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Established in 1911, The Rotarian is the official magazine of Rotary International and is circulated worldwide. Each issue contains feature articles, columns, and departments about, or of interest to, Rotarians. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners and 19 Pulitzer Prize winners – from Mahatma Ghandi to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – have written for the magazine.
Death in Berlin traces rituals and perceptions surrounding death from the Weimar Republic to the building of the Berlin Wall.
As the first historical study of East Germany‘s sepulchral culture, this book explores the complex cultural responses to death since the Second World War. Topics include the interrelated areas of the organization and municipalization of the undertaking industry; the steps taken towards a socialist cemetery culture such as issues of design, spatial layout, and commemorative practices; the propagation of cremation as a means of disposal; the wide-spread introduction of anonymous communal areas for the internment of urns; and the emergence of socialist and secular funeral rituals. The author analyses the manifold changes to the system of the disposal of the dead in East Germany—a society that not only had to negotiate the upheaval of military defeat but also urbanization, secularization, a communist regime, and a planned economy. Stressing a comparative approach, the book reveals surprising similarities to the development of Western countries but also highlights the intricate local variations within the GDR and sheds more light on the East German state and its society.
The development of Early Christian rituals in connection with death and burial has so far not sufficiently been explored. Volp’s study focuses on the surviving literary sources—both pagan and Christian—, together with inscriptions and other archaeological remains while taking into account recent results from science and humanities. A summary of death and ritual in the ancient Mediterranean religions is followed by detailed analyses of the Christian sources from the 2nd to the 5th century. Thus, basic developments are being discovered which led to and accompanied the forming of Christian rituals, such as ritual purity or the social structure of family and society. Being the first such interdisciplinary approach, it also represents the first monographic work on the topic since 1941.
First published in 1981, this reissue examines mankind’s preoccupation with death and mortality by isolating various societies in different periods of time. The authors examine not only the formal rituals associated with the last rite of passage, but also the social attitudes to death and dying which these rituals evidence. The essays establish that different periods do seem to be characterized by different images of death and attitudes to it, but the authors wisely avoid trying to impose strict chronological pattern. A pioneering work in the historical study of attitudes to death, this reissue should reignite discussion on the significance of death in human history. Christiane Sourvinou-I...
In analyzing the origins, course, and effectiveness of domestic policymaking in Hesse-Cassel, Charles Ingrao finds that Frederick was neither as evil as we might think nor as enlightened as we might like to believe.
A revelatory look at how the mature work of Caspar David Friedrich engaged with concurrent developments in natural science and philosophy Best known for his atmospheric landscapes featuring contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies and morning mists, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) came of age alongside a German Romantic philosophical movement that saw nature as an organic and interconnected whole. The naturalists in his circle believed that observations about the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms could lead to conclusions about human life. Many of Friedrich’s often-overlooked later paintings reflect his engagement with these philosophical ideas through a focus on is...