Haystack

Haystack (pronounced hey-stak)

(1) A stack, pile or bindle of hay (cut grass) with a conical or ridged top, built up in the mowed field so as to prevent the accumulation of moisture and promote drying.

(2) Any mix of green leafy plants used for fodder.

(3) In the slang of weed smokers, (1) a device (pipe or bong) with an untypically large bowl in which the marijuana is able to be packed in an unusually large quantity or (2) any device where the weed is stacked above the rim of the cone piece.

(3) In slang, among disapproving carnivores, a disparaging terms for salads or dishes made predominately with leafy greens.

Mid 1400s: The construct was hay + stack.  Hay (mown grass) was a pre-900 Middle English word from the Old English hēg, from the Anglian Old English heg & heig and the West Saxon Old English hig (grass cut or mown for fodder), from the Proto-Germanic haujam (literally “that which is cut” or “that which can be mowed”), from the primitive Indo-European kau- (to hew, strike) which was the source also of the Old English heawan (“to cut” and linked to the modern English “to hew”).  Hay’s cognates included the Old Norse hey, the Old Frisian ha, the Middle Dutch hoy, the Gothic hawi, the West Frisian hea, the Alemannic German Heuw, the Cimbrian höobe, the Dutch hooi, the German Heu, the Luxembourgish Hee, the Mòcheno hei, the Yiddish היי (hey), the Danish hø, the Faroese hoyggj, the Gutnish hoy, the Icelandic hey, the Norwegian Bokmål, the Norwegian Nynorsk høy and the Swedish hö; all meant “hay” although use to refer also to grass (later to be used as hay) is documented.  Hay is the ISO’s (International Standards Organization) translingual (symbol ISO 639-3) language code for Haya and, in slang, one of many terms for marijuana (cannabis).  A hay is a net set around the haunt of an animal (especially rabbits or hares).

1962 BRM P57.

In its original configuration the P57's V8 was fitted with “open stack” exhausts.  Sadly, the charismatic array of eight pipes proved prone to cracking and was replaced with a more conventional arrangement which sacrificed a few HP (horsepower) at the upper end of the rev-range but proved robust.  Built for Formula One's “voiturette era” (1961-1965) and powered by a jewel-like 1.5 litre V8, the P57 in 1962 claimed both the constructer's and driver's championships.  Open stack exhausts are still seen in categories like drag racing but there they need to endure only for ¼ mile (402 metre) runs and (baring accidents) are not subject to lateral forces.

Stack dates from 1250–1300 and was from the Middle English stak (pile, heap or group of things, especially a pile of grain in the sheaf in circular or rectangular form), from a Scandinavian source akin to the Old Norse stakkr (haystack), thought from the Proto-Germanic stakkoz & stakon- (a stake), from the primitive Indo-European stog- a variant of steg (pole; stick (source of the English “stake”, the Old Church Slavonic stogu (heap), the Russian stog (haystack) and the Lithuanian stokas (pillar)).  It was cognate with the Danish stak and the Swedish stack (heap, stack).  “Smokestack” and the derived clipping “stack” were by the 1660s in use to describe tall chimneys, initially when arrayed in a cluster but by 1825 it’s recorded also of the “single stacks” on steam locomotives and steamships.  In English parish records, “Stack” is recorded as a surname as early as the twelfth century and there are a variety of explanations for the origin (which may between regions have differed) and in at least some cases there may be a connection with use of “stack” in agriculture (such as peripatetic workers who travelled between farms specifically to “build haystacks”).  In societies where so much of the economy was based on farming and populations substantially were rural, such links were common.    

Wickes-class four stack destroyer USS Buchanan (DD-131), “laying down smoke” during sea trials, 1919.

One of the US Navy's 273 World War I (1914-1918) era “four stackers”, in 1940 she was transferred to the Royal Navy under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement and re-named HMS Campbeltown (I42).  She was destroyed during the St. Nazaire Raid when, loaded with four tons of explosive, she was used a “floating bomb” and rammed into the gates of the Forme Ecluse Louis Joubert dry dock, putting the facility out of use for the duration of the war.

In naval use, the official Admiralty term was “funnel” and warships were in some listings (especially identification charts which used silhouettes) listed thus (“three funnel cruiser”; “four funnel destroyer”) but the sailors’ slang was “two stacker”, “three stacker” etc.  In libraries, “stacks” in the sense of “set of shelves on which books arranged) was in use by the late 1870s and in computer software, the “stack” was first documented in 1960 to describe a collection of elements which work in unison, the original idea being of a stack of things, each subsequent object depending on the one below to run and by the time all are assembled, the whole can function (ie an early instance of “granular” software”).  Later, the word was applied to other concepts, notably the LIFO (last in, first out) model in data structure (LIFO) describing objects added (push) and removed (pop) from the same end.  Stack is a noun & verb, stackage, stacker & stackback are nouns, stacking is a noun & verb, stacked is a verb & adjective and stackless, stacky & stackful are adjectives; the noun plural is stacks.  Haystack is a noun; the noun plural is haystacks.

In Middle English, the alternative forms were hay-cock and its variants (haycok, hacoke & haycoke), all synonymous with grass-cock, hayrick & haystack and referencing the same conical stacks of cut grass.  The haystack was a product of the cutting of grass and subsequently curing it to make hay as fodder for animals.  Just as cheese was made as a means of preserving milk for later consumption, so the cutting a stacking of hay was a way to ensure there would be feed for livestock during the months when the growth of grass was minimal.  There are many derived terms associated with haymaking and haystacks (hayfork, hayknife, haybailer hay mover, hay rake, hayshed etc) but there’s no evidence “haystacker” was ever used of those individuals who “stacked hay into haystacks”.  The form “haymaker” exists but this seems to have been coined to describe machines built for the purpose rather than the workers.  This is likely because it was a seasonal event in which many farm-workers (although there clearly were some “travelling contractors” who went from farm-to-farm) tended to be involved and, needed no specialized skill-set, the term never appeared; it was a task done rather than a job description.

A young lady with hayfork (now better known as a “pitchfork”, building her haystack.

The haystack was a part of agricultural practice even before the civilizations of Antiquity (Egyptians, Greeks, Romans etc) developed the process on a grander scale.  The objective of stacking the hay in conical formations was as protection from pests and the elements and farmers paid much attention to location, the ideal site for a haystack being somewhere slightly elevated, well-drained and with a foundation not prone to promoting moisture absorption (ideally with a bottom layer of some coarse material to promote air-flow between hay and surface.  Usually, a pole was pounded into the ground to prove the structure with a basic structural rigidity and as each layer is added and compacted, the stack grows upwards and outwards, assuming the distinctive shape, the angles at the top fashioned to optimize the shedding of rainwater.  In a sense, the outermost layer is sacrificial in that it will weather and discolour but, if the structure is well-packed, what lies within will retain its green hue and smell “sweet” to livestock.

American Sapphic, Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) & former special friend Samantha Ronson (b 1977) by Ben Tegel after American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood (1891-1942).  Ms Ronson is depicted holding pitchfork, a tool which, for the manual handling of hay, cannot be improved; like the teaspoon or pencil, it has attained its final evolutionary form.

A “Hawaiian haystack” is a meal of rice with the diner's choice of toppings such as chicken, pineapple, noodles and cheese; a favorite of resort style hotels and cruise ship operators, usually the dish is served buffet-style.  The slang phrase “hit the hay” dates from at least the early nineteenth century when literally it meant “to go to the barn and sleep on an ad-hoc “bed of hay” but by 1903 it was being recorded as meaning simply “going to bed”.  A “roll in the hay” or “romp in the hay” were both euphemisms for “a session of sexual intercourse (usually without any hint of subsequent commitment) and that use is documented only from early in World War II (1939-1945) among US soldiers but when the expression first was used is unknown.  The term “haywire” (usually as “gone haywire” or “gone haywire”) originally meant “likely to become tangled unpredictably to the point of unusability or fall apart”; the idea was of items bound together only with the soft, springy wire (baler twine) used to bind hay bales.  It’s said first to have been used as “haywire outfit” in New England lumber camps (circa 1905) to describe collections of logging tools bound in a haphazard manner and prone to coming adrift.  From that, “haywire” enjoyed some mission creep and came to mean people or machinery behaving erratically or falling apart.  In the modern idiom, the most common use (as “went haywire”) is to describe some act (such as removing a part from a machine) which results in the whole mechanism becoming messed up.

Cylindrical (“rounds” in the jargon) bales of hay stacked in a field.

The figurative term “needlestack” summons the idea of a “stack of needles” and is an allusion to the difficulty in finding a particular object among one of many which are similar or even close to identical.  The word was a back-formation from the phrase “finding a needle in a haystack” which is a much more popular expression although finding a needle in a needlestack is much harder.  Finding a needle in a haystack is merely messy and time-consuming whereas finding a needle in a needlestack can at least verge on the impossible.  The popular TV science show Mythbusters compared methods and found there were techniques which could “speed up” finding a needle in a haystack”, the use of water most efficient (metal being heavier than straw, the needle would sink) while fire worked but was slow and messy and a magnet was ideal (assume the needle remained ferromagnetic).  Obviously, giant magnets, metal detectors or X-ray machines quickly would find even tiny pieces of metal but the Mythbusters crew wanted practical, “real world” examples which would have been viable centuries earlier when first the phrase was used.  The finding of a “bone needle” was considered to be more difficult (fire not recommended and a magnet obviously useless) and the team concluded that whatever the method, the task remained challenging enough for the saying still to have validity.

Haystack News which “finds needles in the haystack”.

Founded in 2013, what prompted the creation of Haystack TV was that in the US, without a cable TV subscription, it was difficult to find news content, the idea being that finding news among the dozens of available channels was like “looking for a needle in a haystack”.  It took until 2015 for the service to start with Haystack TV mission statement saying its objective was to “stream high-quality, trusted news without sifting through masses of irrelevant video.”  Now known as Haystack News, the model is a free, advertising supported streaming service for local, national and international news video available on smart TVs, over-the-top platforms and mobile apps; in the modern way, data (location, topics of interest, favorite sources etc) harvested from each user is used to generate personalized playlist of short news clips.  Initially, the focus was on US news content but in 2019, the vista expanded with clips from more than 200 local TV stations including overseas content.  By 2026, the catchment had expanded to some 400 including Africanews, Al Jazeera, CBC, DW (Deutsche Welle, Euronews, France 24 and i24 News.

A haymaker (in the Middle English originally heymakere) was a machine (purpose built or adapted) used in the production of hay (there scant evident ever it widely was used of workers involved in the process) and in informal use was “a very powerful punch”, especially one which “knocks down an opponent” (on the model of the sweep of a scythe levelling tall grass).  However, some etymologists suggest a more likely origin is as a reference to the strong, muscular arms of the men who wielded the scythes when “cutting hay”.  Figuratively, by extension, it came also to mean “any decisive blow, shock, or forceful action” although that use is now less common.  A haymonger (from the Middle English heimongere, heymonger & heymongere) was “a trader who deals in hay” and although the practices were never formalized in the manner of modern commodity markets, surviving documents suggest that as early as the 1500s there was something like a “proto futures market” in hay as farmers sought to hedge against variables (flood, drought price movements etc) and ensure they’d have a stock of fodder available at a known price.  Hayseeds literally were “seeds from grass that has become hay” and the word was applied generally to the cruft from bits of hay (ie not actually seeds) that sticks to clothing etc.  By extension, a “hayseed” was “a yokel or country bumpkin” (ie a person thought rustic or unsophisticated).

Bales of hay, stacked in a hay shed.  

Manufacturers list hay sheds as specific designs (classically, two or three sides (facing the prevailing weather) and a roof) so if a hay shed is used for another purpose it's a “re-purposed hay shed” whereas if hay is stored in a different type of shed, it might be described as “my hay shed” but its really a shed in which hay is being stored.  Being practical folk, this distinction is unlikely to be something on which many farmers much dwell.

Originally, haystacks were “stack of hay: which might vary in size and shape but the general practice was to create something vaguely conical; rather than being a choice, this was dictated by the physics in that a cone allowed the largest volume to be stacked with the smallest footprint as well as minimizing moisture intrusion.  The modern practice however is for hay to be bound into bales either cylindrical (“rounds”) or cuboid (a rectangular prism) in shape and which is chosen is a product of the machinery available, available storage capacity, heard size and in some cases whether the hay is to be transported by road.  By virtue of their shape, cylindrical bales tend to shed water which may reach the surface during rainfall so any spoilage usually is restricted to the inch or so of the outermost layer, making them suited to outdoor storage; their density also makes them more efficient for fermenting silage.  The cuboid bale, because of the upper surface area, acts in the rain like a sponge, meaning they should be stored under cover and the advantage of the regular shape is that when stacked, the cuboids create no waste space, unlike rounds typically cost around 15-20% in unused space.  The same equation means cuboids are best suited to be transported by truck.  The modern practice (bales now produced in standardized sizes using machines which sometimes will as part of the process wrap them in a waterproof plastic sheeting) means that the word “haystack” now more accurately reflects a number of bales “stacked” in a shed or on the land while the original conical “stack” would more accurately be called a “pile”.  However, because of centuries of use, the term continues to be applied to both although “bale stack” does exist in the jargon of farming.

Bales of hay being trucked to somewhere.  Both cuboids and rounds can be transported thus but, as with storage, the space efficiency of the former is superior.

The proverb “make hay while the sun shines” is now used figuratively to mean “one should act while an opportunity exists and take action while a situation is favourable” but the origin was literal.  Until very recently, weather forecasting was most inexact and because the moisture content of hay was of great significance (spoilage and the risk of spontaneous combustion), it was important for farmers to avail themselves of sunny, dry condition to cut, dry and gather the grass to be assembled into haystacks.  Dating from a time when weather forecasting essentially was “tomorrow the weather will be much the same as today, two times out of three”, the proverb seems to have originated in Tudor times (1485-1603) and the first known reference is from 1546.  Since the mid seventeenth century, it has been used figuratively.  Phrases like “carpe diem” (seize the day), “grasp the nettle” & “strike while the iron is hot” impart a similar meaning.

Defendants in the dock at the first Nuremberg Trial, the right-hand side of the glass-fronted interpreters' booth seen at the top right corner.

At the first Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), an IMT (International Military Tribunal) was convened to try two-dozen surviving members of the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945), 22 of the accused appearing in court, one having committed suicide by hanging (with his underpants stuffed in his mouth to limit the noise) prior to proceedings beginning and one was tried in absentia.  The proceedings were conducted in four languages (English, French, German and Russian) with “simultaneous translation” provided by a rotating group of translators, all those in the courtroom able to listen (through headphones) in any of these language.  It’s no exaggeration to say it was the work of the translators and interpreters that made possible the 13 Nuremberg Trials in the form they took and the implementation of simultaneous interpretation was ground-breaking, the undertaking all the more remarkable because of the scale.  The main trial was conducted over ten months with 210 sitting days and so much material was presented the published transcripts filled 42 volumes, thus the references to “the trial of six million words.”  Logistically, the approach was vital because had the traditional approach been pursued, the trial as conducted would have been impractical because the usual protocol had been: (1) One speaker would deliver remarks in German while (2) interpreters took notes. After the speaker was finished, (3) one interpreter would interpret into French, followed by (4) an interpretation in Russian, and then (5) in English.  Things thus would have lasted perhaps four times as long but with “simultaneous translation” (actually there was a lag of 6-8 seconds) it was as close to “real-time” as was possible.  Not until the 2020s did advances in generative AI (artificial intelligence) trained on LLM (large language models) mean machines alone could improve on what was done in 1945-1946.  Of course, an AI powered machine (in the form of a static device such as a speaker) could not add meaning by the use of NVC (nonverbal communication such as gestures or facial expressions) as is possible for a flesh & blood interpreter but as the occasionally disturbing “deep fake” videos illustrate, NVC certainly is possible on screen and with advances in robotics, it will be only a matter of time before such things can be done in three dimensions.  Now, we can all carry in our pockets a device able accurately (and even idiosyncratically) to translate dozens of languages as text or voice so the days of the profession of interpreter being a good career choice for a gifted linguist may be numbered.      

Wily old Franz von Papen (1879-1969; Chancellor of Germany 1932 & vice chancellor 1933-1934) wearing IBM headphones, undergoing cross-examination.  He was one of three defendants granted an acquittal.

Before the 13 Nuremberg Trials (the subsequent 12 conducted between 1946-1949), there had been only limited experiments with simultaneous translation.  Historically, the need in international relations had been limited because French had long been the “official language of diplomacy” and the first notable shift came with the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920) and subsequently the League of Nations (1920-1946), the British succeeded in convincing the participants to conduct the proceedings in English (which really was an indication of growing US influence).  At these venues, what was done came to be known as “whispered interpretation” with an interpreter literally “whispering a translation into a recipient’s ear.”  That was less than satisfactory and what smoothed the path to simultaneous interpretation was the development in the 1920s of a technology ultimately purchased by IBM (International Business Machines) and released commercially as the “IBM Hushaphone Filene-Findlay System” (more commonly called the “International Translator System”), first used at the ILO (International Labor Organization) conference in Geneva in 1927.  So what was done at Nuremberg was not exactly new but it was there the system came to wider attention and for IBM, providing (at no charge) the four tons of electronic equipment including 300 headsets (an additional 300 were borrowed from Geneva) and miles of cable proved a good investment, the publicity generated meaning one of the corporation’s first sales of the system was to the UN (United Nations) headquarters in New York.  The technology alone however was not enough and some potential interpreters who had passed the early evaluation tests proved unsuitable because they found it impossible to adapt to the demands imposed by the electronics; only some 5% of the 700-odd evaluated proved viable interpreters with “the interpreters the IMT reject” sent to what they called “Siberia” (administrative tasks or the dreary job of translating documents).  Those who made the cut spent their shifts in booths behind thick glass although the top was open so the soundproofing was only partial and the booth was located directly adjacent to the dock in which sat the defendants.

Although there was the odd error, the interpreters were thought to have done an fine job although not all were impressed, several entries in the diary of the British alternate judge Norman Birkett (Later Lord Birkett, 1883–1962) revealing his opinion of the breed:  “When a perfectly futile cross-examination is combined with a translation which murders the English language, then the misery of the Bench is almost insupportable.”  “Dubost [French prosecutor Charles Dubost (1905–1991)] is at the microphone again, making his final speech. He is robust and vigorous; but such is the irony of fate that he is being translated by a stout, tenor-voiced man with the 'refayned' and precious accents of a decaying pontiff. It recalls irresistibly a late comer making an apology at the Vicarage Garden Party in the village, rather than the grim and stern prosecution of the major war criminals.”  “But translators are a race apart - touchy, vain, unaccountable, full of vagaries, puffed up with self-importance of the most explosive kind, inexpressibly egotistical, and, as a rule, violent opponents of soap and sunlight.”  Mr Justice Birkitt always made his feelings clear.

The Passionate Haystack at work: British Army Captain Duncan (later Sir Duncan) Macintosh (1904-1966, left), Margot Bortlein (1912-2008, centre) and US Army Lieutenant Peter Uiberall (1911-2007, right).

The best-remembered for the translators was Margot Bortlin (1912-2008) and her place in the annals of the trial is due wholly to the nickname bestowed on her by journalists: “the Passionate Haystack”, the appellation soon picked by the soldiers and men on the legal teams.  The “haystack” element in the nickname came from her luxuriant fair hair which, in court, she would assemble as an “updo” in a shape which (at least in the minds of the men watching) recalled a haystack and such was the upper volume she was compelled to wear the headband of her headphones around the back of her head rather than atop as was the usual practice.  These days, observers of such things playfully might describe her hair as “an installation”.  The “passionate” part was a tribute to her style of translation, said by Dr Francesca Gaiba (b 1971) in The Origins of Simultaneous Interpreting: The Nuremberg Trial (1998) to have been delivered “with great emphasis, smiling and frowning, with sweeping gestures and dramatic vocal inflections.”  It's not known if the Passionate Haystack had any theatrical training but her use of NVC must have been striking compared with the performances of her colleagues who tended to sit inertly and speak in an unrelenting monotone.  Intriguingly, the journalist & author Rebecca West (1892–1983), no stranger to men's rich lexicon of sexist disparagement, who covered the trial made only an oblique reference to the drama in the delivery, reporting: “When it is divulged that one of the most gifted interpreters, a handsome young woman from Wisconsin, is known as the Passionate Haystack, care is taken to point out that it implies no reflection on her temperament but only a tribute to a remarkable hair-do.”  Wisconsin produces almost a quarter of the nation's butter and cheese so is a state of many haystacks.

Those in court rise in their places as the judges enter the chamber, Ms Bortlein (arrowed) looking down at her papers.  Although not not a high definition photograph, the angle at which her hair appears does show why the “updo piled high” contributed to her affectionate nickname.

In a milieu of dark gowns, military uniforms and grim proceedings, Ms Bortelin clearly made quite an impression, drawing the eye for a number of reasons.  Commenting on Justice Birkett’s acerbic view of the interpreter’s profession, in On Trial at Nuremberg (1979), the British Army lawyer Major Airey Neave (1916–1979), who had served the indictment on the defendants in their cells, wrote: “If this judgement seems harsh, it was the judges who had to listen to them [interpreting the words of counsel, defendants and witnesses] for nine months while junior officials could come and go as they pleased.  When I was not following the evidence, my interest in the interpreters’ box dwelt on a young lady with blonde hair, piled high, known as the 'Passionate Haystack'...”  Margot Theresa Bortlein-Brant was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany, her family emigrating to the US in late 1924 when she was 12.  She earned a degree in languages from the University of Chicago, a background meaning she possessed the most valuable skill a translator could have: equal adeptness with both tongues.  Her academic background obviously contributed to that but leaving one’s native land at a young age to learn the language of one’s adopted country doesn’t always produce such competence, one tourist operator at Ayers Rock Resort in Australia’s NT (Northern Territory) heard to remark of one of his staff: “She does German translation for us which is good but she left Germany when she was ten so she speaks German like a ten year old.  Of course that’s not a problem because she also speaks English like a ten year old.”

Weimar

Weimar (pronounced vahy-mahr, wahy-mahr, veye-mahr or weye-mahr)

(1) A city in Thuringia, in central Germany, the scene (in 1919) of the adoption of the constitution of the German state which came (retrospectively) to be known as the Weimar Republic.

(2) A German surname (of habitational origin).

(3) As Weimar Republic, the sovereign German republic (1918-1933), successor state to the German Empire (1871-1918 and now sometimes referred to as the “Second Reich”) and predecessor to the Nazi regime (the “Third Reich”, 1933-1945).  In the narrow technical sense of constitutional law, the "Weimar Republic" came into existence only in August 1919 but among historians it's common (and convenient) to date it from Kaiser Wilhelm II's (1859–1941; Emperor of Germany & King of Prussia 1888-1918) abdication in 1918.

Pre 1100: The construct was the Old High German wīh (holy; sacred) + meri (sea; lake; pond; standing water, swamp).  The name can therefore be analysed as something like “holy pond” or “sacred lake” but what religious significance this had or which aquatic feature was involved is not known.  A settlement in the area of what is now Weimar has existed since at least the early Middle Ages and there is a document dated 999 which makes reference to the town as Wimaresburg but how long this, or some related form had been in use is unknown.  Over time, the changes presumably reflected as desire for convenience and simplification (not an imperative always noted in evolution of the German language) and during the early centuries of the second millennium the place seems to have been known as Wimares, Wimari & Wimar before finally becoming Weimar.  In a manner not unusual in the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806 and for certain purposes dubbed First Reich”), it was the seat of the County of Weimar, one of the administrative and commercial centres of Thuringia but in 1062 merged with the County of Orlamünde to form Weimar-Orlamünde which existed until 1346 when the Thuringian Counts' War (a squabble between several local barons) erupted.  In the settlement which followed, Weimar was taken by the Wettin clan as an agreed fief and over time developed into a major city.  Weimar is a proper noun, Weimarization & Weimarize are nouns and Weimarian is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is Weimars.

One native to or an inhabitant of Weimar is a Weimarer (strong, genitive Weimarers, plural Weimarer, feminine Weimarerin).  The adjective Weimarian (of or relating to the Weimar period (1918-1933) in German can be used in any context but is most often applied to the art & culture associated with the era rather than politics or economics.  The comparative is “more Weimarian”, the superlative “most Weimarian”).  The noun Weimarization (a state of economic crisis leading to political upheaval and extremism) is used exclusively to describe the political and financial turmoil of the Weimar years.  The verb Weimarize (to cause to undergo Weimarization) is the companion term and is applied in much the same was as a word like “Balkanize” as a convenient word which encapsulates much in a way no other can.  The Weimaraner is a breed of dog, bred originally in the region as a hunting dog, the construct being Weimar + the German suffix -aner (denoting “of this place”).

In a constitutional sense, the Weimar Republic came into existence on 11 August 1919 when the national assembly of the German state met in the city to adopt the new Weimar Constitution.  Despite that, many historians use the label to cover the whole period between abdication on 9 November 1918 by Wilhelm II and the Nazis taking office on 30 January 1933.  The constitution created what structurally was a fairly conventional federal republic (known officially as the Deutsches Reich (German Reich)), the constituent parts of which were the historic Länder (analogous with the states in systems like the US, Canada or Australia though the details of the power sharing differed), each with their own governments, assemblies and constitutions.  Historians regards the inherent weakness of the structure as one of the factors which contributed to the political instability, economic turmoil and social unrest for which the era is remembered but the external forces are thought to have been a greater influence, notably the harsh terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the extraordinary level of war reparations, the latter associated particularly with the hyper-inflation of 1923.  However, it was a time of unusual social & political freedom, marked by an outpouring of innovative cultural creativity.  One thing which tends to be obscured by what came later was that by 1928 the system had been stabilized and the economy was stable; in the last election prior to the Wall Street Crash (1929), the Nazi vote had slumped, rendering the party an outlier with no immediate prospect of success.  In democratic politics, the the so-called "protest vote" can at scale be attracted only if a critical mass of people think things are so bad they're prepared to "take a risk" on an unproven alternative; it was only the depression of the early 1930s which doomed Weimar and even then, the Nazis gained power not by achieving an electoral majority but through a series of back channel deals by establishment figures who (at the time, understandably) underestimated the threat posed.

Lindsay Lohan in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

Actually, rather than the pleasant city in Thuringia which lent the constitution its name, it was Berlin, the national and Prussian capital which came most to be associated with the artistic and sexual experimentation of the republic.  Although most of went on in the place was little different than in other conservative German cities it was the small but highly visible numbers of those enjoying the excesses which attracted attention.  In his novel Down There on a Visit (1962) Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) wrote of the sort of warning respectable folk would in the 1920s offer to anyone who seemed to need the advice:

“Christopher - in the whole of Thousand Nights and One Night, in the most shameless rituals of the Tantra, in the carvings on the Black Pagoda, in the Japanese brothel-pictures, in the vilest perversions of the oriental mind, you couldn’t find anything more nauseating than what goes on there, quite openly, every day. That city is doomed, more surely than Sodom ever was."  And then and there I made a decision - one that was to have a very important effect on the rest of my life. I decided that, no matter how, I would get to Berlin just as soon as ever I could and that I would stay there a long, long time.

Weimar art: Der Künstler mit zwei erhängten Frauen (The Artist with Two Hanged Women), watercolour and graphite on paper by Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955).  Note the high-heeled jackboots.   

Isherwood left London by the afternoon train for Berlin on 14 March 1929, taking a room next to the Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science from which he explored the city’s “decadence and depravity” enjoying just about every minute and by his own account every gay bar and club (of which there were many).  That niche was only one of many to which the Berlin of Weimer catered, all fetishes seemingly there from morphine, cocaine and opium houses to a club at which membership was restricted to a “coven of coprophagists [who] gorged a prostitute on chocolate, gave her a laxative and settled down to a feast.”  Actually, at the time, there was plenty of depravity among the Nazis, however much the public platform of the party might stress traditional values and they were as condemnatory as the Pope of communists, homosexuals and Freemasons (by contrast, it was institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church, the British Empire and comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) which attracted the sometimes grudging admiration of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  Indeed, in his writings and the recollections of his contemporaries, Hitler didn’t much dwell on moral matters but ceaselessly would condemn those aspects of German culture he believed the Weimar generation were corrupting including “modernist architecture, Dadaist art, Jewish psychoanalysis, experimental theatre, short shirts, lipstick, bobbed hair, dances like the foxtrot and jazz” (the last of which he derided as “a degenerate negroid sound”).

Weimar art: Sonnenfinsternis (Eclipse of the Sun (1926)), oil on canvas by George Grosz (1893-1959).  Weimar was not untouched by surrealism.

The lurid tales of Weimar Berlin from the diaries of Christopher Isherwood now entertain rather than shock as once they would have managed but the expressionist art which flourished at the time remains striking.  A stridently experimental fork of the European avant-garde, the Weimar artists chose to ignore traditional aesthetic conventions and, according to some critics, the painters were fascinated by ugliness, the composers by atonal dissonance.  They were also artists who were predominately urban and focused upon the city, its decadence and corrosive influence upon the individual.  The Weimar period was the time also when the phrase magischer Realismus (magic realism) was coined, more accurately to describe what had come to be known as the Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity).  Magic realism is now thought of as a literary genre in which fantastical elements are interpolated into life-like depictions of the world but the first use was in 1925 by German art historian Franz Roh (1890–1965) who observed many artists in the Weimar Republic rejecting (or at least ignoring) the idealistic style (fashionable before World War I (1914-1918) and which had combined naturalistic depiction with an amplification of beauty and virtue), in favor of something recognizably realistic yet blended with uncanny elements.  Roh’s understanding of magic realism was at least partially an acknowledgement of technology: the influence of photography and moving pictures (film).  Then as now, there was debate about whether there was some point at which realism stopped and surrealism began but the distinction was that magic realism was a distortion of the actual material world for some political or other didactic purpose whereas surrealism explored the abstractions which lurked in the subconscious mind. 

In the Weimar style: The Rt Hon Theresa May MP (2023), a portrait of Lady May (b 1956; UK prime-minister 2016-2019) by Saied Dai (b 1958).

Painted by Tehran-born Saied Dai, it will hang in  Portcullis House, Parliament's office complex where many MPs have their offices and not since Graham Sutherland’s (1903–1980) portrait of Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) was unveiled in 1954 has a painting of one of the country’s prime-ministers attracted so much interest, the reception of such works not usually much more than perfunctory.  Sutherland was commissioned (as second choice; Sir Herbert Gunn's (1893–1964) fee deemed too high) by the ad hoc “Churchill Joint Houses of Parliament Gift Committee” to paint a portrait to mark the prime minister’s 80^th birthday and, on 30 November 1954, members of the Commons & the Lords assembled in Westminster Hall to mark the occasion.  Paid for by parliamentary subscription (the idea of paying for such a thing from their own pockets would appal today’s politicians), it was intended the work would remain with Churchill until his death after which it would be gifted to the state to hang in the Palace of Westminster.

Winston Churchill (1954) by Graham Sutherland.

Things didn’t work out that way.  Churchill, not anyway much enjoying the aging process loathed the painting and felt betrayed by the artist, the preliminary sketches he’d been shown hinting at something rather different.  Initially, he sulked, first saying he wouldn’t attend the event, then that he’d turn up only if the painting wasn’t there but his moods often softened with a little coercion and he agreed to make a short speech of thanks at the unveiling, his most memorable lines being: “The portrait is a remarkable example of modern art. It certainly combines force and candour.”  It wasn’t hard to read between the lines and when delivered to Churchill’s country house, the painting was left in a storeroom, never unwrapped and never again to be seen, Lady Churchill (Clementine Churchill (Baroness Spencer-Churchill; 1885–1977) in 1956 incinerating it in what was described as “a huge bonfire”.  That she'd executed one of history’s most practical examples of art criticism wasn't revealed until 1979.  Curiously, when first she saw it in 1954 she admired the work, Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) who was with her at the time noting she “liked the portrait very much” and was much “moved and full of praise for it.”  Her view soon changed.

The better-received May portrait was commissioned this time by the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art at a cost to the taxpayer of Stg£28,000 (in adjusted terms somewhat less than the thousand guineas paid in 1954) and Mrs May (she doesn’t use the title gained in 2020 upon her husband being knighted (for “political service”) in Boris Johnson’s (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) remarkable (and belated) Dissolution Honours List) was reported as saying she thought the portrait a “huge honour”.  When interviewed, the artist said his “…aim was to produce not just a convincing physical likeness, but also a psychological characterization, both individual and yet archetypal - imbued with symbolism and atmosphere.  A good painting needs to be a revelation and also paradoxically, an enigma. It should possess an indefinable quality - in short, a mystery.”

A work of careful composition, critics have found in it influences from the Renaissance and Mannerism but it’s most obviously in the spirit of the German expressionists identified with the Weimar Republic and the addition of a convallaria majalis (the "lily of the valley" which flowers in May) was the sort of touch they would have admired.  Interestingly, Mr Dai expressed relief he’d not been asked to render Mr Johnson on canvas which is understandable because while an artist could permit their interpretative imagination free reign and produce something memorable, Mr Johnson over the decades has been a series of living, breathing caricatures and it would be challenge for anyone to capture his “psychological characterization”.  The Weimaresque May in oil on canvas works so well because it’s so at variance with the one-dimensional image of the subject which has so long been in the public mind.  Whether it will change the perception of Mrs May in the minds of many isn’t known but critics mostly have admired the work and views of her premiership do seem to have been revised in the light of the rare displays of ineptitude which have marked the time in office of her three successors.

After Weimar: Der Bannerträger (The Standard Bearer (circa 1936)) oil on plywood by Hubert Lanzinger (1880-1950).  The post card with the inscription Ob im Glück oder Unglück, ob in der Freiheit oder im Gefängnis, ich bin meiner Fahne, die heute des Deutschen Reiches Staatsflagge ist, treu geblieben (Whether in good fortune or misfortune, whether in freedom or in prison, I have remained loyal to my flag, which is now the state flag of the German Reich) was issued in 1939, one of many such uses of the image which depicts Hitler as a knight in shining armor on horseback, bearing a Swastika flag.  As he did whenever a  postage stamp with his image was sold, the Führer received a tiny fee as a royalty; multiplied by millions, he gleaned quite a income from the use.  In one of the many examples of the fakery which underpinned Nazism (and fascism in general), in real life, Hitler was “terrible on horseback".

Der Bannerträger was an example of the type of art which proliferated in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, works which constructed the the personality cult around Hitler and comrade Stalin, reinforcing the messaging of both regimes.  Although, understandably, biographers and others have much focused on the two as human characters, as historical figures they need also be understood as manufactured constructs something certainly understood by the Soviet leader who once explained the abstraction of the personality cult by pointing to one of his many huge portraits and saying “…you see, even I am not Stalin, THAT is Stalin!”  One remarkably succinct sketch of how these thing are done lies in the pages of Paris: The Memoir (2023) in which Paris Hilton (b 1981) detailed the way Paris Hilton (the blonde flesh & blood creature) has a full-time job being Paris Hilton (the blonde public installation), a dualism she treated seriously because its maintenance demands study and an understanding of the supply & demand curves of shifting markets; a personality cult needs to be managed because, while some aspects must remain static, others need to evolve.

Such imagery Hitler dutifully would acknowledge when they were presented but he really did think them a kind of kitsch and while understanding their utility as propaganda pieces, they aroused in him little interest.  What he really liked in a painting was beauty as he defined it and in this his differentiation was something like his views on architecture where the standards imposed on the “functional” varied from his expectations of the “representational”.  Hitler would admire modern architecture rendered in steel & glass if it was being used for a factory or warehouse; there it was a matter of efficiency and improving working conditions but for the public buildings of the Reich, he insisted on classical motifs in granite.  In painting, he distinguished between what was essentially “advertising” and “real” art which the expressionism of the Weimar era certainly was not; the “…sky is not green, dogs are not blue and anyone who paints them as such has a sick mind” was his summary of thought on the Weimar art movement.  His preference was for (1) the Neoclassical which drew inspiration from the Greek and Roman art of Antiquity and his fondness extended not only to the voluptuous female nudes historians like to mention but also to the idealized, heroic figures representing nobility and heroism; with these he identified, (2) realistic landscapes, particularly those of the German countryside at its most lovely, (3) German Academic Realism which produced intricately detailed realistic representations of subjects, (4) depictions from Norse mythology which created a link between the legends and the idealized vision of the Nazi project and (5), traditional portraiture, if realistic and flattering (certainly demanded of the many painted of him).

Women in Weimer art: Margot (1924), oil on canvas by Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955) (left), Porträt der Tänzerin Anita Berber (Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber (1925)), oil and tempera on plywood by Otto Dix (1891–1969) (centre) and Bean Ingram (1928), oil on canvas by Herbert Gurschner (1901-1975) (right). 

Books of which the Nazis didn’t approve could be burned and proscribed music not performed but the practical public servants in the finance ministry knew much of the Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) removed from German (and later Austrian) galleries was highly sought by collectors in other countries and valuable foreign exchange was obtained from these sales (some of which in the post-war years proved controversial because of the provenance of some pieces sold then and later; they turned out to have been “obtained” from occupied territories or Jews).  Hitler despised Dadaism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and just about every other modern "ism" in art and expected others in the Reich to share his view but an exhibition of Entartete Kunst in Munich in 1937 proved an embarrassing one-off for the regime because people from around the country travelled to see itm making it the most attended art show of the Third Reich.  It was Weimar’s revenge.

Bench

Bench (pronounced bench)

(1) A long seat (without arm or back-rest) for two or more people:

(2) A seat occupied by an official, especially a judge in a courtroom.

(3) Such a seat as a symbol of the office of an individual judge or the judiciary.

(4) The office or dignity of various other officials, or the officials themselves.

(5) In certain team sports, the seat (literally or figuratively) on which the reserve (substitute) players sit during a game while not playing and on which “starting side” players sit while substituted.

(6) The quality and number of the players named as substitutes.

(7) By extension, the quality and number of professionals or experts in reserve, to be called upon as needed:

(8) As a clipping of workbench, the worktable of those engaged in trades.

(9) In interior design, certain fixed flat surfaces (kitchen bench, bathroom bench etc).

(10) A platform on which animals or objects are placed for exhibition.

(11) In farming, a hollow on a hillside formed by sheep.

(12) In surveying, a bracket used to mount land surveying equipment onto a stone or a wall.

(13) In certain legislatures, as “front bench” (the office-holding members of a government or opposition who sit on the bench at the front of their side of the assembly), “back bench” (those elected members not appointed to an office who sit on benches behind) and “cross-bench” (those not members of the party in government or formal opposition who sit on other benches).  The terms are sometimes literal but depending on an assembly’s architecture or the size of a government’s majority, others can sometimes “overflow” to the physical “cross benches”.  Thus there are “front benchers”, “back benchers” & “cross benchers” (sometimes hyphenated).

(14) In geography, a shelf-like area of rock with steep slopes above and below, especially one marking a former shoreline.

(15) In extractive mining, a step or working elevation in a mine.

(16) In science (usually as “at the bench”), to distinguish between being engaged actively in research and concurrent or subsequent administrative functions.

(17) To furnish with benches (now rare).

(18) To seat on a bench or on the bench (now rare).

(19) In extractive mining, to cut away the working faces of benches.

(20) In certain team sports, to substitute or remove a player from a game or relegate them to the reserve squad.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English bench, benk & bynk, from the Old English benc (bench; long seat (especially if backless)), from then Proto-West Germanic banki, from the Proto-Germanic bankon & bankiz (bench), from the primitive Indo-European bheg.  It was cognate with the Scots benk & bink, the West Frisian bank, the Dutch bank, the Old High German Bank, the Old Norse bekkr, the Old Frisian benk, the Danish bænk, the Swedish bänk and the Icelandic bekkur, all from a Germanic source and all of which meant “bench”.  In the Old English there were the verbs bencian (to make benches) and bencsittend (one who sits on a bench).  The dialectal spellings benk & bink are both long obsolete.  Bench & benching are nouns & verbs, bencher is a noun, benched is a verb & adjective and benchy & benchlike are adjectives; the noun plural is benches.

The source of the idea of the “bench as a type of long seat” is thought to come from riparian imagery (natural earthen incline beside a body of water) and etymologists speculate the original notion was of a “man-made earthwork used as a seat”.  Bench was from the late fourteenth century used of the tables on which merchants displayed their wares and that may have been a borrowing from the reference to the seat the judge would occupy in a court of law, that use emerging early in the 1300s and coming soon to mean “judges collectively, office of a judge, the judiciary”.  Whether it was actually an allusion to customers “judging the goods displayed” is speculative.  The use in team sports of “the bench” being the “reserve or substitute team members” was drawn from the actual physical bench on the sideline on which those players would sit while not on the field.  The earliest known reference to the existence of furniture used for this purpose is from the US in 1899 but extending this generally to the “reserve of players” in baseball, football etc seems not to have begun until 1909.  In sport, the idiomatic forms include “bench player” (one habitually selected only in the reserves and not the “starting side”), “benched” (a player substituted during play and “sent to the bench”, either because of poor performance or as part of a planned rotation, “injury bench” (players substituted due to injury), “bench warmer (or “bench sitter”, or “bench jockey”) (one whose career has plateaued as a “bench player”, “warming the bench”) 

Bench has attracted many modifiers describing use including “bench grinder”, “bench saw”, “bench drill”, “sawbench”, “kitchen bench”, “deacon's bench”, “friendship bench”, “bench easel”, “mourners' bench”, “piano bench” (a “piano stool” for two), “preacher’s bench” etc.  The noun & verb “benchmark” refers to the optimal results obtained when testing something or someone on a “test bench” although the use is often conceptual, a physical “test bench” not necessarily part of the processes and even some structures in engineering referred to as a “test bench” may bear no relationship to any actual “bench” however described.

Of seats

Bench seats ranged from the functional to the extravagant.

1971 Holden HQ Belmont Station Sedan (station wagon or estate-car) (left) in turquoise vinyl and 1974 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (right) in chestnut tufted leather though not actually “rich Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired.  Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos.  While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the extravagance although regrettably, some testers at the time reported than while they looked accommodating, after an hour of so, they proved quite uncomfortable.  They contrasted the eye-catching seats in the Imperial with the "hard" pews provided by Mercedes-Benz which proved supportive and comfortable even after hours behind the wheel, concluding backs, shoulders and legs were a more reliable guide to orthopedic correctness  than visual appeal, Teutonic austerity proving more luxurious than Detroit's rococo.

Boring: Rear bench seat in 1963 Chrysler 300J.

The 1963 Chrysler 300J was the rarest (ie the one fewest customers purchased) of the eleven “letter-series” cars (1955-1965) and whether or not related to its performance in the market, one thing which at the time attracted comment was a rear bench seat replacing the eye-catching twin buckets and full length console which had for three seasons appeared in its predecessors (300F, 300G & 300H).  In 1963, the industry, chasing volume & profits, had begin the process of “de-contenting” their cars, either ceasing the availability of stuff expensive to make or install or moving such items to the option list; by the late 1960s even Cadillac would be afflicted.  The Chrysler “letter series” 300s had begin in 1955 with what many had assumed was a one-off high-performance model created by mixing & matching trim from the Imperial line (newly that year established as a stand-alone marquee) as well as tuning the mechanical components for speed.  Existing initially to homologate stuff for use in competition, not only did the C-300 sell in a pleasing volume but it was such a success as a image-building “halo car” the model was retained for 1956 and dubbed 300B with a further nine annually following until the end of the line in with the 300L 1965, each release appending as an identifier the next letter in the alphabet (thus 300C, 300D etc).

Much more swish: Rear bucket seats in 1961 Chrysler 300G.

However, as well as the dubious distinctions of being the least popular and being the only one the series between 1957-1965 not to be offered as a convertible, the 300J represents a quirk in the naming sequence, Chrysler skipping the letter “I”.  That was done for the same reason there are so few “I cup” bras, the rationale being “I” might be confused with the numeric “1” so most manufacturers go straight from “H cup” to “J cup” although some plug the gap with a “HH cup” and there are even those who stop at “G”, handing incremental increases in volume with “GG” & “GGG” cups; it does seem an industry crying out for an ISO.  There’s no evidence Chrysler ever pondered a “300HH”.  Like Chrysler and most bra manufacturers, the USAF (US Air Force) also opted to skip “I” when allocating a designation for the updated version of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962 and still in service).  Between the first test flight of the B-52A in 1954 and the B-52H entering service in 1962, the designations B-52B, B-52C, B-52D, B-52E, B-52F & B-52G sequentially had been used but after flirting with whether to use B52J as an interim designation (reflecting the installation of enhanced electronic warfare systems) before finalizing the series as the B-52K after new engines were fitted, in 2024 the USAF announced the new line would be the B-52J and only a temporary internal code would distinguish those not yet re-powered.  Again, “I” was not used so nobody would think there was a B521.

1958 Metropolitan Hardtop in two-tone Frost White and Berkshire Green over black and white houndstooth cloth and vinyl.

Under various marques, the Metropolitan was in production between 1953-1961 and its cartoon-like appearance was a result of applying the motifs of the standard-sized US automobile to something much smaller and in that it was conceptually similar in concept to the more severely executed Triumph Mayflower (1949-1953) which took as a model the “knife-edged” lines of the Daimlers and Rolls-Royces bodied by Hooper.  Although most four-door cars with front bench seats featured full-width cushions (one which one’s butt sat) and squabs (on which one’s back rested), most two door models had “split squabs” which individually could be folded forward, affording someone access to the rear passenger compartment without disturbing anyone sitting on the other side of the front seat.

1958 Metrolpoitan.

The split squabs erect (left), the passenger's folded forward to afford entry to the rear bench (centre) and the rear bench's squab laid flat to allow access to the trunk or provide a larger storage space (right).  In modern five-seaters, the trend has been the so-called 40/60 split seat which allows two passengers still to sit on the back seat while extending the trunk space into the cabin, the origin of the idea reputedly the desire of skiers to carry their skis & poles without the need to fit external racks.  The Metropolitan also had a fold-down rear bench, a common feature in many station wagons, SUVs (sports utility vehicle) and such but for the diminutive Metropolitan it was essential because there was no trunk (boot) lid.  Though not unique, that was unusual in four-seat sedans (which the Metropolitan sort of was) although some sports cars also lacked the fitting including the early Austin-Healey Sprite (the so-called bugeye or frogeye (depending on the side of the Atlantic where one sat)) and every Chevrolet Corvette between the release of the C2 in 1962 and the C5 in 1998.

Bench seat for four: the improbable 1948 Davis Divan.  The blue car (one of a dozen survivors of the 17 built) was restored by the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles where it is on display.

In cars and such, a “bench seat” differs from a “bucket” or “individual” seat in that comfortably it can accommodate three occupants, the comparison with furniture being the difference between a “chair” and a “sofa”.  In commercial vehicles, bench seats commonly can seat four but in cars the recommended (and eventually legal) limit was typically three although the truly bizarre Davis Divan (1948) featured a bench allowing four abreast seating for adults, something which would have been an interesting experience for the quartet because a quirk of the suspension system was the long, pointed nose of the thing actually rose under braking.  The three-wheeled Divan was the brainchild of “automotive entrepreneur” (some historians are less kind) Glen Gordon “Gary” Davis (1904-1973) who put some effort into building the prototypes, not enough into preparation for actual production but much into raising funds from “investors”, a goodly chunk of which apparently was spent on real estate, entertaining and mink coats for “friends” (with all that implies).  He had a flair for slogans so many investors were attracted but the project proved chimeric, Mr Davis subsequently tried and convicted of fraud & grand theft, spending two years in prison.  The name Divan was used as an allusion to the car's wide bench seat.  It was from the French divan, from the Ottoman Turkish دیوان (divan), from the Iranian Persian دیوان (divân), from the Classical Persian دیوان (dēwān), from Middle Persian dpywʾn' or dywʾn' (dēwān) (archive, collected writings, compilation of works”), from the Sumerian dub.  The sense was of a sofa-like piece of furniture comprising a mattress lying against the wall and on either the floor or an elevated structure.  Part of the tradition of interior decorating in the Middle East, in the West divans are sometimes called “ottomans”; those with an internal storage compartment: “box ottomans”.

Four American Airlines stewardesses proving the bench seat had “hiproom for four adults; its foam rubber cushion beautifully upholstered in long-wearing synthetic fabrics.”  Dr Phil Tiemeyer's Women and the Jet Age. A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (2025) explores the post-war aviation industry and the not always happy part played by flight attendants.

Resembling a large shoe mounted on a tricycle undercarriage, so much was strange about the Davis Divan that in 1948 the four-abreast seating configuration probably didn’t seem so startling.  Still, the public were aware of the unusual feature because among the many publicity shots distributed was one of four American Airlines flight attendants (then called stewardesses) perched, apparently happily, on the bench seat while Mr Davis looked on approvingly.  Presumably, the four young ladies were relaxed and comfortable because the space available was rather more than airlines these days provide for economy-class passengers in airliners.  To this day, there are those who defend Mr Davis and claim the corporate failure was a consequence of his managerial ineptitude rather than constructive fraud but as well as the mink coats, there were clues some of techniques used to raise what would now be called VC (venture capital) were suspect, including the claim the movie star Greta Garbo (1905-1990) was one of the investors.  Ms Garbo was by 1948 already legendarily reclusive, never gave interviews and journalists who sent type-written questions (including a return SSAE (stamped self-addressed envelope)) were ignored.  If any alleged “investor” was unlikely to contradict Mr Davis, it was Greta Garbo.

Mannerist but not quite surrealist: Some artistic licence taken.

Advertising for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (left) with images by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum to which the rim (in the true sense of the word) directly was bolted.  Four could be seated on the Bonneville's front seat but the packaging efficiency was not as good as was found on the Divan; although the car was 8.2 inches (208 mm) wider (78.2 (1,986) vs 72.0 (1,829)), at 63.4 inches (1,610 mm), the Pontiac’s front seat was narrower than the 64 inches (1,626 mm) found in the Divan.  The inefficiency inside was reflected under the hood (bonnet).  Although wide, even Detroit's large-displacement V8s of the post-war years were, by historic standards, relatively short, but to achieve the desired look (longer, lower, wider), the stylists rendered long noses and such was the capaciousness, a straight-8 or V16 could have been installed.  Remarkably, as a marker of distinction, some of these machines even had their noses extended a few inches, just "for the look", creating even more waste space.  Undeniably, something like the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix was dramatic but it was emblematic of an era of self indulgence. 

Had one taken seriously some of the images used to advertise US cars in the 1960s, one might have assumed Mr Davis had been so influential that bench seats might by 1961 seat five but sadly, the work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman (best remembered for what they rendered for GM’s (General Motors) PMD (Pontiac Motor Division) took some artistic licence and one piece of exaggeration was width.  The pair rendered memorable images but certainly exaggerated things where they though it would help created what were even then admired as simulacrums rather than something to be taken literally.  While PMD’s “Year of the Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan (the original advertising copy read “Wide Track Wheels” but was soon clipped to “Wide Track” because it was snappier), it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (127 mm) because the 1958 frames were carried-over for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly old-fashioned.  That spliced-in five inches certainly enhanced the look but the engineering was sound, the wider stance did genuinely improve handling.  Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide Track” theme, the advertising artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide.  Had they been, the experience of driving would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Davis Divan: Even if the car wasn’t “real”, the brochure was well-done, reflecting the influences of Art Deco and Mid-Century Modernism.

Although not in US terms a “big” car, at 72 inches (6 feet, 1.8 metres) in width, the Davis Divan was comparatively wide, as of course it had to be make the four-place bench seat viable.  Still, with an apparently aerodynamic body made from aluminium (taking advantage of the ample stock of the metal created when contacts for military aircraft had been cancelled after the unexpectedly abrupt end of World War II (1939-1945)) it weighed in at a svelte 2,450 pounds (1,110 kg) so the small, four cylinder engines would have delivered low fuel consumption and provided adequate, if not sparkling, performance although if the shape was as slippery as it appeared, the claimed top speed of 115 mph (185 km/h) may have been plausible; as far as is known, no one has ever attempted to verify the claim.  In a booming economy in which new cars were in high-demand, the package must have seemed attractive to investors, especially as it was expected to sell for what seemed a competitive US$995.

One of the mink coats made infamous in the court proceedings in which Mr Davis was handed a two-year sentence after being convicted of fraud & grand theft.

In retrospect, the projected price was as remote from economic reality as the 990 Reichsmarks (RM) the Nazi Party in 1938 promised would be the cost Germans would pay for a new KdF-Wagen.  The Kraft durch Freude-Wagen was the “people’s car” marketed by the Party’s Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) operation which also ran cruise liners and holiday resorts and although not one car had been delivered to a civilian customer by the end of the war, it would subsequently enjoy much global success as the Volkswagen Type 1 (VW Beetle, 1938-2003).  As late as 1943 some of the 340,000-odd Germans obediently still were making their weekly payment of 5 RM and it would be more than a decade before some received any form of refund.  While over 21 million VW Beetles were made, Davis Divan production only ever reached 16 or 17 (including three specialized military (non-combat-vehicles) variants) and remarkably, at least 12 have survived as curiosities in museums and private collections.

Of law

Bench seat for four: A gang of four Sceggs.  Sceggs should not be confused with the homophonic skegs, a feature from shipbuilding.

In courts of the common law tradition the terms “bench” & “bar” date from the medieval age and remain part of courtroom terminology.  “The bench” was originally the seat on which judges at while presiding, the early furniture apparently a simple wooden bench as one would find at many long dining tables and in the manner typical of the way English evolves, “bench” came to be used of judges collectively and of the institution of the judiciary itself.  The “bar” was the physical barrier separating the spectators and participants of a trial from the area where the lawyers and judges conducted the proceedings, thus the “bar table” being that at which the advocates sat and the right to practice law before the bench being “passing the bar”, familiar in the modern US phrase “passing the bar exam” or the English form “called to the bar”.  As “bench” became a synecdoche for the judiciary, “bar” came to be used of the lawyers although in jurisdictions where there is a separation between those who appear in court (barristers) and those who do not (solicitors) “bar” was applied only to the former and even after reforms in some abolished the distinctions between certain branches of the law, specialist practitioners continue often to be referred to as the “equity bar” & “common law bar”.  There’s thus the apparent anomaly of the use of “bencher” (recorded in the 1580s) being used to mean “senior member of an inn of court”, all of whom would have been members of “the bar”.  Presumably the idea was one of “approaching the bench” or (more mischievously) “aspiring to the bench”.  The bench-warrant (one issued by a judge, as opposed to one issued by a magistrate or justice of the peace (JP) dates from the 1690s. 

An illuminated manuscript (circa 1460) which is the earliest known depiction of the Court of King's Bench in session.

In England, the Court of King’s Bench (KB) (or Queen’s Bench (QB) depending on who was on the throne) began in the twelfth century as a court at which the monarch literally presided; it was a circuit court which would, from time-to-time, travel around the counties hearing cases.  The Court of KB was thus in some sense “virtual”, whatever wooden bench upon which he sat becoming the KB for the duration of the trial.  Kings would cease to sit as judges and the KB later was interpolated into the system of courts (there would be many internecine squabbles over the years) until (as the Court of Queen’s Bench), under the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (1873), it, along with the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of Exchequer and Court of Chancery were merged to become the High Court of Justice, each of the absorbed institutions becoming a division.  The Common Pleas and Exchequer Division were abolished in 1880 when the High Court was re-organized into the Chancery Division, Queen's Bench Division and the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division (the latter memorably known as “wills, wives & wrecks” in legal slang).  The origin of the KB is a hint of why a king or queen can’t appear before a court in the UK or other places in which they remain head of state: Although it is in a practical sense now a legal fiction, all courts of law are “their courts” of which they remain the highest judge.  The most famous (or infamous) relic of all this is the power of pardon which although no longer a personal power in the hands of the king, remains exactly that for a US president and is the only head of power in the US constitution not subject to "checks & balances", a POTUS able to grant pardons by ex-officio fiat.  In that sense, the POTUS is the "chief magistrate" mentioned in the Federalist Papers (1788) although the authors used the term to distinguish a republic's president from European monarchs by stressing the execution of legal duties under the rule of law rather than sovereign privilege.  Not all presidents have been much troubled by that distinction. 

Benches afforced with foreign judges, the Chinese Communist Party and Hong Kong’s national security law

Multi-national benches are not uncommon.  There have been courts operating under the auspices of the LoN (League of Nations;1920-1946) & UN (United Nations; since 1945) such as the ICC (International Criminal Court), the ICJ (International Court of Justice) and the various ad-hoc bodies set up to handle prosecutions related to crimes in specific locations (Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia etc) and the UK had the JCPC (Judicial Committee of the Privy Council) which included senior judges from the Commonwealth.  The JCPC functioned not only as a final court of appeal for Commonwealth nations (a role for a handful it still fulfils) but also as the appellate tribunal for a number of domestic bodies including some ecclesiastical bodies, admiralty matters and even matters from the usually obscure DCRCVS (Disciplinary Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons).  There were also the IMTs (International Military Tribunal) which tried matters arising from the conduct of German & Japanese defendants from World War II (1939-1945), the bench of the latter Tokyo Tribunal notably diverse although those of the subsequent dozen trials in Nuremberg after the first (1945-1946) were staffed exclusively by US judges.  A number of former colonies also use foreign judges (and not always from the former colonial power).

However, what remains unusual is the matter of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) deciding to have foreign judges serve on The HKCFA (Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal), established in 1997 when the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) was created upon Beijing regaining sovereignty (under the IC2S (one country, two systems)) principle, with the end of British colonial rule.  At that point, the HKCFA became the territory’s highest judicial institution, replacing the JCPC in London.  On the HKCFA’s bench sits the Chief Justice (a Hong Kong national), several “Permanent Judges” and some two-dozen odd “Non-permanent Judges” who may be recruited from Hong Kong or from among lawyers of the requisite background from any overseas common law jurisdiction.  As non-permanent judges, appointments have been drawn (from bar & bench) from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Lindsay Lohan, foreign judge on the bench of The Masked Singer (2019), a singing competition, the Australian franchise of a format which began in the ROK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) as King of Mask Singer.

While it may seem strange a developed country like the PRC (People’s Republic of China (the old "Red China"), the world’s second largest economy, a permanent member of the UNSC (UN Security Council) and since 1965 the final member of the original “Club of Five” declared nuclear powers) would have foreign judges sitting on the bench of one of its superior courts, on the mainland the PRC operates under a civil law system which, like the tradition in continental European, is based primarily on written statutes and codes (with ultimate effective control remaining with the CCP), unlike common law systems, which rely heavily on case law and judicial precedent.  As a British colony, Hong Kong had used common law and under that system had become a major regional and international presence, something in part due to its judicial system being perceived as fair and uncorrupted; it was a “rule of law” state.

In the PRC there simply wasn’t a body of judges or lawyers with the necessary background in common law to staff the territory’s highest appellate court and significantly, at the time of the handover from the Raj, Hong Kong was of great importance to the PRC’s economy and the CCP understood it would be critical to maintain confidence in the rule of law, investors and overseas corporations with a presence in Hong Kong needing to be assured matters such as contracts would continue as before to be enforceable.  So it was, literally, “business as usual”, whatever may have been the fears about the political undercurrent.  The growth of the mainland economy since 1997 has been such that the HKSAR now constitutes only a small fraction of the national economy but analysts (some of whom provide advice to the CCP) understand the linkages running through the territory remain highly useful for Beijing and some long-standing conduits are still used for back-channel communications about this and that.  As far as business is concerned, the operation of the legal system has remained mostly satisfactory, even though the CCP ensured Beijing retained a reserved power to overturn the HKCFA’s decisions, the "rule of the CCP" sometimes thought preferable to the implications of "rule of law".

The colonial era building where now sits the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.  Formally opened in 1912, it was built with granite in the neo-classical style and between 1985-2011 was the seat of the Legislative Council (LegCo).

However, in 2020, a “National Security Law” (technically the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and thus usually written in English as the “NSL”) was imposed.  While not aimed at the regulation of business or economic matters, it was wide in scope and claims of application (the extraterritoriality extending worldwide), essentially extending to the territory many of the laws of the mainland regarding “political activities” and matters of “free speech”, the latter interpreted by the CCP in a way not unique but certainly different from Western understandings.  Citing the “political situation”, two British judges in June 2024 resigned from the HKCFA, prompted by Beijing’s recent crackdown on dissent in the city, something made possible by the NSL.  In his published letter, one judge, his rationale for departure notwithstanding, did say he continued “…to have full confidence in the court and the total independence of its members.”  As early as 2020, one Australian judge had already resigned, followed by two others from the UK, both saying the Hong Kong government had “…departed from values of political freedom and freedom of expression.”  The CCP may have anticipated some objection from the overseas judges because, since the passage of the NSL, no overseas judge has been allocated to hear the “security-related” cases.  The judicial disquiet seemed not to trouble the territory’s chief executive, former police officer Ka-chiu (John Lee; b 1957) who said the overseas appointments would continue to help “…maintain confidence in the judicial system and… strong ties with other common law jurisdictions.”  In response to the departing judge’s comment, he claimed the NSL had “no effect” on judicial independence and the only difference was that “…national security is now better safeguarded.”

Early in June, the Hong Kong authorities arrested two men and one woman attending a FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football that, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN)) World Cup qualification match against Iran, their offence being “turning their backs to the pitch and not standing during the performance of the national anthem”, a police spokesman adding that anybody “…who publicly and intentionally insults the national anthem in any way in committing a crime.”  Before the NSL was imposed, bolshie Hongkongers were known to boo the anthem to express discontent with their rulers; that definitely will no longer be tolerated.  The match ended Iran 4: Hong Kong 2 but despite that, more than ever the HKSAR and the Islamic Republic have much in common.