting territory. I think it saved the slasher film in many ways from complete exhaustion at some point.
The other thing Nightmare does so well is, its feel for family dynamics is really superior. A lot of those slasher films, there’s really no room for parents at all. The whole trick of the films is teens alone in danger, and what happens then. But Craven really pumps energy into the dynamics between parents and children, and wider than that, between families and their communities. And that dimension of the slasher film was really in sore need of development, as well, and Craven really brought that out. And in terms of Nightmare‘s importance, a figure that we’ve come to know in the slasher formula is the idea of the final girl, the girl who survives, the girl who vanquishes the killer on her own. Nancy, in Nightmare, is outstanding. She is so gritty and resourceful and smart and fearless, without being a superhero. She’s recognizable as a person and as a teenager, but her resourcefulness and her grit is just thrilling to see, even today.

Scream is an interesting case, in that I think it’s how people who only see mainstream movies — people who do not like horror flicks — have an understanding of what horror movies are. That’s the reference point.
And I often bemoan the existence of Scream in certain ways, because of precisely that quality. People who don’t know much about horror films can go to it and feel almost superior to the genre, and comfortable with it. But the memory I always put alongside of that is, horror films are a central part of my work, so I see a lot of them, and I have friends who don’t like horror films at all, and Scream was one I could convince people to come with me to when it premiered, because I could say it would be fun but not scary. And the first 20 minutes of Scream is really scary. It’s intense. I remember my friends looking over at me across the aisle and saying, “You lied to us.” I think that’s a good summation of Wes Craven, in a certain way. Even within the framework of an entertaining horror film that is not very confrontational, that is interested in winking at its audience, there’s still moments that grab you buy the throat.

Do these tropes from horror movies that people know so well stem from Scream, or did Scream just popularize them? It’s such a self-aware movie, and you see these characters talking about other horror movies, like they know they’re in one.
Slasher films may not be imaginative overall, but they are very tuned in to the formula. Slasher films didn’t need to parodied, because they were doing it themselves already. You watch Halloween, after having watched Psycho, you already see the films very much aware of their predecessors and very interested in nodding their hat to their predecessors. So Scream didn’t invent that. But Scream brought it to the awareness of an audience that wasn’t necessarily genre-savvy, and made it fun for them as well. Which is an important feat. It’s good for horror to be able to reach people that don’t necessarily want to deal with it, because that can open the door to different sorts of engagement with the genre.
Horror has always been a very self-aware and self-conscious genre. And what Scream did is, it sort of heightened that experience of awareness for a wider audience. But it did it in a way that remained true to, I think, the way the genre had been working along before Scream. It was basically putting it in highlight and bold.

It seems like one of the recurring themes in Craven’s work is that the scariest things — the villains, the monsters — are actually pretty normal. They’re sort of, not mundane, but they’re not out-of-this-world, supernatural killers. They’re primal, everyday ideas.
Yes, absolutely. One of his favorite things to say is that the horror film is a boot camp for the psyche. Horror, for Wes Craven, was always about the immediate, the primal, the here-and-now. It was not about fantastic things. For him, the scariest things are the things that are closest to us, the things that we know the best, that we think we know and trust.

Why is horror an important genre? What can horror films do that other movies can’t?
I think horror has the potential to show us ourselves in a light that we need to see ourselves in, that we’re also not comfortable enough to try to do. I think horror is more honest about who we are as people, as families, as a culture, as a society, than most other types of films are. And they can get away with it, because a lot of people think horror films aren’t up to anything serious. But under that cover, they are deadly serious. And we ignore the horror film at our peril, because I think if you want an accurate account of who we are and where we are at, you need to go to the horror film as a place to gauge that. That thing becomes particularly crystal-clear during moments of what I call historical trauma. Something like the Vietnam era: A movie like Last House is telling the hard and painful truth about that era that a lot of the contemporary films of that time were not yet ready to talk about. The horror film could do it, because the horror film already has a vocabulary for the shocking, the horrific, the awful. So this is a genre that can engage with these things rather than hope they don’t exist or that they’ll go away.

Where do you see Craven’s influence in modern horror?
One of the themes that Wes Craven pioneered and developed and perfected is the revenge theme, and we can see it most clearly in Last House and The Hills Have Eyes. That’s still a formula that’s very crucial and powerful for the genre. Someone like Eli Roth’s movies and the Hostel films in particular really tapped into that dynamic, that the blood that is spilled in vengeance winds up tainting the avenger at least as much as the crime that was originally committed. And in America, a country where the whole idea of American exceptionalism and entitlement and might-is-right, that lesson about revenge is something we need to be taught over and over again. We never seem to quite learn it.
It Follows has got something to do with something Craven was already interested in in Scream, which is: Where does horror come from and manifest itself in a culture that is so over-saturated with media exposure? Where everything seems like it could be broadcast, televised, tweeted? Where there’s really no such thing as an original experience? I think It Follows is tuned into that. And I think Scream was, too. Looking back, 1996 was a primitive media era compared to now.
When Craven made Last House, he wasn’t clear in an explicit way, “Oh yeah, I’m talking about Vietnam. I’m talking about the present.” It was there in the work but it took a long time for people to really see it, even the directors themselves. I think that’s true now, too. I think with certain exceptions, it’s going to take time to get a sense of, well, what was this historical moment all about anyway? And what were the films that were tapping into it consciously or unconsciously? But I think even early, there’s evidence that the horror film is still doing that job. The movie I would point to semi-recently is Hostel, in the context of the war on terror, the post-9/11 war era. And what Hostel does with the idea of Americans abroad as something to be scared of is a very important and effective intervention into a post-9/11 America.

NOTÍCIA: Novo Asterix tem personagem inspirado em Assange

Fonte: Deutsche Welle
Autor: -
Data: 22.10.2015

Trigésimo sexto volume da série chega às livrarias com tiragem de 4 milhões de exemplares em mais de 20 línguas. Controle da informação é o tema central da nova aventura de Asterix e Obelix.

Imagem da capa de "O papiro de César", novo álbum da série Asterix

O 36º livro da série de histórias em quadrinhos Asterix chegou nesta quinta-feira (22/10) às livrarias da Europa. Em Paris, alguns fãs fizeram fila em frente a uma loja para poder comprar um exemplar autografado pelos novos autores a partir da meia-noite.

O papiro de César foi apresentado há cerca de duas semanas num evento para a imprensa na Torre Eiffel, com as presenças do roteirista Jean-Yves Ferri, do ilustrador Didier Conrad (desenhos) e de Albert Uderzo, de 88 anos, um dos criadores da série.
O título do novo álbum já havia sido anunciado em março, mas só neste mês foram revelados pormenores da história, que faz referências à atualidade e foca no controle e também no vazamento de informações. Entre os novos personagens está o jornalista gaulês Doublepolemix, que é inspirado na figura de Julian Assange, fundador da organização WikiLeaks.

O novo personagem Doublepolemix, inspirado em Julian Assange, conversa com Obelix

O papiro de César tem uma tiragem inicial de 2 milhões de exemplares em francês e outros 2 milhões em outras 20 línguas, entre elas o português.
Ferri e Conrad são os mesmos autores que, em 2013, assinaram o volume anterior, Asterix entre os pictos, o primeiro livro no qual Uderzo não participou.
Uderzo e René Goscinny publicaram a primeira história de Asterix na revista Pilote em 1959. O primeiro livro próprio, Asterix, o gaulês, só saiu em 1961, dando início a uma das mais bem sucedidas séries de histórias em quadrinhos do mundo, com mais de 350 milhões de livros vendidos.
Asterix é um pequeno gaulês de bigode farto que tem como melhor amigo Obelix, um personagem gordo e desajeitado, dono de uma força incomum e que adora comer javalis. Ambos são habitantes de uma aldeia invencível, que teimosamente resiste às investidas militares dos romanos.
A parceria entre Uderzo e Goscinny terminou em 1977, com a morte do roteirista, mas o nome de ambos foi sempre mantido na assinatura das histórias. Em 2011, Uderzo, de 88 anos, retirou-se da série alegando cansaço.

NOTÍCIA: Cheap and nasty: the horrid legacy of the penny dreadful

Fonte: The Guardian
Autor: Matthew Sweet
Data: 06.06.2014
Vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein – as John Logan's gothic TV series continues, Matthew Sweet explores the legacy of lurid Victorian fiction





Reeve Carney and Eva Green in Sky's Penny Dreadful. Photograph: Allstar/DESERT WOLF PRODUCTIONS/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

In a large dark Victorian house on Barton Street, Westminster, something dreadful is happening. The gas lamps are dead. Screams are rising from the next room – sounds of ordeal and agony. You wouldn't run in to help; you'd knot sheets together and escape through the window.

I know it's all confected for the cameras. I've read all the scripts. We're in Ardmore Studios – a cluster of hangars on the edge of the Wicklow mountains – and I've been walking around them all day. I've examined the maps of the Belgian Congo pinned to the drawing room wall; goggled at the batteries in Victor Frankenstein's laboratory; ducked low to inspect the cogs and pulleys under the stage of the Grand Guignol theatre. I know the rats heaped in the prosthetics store have been moulded in latex; that, contrary to small print on the bills pasted on the walls, no Victorian playwright called Michael Grandage ever wrote a play called Emperor of the Universe; that the people gathered beside me – Timothy Dalton and Josh Hartnett – are actors, watching the business of another actor – Eva Green – being relayed from a camera in the next room. The performance she's giving, though, is so intense, so out-there, so Renée Jeanne Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc, that even these two rugged old turns are exchanging glances. And, hunkered down over the monitor, the man who unleashed this madness is grinning from ear to ear.

 

Penny Dreadful, eight hours of gothic television filmed in and around Dublin, gathers a synod of monsters, criminals and lost souls – a vampire-hunter (Green), a sharpshooter (Hartnett), a grief-wracked explorer (Dalton), a prostitute (Billie Piper), Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney). The story has been bubbling away inside John Logan – author of the Rothko play, Red, screenwriter of Hugo and The Aviator and Skyfall – for a decade or more. Ask him about its origins and he'll talk about his regard for the Romantic poetry that crackled into life beside Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; the late-Victorian moment that brought Dracula, Dorian and Dr Moreau into being; the uses to which these creatures were put by Hollywood and Hammer. He'll also talk about his own feelings of monstrosity and his sense of isolation as a young man. How it felt to make scarifying visits to New York's Christopher Street in the 1970s, or to be young and gay in the years when America first became acquainted with HIV. Logan is keen to ensure that everybody involved in the series feels like part of his gang. If you're there, you're one of the Dreadfuls. When he says it, it feels good.

In the 19th century, "penny dreadful" was an unofficial literary category – used by its enemies and its fans to describe cheap serial fiction produced in weekly eight or 16-page instalments, which might, in the course of months or even years of publication, supply rambling narratives founded on poisoning, strangling, burglary, flagellation and hairbreadth escapes from drowning and sexual assault. Their titles generally gave away their natures: Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood (1845-7); Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1846-7); The Night-Hawks of London; or, the Noble Highwayman and the Miser's Daughter (1865). The semi-literate – who made up an important part of their market – were reeled in by the lurid woodcuts: Black Bess, rearing against the moon; the heroine, bare-breasted and manacled in a burning attic; a bloodsucking fiend scuttering over a four-poster bed.

Their authors, who might keep 10 of these stories spinning simultaneously, were paid at the rate of a penny a line, which had a legible effect on the text. Skilled practitioners knew that staccato sentences were the most profitable, and learned how to oblige the compositor to leave one or two words hanging at the end of a paragraph. The typography of the genre was as full of widows and orphans as its plots. Smart strategy, if you're hungry.

Some writers pursued parallel careers of the sort that didn't bleed lampblack all over your fingers. As Mary Elizabeth Braddon's sensational Lady Audley's Secret (1862) was being devoured by subscribers to Mudie's Circulating Library, its author was staying up late to meet her deadlines on a rather less prestigious project: The Black Band; or The Mysteries of Midnight – a 240,000-word shocker about a bigamous noblewoman, a persecuted ballerina, a clique of Italian revolutionaries and an Austrian gangster whose brain is being slowly dissolved by poison.

Unsurprisingly, Braddon produced the keenest sketch of a "dreadful" writer at work. In The Doctor's Wife (1864), itself a sophisticated heist on the plot of Madame Bovary, Braddon introduces the reader to the fictional Sigismund Smith, inky-fingered author of Count Montefiasco; or, The Brand Upon the Shoulder-Blade, a cheerful hack who specialises in pop-fiction plagiarism. "I'm doing a combination novel now," he explains. "The Heart of Midlothian and The Wandering Jew. You've no idea how admirably the stories blend together." Reality went one better: in 1884 the American newspaper Beadle's Weekly published a story called Monte Cristo Afloat; or The Wandering Jew of the Sea: A Romance of Weird Mystery One Hundred Years Ago.

'Narratives are founded on poisoning, strangling and flagellation' … Wagner the Wehr-Wolf pr

Cheap, violent serial fiction had flourished since the 1830s, but its strongest, maddest phase of life was the product of a statutory lightning-strike: the 1861 repeal of the paper tax. The sudden rush of printing caused a type-famine that brought about the momentary return of the 18th-century's long "S" letter, unpacked from dusty boxes in printshop backrooms. The hunger for stories sent writers back to old tropes, to folklore, to half-remembered figures from chapbooks and broadside ballads. In James Malcolm Rymer's The Dark Woman; or Plot and Passion (1861) for instance, the fictional heroine (an organised crime boss and illegitimate royal) collides with two historical figures whose lifetimes did not overlap – the highwayman Jack Sheppard (1702-1724), and the Prince Regent, later George IV (1762-1830). Logan's TV series occupies the same dreamlike space: in Penny Dreadful, Frankenstein coexists with Dorian Gray and the survivors of Bram Stoker's Dracula, who, over the course of the series, form a strangely familial alliance. Resurrection men remain busy, in defiance of the 1832 Anatomy Act. The Romantic era and fin-de-siècle seem to be occurring simultaneously, brought together by blood and electricity.

 

For most of its history, the penny dreadful was a genre for lost boys. Boys were often its protagonists, its readers, and the figures who legislators and campaigners believed required protection from its pleasures. Wily publishers, keen to exploit a growing market for more self-consciously wholesome material, picked up their pitchforks in sympathy with this moral panic. "The police court reports in the newspapers are alone sufficient proof of the harm done by 'penny dreadfuls'," asserted Alfred Harmsworth, future owner of the Daily Mail, as he launched a new boys' title, the Halfpenny Marvel, in 1893. "It is an almost daily occurrence with magistrates to have before them boys who, having read a number of 'dreadfuls', followed the examples set forth in such publications, robbed their employers, bought revolvers with the proceeds and finished by running away from home and installing themselves in the back streets as 'highwaymen'. This and many other evils the 'penny dreadful' is responsible for. It makes thieves of the coming generation, and so helps fill our gaols." In August 1895 the MP for Leicester launched a campaign against the "grossly demoralising and corrupting character" of the penny dreadful. By a sweet coincidence, his name was John Logan.
The boys in whom this corruption was identified have left sad little footprints in the printed record. Thomas Richard Nash, a 15-year-old who, in September 1895, killed himself by drinking carbolic acid: the Leeds Times reported that his box of belongings contained "a number of books of the penny dreadful description, dealing with daggers and poisons, guillotines, scaffolds etc". George Sharp, a young sailor, was, in 1904, reprimanded for threatening his stepfather with murder: "Sharp had in his possession a 'penny dreadful' and also a clasp-knife," said the Dundee Evening Post. In 1892 Joseph Margerison and Robert Thompson, two teenage textile workers from Blackburn, robbed a local farmer while he was milking his cows. Under the headline "Effects of the Penny Dreadful", the Grantham Journal claimed "the boys formed part of a gang who, led by sensational literature, had built a cave in a yard and filled it with firearms, knives, and the proceeds of robberies".
Reading back over such reports, what strikes me is the breathless journalistic effort required to transform the penny dreadful into the cause of the crime. Nash left a suicide note that stated: "I wish you to know the reason I did it is because I could not work." Sharp declared that his threats were made in protest against his stepfather's violent treatment of his three-year-old sibling. Accounts of the Blackburn boys written by hacks closer to the scene supply sharper details of their lives. Margerison was a creeler – a boy who dodged under the whirring loom and replaced spent spools for a few shillings a week. A more considered description of their criminal activities mentions no bandits' cave, no guns, no knives – just a loose sod in the Moss Street Corporation Yard that concealed cash tied in a handkerchief.

"No one in his senses," wrote George Orwell in 1939, "would want to turn the so-called penny dreadful into a realistic novel or a socialist tract." A kind of radicalism, though, does haunt many of these stories. Its protagonists are outcasts and outlaws, its villains figures of privilege and authority. George WM Reynolds's The Mysteries of London (1844-6) thrums with Chartism and thieves' cant. The Boy Detective; or, The Crimes of London (1865-6) is led by a youth who assumes transvestite disguise to foil the plans of his wicked stepmother, Barbara, kingpin of a gang of counterfeiters. The Wild Boys of London; or, The Children of the Night (1864-66) details the adventures of a gang of dangerously likable sewer-dwelling thieves. In 1877, copies were seized in police raids. Decades later, they were pored over by William S Burroughs, who populated his fiction with their criminal descendants.

They're present, too, in Penny Dreadful – a drama about a group of wounded individuals who have a number of things in common – aching loneliness, a cognisance of their own sin, and knowledge of a supernatural world unseen by those they pass on the pavement. It would be against the rules of bloodcurdling serial fiction to reveal what was happening behind the wall in that house on Barton Street – except to say that the dreadful world has space in it for the possessed, as well as the dispossessed.

Penny Dreadful continues on Tuesdays at 9pm on Sky Atlantic. Matthew Sweet's books include Inventing the Victorians.

NOTÍCIA: Um castelo como herança

Fonte: Deutsche Welle
Autor: -
Data: 19.10.2015

 

Descendentes de famílias da nobreza herdam e administram castelos e palácios na Alemanha. Mas o alto custo de manutenção, as normas de preservação e a vida no campo afastam muitos integrantes das gerações mais jovens.

O castelo de Namedy, em Andernach

Quando criança, Anna corria e brincava pelos cômodos do antigo castelo de Namedy, em Andernach, no oeste da Alemanha. Havia objetos dos séculos passados por todo lado: móveis ornamentados, pinturas da nobreza e troféus de caça faziam parte do playground da menina.

Hoje, aos 32 anos, a princesa Anna e sua mãe, a princesa Heide von Hohenzollern, de 72 anos, são responsáveis por administrar a construção do século 14. Por mês, elas gastam 8 mil euros com contas de água, aquecimento e luz – isso sem contar os custos de manutenção e renovação.
"É um negócio difícil", diz Anna. O senso de tradição não foi o único motivo para começar a investir no castelo, há quase seis anos. "Eu tive a sorte de não ser obrigada por ninguém da família a fazer isso."
Anna não se intimidou com a tarefa de ser "herdeira do castelo". Apesar disso, sua mãe afirma: "Administrar um negócio familiar nunca é fácil." No início, elas discordavam bastante. Anna tinha acabado de se formar em Gerenciamento de Mídias e queria trabalhar com filmes, até que ela desembarcou no castelo cheia de ideias.
O castelo de Namedy serve hoje não apenas como local para eventos culturais, mas também para casamentos e conferências.

Troca de gerações
Com frequência, a transição entre gerações da responsabilidade por castelos e palácios que são propriedade privada de antigas famílias da nobreza não acontece de forma tão natural quanto no caso de Anna. Muitas vezes, o alto custo de manutenção, as normas de preservação e a vida no campo afastam os jovens.

Princesa Heide Von Hohenzollern: "Administrar um negócio familiar nunca é fácil"

"Quando não conseguimos convencer os descendentes da família, isso pode representar uma enorme ameaça para o patrimônio cultural", diz Hartmut Dorgerloh, diretor-geral da Fundação de Palácios e Jardins Prussianos de Berlim-Brandenburgo.

Se não houver nenhum investidor e o país não assumir a responsabilidade, a propriedade pode se deteriorar. "O setor público já está fazendo muito, e somos muito gratos. Mas ele deveria também definir incentivos para que bens públicos e privados sobrevivam", diz Dorgerloh.
"É um problema constante. De geração para geração, mais e mais propriedades são perdidas", diz o presidente honorário da Associação Alemã de Castelos, Alexander Fürst zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, de 71 anos. No palácio Sayn, a poucos quilômetros do castelo de Namedy, ele ainda tem a palavra final.
Os filhos de Sayn-Wittgenstein-Say vivem e trabalham em grandes cidades europeias. "Assumir a responsabilidade sobre o castelo significaria mudar-se para a província com a família. Eles teriam que apertar o cinto e arregaçar as mangas para manter a histórica e economicamente complicada posse. Muitos preferem esperar até que as gerações mais velhas não possam mais [administrar os castelos]."
O problema é evidente sobretudo em cidades da ex-Alemanha Oriental. As expropriações de 1945 fizeram com que diversas sucessões geracionais fossem interrompidas. Com a Reunificação do país, muitos antigos proprietários tentaram comprar de volta suas mansões. Mas eles não foram autorizados a arrematar os terrenos adjacentes, excluindo a agricultura como fonte de renda.
Muitos investidores privados compraram as construções antigas, mas logo as revenderam. "É sempre um problema quando a pessoa não tem uma ligação histórica com a casa", diz Sayn-Wittgenstein-Say.
Nos estados da Baviera, Renânia do Norte-Vestfália, Baixa Saxônia e Hessen, os castelos e palácios estão, em sua maioria, ligados a terras agrícolas. Na Renânia-Palatinado, esses vínculos foram cancelados por causa das sucessivas invasões francesas e destruições no século 17. Por isso, propriedades como os castelos Sayn e Namedy são, frequentemente, usados com fins comerciais.
Com muito orgulho, as duas princesas Von Hohenzollern caminham pelo castelo. Elas contam sobre vazamentos de água e a construção equivocada do terraço, que é sempre motivo de preocupação. "Mas, 99% do tempo, [administrar o castelo] é um grande prazer", diz Heide.