Maiden

Maiden (pronounced meyd-n)

(1) A girl or young unmarried woman; a maid (archaic but still in literary and poetic use).

(2) A female virgin (archaic); used also of unmarried young females in the sense of a “bachelorette” (a spinster being “a maiden aunt”).

(3) In horse racing, a horse which has never won a race.

(4) In horse racing, a race open only to maiden horses.

(5) As “clothes maiden”, a northern English dialect form describing a frame on which clothes are hung to dry (a clothes horse).

(6) A machine for washing linen (obsolete).

(7) An instrument resembling the guillotine, once used in Scotland for beheading criminals.

(8) As “maiden name”, a woman’s surname, prior to taking that of her husband upon marriage.

(9) In land management, as virgin soil, virgin forest etc, an area in its natural state; unexploited.

(10) In pre-modern agriculture, the last sheaf of grain harvested, decorated with ribbons and regarded as a talisman (by extension the end of the harvest) (archaic).

(11) In botany, a tree or shrub grown from seed and never pruned.

(12) In cricket, as “maiden over”, for a bowler to complete an over (now six legitimate deliveries) without conceding a run; a “wicket maiden” is an over in which a wicket fell with no runs being scored (thus double-wicket maiden & hat-trick maiden).

(13) Of, relating to, or befitting a girl or unmarried woman (archaic but preserved in phrases such as “her maiden virtues”. “a maiden blush” et al).

(14) Of an unmarried woman, older than a certain age (generally past middle age), often in the form “maiden aunt”.

(15) Something made, tried, appearing etc, for the first time (maiden flight, maiden speech, maiden voyage etc).

(16) In military slang, an untested (or untried in battle) knight, soldier or weapon; a fortress never captured or violated.

Pre-1000: From the Middle English mayden & meiden, from the Old English mæden  & mægden (unmarried woman (usually young); virgin; girl; maidservant), originally a diminutive of mægð or mægeð (virgin, girl; woman, wife), the construct being mægd, mægth or mægeth, from the Proto-West Germanic magaþ, from the Proto-Germanic magaþs & magadin (young womanhood, sexually inexperienced female) (and cognate with the Old Norse mogr (young man), the Old Irish maug & mug (slave), and the Gothic magaths) + -en (the diminutive suffix).  The Proto-Germanic was the source also of the Old Saxon magath, the Old Frisian maged, Old High German magad (virgin, maid), the German Magd (maid, maidservant), the German Mädchen (girl, maid) from Mägdchen (little maid), the feminine variant of the primitive Indo-European root maghu- (“young of either sex; “unmarried person” and the source also of the Old English magu (child, son, male descendant), the Avestan magava- (unmarried) and the Old Irish maug & mug (slave)).  Maiden is a noun & adjective, maidenly is an adjective, maidenship & maidenhood  are nouns and maidenish is an adjective; the noun plural is maidens.

Iron Maiden is a heavy metal band active since 1975, their eponymous album in 1980 the debut release of studio-recorded material.  Their album cover-art has become something of a motif and is widely reproduced in posters, T-shirts and such, their music is said to possess a similar consistency.

In thirteenth century Middle English, “maiden” could be used as a slur to refer to “a man lacking or abstaining from sexual experience” and in Scotland it was the official term for a guillotine-like device used to behead criminals.  In horse racing, a maiden horse is one which has never won a race (although in the mid-eighteen century it was sometimes used of horses which had not previously contested a race.  A maiden race is one restricted to maiden horses (which can be mares, stallions or geldings).  The figurative sense of "new, fresh, untried” (maiden flight, maiden speech, maiden voyage etc) seems first to have been used in the 1550s.  The idea of the maiden name (a woman’s surname, prior to taking that of her husband upon marriage) dates from the 1680s.  The noun maidenhood (state of being a maiden; state of an unmarried female; virginity) was from the Old English mægdenhad while the adjective maidenly (like a maid, becoming to a maid; gentle, modest, reserved) was first documented in the mid 1600s.

Headbanger Lindsay Lohan in Iron Maiden T-shirts.

is inquisitions.

In 2008, the (not updated since 2017) blog Metal Inquisition was most impressed by Lindsay Lohan donning a vintage Iron Maiden T-shirt.  Whether any inquisitor (or anyone else) ever used the "iron maiden" (reputed to be one of many apparatuses of gruesome torture known in medieval & pre-Enlightenment Europe) for its alleged purpose is doubted by many historians.

The term Hiroshima maiden (or A-bomb maiden) was in the 1950s used to refer to the Japanese & Korean women disfigured by the radiation from the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki in August 1945, the term coming into use in 1955 when they were sent to the US for reconstructive plastic surgery.  In Norse mythology, the billow maidens were any of the nine daughters of the sea-god Ran and a skjaldmær (shieldmaiden) was a female virgin who had chosen to fight as a warrior in battle.  In several tales from mythology, an ice maiden was one of the ice people (or people of the ice), a woman from a place of snow and ice (in popular culture, the idea was borrowed in fantasy writing.  In idiomatic use, an ice maiden (also ice princess or ice queen) is a beautiful but cold (heartless) woman.  In Westminster parliamentary systems, the maiden speech of a member is their first substantive address to a chamber.  By convention it is (1) uncontroversial and (2) listened to by the house in polite silence although in cases where the member has not followed the convention, there have been some famous interjections.  Maiden ventures by machinery have sometimes become infamous.  Ships have sunk on their maiden voyages including RMS Titanic (1912) and the Wasa (or Vasa), a Swedish warship at the time one of the fastest and most heavily gunned in the world (1628).  In aviation, many aircraft have crashed on their maiden flights (test pilots are truly intrepid types) although it’s a myth that included the Supermarine Spitfire.  Less fortunate was the German industry in the later stages of World War II (1939-1945) when development was being rushed and at least two prototypes are known to have either crashed or suffered severe damage during their maiden test flights including the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger (People's Fighter).  In the case of the He 162 the maiden flight actually ended without incident and it was only a subsequent investigation of the airframe (after another prototype He 162 had crashed) which revealed the adhesive used to bond wooden components was so acidic it caused the timber to disintegrate.

An iron maiden towering above other instruments of torture.

The infamous torture chamber known as the iron maiden is now though to be mythical and an invention of those who wished to characterize the Middle Ages as a time of barbarism and savagery.  It was said to be a solid iron cabinet with a hinged front, large spikes fitted throughout the interior and designed to be large enough to accommodate an adult human.  Once the door was closed, it was said to be impossible to avoid being “spiked” and with every movement, one became “more spiked”.  Although their existence has been disproved, iron maidens (most apparently built in the nineteenth century) are a popular exhibit in “museums of torture”, some probably genuine “torture coffins” to which the spikes were a latter addition.  Quite why it was felt necessary to “invent” the iron maiden given there were so many examples of equally gruesome Medieval torture devices isn’t clear but it may be there was some desire to exonerate the torturers of Antiquity who really did use such things; among post Renaissance historians, such was the veneration for the Classical world that wherever possible, things were blamed on the Middle Ages.

In the English legal system, maiden assize came to mean an assize (periodic courts with on a circuit basis were conducted around England and Wales until 1972,) at which there were no criminal cases to be heard although originally it was an assize at which no prisoner was condemned to die.  There used to be some ritualism attached to the declaration of a maiden assize and the tradition wasn’t unknown in the US:  If a judge, upon opening a session of their assize found there were no cases to be heard, the clerk of the court would present him with a pair of white gloves, the marker of a maiden assize, the significance being that judges, as a mark of submission to the Crown, were always gloveless when executing the royal commission.

Inquisition

Inquisition (pronounced in-kwuh-zish-uhn)

(1) An official investigation, especially one of a political or religious nature, historically characterized by lack of regard for individual rights, prejudice on the part of the examiners, and recklessly cruel punishments.

(2) In informal use, harsh, difficult, or prolonged questioning.

(3) The act of inquiring; inquiry; research; an inquest; questioning.

(4) An investigation or process of inquiry, especially a judicial or official inquiry.

(5) In technical use, the finding of a jury, especially such a finding under a writ of inquiry.

(6) Historically, a judicial institution (1232–1820) of the Roman Catholic Church, founded to discover and suppress heresy.

1350–1400: From the Middle English inquisicioun & inquisicion, from the twelfth century Old French inquisicion (inquiry, investigation (inquisition in modern French)), from the Latin inquisitionem (the nominative form in Legal Latin was inquīsītiō) (a seeking of grounds for accusation; a searching into, legal examination) the noun of action from past participle stem of inquirere.  The construct was inquīsīt(us) (past participle of inquīrere (to inquire)) + iōn.  The –ion suffix was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The word is now most often used, sometime critically, to describe bodies such as royal commissions which are by nature inquisitorial.  Inquisition, inquisitionist & inquisitor are nouns and inquisitorial & inquisitional are adjectives; the noun plural is inquisitions.

In 2008, the (not updated since 2017) blog Metal Inquisition was most impressed by Lindsay Lohan donning a vintage Iron Maiden T-shirt.  Whether any inquisitor (or anyone else) ever used the "iron maiden" (reputed to be one of many apparatuses of gruesome torture known in medieval & pre-Enlightenment Europe) for its alleged purpose is doubted by many historians.

The noun inquisitor dates from the early fifteenth century and was the title of the inspector (one who makes inquiries), from the Anglo-French inquisitour, from either the Old French inquisiteur or directly from the Latin inquisitor (searcher, examiner; a legal investigator, collector of evidence), the agent noun from the Latin inquirere.  In the Church, it was the formal title of an officer of the Inquisition from the 1540s.  The feminine forms were inquisitress (1727) & inquisitrix (1825).  In the Church, the role (though not the title) of inquisitor dates from 382, but the ecclesiastical court charged with finding, suppressing and punishing heretics wasn’t formed as an institutionalized standing body until appointments were made by Pope Innocent III (1161–1216; pope 1198-1216) early in the thirteenth century to what was first called the Congregation of the Holy Office.  The English word inquisition began to be used in this sense (and with a capital initial letter) during the 1490s and in the popular imagination has long most been associated with office's reorganization (1478-1483) in Spain, where it fell under the control of the state as what is commonly called the Spanish Inquisition, noted especially for its obsessional secrecy, the severity of its methods of torture and the numbers burned at the stake.

Principle tortures of the Inquisition, woodcut by unknown artist, printed in History of the Inquisition (1850) by Charles H Davie.

Technically, the Inquisition was a group of institutions within the system of the Catholic Church which interacted to varying degrees with the judicial and investigatory offices of secular authorities and it began significantly to grow in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.  It expanded from its French origins to other European countries, most famously in the form of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, both of which operated as inquisitorial courts throughout their empires in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  In 1808, Napoleon conquered Spain and ordered the Inquisition there to be abolished although after Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) defeat in 1814, Ferdinand VII (1784–1833; King of Spain 1808 & 1813-1833) attempted a revival but was prevented by the French government upon which his tenuous hold on the throne depended.  With the exception of the Papal States, the institution of the Inquisition was defunct by 1834, surviving only in the Roman Curia, renamed in 1908 the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and known since 1965 as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The Inquisitor and a recalcitrant.  The "...not the time to be making enemies." is often attributed to Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet; 1694–1778) but there's no proof of origin.  Certainly it's something Voltaire on his deathbed would like to have liked to have said to an earnest priest and it's hard to thing of anyone more likely to have done so. 

Except among historians and Church scholars, all of who have their own favourites, the best known Inquisitor is doubtlessly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1927-2022; the future Pope Benedict XVI, pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022), appointed by Pope Saint John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005) to the office of Prefect (the new (touchy-feely) brand-name for the Inquisitor) of the CDF.  The quarter-century Benedict spent as Inquisitor was both an interesting prelude to his still under-estimated pontificate and the just reward for his abandonment of the youthful indiscretion that was his enthusiasm for reform and change in the Church.  He’d been hopeful, optimistic even, about the possibilities for modernization offered by the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II 1962-1965) but having witnessed the social convulsions and the riots across Europe in 1968, which at some moments seemed to verge on revolution, he became disturbed at the effect on youth and the challenge to Church teachings.  He was then the ideal Inquisitor with which the Church could enter the third millennium and updated the philosophical doctrine under which he’d been trained, realizing the great enemies of the Church were no longer communism, homosexuality & Freemasonry but were now Islam, homosexuality & Freemasonry.  Unfortunately, his time as Inquisitor coincided with the need to deal with distasteful, worldly matters rather than the heresy and fine theological points in which he’d more happily have allowed himself to become immersed.  Regrettably too, the powers of the CDF were more limited than in medieval times and a defrocking (laicization) was the most extreme punishment he was able to recommend, the last hanging by the Inquisition being a Spanish schoolmaster in 1826, the last burning at the stake seventy years earlier.

Shunamitism

Shunamitism (pronounced shunn-ah-might-izm)

The ancient practice of an old man sleeping with, but not necessarily having sex with, a young virgin, either to preserve youth or restore health.

Biblical (1 Kings 1-4): From Shunamite +‎ -ism, after Abishag (אבישג‎ (Avishag) in the Hebrew), a Shunamite woman who served this purpose for King David.  A Shunamite was an inhabitant of the Biblical village of Shunem.  The –ism suffix is ultimately either from the Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós), a suffix that forms abstract nouns of action, state, condition, doctrine; from stem of verbs in -ίζειν (-ízein) (whence the English -ize), or from the related suffix Ancient Greek -ισμα (-isma), which more specifically expressed a finished act or thing done.

Still recommended

Shunamitism is the practice of an old man sleeping with, but not necessarily having sex with, a young virgin to preserve his youth.  A legitimate medical theory of the time, the rationale was heat and vitality of the young maiden would revitalize the old man.

The term is based on the Biblical story of King David (1 Kings 1-4) and Abishag, a young woman from Shunem.  The King was very old and could not stay warm so his servants procured the young Abishag to sleep with him; they did not enjoy intimacy but Abishag also provided another footnote in royal history.  After a power-struggle with his brother Adonijah, Solomon was crowned king and when Adonijah asked for Abishag in marriage, Solomon, fearing another attempt to usurp the throne, had him put to death.

As late as the eighteenth century, physicians were still prescribing shunamitism and, in emergency medicine, it remains a recommended method to treat hypothermia when no medical facilities are available, though without mention of the necessity to secure a young virgin.

A work in progress: Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) with wife Jerry Hall (b 1956), Barbados, 2019.

Reports in June 2022 were circulating that Mr & Mrs Murdoch had separated and, after six year of marriage, were to divorce.  A usually reliable source for the details of such matters, the Murdoch tabloids, were as silent as they'd been when last Mr Murdoch sundered a marriage but no denial was issued, this taken as a confirmation by those who read between the lines.  Anything involving Mr Murdoch is an event of note, not least because he probably ranks with Billy Hughes (1862-1952), MacFarlane Burnett (1899-1985) and Germaine Greer (b 1939) as the most influential Australians of the last hundred-odd years.

Reich

Reich (pronounced rahyk or rahykh (German))

(1) With reference to Germany or other Germanic agglomerations, empire; realm; nation.

(2) The German state, especially (as Third Reich) during the Nazi period.

(3) A term used (loosely) of (1) hypothetical resurrections of Nazi Germany or similar states and (2) (constitutionally incorrectly), the so-called “Dönitz government (or administration)” which existed for some three weeks after Hitler’s suicide. 

(4) Humorously (hopefully), a reference to a suburb, town etc with a population in which German influence or names of German origin are prominent; used also by university students when referring to departments of German literature, German history etc. 

(5) As a slur, any empire-like structure, especially one that is imperialist, tyrannical, racist, militarist, authoritarian, despotic etc.

1871: From the German Reich (kingdom, realm, state), from the Middle High German rīche, from the Old High German rīhhi (rich, mighty; realm), from the Proto-West Germanic rīkī, from the Proto-Germanic rīkijaz & rikja (rule), a derivative of rīks (king, ruler), from the Proto-Celtic rīxs and thus related to the Irish rí.  The influences were (1) the primitive Indo-European hereǵ- (to rule), from which is derived also the Latin rēx and (2) the primitive Indo-European root reg (move in a straight line) with derivatives meaning "to direct in a straight line", thus "to lead, rule".  Cognates include the Old Norse riki, the Danish rige & rig, the Dutch rike & rijk, the Old English rice & rich, the Old Frisian rike, the Icelandic ríkur, the Swedish rik, the Gothic reiki, the Don Ringe and the Plautdietsch rikj.  The German adjective reich (rich) is used with an initial lower case and as a suffix is the equivalent of the English -ful, used to form an adjective from a noun with the sense of “rich in”, “full of”.  As a German noun & proper noun, Reich is used with an initial capital.

Reich was first used in English circa 1871 to describe the essentially Prussian creation that was the German Empire which was the a unification of the central European Germanic entities.  It was never intended to include Austria because (1) Otto von Bismarck's (1815-1989; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890) intricate series of inter-locking treaties worked better with Austria as an independent state and (2) he didn't regard them as "sufficiently German" (by which he would have meant "Prussian": Bismarck described Bavarians as "halfway between Austrians and human beings".  At the time, the German Empire was sometimes described simply as “the Reich” with no suggestion of any sense of succession to the Holy Roman Empire.  “Third Reich” was an invention of Nazi propaganda to “invent” the idea of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) as the inheritor of the mantle of Charlemagne (748–814; (retrospectively) the first Holy Roman Emperor 800-814) and Bismarck.  The word soon captured the imagination of the British Foreign Office, German “Reichism” coming to be viewed as much a threat as anything French had ever been to the long-time British foreign policy of (1) maintaining a balance of power in a Europe in which no one state was dominant ("hegemonic" the later term) and (2) avoid British involvement in land-conflicts on "the continent".

The term "Fourth Reich" had been around for a while when it was co-opted by Edwin Hartrich’s (1913-1995) for his book The Fourth and Richest Reich (MacMillan 1980), a critique both of the modern German state and its influence on the European Economic Community (the EEC (1957) which by 1993 would morph into the European Union (EU).  The term is still sometimes used by those criticizing the German state, the not so subtle implication being Berlin gradually achieving by other means the domination of Europe which the Third Reich attempted by military conquest.  Fourth Reich is also sometimes used, erroneously to describe the two-dozen day “administration” of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; German head of state 30 April-23 May 1945) who in Hitler’s will was appointed Reich President (and therefore head of state); the so-called “Flensburg Government”.  That’s wrong and the only difference of opinion between constitutional theorists is whether it was (1) the mere coda to the Third Reich or (2) a charade, the German state ceasing to exist by virtue of events on the ground, a situation the finalization of the surrender arrangements on 8 May merely documented.  The latter view certainly reflects reality and in a legal sense the formal existence of a German state was required to ensure the validity of the surrender and other administrative acts; the consensus is the German state ceased to exist on 8 May 1945.  That the Allied occupying forces allowed the obviously pointless “Dönitz administration” to “function” for some three weeks has been the subject of historical debate.  Some have suggested there were those in London & Washington who contemplated using (at least temporarily) the “Flensburg Government” as a kind of “administrative agent” and it's true Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) did briefly flirt with the idea.  However, what's more plausible was it was so unexpected and no planning (military or political) had been had undertaken to deal with such a thing: "Hitler in his bunker was one thing, an admiral in Flensburg was another".

Hartrich’s thesis was a particular deconstruction of the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), the unexpectedly rapid growth of the economy of the FRG (the Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) in the 1950s and 1960s which produced an unprecedented and widespread prosperity.  There were many inter-acting factors at play during the post-war era but what couldn’t be denied was the performance of the FRG’s economy and Hartrich attributed it to the framework of what came to be called the Marktwirt-schaft market economy with a social conscience), a concept promoted by Professor Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977) while working as a consultant to the Allied occupying forces in the immediate aftermath of the war.  When the FDR was created in 1949, he entered politics, serving as economy minister until 1963 when he became Chancellor (prime-minister).  His time as tenure was troubled (he was more technocrat than politician) but soziale Marktwirtschaft survived his political demise and it continues to underpin the economic model of the modern German state.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of the German edition of GQ (Gentleman's Quarterly) magazine, August 2010.  Although published in the Fourth Reich, the photo-shoot by photographer Ellen Von Unwerth (b 1954) took place on Malibu Beach, California during June 2010.  Sommerlust is not as exciting as it may sound to English-speaking ears; it translates as “summer pleasure”

Hartrich was a neo-liberal, then a breed just beginning to exert its influence in the Western world, but he also understood that the introduction of untrammelled capitalism to Europe was likely to sow the seeds of its own destruction but he insists the “restoration” of the “…profit motive as the prime mover in German life was a fundamental step…” to economic prosperity and social stability.  Of course the unique circumstances of the time (the introduction of the Deutsche Mark which enjoyed stability under the Bretton Woods system (1944), the outbreak of the Cold War, the recapitalization of industry and the provision of new plant & equipment with which to produce goods to be sold into world markets under the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade (1947)) produced conditions which demand attention but the phenomenal growth can’t be denied.  Nor was it denied at the time; within the FRG, even the socialist parties by 1959 agreed to build their platform around “consumer socialism”, a concession Hartrich wryly labelled “capitalism's finest hour”.  The Fourth and Richest Reich was not a piece of economic analysis by an objective analyst and nor did it much dwell on the domestic terrorism which came in the wake of the Wirtschaftswunder, the Baader-Meinhof Group (the Red Army Faction (RAF)) and its ilk discussed as an afterthought in a few pages in an epilogue which included the bizarre suggestion Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015; FRG Chancellor 1974–1982) should be thought a latter-day Bismarck; more than one reviewer couldn’t resist mentioning Hitler himself had once accorded the same honor to the inept Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945).

The word "Reich" does sometimes confuse non-specialists who equate it with the German state, probably because the Third Reich does cast such a long shadow.  Murdoch journalist Samantha Maiden (b 1972) in a piece discussing references made to the Nazis (rarely a good idea except between consenting experts in the privacy of someone don's study) by a candidate in the 2022 Australian general election wrote:

The history of the nation-state known as the German Reich is commonly divided into three periods: German Empire (1871–1918) Weimar Republic (1918–1933) Nazi Germany (1933–1945).

It's an understandable mistake and the history of the German Reich is commonly divided into three periods but that doesn't include the Weimar Republic.  The point about what the British Foreign Office labelled "Reichism" was exactly what the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) as a "normal" democratic state, was not.  The Reich's three epochs (and there's some retrospectivity in both nomenclature and history) were the Holy Roman Empire (1800-1806), Bismarck's (essentially Prussian) German Empire (1871-1918) & the Nazi Third Reich (1933-1945).  

The First Reich: the Holy Roman Empire, 800-1806

The Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth century.

The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the early Middle Ages, the popular identification with Germany because the empire’s largest territory after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany.  On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III (circa 760-816; pope 795-816) crowned Charlemagne (747–814; King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor of the Romans (and thus retrospectively Holy Roman Emperor) from 800)) as Emperor, reviving the title more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.  Despite the way much history has been written, it wasn’t until the fifteenth century that “Holy Roman Empire” became a commonly used phrase.

Leo III, involved in sometimes violent disputes with Romans who much preferred both his predecessor and the Byzantine Empress in Constantinople, had his own reasons for wishing to crown Charlemagne as Emperor although it was a choice which would have consequences for hundreds of years.  According to legend, Leo ambushed Charlemagne at Mass on Christmas day, 800 by placing the crown on his head as he knelt at the altar to pray, declaring him Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans), in one stroke claiming staking the papal right to choose emperors, guaranteeing his personal protection and rejecting any assertion of imperial authority by anyone in Constantinople.  Charlemagne may or may not have been aware of what was to happen but much scholarship suggests he was well aware he was there for a coronation but that he intended to take the crown in his own hands and place it on his head himself.  The implications of the pope’s “trick” he immediately understood but, what’s done is done and can’t be undone and the lesson passed down the years, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) not repeating the error at his coronation as French Emperor in 1804.

Some historians prefer to date the empire from 962 when Otto I was crowned because continuous existence there began but, scholars generally concur, it’s possible to trace from Charlemagne an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, describing a gradual assumption of the imperial title and role.  Not all were, at the time, impressed. Voltaire sardonically recorded one of his memorable bon mots, noting the “…agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."  The last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II (1768–1835; Holy Roman Emperor 1792-1806) dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806, after Napoleon's creation of the Confederation of the Rhine.

The Second Reich: the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty, 1871-1918

German Empire, 1914.

The German Empire existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the abdication of Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Kaiser (Emperor) & King of Prussia 1888-1918) in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic, remembered as the Weimar Republic (1918-1933).  The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, most ruled by royal families.  Although Prussia became one of several kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory and certainly the greatest military power and the one which exercised great influence within the state; a joke at the time was that most countries had an army whereas the Prussian Army had a country.

To a great extent, the Second Reich was the creation of Prince Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898; chancellor of the North German Confederation 1867-1871 and of the German Empire 1871-1890), the politician who dominated European politics in the late nineteenth although his time in office does need to be viewed through sources other than his own memoirs.  After Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck, without his restraining hand, the empire embarked on a bellicose new course that led ultimately to World War I (1914-1918), Germany’s defeat and the end the reign of the House of Hohenzollern and it was that conflict which wrote finis to the dynastic rule of centuries also of the Romanovs in Russia, the Habsburgs in Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans in Constantinople.  Following the Kaiser’s abdication, the empire collapsed in the November 1918 revolution and the Weimar Republic which followed, though not the axiomatically doomed thing many seem now to assume, was for much of its existence beset by political and economic turmoil.  

The Third Reich: the Nazi dictatorship 1933-1945

Nazi occupied Europe, 1942.

“Nazi Germany” is in English the common name for the period of Nazi rule, 1933-1945.  The first known use of the term “Third Reich” was by German cultural historian Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925) in his 1923 book Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich).  Van den Bruck, a devotee of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and a pan-German nationalist, wrote not of a defined geographical entity or precise constitutional arrangement.  His work instead explored a conceptualized (if imprecisely described) and idealized state of existence for Germans everywhere, one that would (eventually) fully realize what the First Reich might have evolved into had not mistakes been made, the Second Reich a cul-de-sac rendered impure by the same democratic and liberal ideologies which would doom the Weimar Republic.  Both these, van den Bruck dismissed as stepping stones on the path to an ideal; Germans do seem unusually susceptible to being seduced by ideals.

In the difficult conditions which prevailed in Germany at the time of the book’s publication, it didn’t reach a wide audience, the inaccessibility of his text not suitable for a general readership but, calling for a synthesis of the particularly Prussian traditions of socialism and nationalism and the leadership of a Übermensch (a idea from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) which describes a kind of idealized man who probably can come into existence only when a society is worthy of him), his work had obvious appeal to the Nazis.  It was said to have been influential in the embryonic Nazi Party but there’s little to suggest it contributed much beyond an appeal to the purity of race and the idea of the “leader” (Führer) principle, notions already well established in German nationalist traditions.  The style alone might have accounted for this, Das Dritte Reich not an easy read, a trait shared by the dreary and repetitive stuff written by the party “philosopher” Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946).  After Rosenberg was convicted on all four counts (planning aggressive war, waging aggressive war, war crimes & crimes against humanity) by the IMT (International Military Tribunal) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) and sentenced to death by hanging, a joke circulated among the assembled journalists that it would have been fair to add a conviction for “crimes against literature”, a variation on the opinion his fellow defendant Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945) should also have been indicted for “crimes against poetry”.  Von Schirach though avoided the hangman's noose he deserved.        

A book channeling Nietzsche wasn’t much help for practical politicians needing manifestos, pamphlets and appealing slogans and the only living politician who attracted some approbation from van den Bruck was Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime minister of Italy 1922-1943).  The admiration certainly didn’t extend to Hitler; unimpressed by his staging of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch (8–9 November 1923), van den Bruck dismissed the future Führer with a unusually brief deconstruction, the sentiment of which was later better expressed by another disillusioned follower: “that ridiculous corporal”.  The term “Third Reich” did however briefly enter the Nazi’s propaganda lexicon and William L Shirer (1904–1993) in his landmark The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) reported that in the 1932 campaign for the presidency, Hitler in a speech at Berlins's Lustgarten (a place which, again perhaps disappointing some, translates as “pleasure garden”) used the slogan: “In the Third Reich every German girl will find a husband”.  Shirer's book is now dated and some of his conceptual framework has always attracted criticism but it remains a vivid account of the regime's early years, written by an observer who actually was there. 

The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich (German Empire) between 1933-1943 and Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Empire) between 1943 to 1945 but so much of fascism was fake and depended for its effect on spectacle so the Nazis were attracted to the notion of claiming to be the successor of a German Empire with a thousand year history, their own vision of the Nazi state being millennialist.  After they seized power, the term “Third Reich” occasionally would be invoked and, more curiously, the Nazis for a while even referred to the Weimar Republic as the Zwischenreich (Interim Reich) but as the 1930s unfolded as an almost unbroken series of foreign policy triumphs for Hitler, emphasis soon switched to the present and the future, the pre-Beer Hall Putsch history no longer needed.  It was only after 1945 that the use of “Third Reich” became almost universal although the earlier empires still are almost never spoken of in that way, even in academic circles.

Van den Bruck had anyway been not optimistic and his gloominess proved prescient although his people did chose to walk (to destruction) the path he thought they may fear to tread.  In the introduction to Das Dritte Reich he wrote: “The thought of a Third Empire might well be the most fatal of all the illusions to which they have ever yielded; it would be thoroughly German if they contented themselves with day-dreaming about it. Germany might perish of her Third Empire dream.”  He didn’t live to see the rise and fall of the Third Reich, taking his own life in 1925, a fate probably not unknown among those who read Nietzsche at too impressionable an age and never quite recover.

Wilhelm Reich, Hawkwind and the Orgone Accumulator

Sketch of the orgone accumulator.

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was a US-based, Austrian psychoanalyst with a troubled past who believed sexual repression was the root cause of many social problems.  Some of his many books widely were read within the profession but there was criticism of his tendency towards mono-causality in his analysis, an opinion shared by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in his comments about Reich’s 1927 book Die Funktion des Orgasmus (The Function of the Orgasm), a work the author had dedicated to his fellow Austrian.  Freud sent a note of thanks for the personally dedicated copy he’d been sent as a birthday present but, brief and not as effusive in praise Reich as had expected, it was not well-received.  Reich died in prison while serving a sentence imposed for violating an injunction issued to prevent the distribution of a machine he’d invented: the orgone accumulator.

The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London (United Artists UAD 60037/8; referred to usually as Space Ritual) (1973).

The orgone accumulator was an apparently phoney device but one which inspired members of the science fiction (SF) flavored band Hawkwind to write the song Orgone Accumulator which, unusually, was first released on a live recording, Space Ritual, a 1973 double album containing material from their concerts in 1972.  Something of a niche player in the world of 1970s popular music Hawkwind, perhaps improbably, proved more enduring than many, their combination of styles attracting a cult following which endures to this day.

Diva

Diva (pronounced dee-vuh or dee-vah)

(1) A distinguished female singer; a prima donna.

(2) By later extension, any female celebrity, especially one who sings.

(3) In slang (use can be derogatory or affectionate),a person with an exalted opinion of their worth, is demanding of others and fussy about personal privileges.

1864: From the Italian diva (diva, goddess, a fine or beautiful woman), from the Latin dīva (goddess), feminine of dīvus (divine, divine one; notably a deified mortal (and related to related to deus (god, deity)), from the Old Latin deivā, from the Proto-Italic deiwā (goddess), feminine of deiwos (god), from the primitive Indo-European deywós (god) & (dyeu- (to shine (in derivatives: “sky, heaven, god”).  Diva, divaism & divadom are nouns and divaesque, divalike & divaish are adjectives; the noun plural is dive or (more commonly in English) divas.  The verbs divaed & divaing have been used but are non-standard.

The use of “diva” began on the Opera stages and it’s not clear who was the first soprano so labeled.  The first known reference to a singer a “diva” dates from 1864 but some historians claim the model for the mode of behavior was the Spanish soprano Maria Malibran (1808-1836) who before dying tragically young was notorious for her demanding personality and dramatic ways; retrospectively “diva” was applied to her.  During her lifetime it was used also of the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind (1820-1887) although apparently only in relation to the beauty of her voice (she was dubbed “the Swedish Nightingale” and she’s remembered also “Jenny Lind soup” (made with mashed sago or rutabaga or sago, chicken stock thickened with a roux, Gruyère cheese, sage, egg yolks and heavy cream, all topped topped with beaten egg whites),  The link to her is said to be it being her favorite dish to sooth the chest and vocal cords prior to a performance.

Lindsay Lohan on the panel of The Masked Singer (2019).  Diva can be a term of endearment. 

Divas (real and imagined) are popular figures to parody and the word has produced a number of derived forms including (1) the nouns divaism (diva-like behavior) & divadom (the condition of being a diva; the sphere of divas) and (2) the adjectives divaesque (behavior reminiscent of a diva (the comparative more divaesque, the superlative most divaesque)), divalike & divaish (pertaining to the manner expected of a diva (some noting of the latter the anagram was HIV/AIDS)).  The adjective divaistic and the verbs divaed & divaing (doing something in a divaish way) are non-standard and used for jocular effect.  In music, the noun “diva house” described a late 1980s subgenre of house music, much associated with booming vocals (handbag house listed usually as the synonym although, being pop culture, there are likely some who find a distinction)).  The noun divo is used of “a male diva” (a man with the traits characteristic of a typical diva (used also with the implication the word should summon in the mind "deviant" (ie he's a bit gay)).  Diva (in the sense used in English) was also borrowed from the Italian in un-adapted form in Catalan, Dutch, French, Norwegian Nynorsk, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Top ten (20, 25, 100 etc) lists are a staple of publishing and the internet and some have assembled list of the “greatest” sopranos of all time but it’s really not possible to compare those who performed over centuries.  For those of the pre-electronic age, obviously no recordings exist and the only evidence of their stage performances is the subjective writings of critics and other contemporaries (of their divalike behavior the contemporary reports may be more reliable).  Even well into the twentieth century, the capabilities of the technology used to record sound and the dubious quality of the storage media means it’s difficult to compare and while “digital re-mastering” greatly enhances sound, it’s not entirely certain how closely the result emulates what originally would have been heard.  These difficulties exist in many fields.  In boxing it’s a challenge to creating rankings because those of one era never fought those in another and in sports where the equipment has such an influence (such as golf and tennis), it can be hard to work out where technology ended and ability & application began.  Even the notions of “best” and greatest are contested.  In something like sprinting where everything comes down to a single metric (such as the elapsed time over 100 metres) perhaps it’s possible but is “the best” by definition the current holder of the world record, whomever held it longest or the runner who was judged to have run in the era with the most formidable competition.  There are nuances too.  In motorsport the question of “the greatest” is often debated and that’s clearly not about who is the fastest because in the 1970s few doubted that was Ronnie Peterson (1944–1978) but it’s rare to see him on lists because the sport is so focused on titles.  So it’s probably absurd to create a “greatest divas” list although some have and while there will always be variations, some names are likely always to appear:

Victoria de los Angeles (1923-2005): De los Angeles sang in an age of divas yet according to all reports she was the most un-diva-like of them all.  What made her a great singer was the sheer beauty of her voice, coupled with a delivery which seemed genuinely to affect her audience, one critic noting she didn’t so much master her repertoire as “seduce it”.  It was of course a technique to use a voice to evoke emotion in others and many singers do it but de los Angeles managed it with an innocence which made those listening forget the technical tricks of the trade and just feel.

Maria Callas (1923-1977): There is a cult surrounding Callas and even half a century-odd after her death, she remains probably the best known of all the divas, including among those who have never heard her sing a note.  Her tempestuous private life accounts for much of that but she deserves the reputation she gained as a singer while at the height of her powers.  Both her training and technique were unconventional: Although never the most refined singer, she transcended that by brining to her roles a thrilling intensity and an untypical willingness to sound ugly if that’s what the role demanded; she was a great actress as well as a singer.  Where Callas sits in the pantheon will always be debated but she remains unique.

Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962): There should probably be a special category for those who sing Richard Wagner’s (1813–1883) operas because as well as tonal beauty and a great memory, they need endurance and sheer power and in all this the Norwegian Flagstad set a mark not yet surpassed.  Even all that is really not enough to conquer the Wagnerian repertoire because a soprano needs also a sense of drama and several modes of attacking the declamatory utterances which make his work so memorable.  Hers was a dark voice which could range from the tenderness of the grieving maiden to the violence of Brünnhilde’s battle-cry and Wagner hasn’t been the same since.

Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981): US born of Italian stock, Ponselle performed mostly in the US along with several seasons in England and Italy.  She retired from stage work in the mid-1930s but to continued to sing into the 1950s and although the recordings of her are obviously pre-modern, they reveal enough for listeners to understand why her voice was so often described as “legendarily beautiful”.  That many critics can’t all be wrong.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006): It may sound strange to speak of a soprano as “a technician” but it seems appropriate for Schwarzkopf who mastered such a range of styles and material; the word which appears time after time in the critical notices was “flawless”.  What should not be forgotten however were the innovations for she “invented” some of the ways sopranos “phrase” things are now part of the orthodoxy of performance.  Her 1965 performance of Richard Strauss's (1864-1949) Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) with the Radio-Symphonieorchester Berlin under György Széll (1897–1970) is definitive: the need again to record the songs vanished because it's simply not possible to improve on Schwarzkoph's recording.  She must have agreed with the critics because she choose seven of her own recordings when appearing on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs.

Renata Tebaldi (1922-2004): Tebaldi’s career began quite modestly in the last days of World War II (1939-1946 and in the early post-war years she confined herself almost exclusively to Italian works of the late nineteenth & early twentieth century but during the 1950s & 1960s she emerged was the leading Italian soprano.  By her own admission she was never a great “actress” and relied for effect on her voice but it alone was enough, critics describing it with terms like creamy or velvety, observing the way audiences would “bask” in its waves.  Because she performed in the same era as Callas the two are often compared but they were very different singers; except for the price tags, one may as well compare a Rolls-Royce with a Ferrari.