Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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Part 1 of 2

A Promise Kept: Memoir of Tibetans in India [Excerpt]
by Germaine Krull
©  2018 by Germaine Krull and Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz, Ph.D.

Chapter 1

Yes, like everyone of my generation in Europe, I had heard and read about Tibet, the Roof of the World, where people lived high up in the mysterious Himalayan peaks. It was said that there were Lamas in Tibet who passed all the years of their lives in prayer and meditation. They were the keepers of their age-old Buddhist wisdom.

Strange tales were told about these holy men: that they would live for many hundred years; that they could walk without touching the ground; that they could appear simultaneously in different places; and that they could stop the thunder or command the rain to fall.

And then there was also the mysterious Dalai Lama -- the reincarnated Buddha -- who lived in the golden Potala, high up in Lhasa. where no one could reach him. He too was a Keeper of the world's Wisdom. Tales about his miraculous birth and reincarnations were told from time to time in books or popular magazines.

Those tales from my childhood were recounted and later confirmed in books about Tibet; however, none of them ever increased my real knowledge of that country. Yet, The Roof of the World remained in my mind as the holy site where Wisdom and Spirituality were kept alive.

Also like my countrymen and the world, I had heard about the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese Communists. I had even read about how the Tibetan people were fleeing their country. and even how the mysterious Dalai Lama left his golden Potala and took refuge in India too.

Newspapers had told us all about these events. However, our war-weary Europe was still so full of tragedies. and so full of refugees who were all so sad. that the tragedy of Tibet, an unknown for so many of us, disappeared quickly from the front pages of newspapers. And with that disappearance, once the subject was out of our minds, I -- like most others among us -- forgot about the Tibetans for the moment, and even until something happened to me.

It happened during one of those cold winter days in New Delhi, India, in 1962.

The Thai ambassador, whom I had met in Thailand where I still lived, invited me to attend a reception he was giving for a group of young Tibetan monks. These particular monks were said to have been identified as special young reincarnated Lamas of importance. I was told that this small group of Lamas was to be honored by a Thai reception. These young Lamas had been carefully identified and selected as tulkus by an English lady, Freda Bedi. They were selected from among Tibetan refugees working by the thousands in construction gangs along the roads of northern India.

The young Lama refugees being honored by the Thai Ambassador were to be enrolled in a school in Dalhousie. where they would learn English. Hindi. and how to deal with the ways of the Western world as special refugees. Their Buddhist studies would continue to be taught by selected Tibetan Lamas, in a manner consistent with their statuses as tulkus, and future adept-teachers, according to the established custom in Tibet.

The Thai ambassador wanted to entertain and honor the young Lamas, who were mostly ten years old to early teenagers. They were all refugees who had recently arrived in New Delhi. They had never seen countries outside of Tibet -- until they escaped, and were still viewing their country of exile with 'new eyes.' For this reason, the Ambassador had decided to show them movies of Thailand, and also give them Christmas presents.

As guests, we sat in the large reception room of the Thai Embassy in Delhi. This room had an elaborate marble floor inlaid with green and yellow designs, partly covered by beautiful carpets. The windows were closed and covered by drapes and curtains of Thai silk emblazoned in a golden flame design. The walls were high and topped by a dome-shaped ceiling that gave the room a sort of Byzantine air. Opposite the entrance, a life-size gold-framed portrait of the King of Thailand hung next to a similar framed portrait of his lovely Queen Sirikit. The corners of the room were occupied by heavily carved gold Thai vitrines, each of which held displays of Thai handicrafts and dolls. One wall of the room had been arranged so the projected film could be shown, and a row of chairs stood ready to receive the young Tibetan Lama guests.

As we sat around, I studied the Indian ladies. They wore gorgeous silk saris embroidered with gold and silver. I also saw that, since it was cool, they kept their sophisticated soft Kashmiri shawls wrapped around their shoulders. The European ladies mostly wore their fur coats. Only the Thai ladies, garbed in shiny Thai silk dresses with long skirts and a large front fold, seemed not to feel the cold. Their skirts touched the ground, and were topped with tightly fitted silk blouses that were closed from waist to neck by a row of round gold decorative buttons.

In the usual Asian way, the ladies were sitting together apart from the men. They were engaged in the usual gossip while drinking the usual martinis or fruit juices. On the other hand, the gentlemen remained standing, whiskey glasses in hand, and were attended constantly by white-gloved servants. from time to time, the ambassador's louder laughs hinted that the mood of the gentlemen was improving.

Suddenly the doors were opened and two young monks, no more than perhaps ten years of age, arrived. Perfectly calm, and in no way disturbed by the sophisticated surroundings or richly dressed ladies and gentlemen, they entered with folded hands and downcast eyes. They were followed by thirty or forty slightly older monks, all garbed in traditional red-burgundy robes. Without any commotion, they approached the Thai Ambassador in a group, and he greeted them with folded hands. After this greeting, they marched directly to their chairs and, with smiling faces, accepted the lemonade and cookies provided for them by the servants.

In no way did these young monks appear to be disturbed or to feel out of place. On the contrary, it was we who more or less seemed out of place. The very entrance of these young burgundy-clad monks had charged the atmosphere and made a difference. With their intelligent faces, bright dark eyes and calm acceptance of their new surroundings, something new had entered the reception room. Another world had suddenly opened (among and for us).

For me, that evening had initiated a strange sentiment of subtle potential involvement. I felt myself drawn to this group of monks, and somehow already realized that I might want to keep close to them. That evening ended, but not before I had made an appointment with Freda Bedi to visit the Tibetan refugee camp in Delhi on the following morning.

The following morning, a sophisticated white-clad chauffeur drove me to old Delhi in the Thai embassy car. On the way, we passed the famous Red Fort and followed the Ring Road until we finally reached a neighborhood of shabby huts. Many of these structures were made of mud mixed with straw into adobe. They had mostly palm roofs weighted down with stones to keep them from drifting away in the wind. Here, people were huddled in outdoor areas where they tried to warm themselves under the few rays of sunlight that could reach them. They were also trying in this way to avoid the cold winds that blew off the nearby river (the Yamuna River).

"Nothing good here," remarked the chauffeur repeatedly. We continued to drive until we reached the Buddhist Vihara where a large group of Tibetans had already gathered. Once stopped, I descended from the car and tried to make my way through the dense crowds of mostly Tibetan people.

I had already seen multitudes of refugees in Europe, and had even visited a few concentration camps during and after World War II; however, somehow the refugees gathered here seemed especially tragic, although in a different way. Their faces bore expressions of extreme bewilderment. They seemed entirely lost and out of place. There were old and young women, children, and many old men. They sat hunched on the cold black earth. or huddled together on the cement stairs inside of the Vihara courtyard.

The Vihara itself comprised a spacious compound situated along one bank of the river from which an icy cold wind blew periodically. A kind of gallery or walled cloister surrounded the entire vihara compound, and many children were curled up in this protected area. The Tibetan men and women were dressed in similar darkish long robes, and their black hair was arranged in long plaits, which either hung down their backs or were coiled around their heads. Here and there the burgundy-red robes worn by the young lama refugees appeared. It was impossible for me to place my feet on the ground without trodding on an arm or a leg, and I didn't know where to direct my faltering steps in this sea of humans. where was Freda Bedi, and how could I find her?

In one far corner, I could see a commotion developing. Lorries loaded with bags of rice and wheat had pulled up, and these were immediately being off-loaded by Indian Officials. The workers tried valiantly to make themselves understood by the mob of gesticulating and screaming hungry Tibetans; however, it appeared their Hindi was not understood.

At last - in the midst of this confusion where I stood helpless and not knowing where to go - I caught Sight of one of the child Lamas I had met the previous night. He was emerging out of the crowd. Paying little attention to where I placed my feet now, I ran up to him, grasped his robe, and tried to make him understand that I was searching for Freda Bedi.

At first his face remained expressionless, but when he heard the name 'Mrs. Bedi,' his face came alive. I was immediately rewarded with a large smile and nod. After this, running like a small mouse, and weaving among the people without seeming to touch them, he led the way up and down several corridors. I followed him as best I could. People were huddled everywhere, and the entire compound seemed to be a sea composed of massed people in deep misery. At the end of this erratic search, I was virtually pushed into an untidy room where, in front of me, stood Freda Bedi. My little Lama disappeared as quickly as he had appeared, even before I could thank him.

"How sweet of you to come," Freda said. "It's an awful mess here today, but come and meet my daughter, Gulhima, and one of my two sons."

A charming Anglo-Indian girl looked up at me with shining eyes, and a very handsome youth standing nearby smiled. He resembled an Indian more closely than did the daughter.

"It is truly difficult here today," Freda continued, "because a brand new group of Tibetan refugees must be taken care of. They have only recently crossed our border from Sikkim, and apparently had been walking in the wintry cold for days and weeks before. They've walked through several snowstorms from their home areas in Tibet, and are now extremely exhausted and hungry

"Come and I'll show you around, Germaine Krull, but before that, let me give you the Tibetan blessing we learned to give to all our friends."

Freda took a tiny sculptured Buddha figure from a small shrine, touched it to her forehead first. She next touched it to the heads of her daughter and son, after which she touched it to my forehead too, ''This is the way we would give blessings to our friends in Tibet," she explained with a smile, "so why not do the same thing here?"

Next, we were shepherded along a corridor and entered a room that appeared to be a classroom. I saw some of the young Lamas from the previous evening seated here, along with an older Tibetan Lama. He was obviously serving as their teacher.

Freda explained the situation. "These young lamas are all reincarnations of high ranking spiritual previous Lamas in Tibet. With Nehru's consent and support, I have been helped to identify and pick them out from among the many refugees working along the roads in northern India. We intend to enroll them in a special school as soon as possible. They will need to learn what will help them understand about living in the Western world, since they will become special spiritual teachers in the future. We've also been able to identify and pick up many learned older Lamas too. They will now continue to teach the young Lamas their studies, which were interrupted by their collective flight from Tibet. We shall try to help them learn new subjects while maintaining the important spiritual aspects from their Tibetan heritage. In short, they will also learn to adapt to new ways of living as refugees in the Western world, but they will remain Tibetan tulkus as identified, and will teach and guide others in the future."

She turned and added, ''This is Lama Thuthop Tulku, Germaine. He is a reincarnated Lama who comes from a monastery high up in the mountains of Tibet. He is gifted, already picking up English quite well, and is even writing it correctly. This is his brother Chivang Tutku. They are both happy, because their parents were able to escape safely with them. They all escaped at the same time as part of a larger and therefore somewhat safer group."

I looked into the classroom and noticed my little Lama guide who assisted me today. He was sitting at the feet of his teacher, looking up at us and smiling.

Freda Bedi nodded to him and explained, "He is the reincarnation of the Abbot from one of the most important monasteries in Tibet. Now, in this incarnation, he will continue to be placed in charge of many thousand souls whom he will guide and teach when he is an adult.

"There are more young Lamas studying in another room. The whole group of these Lamas and their teachers will be leaving very soon for the north of India. They will settle for the present in Dalhousie, on the edge of the Himalayan lower mountain ranges. There, we have been given a very large house which will serve as our first Lama Home-school. To establish this school, we shall assemble as many special young tulku Lamas as we are able to identify. We also hope to find volunteers from various other countries who will come to India and help us by volunteering to teach them English."

Freda Bedi continued to explain how different groups of Tibetan Friendship Societies were being created around the world, especially in the neutral countries of Europe. She ended with: "I hope, Germaine, that you will come and visit us in Dalhousie. I look forward to showing you our school. It will be the result of two plus years of personal planning and effort."

We were shepherded back down the same corridors, and entered the sea of humans gathered outside around the Vihara. We continued making our way along the riverbank where bunches of Tibetan women were huddled or squatting on the ground with their babies. They were trying to feed them in spite of the cold wind. One of the older English-speaking Lamas had accompanied us, and he translated the many requests for aid from Freda Bedi being made by the Tibetan refugee women.

"You see," he explained, "some of these babies were born along the way from Tibet, and a few were actually born here. This tiny one was born yesterday morning," he pointed, "and we still don't have enough milk for it. The Indians themselves often find it difficult to get milk for their own children, although cows are roaming around everywhere. We still have some powdered milk that friends have given us, but it is never enough for our growing needs."

In spite of their suffering, the women looked at us with warm smiles, apparently relieved to see kind and interested people. At least there was no more wading through snowstorms or rains, and no more fear of Chinese soldiers. At least those dramas were behind them now.

I followed Freda through the camp, and saw many old men in ragged robes twirling their prayer wheels. others were chanting prayers. Some were holding their malas (rosaries) in their left hands, while twirling their prayer wheels with their right hands. The old men had wrinkled faces and faraway expressions on their faces under their plaited hair. They wore ragged clothes, but never stopped twirling their prayer wheels or chanting prayers, as they huddled in small groups. I would see similar sights often in the future.

We noticed that some of the women had already started what would become a kind of national refugee-occupation: knitting wool sweaters. As we circled and approached the front of the Vihara, the crowd became even more densely packed. Questions rose softly or in shouts, and were put to Freda from all sides. She pointed out persons who had suffered frozen toes, legs, and hands, as well as others who still had large open unattended wounds. I recall seeing one man whose face appeared to be half eaten-up by something.

"A leper, perhaps?" I asked Freda.

"Yes, possibly." she answered with a sigh. "Or perhaps some other undiagnosed disease that we might not have seen before. Tibetans were isolated a long time, and have little or no resistance to fight against certain physical problems - like chronic infections or tuberculosis."

The Indian officials had by then discharged all their bags of rice and wheat. They also assured Freda that a team of doctors would arrive later that day to attend those who needed additional care among already treated refugees, as well as to help the newly arrived patients.

I left the refugee camp and Vihara about noon that day; however, I also promised Freda Bedi that one day I would visit her in Dalhousie. This is a promise I knew I would certainly keep, even if in the somewhat distant future.

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Part 2 of 2

Chapter 2

After this visit with Freda, I planned to return to Europe for several months. I had only planned to stop briefly in Delhi on my way to Europe from Thailand, where I still lived and worked. I sometimes returned to Europe via Delhi, since good direct transport to Europe is still scarce in Thailand. Now I had already stayed more time here than planned, and was anxious to leave as previously arranged.

I had again returned to Thailand, but not to work for too long, and eventually traveled on to India. On this return to India [1965?], I was accompanied by a young Siamese companion: a girl named Leck. She was a friend who had often worked for me while I lived in Bangkok, during my twenty or so years of living and working in Thailand, before I decided to retire in 1966.

During this trip to India, I wanted to avoid the usual manner of tourist travels. During previous visits to India,. I had been in the controlling orbit of tourist organizations. I stayed only in the recommended big tourist hotels, and used only tourist guides. Even my visits to the South of India had been in privately hired cars with drivers and guides. During this trip, I was determined to escape the same tourism orbit. Therefore, somewhat courageously I purchased two seats on the Kashmir Express -- first class sleeper -- all the way to Pathankot, the terminus of the railway. From there, a local bus or shared taxi would carry us on to Dalhousie, where I hoped to visit with Freda Bedi. I wanted to see how her work was progressing with the Tibetan tulkus whom I had met at the Thai reception in Delhi (in the winter, near the end of 1962.

The Kashmir Express was actually quite a comfortable train. Clean bedding was provided for first class passengers, and the four private compartment ventilator fans all worked properly. According to the schedule, having left Delhi about midnight, we were to arrive in Pathankot by 8:00 AM., the next morning. I had a sound sleep that night, but when I awakened my companion Leck said, "You know, Germaine, it seems we are almost about eight hours late."

"What do you mean eight hours late? That's impossible!"

"But I think that is what the porter man said."

I soon found that Leck's statement was unfortunately true. I learned that we were indeed nearly eight hours late. Apparently our train had run into another train on the same rail track, but going the opposite direction. Thus, a wait of several hours to correct this flaw was inevitable. Now we were very late. Soon enough, it started to become very hot inside our compartment. An Indian gentleman, a neighbor in the next compartment, had passed our door several times. He appeared especially interested in my little Thai companion, and therefore proved very helpful to us about securing our breakfast.

I complained to this gentleman that I was worried about our schedule. There was only one daily bus to Dalhousie, and now it would have left long before our late arrival. I asked, "Is it possible to hire a taxi in Pathankot?"

But now the Indian gentleman was of little help. It appeared that he was a high official in the railway administration, so he tried to convince me to return to Delhi later by the same train. As an alternative, he also suggested that we could travel on to Simla, Mussoorie, or some other 'more modern' hill station. Indeed, he insisted that Dalhousie was not interesting to visit for any reason, let alone for tourist activities.

Finally, by somewhat after noon we arrived in Pathankot. There were hundreds of people crowding the quay, and screaming porters came barging into our compartment. This time, I think we would have been lost without our Indian gentleman's help. With a few words, he instructed one porter what to do. He placed our luggage on the head of that porter, and instructed him and us to follow him out of our compartment, and to continue on to the train station to wait.

We followed our helper, and were guided into the station waiting room. We found it to be clean, furnished appropriately, and even air-conditioned. Our luggage was stashed in a corner and waiters - in uniforms that had once been clean - served us a good breakfast of tea, toast and eggs.

During the meal, our Indian gentleman once more suggested that we board the same train and return to Delhi. However, I insisted that I was intent on traveling on to Dalhousie to visit a good friend. I also asked him if there was somebody responsible with whom I might talk about this arrangement in English.

"None of these workers speaks English, only the Station Master. But it appears that today he is absent for an all-day meeting."

"Well then, is there a taxi I could hire to take us to Dalhousie? Or another bus that we could take tomorrow morning?"

"I can offer you my room here, which has an adjoining bed and bathroom. And I'll also see what I can do for you. I'll be in a meeting myself meanwhile, but I'll return later today. I assure you again that my compartment on the train will be vacant, and it's at your disposal if you change your mind and decide to return to Delhi." He was indeed a thoughtful and helpful man, but we didn't want to return to Delhi without seeing Freda. It was also becoming too hot on the plains of India, and would be cooler in Dalhousie anyway.

After he left, we went out on the platform, which was by that time truly 'burning hot.' I started to search for someone who could speak English. At last, in one of the booking offices, I found a clerk who also informed me that the Station Master was out for the day at a meeting. However, he then added that we should stay in the station room provided for us as travelers, and explained that our needs would be met by the staff, while we waited here in Pathankot overnight.

Time passed slowly that day. We were trapped in Pathankot, and it was too hot to go outside. Fortunately by late afternoon, I was able to verify that we indeed had a reserved room with bath. It was on the first floor of the train station, so we then moved our things into that room for a sound overnight sleep later.

By late afternoon, when the Indian gentleman returned, he was quite disappointed that we weren't prepared to return to Delhi. Although he suggested he had made arrangements for the bus, in fact he had not. Also by late afternoon, it was much cooler. I looked around the station again, and realized that fascinating scenes lay all around and in front of us below.

Our balcony overlooked the train platform, so we watched the people hurrying about below. We saw there was a train about to embark for somewhere, and hundreds of people were boarding it. They were mostly carrying their bedding on their heads. Personal bedding consists of a blanket, sheets and whatever is needed for the night, all rolled up in a canvas cover.

We saw men, women, children and soldiers milling about. The latter had packs on their backs and canteens dangling from their belts. We also noticed that some of the men, oddly enough, boarded the train through the open windows! The whole station was a scene with much crowding, a multitude of shouts and screams, plus other unknown noises. There were also itinerant merchants selling all kinds of snack foods. These ranged from fried bananas to boiled eggs, along with a variety of mysterious dishes wrapped in banana leaves.

Along with the noises of the people was the added ruckus of hundreds of screeching parrots, which had settled like a colorful cloud in two big trees adjacent to the balcony. It was amazing how these birds found space to perch among the thick foliage, while screaming at each other and flapping their wings to fight for places. All this coming-and-going continued until the train below finally departed.

We decided we should find the place from which the bus was scheduled to leave, as well as a more exact time of its departure for Dalhousie. To accomplish our search we decided to leave the balcony and go for a walk in the streets below.

I had never before seen so many different but quite equally dirty shops. We couldn't learn exactly what it was they were all selling, but they must have all been selling something. The shops lined the streets in side-by-side rows. The streets were also packed with various kinds of vehicles: big military lorries; small hand-carts loaded with grass; and other larger carts loaded with what appeared to be home furnishings. Many of them, except the military lorries, were pulled by hungry-appearing horses. There were also bullock carts loaded with timber, and many tongas. These vehicles were all jam-packed with women, men and children.

There was also an interspersed sea of humans peddling their bicycles. Some used their handlebars as second passenger seats, while also carrying loads on their back racks. All these people were going or coming to and from other places. I wondered how we were ever going to find the bus stand in all this confusion. We looked around rather desperately now.

Every time I saw an army officer, I tried in English to ask directions. Finally, we arrived at a dusty and dirty location that we were told was the 'bus terminus for Dalhousie.' We were also told that the bus would leave at 4:00 AM. Since there was nobody from whom to buy tickets or take reservations, we were simply told to be at the terminal early the next morning, and we would 'surely be able to find two seats.'

I wasn't satisfied with the answers we were given, and began to wonder if we would ever reach this mysterious Dalhousie. While we managed to return to the safety of our room in the station, our next problem was to find someone who would awaken us at three in the morning, and also help us carry our luggage to the bus terminal we had found.

That evening, a rather surprisingly elaborate dinner was served to us in our room. I made one last attempt to see the Station Master, and was finally able to contact the Assistant Station Master. He informed me the Station Master was still absent at his meeting; however, he seemed to be a very kind Indian man, and told us not to worry. The night watchman would awaken us on time, and would also help us with our portage problem. He also insisted he was certain we could find seats in the very early morning bus to Dalhousie.

That night passed quite well, except for the noises from nearby water pipes, which every now and then broke into piping screams. At three in the morning, the night watchman, who was obedient and dutiful, awakened both of us. We dressed in the dark, since the electricity had failed, and we had no flashlights with us. We managed to load our luggage onto the head of one porter, and ventured into the pitch-dark streets below. Our only guide was the glowing tip of the cigarette in our porter's mouth, so we dutifully followed it.

I don't know exactly how far we walked, but in the end our porter put down our luggage and squatted beside it. There was no bus in sight. Inside the nearby hut - which I saw served as part of the office - we could see several people stretched out on the floor. They were fast asleep, but soon started to stir. Gradually life erupted in and outside the hut. There was nothing to do but wait. Dawn came with its dim light, and things slowly took shape. At last, an old rattling bus arrived. It was powered by an infernally noisy engine. Once parked, all the people immediately rushed toward the bus. It was a wonder that both of us managed to grab window seats. Our porter stowed our luggage under our feet, and we gratefully settled down for the next part of our fateful trip to Dalhousie.

Our bus sported the rather pompous name: 'Kashmir Tiger.' Our driver was a lean and lanky chap. He had long bony arms, long legs, and a high forehead partly covered by a turban, which is called a 'pugri' in its Indian name. He also had a long hooked nose, twin dark eyes and a large mouth partly covered by a reddish droopy moustache. He wore khaki trousers with black patches, and a kind of dark khaki vest and coat. Worn proudly on one shoulder was pinned a small metal badge stating: 'Kashmir Tiger.' He was as long and rattling as his bus, and managed, by shouting and pushing people around, to make some kind of order in the bus. At last - off we went!

We took off with tremendous speed, leaving behind clouds of scattered dusty smoke. Very soon the plains slowly disappeared and we started to climb. The first portion of the road was quite good, and the curves were not too bad. Our Kashmir Tiger took us along all of them, puffing and screaming loudly. Eventually we stopped at a roadside teashop for a break. The shop had been part of a former British rest-house, and we were grateful for the tea and toast served to us there. After that, we climbed back into the bus, creeping over legs, hands, and luggage to reach our seats.

From that point onward, our road became a dreary one-lane passageway. For the next few hours, our ride was on a narrow mountain road, full of treacherous curves and sharp turns. This nightmarish part of the journey remains forever fresh in my mind. As the bus rattled along, it seemed at every curve we might scrape or bump against the mountain on one side, or find ourselves hanging in the air on the other side. I'm still not sure how we managed not to bump into the mountain of rocks in front, or fall over the edge of a cliff in our back during that wild ride!

Inside the bus, passengers were thrown from side to side, no matter how hard we tried to cling to our seats or the windowsills. The bus soon became a terrible mess: water spilled on the floor; luggage fell or slid everywhere; women moaned; children cried; and many leaned out of the windows to be sick. The only one who seemed to enjoy the ride and the passengers' discomfort was the driver. The worse the situation became in the bus, the happier he seemed to be as we throttled along.

I don't know what might have happened if our way had not been finally blocked by a military convoy. Our driver actually overtook one of the convoy trucks, and almost drove it over the edge and off the cliff. Obviously this contretemps forced the military convoy to stop. The convoy Commander, who was by that time quite angry, ordered our bus driver to: 'Fall in line behind my trucks and stay there!' This happenstance event forced our slow-down, and gave the passengers time to recover a little. Finally, after these few hours that felt much longer, we arrived in Dalhousie, a hill station situated at roughly near the seven thousand foot altitude level.

As porters crowded around to grab our luggage upon our arrival, my first impression of Dalhousie was dual: agreeable fresh air and fascinating scenery; and generally confusing with respect to town layout. We immediately saw two hotels in front of us. One was named 'Snow View,' and the other was called 'Mountain View.' To reach both we had to climb up numerous steps. By now, steep hills seemed to encircle us on all sides. Somehow we landed in Snow View, and immediately ate the very good breakfasts served to us in the hotel restaurant.

The view of the encircling mountains was absolutely beautiful. There were no snow-capped peaks visible at the present time, since the mountains were covered by a summery green sheen. A forest of tall pine and cedar trees covered most of the adjacent hilly slopes, and the landscape was entirely composed of a series of hilly ups and downs. Moreover, it actually appeared as if the entire scene was creeping steadily upward, which I later learned was generally true.

I begin to wonder how we would ever be able to find the Tibetan Lama School, since even the owner of the hotel spoke very little English. He seemed neither to know nor had he ever heard of any Tibetan Lama School when first asked. It appeared, as he noted, there were indeed several schools in the area, but how were we going to find out their exact names and where they were situated?

Then I asked, "Have you ever heard of an English lady named Freda Bedi who arrived here with many young Tibetan lamas?"

"No, never!"

I remembered another referral word, so I next asked: "Have you ever heard of a place called the 'Tibetan Kailash?'" The hotel man answered this query quickly in the affirmative. The word 'kailash' ticked his memory as an unusual school referred to in Dalhousie.

"Oh, yes," came his immediate answer. "It is way higher up, near the base of the mountains. There you will see that it's one really big house, now used for teaching young students. Actually, the Kailash might even have a telephone!"

The Kailash did indeed have a telephone, and I was able to speak directly with Freda Bedi. She informed us that she would send a Tibetan youth down to meet us at our hotel. She also added, "Since it is quite high up, it might be necessary to ride a horse instead of trying to walk all the way in this altitude."

We waited for some time, but finally a young Tibetan boy arrived. Surprisingly, he already spoke quite good English. Our luggage was loaded on the shoulders of a young Indian porter, and we set out for our hike up to the Kailash.

I must admit that I was not very courageous by now. My many years of living on the plains made it difficult now for me to climb.

In short, after a little while, I agreed to ride the horse that accompanied us. However, because I hadn't ridden a horse since early childhood, the steep climb onward was as hard for the horse as it was for me. Yet, the higher we climbed, the more beautiful the scenery became. We were surrounded by a mountain forest of tall green trees, while being fully encased in air that was extremely fresh and clean.

Near the end of this journey, we reached a kind of circular flat roadway where our party rested for a while. From this point on, a more level road led in a meander up to the Kailash, which I could see ahead and still above us. I decided to climb down from my horse. However. since I was unable to regain full use of my legs for some minutes, I must have made a grotesque sight staggering around! My girl Leck and the Tibetan youth burst into laughter. Indeed, it took quite a while for me to regain full and confident use of my quavering legs.

We finally reached the big wooden house. We saw that it had a large double front door over which was posted a large sign: 'Kailash Young Lama School.'

We continued down a narrow path and saw that this large house actually resembled a Swiss Chalet with its deeply pitched roof; however, at the same time it had the curious air of a small Indian castle with one small soaring tower. We next mounted more steps to a banked terrace where patches of colorful flowers surrounded us. Our Tibetan guide had already run up the stairway ahead of us, and disappeared into the house.

I was quite weary, and found it difficult to recover my breath in the higher altitude. I stopped in front of the house to view the scenery. It was unique, and appeared to consist of range after range of mountains, each succeeding the previous one in an apparently endless regression of higher peaks. Next to the Kailash were two tall cedar trees that spread their branches over the house like protecting arms or wings. Along the side, clusters of tall pine trees stood like watch towers. I was lost in dreams, but soon heard Freda Bedi's voice calling from somewhere in the house.

"Come in, Germaine, dear! Come in, dear Germaine! I'm so glad you were able at last to come for a visit."

Somehow I continued on, and stumbled up a narrow staircase into the protecting arms of Freda. I looked around and saw we were in a small entry room. On a low bench were several piles of mail. Obviously Freda was trying to catch up on her correspondence. Pushing aside a few bundles and parcels, I sat down heavily on the bench. I tried to recover my panting breath bit by bit.

As soon as we were truly settled in a room nearby, Tibetan servants hurried in to serve us tea and a variety of snacks. Freda began to tell us about the school for which she had worked so hard for more than two years.

"The Young Lama School is the first of its kind in India. There are now fifty young Lama Tulku students here, along with some other monks who enrolled to learn English. If they become better-educated, they will help with teaching others the Dharma. We soon expect many more will be coming, so we shall definitely need more teachers. The young Lamas continue their Dharma studies here under Tibetan Lamas, but also study English reading, writing and speaking every day. They are the best assurance that the Dharma and Sangha will endure into the future; therefore, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in favor of this school. He also helped planning for it soon after his escape to freedom."

"We have set up the educational program here quite well," Freda said and then noted: "There are a number of young volunteers who have come from all parts of Europe and America to help us with the English teaching part."

At this moment, the door opened and Thuthop Tulku entered. Freda nodded at him and continued: "He has become very good in English, and is now able to help me with our voluminous correspondence. You see, Germaine, it's increasingly the case that we have Tibetan friendship groups forming all over the world. They help by volunteering, as well as by sending us clothing and sometimes some money too. Their gifts help to sustain us here."

We continued to converse for a few hours, interrupted only by servants who occasionally refilled our teacups. By now, and after this conversational rest, I had finally recovered my strength in spite of the altitude.

Freda Bedi added: "You can stay in the Guest House, which is just next door, Germaine. You'll have an Indian servant there who will furnish you with hot water for bathing and your tea. I'll send over Tibetan food for lunch or dinner, and you and Leck can come here anytime you want to visit. Rest yourself and stay as long as you wish in Dalhousie."

off we went again on that circular walkway. It appeared that Freda Bedi's 'next door' meant a walk of more than half an hour for Leck and me, mostly among the pines and cedars.

At last, the young Tibetan monk, carrying our bedrolls and baggage, pointed up the mountain to a small white house. It resembled an eagle's nest. This was Freda's 'next door' Guest House. As we continued to scramble and climb up this final steeper and rockier path, even my little Siamese girl, Leck, had to use her hands to grasp and hold on to the grassy edges to manage making it up the path. Frankly, I don't know how I managed to get up to the house -- by puffing like a steam engine, I guess.

Once we arrived and entered the house, I immediately felt its unique enchantment. A large covered verandah circled the house and overlooked the mountains and valley below. There, well below us, a river flowed like a silvery curving ribbon. Tall trees surrounded the little house like watchful sentinels, and patches of colorful wildflowers bloomed everywhere.

The first floor of the house consisted of one large room attached to a bathroom with running water. This room was furnished with two Indian beds covered with Tibetan rugs, and the remaining furniture included two overstuffed chairs. A large window with glass panes, partly replaced by plywood panels, overlooked the scenery below. That was our bedroom. Outside, the verandah was furnished with a table, two hard chairs and one easy chair.

Next to our big room I saw a smaller room. Our Tibetan helper told us that a young man named Peter sometimes stays in this room. He also said that the kitchen was situated on a lower level, that is to say, downstairs from our big main living and sleeping room.

We quickly installed ourselves in our room, and Leck decided to go down and inspect the kitchen. When she returned, she shuddered at what she had seen. Half in Thai and half in English, she reported her results. She had tried to communicate with the Indian woman there, hoping she would understand the need to clean up the place; however, she wasn't hopeful.

The first night passed without event. I slept from early evening until the next morning in one stretch. Early the next morning, I stepped out onto our verandah and looked down toward the valley below. The sight was breathtaking. The next impressive element was the many monkeys playing in the trees adjacent to the house. When standing upright, they were nearly the size of a man!

Leck soon came into our room almost screaming: "The monkeys are so big that I'm afraid of them."

Our young Tibetan boy, who was still present as a helper, insisted the monkeys were harmless and would never enter the house. Leck wondered about this, but decided instead to focus on washing the kitchen before it was necessary to use it.

Suddenly we heard sounds emanating from the room where Peter was supposedly staying ·sometimes.' I realized we had completely forgotten that he was 'sometimes' here, until we heard the chanting. It became louder and louder, but it was still unintelligible. Later we learned Peter chanted in Tibetan.

Hours later, when Peter came out of his room, we saw he was a tallish, rather pale young American. Peter, who seemed to be about twenty years old, was dressed in a pair of colorless trousers and a white shirt, open at the neck. A scarlet silk cape with a thick cotton lining hung over his shoulders... His feet were shod in worn Indian sandals. "Good morning," he said, "I hope I haven't disturbed you with my morning chanting."

"Oh, no," I shrugged. "I guessed that you would be Peter. Did you have your breakfast? You look so cold."

"No, thanks, but I will have a cup of tea. Actually I'm not cold. This cape, which is not mine but borrowed, is actually very warm."

Peter seemed generally quite absentminded - mostly as if absorbed in some mental questions or exercises of his own most of the time. I asked, "Peter, how long are you going to stay here? And are you going to be teaching the young lamas?"

"Not exactly. That is, I'm helping Mrs. Bedi with some translations, and may stay here for a while, but I really don't know anything for sure yet. You see - I just returned last night from the plains - and now I planned to go down to the Kailash to talk with Freda. Do you have any messages?" He glanced around at us with this question.

"Please tell Freda that I won't be coming to see her today. I wouldn't be able to make it up the hill once I got down after yesterday. I'm still tired from that hike, and need to get more accustomed to the altitude a bit."

Our daily routine took shape and continued in the same pattern for about a week or so. After breakfast, Leck would try to explain to our Tibetan helper that she should try to buy some fresh fruit and vegetables in the market at Dalhousie. Although it was summer, fresh food supplies were not easy to obtain. There were almost no vegetables in the market except some cabbage, poor potatoes and few dessicated carrots. Local gardens were scarce. After trying to buy a chicken that looked more like a sparrow, plus some really poor bony-looking mutton, we gave up pretty much. Fortunately we still had tea, Tibetan noodles, some biscuits and good jam. With these items we were more or less satisfied daily. Occasionally our Indian woman helper would bring us plates of wild raspberries, which were ripening everywhere on the mountain slopes. They were truly delicious.

At this point, Leck was busy trying to help solve our material problems, but I continued to be tired. It seemed a bad cold had taken hold of me, and I felt worse each day. Now the days seemed to drag by. Then one day I felt somewhat better, so we finally ventured down to the Kailash. We hoped to visit with the little Lamas, one by one if possible.

Thuthop Tulku accompanied us around the Kailash, and tried to explain everything for us while I took pictures. We saw there was one big room reserved for the volunteers to work in. We met a couple from Canada there. She was a tall blonde girl, and her companion was a broad-shouldered young man with a long black beard. They both seemed quite unconscious about the state of their clothes, and were both dressed mostly in rags. The young woman was barefoot, and the young man wore a pair of Indian sandals held together with string. Nevertheless, they were quite jolly, and full of fun and laughter. They seemed to be dedicated teachers for the young Lamas, who seemed to like them very much too.

I saw Peter sitting in one corner furiously typing on an ancient typewriter. In another corner, an Australian boy in Tibetan clothing was sitting on the floor. He was looking through Tibetan manuscripts and books, page by page. What an odd international collection had gathered here in the mountains of Dalhousie, India!

That was the first occasion that I actually saw and handled Tibetan books. I saw they consisted of long, loose leaves a little more than a foot in length and about four to five inches wide. Each page was hand-written with script on both sides, and the leaves were piled together into ordered groups about four to five inches thick as a 'book.' Each bunch was wrapped carefully in pieces of colored silk and tied with string.

We learned there were several volunteers working in the Kailash. many of whom were not in the volunteer room at the same time. This is because they were teaching the little Lamas in separate classrooms.

We also met the newly appointed Abbot of the Kailash on that day. He was a young and handsome Lama who spoke quite good English. Freda later told us that he was one of their most important tulku reincarnations. He had luckily left Tibet before the Chinese invasion, and was now devoted to working with the refugees. He had lived in Sikkim for several years, and learned considerable English while in residence there. I also saw several very old Lamas with deeply wrinkled faces, and sincerely hoped to have enough time to photograph some or all of them before leaving Dalhousie.

We later lunched with Freda, and I admitted to her that I was not feeling at all well. I even asked, "Is it possible to find a medical doctor around here?"

"I'm afraid, Germaine, that the doctors around here are not very good. And I'm sure there is no appropriate cold medicine available in Dalhousie. It would be better if you just stayed at home and rested. I'll send your food up to you. Use your own medicine if you have any, and just rest a few days. I realize this altitude and climate are difficult to become accustomed to."

We stayed on at the Kailash that afternoon. There was a special religious ceremony scheduled, and I wanted to take pictures of the monks gathered together.

The ceremony took place in the shrine room, which was a long relatively undecorated room in the main house. On the shrine altar, I noticed a newly painted statue of Buddha, wrapped in several layers of white prayer scarves in the typical Tibetan manner. A row of silver offering bowls was placed in front of the Buddha statue, and a bunch of colorful paper flowers had been heaped nearby. Next to the shrine altar, a large electric bulb shed its light into the far corners of the entire assembly room. I had been told that lights placed over shrines help to attract the attention of the spirits, along with the scents of food and other altar offerings, such as incense.

A row of torma cakes was also placed near the front of the altar. As usual, these torma cakes were made by mixing butter and barley flour into a dough that was sculptured into the usual round and pointed cone-like forms. These were quite simple, since none was decorated or painted with designs. I had learned that tormas were meant to serve as food offerings to the Buddha and/or particular spiritual embodiments for whom the altar was dedicated. The shrine altar also held a row of small bowls that contained the usual offerings: water, barley and rice. A row of butter lamps burned along the very edge, in front of all the other offerings.

Along the wall in back of the shrine altar hung three large thankas, as well as the usual large photograph of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Two parallel rows of chanting monks sat on small Tibetan carpets placed in front of the altar. In all, there were about forty or fifty little Lamas being led in prayer by the Abbot, who sat elevated in the middle of the room in front of the shrine altar. Nearly all of the volunteers entered and participated by joining in as well as they were able.

I felt as if I were in another world where time did not count. It was nearly dark by the time we came out. While on our way up to our eagle's nest house, we were caught in a heavy and sudden rainstorm!

"Oh my, Leck, just look," I complained, "how far we truly are from Western civilization's promises! My trench coat, which was supposed to be waterproof, has absorbed water like a sponge."

Drenched, cold and shivering, we arrived at our little perch-house again. It seemed as if that night might finally be the end of me! My cold now settled inside me in earnest, and it lasted for more than five days without improvement.

On the fifth day, when I was sitting on the verandah wrapped in my fur coat and all the blankets I could find, I saw Freda Bedi. She and Thuthop Tulku were wending their way up the steep and winding path toward us. Once they arrived, Freda announced: "We have come to pray for you. Do you mind?"

"No. Why should I mind?" I replied glumly.

Without further delay, they sat and started chanting their prayers. I sat in my chair and listened calmly to their chanting. About half an hour later, a sharp pain slashed through my chest and body and I felt quite odd. After minutes of this odd sensation, I felt relieved for the first time in almost two weeks. Even my breathing had become much easier for me.

After Freda and Thuthop Tulku left, I exited from all my wrappings and slipped into my warm bed. While I felt strangely like someone who had awakened from a very bad dream, I also felt as if my cold had almost disappeared. who knows ...

Chapter 3

The rain finally stopped, and I could see the entire valley spread out in front of us the next day. We decided to go down to the Kailash, and slowly wended our way down along the familiar circular path. While walking, we saw the usual scenes: Tibetan nuns carrying heavy loads of bundled leaves or wood; young Tibetan men or groups of young monks carrying tools; and as we neared the Kailash, more and more Tibetans engaged in coming and going. Near the Kailash itself, everyone seemed busy working in the gardens. A tree had been felled. and the logs were being trimmed and oiled carefully. Even placid Thuthop Tulku was running from one to another group, gesticulating and talking.

"What do you think is wrong here?" I asked. "Something must have happened, because there's an unusual amount of activity going on."

Just then Freda came running down the stairs and called out to us: "Germaine, something big is happening to us. It's a very lucky thing! We shall have a visit from one of the most important Lamas of all! His Holiness Sakya Trizin is coming to see us! Next to the Dalai Lama. he is one of the most important spiritual lights in Asia. His Holiness Sakya Trizin is supposed to be an emanation of Manjusri, the Boddhisattva of Accomplished Wisdom! What luck for you both to be able to meet him while you're here in Dalhousie!"

During the following two days of preparation, the entire place was like an ants' nest of activities until the big day came. Once the important Lama arrived, conch shells and drums sounded from early morning onward. I was told I should wait in our perch house, and that we would be summoned when it was possible to meet His Holiness Sakya Trizin.

The day passed slowly, and nobody came to our eagle's nest to visit. Our Indian lady told us, with many gestures and broken English, that the great Lama was very young, quite chubby, and did not wear the same robes other lamas wore. He dressed in a white robe, and had a deep red shawl wrapped around his shoulders. He wore his hair in long braids and has a long golden earring with blue stones hanging from one ear. Indeed, she suggested that he looked more womanish than mannish, especially with these odd accoutrements and his long braided hair style and jewelry.

By now we were very curious and waited impatiently to see him. Finally, in the late afternoon, a monk came to fetch us. He said that he would accompany us to the nunnery where the Great Lama was now teaching.

Once in the nunnery, we waited in a large dimly lit room where everything seemed wrapped in an air of mystery. Nuns I had never before seen were rushing to and fro from room to room, and many monks sat around waiting with us too. The entire place seemed both shrouded in mystery and full of excitement at the same time. From behind closed doors came the sound of chanting, interrupted only by the occasional ringing of hand-held bells and hand-drums.

Then Freda called me in a hushed voice, I entered a room lighted only by one dim light bulb. In one corner was a shrine altar from which lighted butter lamps flickered beams of illumination that morphed into nebulous shadows. There were many people in the room, but I saw only one figure before me. This was a sturdy person of medium height who seemed less a human being than a spiritual presence to which I felt deeply drawn.

Strangely too, His Holiness made an instinctive gesture directly toward me. I approached, and we looked into one another's eyes for more than a long second.

It was only when Freda, who was standing beside me, introduced us that I returned to a normal focus and reality. Then, I somewhat awkwardly presented my white prayer scarf or kathak to His Holiness, as one should. I held it out to him with both hands.

I was unable to speak a single word when presenting my scarf. It was only after a few minutes, as I was readying myself to leave, and His Holiness had placed his hands on my head to bless me that I returned consciously fully to myself again. Then, I asked softly: "May I please see you again?" He nodded yes, silently.

This was an impressive and important meeting for me. I felt strangely happy afterwards, although I could not say or define exactly why. I felt that this was a meeting with someone whom I had known all my life; or maybe someone I had known forever, even somehow known before time itself existed.

The next morning I returned to the Kailash again.

"You must have a very happy karma, Germaine," said Freda, "since it brought you so close to His Holiness yesterday."

"Yes, I felt as if I had known him always. Moreover, I think he too felt that I was not a complete stranger."

We waited together in the entry room for a while. We again heard drumming and chanting from the shrine room. After a while, Lama Thuthop came out. He made a gesture to us that His Holiness was waiting to see us again.

His Holiness greeted us with a big smile and folded hands. He made a gesture that signaled I could sit by his side on his bench-chair if I wanted. However, I felt more at ease sitting on a carpet on the floor in front of him.

Now, in the light of day, His Holiness appeared more human. His bright eyes peered at me from behind his round spectacles, and looked straight at me. His long braids were wound around his head today, and his gold and turquoise earring was suspended from a red woolen string that was wrapped around one ear. It shook whenever he moved his head.

His Holiness was not too tall but definitively of a sturdy build. The most striking part of him was not his round face or bright eyes, it was his hands. His Holiness' hands were small and delicately shaped, like the hands and fingers of the Buddhas depicted in old Tibetan paintings. They were graceful and almost childlike hands, with long and slender fingers. These hands were actually fascinating and attractive. They moved with such unusual grace when making mudras, or even simple gestures of any kind.

Our conversation started quickly and informally. The initial shyness I had experienced the previous day had left me, and His Holiness seemed more like an old friend. We talked for a long time that day. He wanted to know about France, about me and my life, and about European history. He asked many questions. His English was still somewhat limited, so Lama Thuthop translated for us when necessary. His presence helped the flow of our conversation.

At one point, Lama Thuthop interrupted with, "His Holiness says that you should come and visit him in Mussoorie."

"My next planned journey will take me back to Europe for some months," I told him; "however, if you or His Holiness will send me a note with news from time to time, when I return to Asia, I shall surely visit him in Mussoorie."

After this, I took many pictures of His Holiness. Lama Thuthop then told me that I should come into another room and meet His Holiness' 'Aunty.' ''This 'Aunty,' as we all call her, was more or less like His Holiness' mother," Lama Thuthop added with a smile. "I was also told that it was she who helped rear him after the early death of his birth mother, and somewhat later when his father's early death interrupted his education as a youth. She is important to all of us, and still cares and plans for this family, including his sister whom you will meet."

'Aunty' was a small lady whose sparse hair was parted in the middle and tied up into a gray knot. Large gold earrings dangled from her small ears. She had a fine, straight nose, tiny mouth, and a very kind smile. That smile matched the sympathetic look in her dark grayish eyes. She sat alone on a carpet-covered bench in a room that was normally reserved for His Holiness' personal use.

A large thermos of hot Tibetan tea was placed at the foot of 'Auntie's' bench, and every time her cup was emptied or cool, a Tibetan servant hurriedly refilled it. Lama Thuthop explained to 'Aunty' who Leck and I were as visitors. She nodded brightly and presented me with a large red apple. I took several photographs of her too. Then, since it was already evening, we left and climbed up to our eagle's nest. I realized then that I would meet' Aunty' again when I visited His Holiness in Mussoorie. In fact, I certainly intended to make that visit one day during a future trip to India, which I was now certain to make again.

Throughout that evening and night, Leck and I heard the steady throb of drums and the hooting sounds of conch shells in the distance. When Peter returned to the house later that night, he explained: "His Holiness is giving some special teachings to the monks." Then he added, "You've been very lucky today, Germaine, since His Holiness seemed pleased when he met and talked with you."

"I thought so too. Somehow I felt as if I had known him for a long time, and perhaps he might have felt that way too."

"Yes. I saw the meeting, and think he must have felt the same way you did."

During the same evening, we heard a rash of worrisome news over the wireless radio. It reported that political trouble was brewing again between Pakistan and India. The problem, as usual, was about the border between these two countries. When we heard this rumor too repeatedly for comfort, we set the next day for our departure from Dalhousie. Even Freda was troubled about the rumors, since we had both noticed several Indian military planes flying over our peaceful area.

Under the circumstances, it did not seem to be a good idea to stay on, and perhaps become involved in troubles whose origins and resolutions would be problematic for us. This was not the first time I had experienced similar border problems in my life. Moreover, I had already planned to return to Europe after this side-trip from Thailand.

Early the next morning, as I was finishing the last of my packing, a monk arrived with a message from Freda. Apparently that day was being dedicated to a very important religious Buddhist celebration. The message also said that this ceremony was rarely held, and that we should not miss the opportunity to witness such a rare puja to he held nearby. We agreed.

The single jeep in Dalhousie had been made available to His Holiness, and we were told to wait for its arrival too. We walked down to the main road and waited. After some time, the jeep arrived with a white-turbaned Sikh as the chauffeur. Sitting next to the driver was His Holiness, and piled in back were two attendants, a personal servant and Lama Thuthop. There was barely room for Freda and me, along with our pile of luggage and other odd packets.

Arrangements had to be made. Therefore, almost immediately Freda asked for the jeep to stop. She arranged to have our luggage offloaded at a nearby hotel where we would stay for our last night in Dalhousie. She then instructed the driver to return after delivering us to pick up Leck who would wait here, and drive her to where the ceremony was being held.

So off we went again. Our first stop was to visit a very old Lama who was unable to attend the ceremony due to his advanced age. The jeep next maneuvered down a steep hill, even though the road had become almost too narrow. The chauffeur often found it difficult going, especially because so many people were running alongside our jeep to receive a blessing or quick touch from His Holiness Sakya Trizin.

It took considerable skill in driving before we arrived at our destination, which turned out to be another small house. We saw several monks and another 'ancient' Lama awaiting the arrival of His Holiness outside. We all entered the house together, and His Holiness was soon seated on his special high chair. The rest of us sat on long benches with small tables in front of us. We were first served the traditional guests' small dish of sweet rice and tea.

Later, for the first time in my life, I was formally served Tibetan butter tea. It was poured from a great silver kettle into a tiny cup placed in front of me. I didn't think it had a bad taste. Instead, I thought it was a strange but not disagreeable drink that resembled an amorphous too salty hotel soup. It was different from any normal tea I had ever known or been served before, but I could see its value here.

After our tea, we were again guided on our way. We climbed back into the jeep, only to discover the chauffeur had a very difficult time turning it around. We finally returned to the main road, and discovered that following it was every bit as perilous as our original downhill descent had been. All along the way, the road was crowded with Tibetans. There were young and old men twirling their prayer wheels and reciting the beads of their rosaries while walking. There were women walking with hands folded and holding burning incense sticks. Those with children held them up near the jeep for His Holiness to bless them in passing. We continued on our pilgrimage. but stopped once more to visit other very old lamas who were unable to attend the main ceremony. His Holiness blessed them in passing.

Finally, the jeep climbed upward again; however, when the road became even more steep and narrow, we were asked to descend and walk the remainder of the way.

We finally came to the location for the ceremony, which was to be held outdoors. It consisted of a large grassy meadow with row upon row of monks and lamas sitting cross-legged on the grass. Each one held a flower in his hand. There was also a crowd of lay people sitting in back of and around the monks. There were many women dressed in traditional Tibetan chubas worn under their colorful striped aprons. Most sat holding their children. There were long-haired Tibetan men of all ages, as well as a number of local Indian people from Dalhousie. A large group of various foreigners had also come to see and hear the great Lama deliver his teaching. Among this group, the majority were garbed in the usual casual 'hippie' fashion.

A white open-sided tent had been erected in one part of the meadow. In the center of the tent stood a high wooden chair (in lieu of a Lotus Throne) for His Holiness Sakya Trizin. Nearby was placed a large gold-framed photograph of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Near this photo, a large thanka of the Buddha had been pinned to one of the tent walls. On the table in front of His Holiness' throne-chair, a Vajra, a special Bell, and several other ritual or ceremonial objects were readied for use.

The ceremony in the meadow began immediately. As His Holiness started to chant the opening prayer, most of the monks and lamas joined with him. His Holiness combined the chanted prayers with specific and intricate hand movements or mudras.

I observed that the ritual hand movements resembled a dance of raised arms and hands, plus joined, flexed and released fingers. The prayer delivered was long. Once the chanting and prayers ended, His Holiness blessed everyone present by touching the Vajra to the head of each passing participant. This blessing was followed by additional blessings given by three lamas. The first lama placed a red or green string around the neck of each person; the second one poured some lotion from a silver chabai into the hand of each person, some of which was swallowed, and the rest was swiped across the head. The third lama gave each person a tiny barley cake to be eaten later. This procedure sometimes follows certain ceremonies as a special physical blessing that is thus related to the body, spirit and mind.
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I waited to receive my blessing until all the monks and lay people had been served theirs. After receiving this final blessing, I felt strangely free and very happy once again.

We noticed that His Holiness had finally stepped down from his raised seat and disappeared into the crowd of lamas. After this, Leck, who had arrived during the ceremony, and I left the meadow. We were driven back to the hotel to spend the last night before our departure in the morning.

We left the next morning for Delhi, but somehow I knew I would visit His Holiness again, either here or in another place in India. I also hoped to see Freda again.

This time our return bus trip up and down the hills back to Pathankot was not in the 'Kashmir Tiger,' but in the 'Hill Express.' While I could not say that the trip was easier or more pleasant, the current political border problems meant that the roads were heavily occupied by military trucks and convoys; therefore. the forced slower speed of the bus made the return ride much less back-breaking for us packed-in passengers. Even the aisles were used for seating. since the news of possible strife was ominous.

Once back in the crowds of Pathankot, we returned to that other world in feeling: that of being among hectic crowded activities. We quickly learned that the political border crisis had become even worse than we had imagined. Most adolescent Indian boys wandered about with transistor radios dangling around their necks. Their faces had grim expressions from the news they were hearing. The atmosphere was permeated with an explosive feeling of tension, and the Pathankot area was filled with a military presence. We were told that we should take the next train to Delhi, since it might well be the last one to leave Pathankot for a long time.

By the time we finally arrived in Delhi, I realized just how serious the border problem had become. Because of the touchy situation between Pakistan and India, we were advised to depart India on the next possible international plane. We made rapid departure arrangements and, in fact, ours plane was the last one to leave India and not be grounded when flying over Karachi.

We left, but I continued to worry about the friends and refugees left behind in Dalhousie. After all, that area was not too far from the troubled spots. Later I received the good news that no harm had come to the Kailash, or to anyone living nearby it in Dalhousie. I was much relieved.

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Notes:

Dalhousie is situated in the northern Himachal Pradesh area, actually only about forty some miles from Pathankot, or about three hours (theoretically) by bus or taxi on a difficult road. Dalhousie was home to one of the earliest Tibetan refugee communities about the 1950 exodus of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from Tibet. After his successful flight from Tibet, the roads and trails were immediately flooded with as many refugees as could muster the courage to escape. Hundreds wanted to free themselves from Chinese occupied Tibet, and most directed their steps toward areas of northern India. Thus, one of the earliest fully functional schools, the ‘Central School for Tibetans,’ was founded in this community. Perhaps consulting a map is suggested here, because visualizing the different hill station locations makes it easier to understand the cluster of Tibetan refugee centers situated in these northern to more central areas of India. The editor was unable to find a single map which locates all the settlements noted in the Memoir.

Dalhousie was founded by Lord Dalhousie in 1854, during the early days of the nearly century-long Raj colonial occupation of India. Like other hill stations, Dalhousie became a popular place to which British government or military commands often moved their offices during the summer, since it is at the on-average 6,463 foot level of elevation, and thus avoids the numbing heat of the Indian plains and capital of Delhi. It still remains a popular summer resort, and is renowned for its Victorian left-over houses and hotels constructed during the Raj. Some of these buildings became schools, and others became small hotels.

Dalhousie is also known as the place where many educational schools of quality were situated, some of which are still operative. The favorite British shopping stores and restaurants were located in the central part of this station. As in other hill stations, the popular Raj-favored Indian restaurant chefs early learned to cook the inevitable British-preferred non-spicy meat and potato dishes, drab first-served soups, and post entrée puddings the Raj colonials preferred for dessert.

It is amusing to read the few Indian-Raj cookbooks that eventuated during that long Colonial occupation. The editor found and bought one copy as a kind of ‘collectors’ item. While it might have once been popular as a guide for Indian colonial cooks, who were typically men, I doubt it would have ‘many takers’ among Indian chefs today. The recipes are nothing traditionally Indian, except by name. They are bland and compulsively repetitive, and with too many ‘toned down’ sauces to be interesting.

For those interested in actual Indian cookery, there are now many excellent Indian recipes given online, some of which can be visited under Raj-styled Indian dishes or recipes, with pictures to visualize the dish. Indian food is often of interest to vegetarian-prone eaters, because of its many non-meat traditional dishes that have spicy sauces without chilis, which makes them flavorful, but not too hot.

Dalhousie, like most hill stations, has many beautiful gardens, lovely mountain vistas, and a moderate climate, except during the cool rainy season. Its good central location was another factor that contributed to its early popularity as a Raj hill station. The surrounding land is more suited to animal shepherding than farming, since the soil is stony and not well suited for most crops. Hunting was also good in the Dalhousie area, so the military enjoyed the city and its environs for their ‘sporting’ potential too….

The first school for Tibetan Lamas as tulkus was established with Nehru’s express permission, and supported primarily by Christopher Hills, a British-born author, philosopher and scientist. The first Abbot of the school was Karma Thinley Rinpoche, and Chogyal Trumpa assisted him as the spiritual Advisor. Although more Kagyu in its early orientation, as was its leader, Freda Bed, the school later directed its educational programs toward all four Tibetan Schools of interpretation, and became a growing fountain of productivity through the decades. As it grew, it accepted Indian aid, and other than Tulkus and Tibetans as students. Finally, it thereby gained a much larger enrollment, including local Indian students.

It should be noted that the Kailash School for Lamas in Dalhousie continued to operate under the leadership of Freda Bedi for some more months. At that time, the new post-Freda leadership changed its orientation and student body to include a wider spectrum of students, since Freda wanted to return to Gangtok. Under new leadership, the school continued.

When Freda left Dalhousie to study in Gangtok, Sikkim, with Karmapa, she was later declared to be a ‘high and special status Kagyu nun,’ and became known internationally as ‘Sister Palmo,’ or ‘Kechog Palmo.’…

The summer 1965 and later border skirmish was series, but was ultimately mitigated through diplomacy, and the assistance of the United Nations to which India had referred this recurring problem. It did last until late September with threats from both sides; however, ultimately the controversy was resolved without any seriously anticipated military engagements.

It was shortly after this period that Freda Bedi ended her work at the Kailash for Tibetan Tulkus. She had apparently decided to return and study against with Karmapa in Gangtok Kagyu monastery and temple in Sikkim. She was already a nun, but wanted to focus more on Buddhist philosophy. Thus, the school continued, but was refigured to include a wider spectrum of students as suggested.

Meanwhile, sometime in 1966, Germaine decided to sever her ties with the Oriental Hotel, of which she had been a part owner and developer since after World War II. When she returned to Bangkok from a few months in Europe, she sold her shares in April of 1966 [Wikipedia says 1967]. She planned to travel and spend part of her time in Europe (Paris mostly), as well as occasional trips to Asia, including India. However, she apparently knew by this time that she would eventually return to north India to be near Sakya Trizin and his family as well.

[admin]

Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/29/20


Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
View of Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
from the Chao Phraya River
Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok is located in BangkokMandarin Oriental, Bangkok

Location within Bangkok
General information
Location 48 Oriental Avenue, Bangkok 10500, Thailand
Coordinates 13°43′25″N 100°30′52″E
Opening 1876
Management Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Other information
Number of rooms: 393
Number of suites: 35
Number of restaurants: 8
Website: MandarinOriental.com/bangkok

Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok is a five-star hotel in Bangkok owned in part and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Located on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, the original structure was the first hotel built in Thailand when it opened as The Oriental in 1876. Today, the hotel is one of two flagship properties of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.

History

When Siam opened to foreign trade after the signing of the Bowring Treaty the sailors that manned the ships which conveyed this trade though Bangkok required accommodation on shore. To meet this demand, Captain Dyers, an American and his partner J.E. Barnes opened a hotel called the Oriental Hotel. This burnt down in 1865.[1]

Several years later a partnership of Danish captains opened a replacement hotel.[2] In the 1870s the board of the Oriental Hotel decided with the opening of the new River Wing, upon 1876 as the official establishment date of the Oriental Hotel.

H. N. Andersen

In 1881 29-year-old Hans Niels Andersen, a Danish businessman, bought the premises.[3] His various business ventures led to him becoming a much respected member of the Western community in Siam. Andersen identified a need for a respectable hotel with good accommodation, a bar and a western menu to meet the needs of travellers and businessmen visiting to Siam.

Encouraged by Prince Prisdang Jumsai, Hans Niels Andersen formed a partnership with Peter Andersen and Frederick Kinch to build a luxury hotel. Designed by Cardu & Rossi, a team of local Italian architects, the Oriental was the first luxury hotel in Siam. The hotel opened on 19 May 1887 with 40 rooms and features which at the time had never been seen in Siam outside of a royal palace: a second floor (during a time of single-storey bungalows), carpeted hallways, smoking and ladies rooms, a billiards room and a bar capable of seating 50 patrons.[4] To ensure the success of the restaurant and a satisfactory level of service the owners lured the chef and butler away from the French Consulate to work at the hotel.

The first major event that the hotel hosted was a grand banquet on 24 May 1888 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. After personally inspecting the hotel’s facilities in December 1890, King Chulalongkorn decided the hotel was up to the standard necessary to host visiting royalty. The hotel's first royal guests were the entourage of Crown Prince Nicholas of Russia, (later Tsar Nicholas) in April 1891.

A succession of owners followed until Marie Maire took over the ownership in 1910. She immediately went to work revamping the hotel. She sold it in 1932. During the Second World War the hotel was leased to the Japanese Army who used it as an officers club (under the management of the Imperial Hotel of Tokyo). At the end of the war it was used to house liberated Allied prisoners of war, who in the belief that it was a Japanese property ransacked the building.[2][5]

Germaine Krull


The original 19th century Authors' Wing

At the end of the war a six-person partnership each contributed US$250 to buy the hotel, badly run down from its wartime service. The partnership consisted of Germaine Krull (1897–1985),...

Germaine Luise Krull (20 November 1897 – 31 July 1985) was a photographer, political activist, and hotel owner. Her nationality has been categorized as German, French, and Dutch, but she spent years in Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Thailand, and India. Described as "an especially outspoken example" of a group of early 20th-century female photographers who "could lead lives free from convention", she is best known for photographically-illustrated books such as her 1928 portfolio Métal.

Krull was born in Posen-Wilda, a district of Posen (then in Germany; now Poznań, Poland), of an affluent German family. In her early years, the family moved around Europe frequently; she did not receive a formal education, but instead received homeschooling from her father, an accomplished engineer and a free thinker (whom some characterized as a "ne'er-do-well"). Her father let her dress as a boy when she was young, which may have contributed to her ideas about women's roles later in her life. In addition, her father's views on social justice "seem to have predisposed her to involvement with radical politics."

Between 1915 and 1917 or 1918 she attended the Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Photographie, a photography school in Munich, Germany, at which Frank Eugene's teaching of pictorialism in 1907–1913 had been influential. She opened a studio in Munich in approximately 1918, took portraits of Kurt Eisner ...

Kurt Eisner (14 May 1867 – 21 February 1919) was a politician, revolutionary, journalist and theatre critic from Germany. As a socialist journalist, he organised the Socialist Revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918, which led to his being described as "the symbol of the Bavarian revolution". He is used as an example of charismatic authority by Max Weber. Eisner subsequently proclaimed the People's State of Bavaria, but was assassinated by far-right German nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley in Munich on 21 February 1919.

-- Kurt Eisner, by Wikipedia

and others, and befriended prominent people such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Pollock, and Max Horkheimer.

Krull was politically active between 1918 and 1921. In 1919 she switched from the Independent Socialist Party of Bavaria to the Communist Party of Germany, and was arrested and imprisoned for assisting a Bolshevik emissary's attempted escape to Austria. She was expelled from Bavaria in 1920 for her Communist activities, and traveled to Russia with lover Samuel Levit. After Levit abandoned her in 1921, Krull was imprisoned as an "anti-Bolshevik" and expelled from Russia.

She lived in Berlin between 1922 and 1925 where she resumed her photographic career. She and Kurt Hübschmann (later to be known as Kurt Hutton) worked together in a Berlin studio between 1922 and 1924. Among other photographs Krull produced in Berlin were a series of nudes (recently disparaged by an unimpressed 21st-century critic as "almost like satires of lesbian pornography").

Having met Dutch filmmaker and communist Joris Ivens in 1923, she moved to Amsterdam in 1925. After Krull returned to Paris in 1926, Ivens and Krull entered into a marriage of convenience between 1927 and 1943 so that Krull could hold a Dutch passport and could have a "veneer of married respectability without sacrificing her autonomy."

In Paris between 1926 and 1928, Krull became friends with Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Eli Lotar, André Malraux, Colette, Jean Cocteau, André Gide and others; her commercial work consisted of fashion photography, nudes, and portraits....

By 1928 Krull was considered one of the best photographers in Paris, along with André Kertész and Man Ray. Between 1928 and 1933, her photographic work consisted primarily of photojournalism, such as her photographs for Vu, a French magazine; also in the early 1930s,she also made a pioneering study of employment black spots in Britain for Weekly Illustrated (most of her ground-breaking reportage work from this period remains immured in press archives and she has never received the credit which is her due for this work). Her book Études de Nu ("Studies of Nudes") published in 1930 is still well-known today. Between 1930 and 1935 she contributed photographs for a number of travel and detective fiction books.

In 1935–1940, Krull lived in Monte Carlo where she had a photographic studio. Among her subjects during this period were buildings (such as casinos and palaces), automobiles, celebrities, and common people. She may have been a member of the Black Star photojournalism agency which had been founded in 1935, but "no trace of her work appears in the press with that label."

... Henry Luce, the largest publisher of the day, with periodicals such as Time and Fortune. Luce collaborated with Black Star to produce a new weekly magazine called Life. Life would use artistic photos in a new format. These pictures would be large and take up the majority of the page. They could capture not only a moment in time, but an emotion and story that would be paramount to the text. Prior to this, photojournalism in the U.S. was relegated to regional newspapers where text was more important than photos...

Kornfeld became Black Star's best picture agent. He had a talent for creating rapport between client and artist. Therefore, Kornfeld handled their most important client, Life magazine, providing up to 200 photos a week.

-- Black Star (photo agency), by Wikipedia

In World War II, she became disenchanted with the Vichy France government, and sought to join the Free French Forces in Africa. Due to her Dutch passport and her need to obtain proper visas, her journey to Africa included over a year (1941–1942) in Brazil where she photographed the city of Ouro Preto. Between 1942 and 1944 she was in Brazzaville in French Equatorial Africa, after which she spent several months in Algiers and then returned to France.

After World War II, she traveled to Southeast Asia as a war correspondent, but by 1946 had become a co-owner of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, a role that she undertook until 1966. She published three books with photographs during this period, and also collaborated with Malraux on a project concerning the sculpture and architecture of Southeast Asia.

After retiring from the hotel business in 1966, she briefly lived near Paris, then moved to Northern India and converted to the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. Her final major photographic project was the publication of a 1968 book Tibetans in India that included a portrait of the Dalai Lama. After a stroke, she moved to a nursing home in Wetzlar, Germany, where she died in 1985.

-- Germaine Krull, by Wikipedia

Prince Bhanu [Prince Bhanubandhu Yugala],

Prince Bhanubandhu Yugala (Thai: พระเจ้าวรวงศ์เธอ พระองค์เจ้าภาณุพันธุ์ยุคล; RTGS: Phanuphan Yukhon, born 27 November 1910 in Songkhla Province, Thailand, died 5 February 1995 in Bangkok) was a Thai film director, producer and screenwriter, playwright, composer and author.

He was a grandson of King Chulalongkorn,...

Chulalongkorn, also known as King Rama V, reigning title Phra Chula Chom Klao Chao Yu Hua[a] (Thai: จุฬาลงกรณ์; RTGS: Chunlalongkon; 20 September 1853 – 23 October 1910), was the fifth monarch of Siam under the House of Chakri. He was known to the Siamese of his time as Phra Phuttha Chao Luang (พระพุทธเจ้าหลวง, the Royal Buddha). His reign was characterized by the modernisation of Siam, governmental and social reforms, and territorial concessions to the British and French. As Siam was threatened by Western expansionism, Chulalongkorn, through his policies and acts, managed to save Siam from colonization. All his reforms were dedicated to ensuring Siam's survival in the face of Western colonialism, so that Chulalongkorn earned the epithet Phra Piya Maharat (พระปิยมหาราช, the Great Beloved King).

-- Chulalongkorn, by Wikipedia

the maternal grandfather of Princess Soamsawali Kitiyakara and an uncle of director Chatrichalerm Yukol....

Prince Bhanubandhu was the eldest of three children of Prince Yugala Dighambara ...

Yugala Dighambara, Prince of Lopburi (March 17, 1882 – April 8, 1932) (Thai: สมเด็จพระเจ้าบรมวงศ์เธอ เจ้าฟ้ายุคลฑิฆัมพร กรมหลวงลพบุรีราเมศร์, RTGS: Chao Fa Yukhon Thikhamphon Krom Luang Lopburi Ramet), was a son of King Chulalongkorn of Siam.

The Prince graduated from Cambridge University. He served as Viceroy of the South during the reign of his half-brother King Vajiravhud and as the Minister of the Interior in the government of King Prajadhipok.

He married Princess Chalermkhetra Mangala (Bhanubandh), a daughter of Prince Bhanurangsi Savangwongse. Their grandson is the filmmaker Prince Chatrichalerm Yugala.

-- Yugala Dighambara, by Wikipedia

and Princess Chalermkhet Mongkhol. He was a grandson of King Chulalongkorn. He was educated in Thailand at Thepsirin School, and then in France. He also lived abroad in his youth in England and the United States. In his 20s, he returned to Thailand and enlisted in the Royal Thai Army's cavalry division. While in the army, he studied filmmaking in his spare time....

Prince Bhanubandhu founded his own company, the Thai Film Company, in 1938, first producing the film, Tharn Fai Kao (The Old Flame). Four other films followed: Wan Phen, Mae Sue Sao (Girl Matchmaker), Pid Thong Lang Phru and Look Thung (The Folks). The company was disbanded during World War II, with its assets sold to the Royal Thai Air Force....

After the war ended, Bhanubandhu formed a new production company, Assawin Pictures.

Bhanubandhu also composed the score for his films. One of his songs from 1938's Tharn Fai Kao, was selected in 1979 by UNESCO as a "Song of Asia".

-- Bhanubandhu Yugala, Wikipedia

General Chai Prateepasen,...

Major General Chai Prateepasen
Secretary General of the Cabinet: February 18, 1943 - August 5, 1944

-- Long Live the King: Government Officials and Employees of the Secretariat of the Cabinet, by soc.go.th

Pote Sarasin (prominent businessman and lawyer)

Pote Sarasin (Thai: พจน์ สารสิน, RTGS: Phot Sarasin, pronounced [pʰót sǎː.rā.sǐn]; 25 March 1905 – 28 September 2000) was a Thai diplomat and politician from the influential Sarasin family. He served as foreign minister from 1949 to 1951 and then served as ambassador to the United States. In September 1957 when Sarit Thanarat seized power in a military coup, he appointed Pote to be the acting prime minister. He resigned in December 1957. Pote also served as the first Secretary General of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization from September 1957 until 1964....

Pote was a scion of the Sarasin family, one of Bangkok's oldest and wealthiest assimilated Chinese families. The Sarasins had always cultivated good relations with the bureaucratic elite of the 19th century, and by the early 1950s held substantial interests in real estate and rice trading. His father, Thian Hee (Chinese: 黄天喜, whose official title was Phraya Sarasinsawamiphakh), was the son of a traditional Chinese doctor and pharmacist who had immigrated from Hainan to Siam in the early 19th century.

Pote's sons are Pong, a leading businessman, Police General Pao, who once served as the Chief of the Royal Thai Police, and Arsa, who, like his father, was also one of the former foreign ministers of Thailand and was serving as the late King Bhumibol's Principal Private Secretary. All three sons–Pong, Arsa and Pao Sarasin had all served as the Deputy Prime Ministers of Thailand.

-- Pote Sarasin, by Wikipedia

and John Webster and Jim Thompson, two Americans who had served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and who had stayed on in Thailand.

James Harrison Wilson Thompson (March 21, 1906 – March 26, 1967 disappeared) was an American businessman who helped revitalise the Thai silk industry in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time of his disappearance he was one of the most famous Americans living in Asia. Time magazine claimed he "almost singlehanded(ly) saved Thailand's vital silk industry from extinction".

Jim Thompson was born in Greenville, Delaware in 1906. He was the youngest of five children of Henry and Mary Thompson. His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer; his mother was the daughter of James Harrison Wilson (1837–1925), a noted Union general during the American Civil War....

From 1931 to 1940, he practised in New York City with Holden, McLaughlin & Associates, designing homes for the East Coast rich. During this period, he led an active social life and sat on the board of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

The Original Ballet Russe (originally named Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo) was a ballet company established in 1931 by René Blum and Colonel Wassily de Basil as a successor to the Ballets Russes, founded in 1909 by Sergei Diaghilev. The company assumed the new name Original Ballet Russe after a split between de Basil and Blum. De Basil led the renamed company, while Blum and others founded a new company under the name Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. It was a large scale professional ballet company which toured extensively in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the United States, and Central and South America. It closed down operations in 1947.

-- Original Ballet Russe, by Wikipedia

In 1941, he quit his job and enlisted with the Delaware National Guard. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, he was transferred to a military outpost in Fort Monroe, Virginia. While he was here, he got to know Second Lieutenant Edwin Fahey Black, a fresh graduate from the US Military Academy, West Point. It was Black who encouraged him to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

At the height of the Second World War, Thompson was recruited by major general William Joseph Donovan (1883–1959) to serve as an operative in the OSS.

His first assignment was with the French Resistance in North Africa. He was then sent to Europe. After Victory in Europe Day (May 7–8, 1945), he was transferred to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to work with the pro-Allied Seri Thai (Free Thai Movement). Their mission was to help liberate Thailand from the occupying Japanese Army. The group had the support of Pridi Panomyong, the regent to King Ananda Mahidol of Thailand, and Seni Pramoj, the Thai ambassador to the United States.

In August 1945, Thompson was about to be sent into Thailand, when the Surrender of Japan officially ended World War II. He arrived in Thailand shortly after Victory over Japan Day and organised the Bangkok OSS office. It was here he got to know Constance (Connie) Mangskau, an Allied Services translator, who later became one of his closest friends.

In the spring of 1946, Thompson went to work as military attaché at the United States legation for his former Princeton classmate Charles Woodruff Yost, the US Minister to Thailand. Thompson used his contacts with the Free Thai and Free Lao groups to gather information and defuse conflicts on Thailand's borders. Working with him in the Legation was Kenneth Landon, an American missionary whose wife, Margaret Landon, was the author of Anna and the King of Siam, which was the inspiration for a 1946 film of the same name, and The King and I in 1956.

In late 1946, Thompson headed for home to seek his discharge from the army. After his divorce from Patricia Thraves (1920–1969), he returned to Thailand to join a group of investors to buy The Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. While working on its restoration, he had some differences with his associates and this resulted in him giving up his shares. He subsequently switched his focus to silk.

In 1948,[13] he partnered with George Barrie to found the Thai Silk Company Limited. It was capitalised at US$25,000. They each bought eighteen percent of the shares. The remaining sixty-four percent were sold to Thai and foreign investors.

The firm achieved a coup in 1951 when designer Irene Sharaff made use of Thai silk fabrics for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I. From then on, the company prospered.... It was only after Thompson's disappearance that the Thai Silk Company relocated its weaving operations to Korat, a city which serves as a base of operations for the Royal Thai Army....

In 1958, he began what was to be the pinnacle of his architectural achievement – the construction of a new home to showcase his objets d'art.

Using parts of old up-country houses – some as old as a hundred years – he succeeded in constructing a masterpiece that involved the reassembling of six Thai dwellings on his estate. Most of the units were dismantled and brought over by river from Ayutthaya, but the largest – a weaver's house (now the living room) – came from Bangkrua. On arrival, the woodwork was offloaded and pieced together....

After he was through with its creation, he filled his home with the items he had collected in the past. Decorating his rooms were Chinese blue-and-white Ming pieces, Belgian glass, Cambodian carvings, Victorian-era chandeliers, Benjarong earthenware, Thai stone images, Burmese statues, and a dining table which was once used by King Rama V of Thailand....

Thompson disappeared from Malaysia's Cameron Highlands on Sunday, March 26, 1967. His disappearance from the hill station generated one of the largest land searches in Southeast Asian history, and is one of the most famous mysteries in the region.

-- Jim Thompson (designer), by Wikipedia

Krull took the position of manager in 1947, despite no prior experience in the hotel field. Born in Germany, she had been best known as a photographer during the 1920s before service in the Pacific as a war correspondent for Agence France Presse. The hotel's restoration and restocking offered Thompson an opportunity to put to use his architectural and artistic abilities.

The hotel reopened for business on 12 June 1947. Krull turned out to be a natural hotelier and during her reign restored the hotel to its position as the premier hotel in Thailand. Thompson soon left the partnership over a plan to build a new wing, though he stayed on in residence at the hotel for some time. To compete with popular clubs and a new local bar called Chez Eve, Krull established the Bamboo Bar, which soon became one of the leading bars in Bangkok.[6]

In 1958 the ten-storey Garden Wing was built. It featured the city’s first elevator and was home to the Le Normandie Restaurant.[2] In 1967, fearful that Thailand would fall to the communists, Krull sold her share to Italthai which at the time was well on its way to becoming one of the country’s most significant mercantile groups eventually totally some 60 companies involved in almost all aspects of the Thai economy.

Italthai

Italthai had been founded in the mid-fifties by Giorgio Berlingieri, an Italian born in Genoa and Dr Chaijudh Karnasuta, a Thai. Berlingieri felt that the Oriental had begun to rest on its laurels and had dropped behind its competitors. He wanted to develop the Oriental into one of the best hotels in the world. Too involved with his various businesses to devote time to the project, Berlingieri in November 1967 appointed 30-year-old Kurt Wachtveitl (1937– ), at that time manager of Nipa Lodge (a hotel that Italthai owned in Pattaya), as general manager of the Oriental.

In 1972 the hotel acquired an adjacent property upon which it erected the 350-room River Wing.[2]

ACC [Asian Cultural Council] is both a grantmaking and grantseeking organization. It is supported by funding from individuals, foundations, and corporations including The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Newman’s Own Foundation and The Starr Foundation

-- Asian Cultural Council, by Wikipedia

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok

Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong is a five-star hotel located on Connaught Road in Central, Hong Kong, owned and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group....

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group (MOHG; Chinese: 文華東方酒店), a member of the Jardine Matheson Group, is an international hotel investment and management group with luxury hotels, resorts and residences in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

-- Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, by Wikipedia

Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (also known as Jardines) is a British conglomerate incorporated in Bermuda and headquartered in Hong Kong, with its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and secondary listings on the Singapore Exchange and Bermuda Stock Exchange. The majority of its business interests are in Asia, and its subsidiaries include Jardine Pacific, Jardine Motors, Jardine Lloyd Thompson, Hongkong Land, Jardine Strategic Holdings, Dairy Farm, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Jardine Cycle & Carriage and Astra International. It sponsors the Jardine Scholarship.

Jardines was one of the original Hong Kong trading houses or Hongs that date back to Imperial China and, as of December 2010, 41 percent of the company's profits were still earned in China. The company is controlled by the Keswick family, who are descendants of co-founder William Jardine's older sister, Jean Johnstone.

-- Jardine Matheson, by Wikipedia

In the 1920s, the U.S. threw its weight behind Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang Party was fighting the Communists and several other warlords for control of China. The U.S. was competing with the other colonial nations for control of China, which had a cheap labor force and represented billions in profits for U.S. corporations and investors. The problem was that the Kuomintang supported itself through the opium trade. It's well documented in the diplomatic cables between the U.S. government and its representatives in China. Historians Kinder and Walker said the Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, "clearly knew about the ties between Chiang and opium dealers."

Anslinger knew that Shanghai was "the prime producer and exporter to the illicit world drug markets," through a syndicate controlled by Du Yue-sheng, a crime lord who facilitated Chiang's bloody ascent to power in 1927. As early as 1932, Anslinger knew that Chiang's finance minister was Du's protector. He'd had evidence since 1929 that American t'ongs were receiving Kuomintang narcotics and distributing it to the Mafia. Middlemen worked with opium merchants, gangsters like Du, Japanese occupation forces in Manchuria, and Dr. Lansing Ling, "who supplied narcotics to Chinese officials traveling abroad." In 1938 Chiang Kai-shek appointed Dr. Ling head of his Narcotic Control Department.

In October 1934, the Treasury attache in Shanghai "submitted reports implicating Chiang Kai-shek in the heroin trade to North America." In 1935 the attache reported that the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai was "acting as agent for Chiang Kaishek in arranging for the preparation and shipment of the stuff to the United States."

These reports reached Anslinger's desk, so he knew which KMT officials and trade missions were delivering dope to American t'ongs and which American Mafia drug rings were buying it. He knew the t'ongs were kicking back a percentage of the profits to finance Chiang's regime.

After Japanese forces seized Shanghai in August 1937, Anslinger was even less willing to deal honestly with the situation. By then Du was sitting on Shanghai's Municipal Board with William J. Keswick, a director of the Jardine Matheson Shipping Company. Through Keswick, Du found sanctuary in Hong Kong, where he was welcomed by a cabal of free-trading British colonialists whose shipping and banking companies earned huge revenues by allowing Du to push his drugs on the hapless Chinese. The revenues were truly immense: according to Colonel Joseph Stilwell, the U.S. military attache in China, in 1935 there were "eight million Chinese heroin and morphine addicts and another 72 million Chinese opium addicts."

Anslinger tried to minimize the problem by lying and saying that Americans were not affected. But the final decisions were made by his bosses in Washington, and from their national security perspective, the profits enabled the Kuomintang to purchase $31 million worth of fighter planes from arms dealer William Pawley to fight the Communists, and that trumped any moral dilemmas about trading with the Japanese or getting Americans addicted.

It's all documented. Check the sources I cite in my books. Plus, U.S. Congressmen and Senators in the China Lobby were profiting from the guns for drugs business too. They got kickbacks in the form of campaign funds and in exchange, they looked away as long as Anslinger told them the dope stayed overseas. After 1949, the China Lobby manipulated public hearings and Anslinger cooked the books to make sure that the Peoples Republic was blamed for all narcotics coming out of the Far East. Everyone made money and after 1949 the operation was run out of Taiwan, with CIA assistance.

-- The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, by Douglas Valentine

The Keswick family (pronounced with a silent "w", "Kezzick") are a business dynasty of Scottish origin associated with the Far East since 1855 and in particular the conglomerate Jardine Matheson.

As tai-pans of Jardine Matheson & Company, the Keswick family have at some time been closely associated with the ownership or management of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company Ltd., the Canton Insurance Office Ltd, (now the HSBC Insurance Co), The Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company Limited, Star Ferry, Hong Kong Tramway, the Hong Kong Land Investment and Agency Co Ltd, and the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Co Ltd.

The Hon. William Keswick (1834–1912)

The founder of the dynasty, he was born in 1834, in Dumfriesshire in the Scottish Lowlands. His grandmother, Jean Jardine Johnstone was an older sister of Dr. William Jardine, the founder of Jardine Matheson & Company. His father Thomas Keswick had married Margaret Johnstone, Jardine's niece and daughter of Jean, and entered the Jardine business. The company operated as opium traders and had a major influence in the First and Second Opium Wars although the company stopped this trading in 1870 to pursue a broad range of other trading interests including shipping, railways, textiles and property development.

William arrived in China and Hong Kong in 1855, the first of five generations of the Keswick family to be associated with Jardines. He established a Jardine Matheson office in Yokohama, Japan in 1859. He returned to Hong Kong to become a partner of the firm in 1862. He became managing partner (Taipan) from 1874 to 1886. He left Hong Kong in 1886 to work with Matheson & Co. in London as a senior director responsible only to Sir Robert Jardine (1825–1905), a son of David Jardine, William Jardine's older brother and the head of Mathesons in London.

-- Keswick family, by Wikipedia

Originally called The Mandarin, the hotel was built on the former site of the colonial Queen's Building on the waterfront in Central Hong Kong. From the onset, the concept was to create a hotel firmly rooted in Eastern culture, providing gracious service to a standard generally experienced only in the Asia–Pacific region. The original cost of construction totalled HKD 42 million, while the interior design amounted to even 50% more at HKD 66 million, sparing no luxury or detail. John Howarth of Leigh & Orange architectural firm was hired to design the building while the interior was entrusted to Don Ashton, a Hollywood Art Director for such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Indiscreet, and Billy Budd. The Mandarin officially opened for business in October 1963, and at 26 storeys, it was the tallest building in Hong Kong. In addition to its record-setting height, the hotel was the first in Hong Kong to have direct dial phones and the first in Asia to include a bath in every guestroom. The hotel quickly drew recognition for its service and elegance, and back in 1967 was listed by Fortune magazine as one of eleven great hotels in the world.

-- Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, by Wikipedia

The Group began with the opening of its flagship property, The Mandarin, in Hong Kong in 1963, which soon built up a reputation for luxurious service. In 1974, Mandarin International Hotels Limited was formed as a hotel management company. The Group's intention was to expand into Asia and operate hotels with a standard of service comparable with their property in Hong Kong.[7]

In 1974 the company's hotel interests expanded further through the acquisition of a 49% interest in The Oriental, Bangkok. Through the management of both The Mandarin in Hong Kong and The Oriental, Bangkok, the Group was in an unusual position of having two "flagship" hotels. In 1985, the Company rationalized its corporate structure by combining these two properties under a common name, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.[7]

The hotel opened its renowned Oriental Spa in 1993 and finished a complete renovation of its rooms and suites in 2003. In 2006, The Oriental, Bangkok celebrated its 130th anniversary.[8] In September 2008, the hotel formally changed its name from The Oriental, Bangkok to Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok.

Hotel

The hotel has contained 331 rooms, including 60 unique suites. The two-story Authors' Wing, the only remaining structure of the original 19th century hotel, houses suites named after Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Noël Coward and James Michener. The River Wing contains deluxe two bedroom suites named after former guests or personages associated with the hotel including Barbara Cartland, Gore Vidal, Graham Greene, Wilbur Smith, John le Carré, Jim Thompson, Norman Mailer, Thai author Kukrit Pramoj.[9] Other suites are named after ships associated with the early Bangkok trade such as Otago (once captained by Joseph Conrad), HMS Melita, Vesatri and Natuna.


Sala Rim Naam restaurant and terrace

Restaurants[10]

• Le Normandie: Contemporary French cuisine
• Lord Jim’s: Seafood and prime cut grill
• Sala Rim Naam: Traditional Thai cuisine
• Terrace Rim Naam: Authentic Thai dishes
• The China House: Classic Chinese cuisine
• Riverside Terrace: International BBQ
• The Verandah: International all-day dining
• Ciao Terrazza: Italian cuisine
• Kinu by Takagi :Japanese Kaiseki dining

Lounges and bars[11]

• The Authors' Lounge: Traditional afternoon tea served with old world charm
• The Bamboo Bar: Live Jazz & Blues Bar

Additional services and facilities

• The Oriental Spa[12]
• The Oriental Thai Cooking School[13]

Awards[14]

• Named “Best City Hotel in Asia” and one of the “Top 20 Hotels Worldwide” (Travel + Leisure's annual World Best Awards 2009)[15]
• Best City Center Hotel Spa Worldwide (Luxury Travel Advisor, December 2008 - Awards of Excellence)
• Urban Spa of the Year (AsiaSpa Magazine, November 2008 - AsiaSpa Awards)
• Named one of the 400 Best Hotels (Forbes Traveler, November 2008)
• No. 8 in Overseas Leisure Hotels - Asia & the Indian Subcontinent (Condé Nast Traveller, October 2008 - Readers’ Travel Awards
• No. 13 in Spas in Overseas Hotel (Condé Nast Traveller, October 2008 - Readers’ Travel Awards)
• No. 3 in Top 20 International City Hotels (Andrew Harper’s Hideaway Report, September 2008 - The World’s Best Hotel, Resorts & Hideaways)

Photo gallery


The Oriental Spa


The Riverside Terrace


Kinu by Takagi


Lord Jim's


Hotel Lobby


Siam One-Bedroom Suite Dining Area


Siam One-Bedroom Suite Living Area


Siam One-Bedroom Suite


Deluxe One-Bedroom Theme Suite Living Room


Deluxe One-Bedroom Theme Suite


Selandia Two-Bedroom Suite


Selandia Two-Bedroom Suite Dining and Living Areas


The Verandah

See also

• Thailand portal
• Architecture portal
• Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
• Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong
• Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London
• Mandarin Oriental, New York
• Mandarin Oriental, Miami

Notes

1. O'Nell. Page 176.
2. Warren & Gocher. Page 120.
3. Augustin and Williamson.
4. O‘Nell. Page 178.
5. O‘Nell. Page 181.
6. Samuels.
7. "Press Kits - Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
8. "Press Kits - Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
9. "Press Kits - Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
10. "Bangkok Fine Dining - Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
11. "Bangkok Fine Dining - Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
12. "Bangkok Luxury Spa - Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
13. "5-Star Hotel in Bangkok - Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December2014.
14. "Bangkok Hotel News - Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok". Mandarinoriental.com. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
15. "2009 World's Best Hotels - Travel + Leisure". Travel + Leisure. Retrieved 29 December 2014.

References

• Augustin, Andreas; Williamson, Andreas (2000). The Oriental Bangkok. Vienna: Leading Hotels of the World. pp. 160 pages. ISBN 3-902118-05-9.
• Augustin, Andreas. "Wachtveitl - Why don’t you do some work?". Accessed 26 September 2008.
• Augustin, Andreas. "Oriental Hotel - Historic Data“. Accessed 26 September 2008.
• Germaine Krull; Dorothea Melchers (1964). Bangkok: Siam's City of Angels. London: Robert Hale Limited. pp. 191 pages. ASIN B0000CM48L.
• Lim, Victor. "The legendary Oriental Bangkok – the grand dame turns 130". Accessed 27 September 2008.
• O’Nell, Maryvelma (2008). Bangkok - A Cultural and Literary History. Oxford: Signal Books. pp. 248 pages. ISBN 978-1-904955-39-9.
• Samuels, David. "Taste of History". Accessed 26 September 2008.
• William Warren; Jill Gocher (2007). Asia's legendary hotels: the romance of travel. Singapore: Periplus Editions. pp. 120 pages. ISBN 978-0-7946-0174-4.

External links

• Official website
• Dining at Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
• The Oriental Spa at Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
• Travel and Leisure World's Best Awards 2009

*****************************

A Short History of Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok
by Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok



In the middle of the nineteenth century, a rest house for foreign seafarers was established on the banks of the Maenam River now known as Chao Phraya River. It was to become one of the world’s greatest hotels: The Oriental. Built in 1876, The Oriental, now Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok was the first luxury hotel in the Kingdom of Siam.

John le Carré completed The Honourable Schoolboy during his stay at The Oriental, W Somerset Maugham wrote about his bout with malaria during his stay at The Oriental in The Gentleman in the Parlour and Barbara Cartland named one of the heroines in Sapphires in Siam after an Oriental employee. Joseph Conrad, the sea captain and writer, was a frequent visitor to the bar of The Oriental, Vaslav Nijinsky danced in the ballroom in 1916 and playwright and actor Noël Coward treasured the memories of his favourite cocktail venue. Jim Thompson, the silk king, owned it, Peter Ustinov loved it and Graham Greene has a suite named in his honour. The Prince of Wales, The Queen of Sweden, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando are a few of the individuals who have called Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok their ‘home away from home’.


An early view of the Oriental Hotel from across the river

In 1865, the hotel’s original structure was destroyed in a fire and was replaced by the current structure in 1876. It was a Danish-born sailor, H.N. Andersen – the only Dane outside the Thai Royal Family to have been decorated with the Order of the White Elephant by the King of Siam – who resolved to give the Siamese capital a new hotel, a new modern luxurious Oriental Hotel.


Boats on the Chao Phraya River


H N Andersen


HM King Chulalongkorn, Rama V

Anderson appointed Italian architect firm Messrs Cardu and Rossi to design the Oriental building, which was subsequently constructed and withstood the ravages of time, and is today one of the proudest landmarks of Bangkok, a beautiful building that is both in use but also serves as a memorial and a promise, linking together the years past and present as well as those still to come.

On 17 December 1890, His Majesty King Chulalongkorn paid a private visit to The Oriental to assess the ability of the hotel to host royal guests. The King was so impressed that he decided to accommodate Crown Prince Nicholas of Russia, who became Tsar in 1894, at The Oriental in April 1891. It was the beginning of a long lasting relationship between the legendary hotel and Thailand’s Royal Palace.


‘New Road”, opened in 1864


Interior of the Authors’ Wing


The Bamboo Bar exterior 1947


Jim Thompson, the future “Thai Silk King”

A succession of owners followed, including Louis T. Leonowens, son of the famous Anna of ‘Anna and the King of Siam’. During the Second World War, the hotel was leased to the Japanese Army, which used it as an officers’ club under the management of the Imperial Hotel of Tokyo. At the end of the war it housed liberated Allied prisoners of war who, under the impression that it was a Japanese-owned property, ransacked the building and left it in urgent need of repair.

A partnership of six people each contributed US$250 to buy the hotel, and immediately began restoration. The partnership included Germaine Krull, a characterful Polish-born photographer who had served in the Pacific as a war correspondent for Agence France Presse, His Royal Highness Prince Bhanubandhu Yugala, a prominent Thai lawyer Pote Sarasin and two Americans, John Webster and Jim Thompson, who had served in the Organization for Strategic Security [Office of Strategic Services - OSS] and chose to stay on in Thailand. The Oriental reopened for business in June 1947. Ms. Krull took the position of manager and restored the hotel to its position as the premier hotel in Thailand and established the Bamboo Bar, which swiftly evolved into a city legend that endures to this day.


HM Queen Sirikit attended the Rotary Bazaar at the Oriental in 1966

In 1958, the ten-storey Garden Wing was added, home to Le Normandie, Bangkok’s first fine dining restaurant, and featured the city’s first elevator. In 1967, Krull sold her share to Italthai, which was founded in the mid-fifties by Italian-born Giorgio Berlingieri and Dr. Chaijudh Karnasuta, and at the time well on its way to becoming one of the country’s most significant mercantile groups. Berlingieri appointed 30-year old Kurt Wachtveitl, at that time manager of a hotel in Pattaya owned by Italthai, as General Manager of The Oriental. Wachtveitl remained at The Oriental until his retirement in 2009.

In 1972, the hotel bought the adjacent land from Chartered Bank, where it built the 350-room River Wing to complete the main body of the hotel as we know it today. An estate was acquired across the river and the celebrated Sala Rim Naam restaurant opened in 1983, followed by The Oriental Thai Cooking School, the first cooking school in Bangkok, and the Fitness Centre. The world renowned The Oriental Spa, the first spa within a hotel property in Bangkok, opened here in 1993 in an exquisite teak mansion. In 1992, the first Oriental Shop opened in Isetan – today there are four Mandarin Oriental Shops across the city catering to Bangkok’s discerning gourmands.


After construction of the River Wing, mid 1970s


Joseph Conrad in 1924


Noel Coward

In 1974, Mandarin International Hotels Limited, owner of The Mandarin in Hong Kong since 1963, was formed as a hotel management company and in expanding its interests in Asia, financed the building of the River Wing and therefore acquired a 45 percent stake in The Oriental. In 1985, the company rationalised its corporate structure by combining these two renowned properties under a common name, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. In 2008, The Oriental formally changed its name to Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok.

[admin]

Germaine Krull
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/29/20

-- A Promise Kept: Memoir of Tibetans in India [Excerpt], by Germaine Krull

-- Germaine Krull at Artnet

Germaine Luise Krull (20 November 1897 – 31 July 1985) was a photographer, political activist, and hotel owner.[1] Her nationality has been categorized as German,[2] French,[3] and Dutch,[4] but she spent years in Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Thailand, and India.[1] Described as "an especially outspoken example" of a group of early 20th-century female photographers who "could lead lives free from convention", she is best known for photographically-illustrated books such as her 1928 portfolio Métal.[5]

Biography

Krull was born in Posen-Wilda, a district of Posen (then in Germany; now Poznań, Poland), of an affluent German family.[1]:5–6 In her early years, the family moved around Europe frequently; she did not receive a formal education, but instead received homeschooling from her father, an accomplished engineer and a free thinker (whom some characterized as a "ne'er-do-well").[1]:6–7 Her father let her dress as a boy when she was young, which may have contributed to her ideas about women's roles later in her life.[6] In addition, her father's views on social justice "seem to have predisposed her to involvement with radical politics."[6]

Between 1915 and 1917 or 1918 she attended the Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Photographie, a photography school in Munich, Germany, at which Frank Eugene's teaching of pictorialism in 1907–1913 had been influential.[1]:9–13 She opened a studio in Munich in approximately 1918, took portraits of Kurt Eisner and others, and befriended prominent people such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Pollock, and Max Horkheimer.[1]:13–16

Krull was politically active between 1918 and 1921. In 1919 she switched from the Independent Socialist Party of Bavaria to the Communist Party of Germany, and was arrested and imprisoned for assisting a Bolshevik emissary's attempted escape to Austria.[1]:18–22 She was expelled from Bavaria in 1920 for her Communist activities, and traveled to Russia with lover Samuel Levit.[1]:24–25 After Levit abandoned her in 1921, Krull was imprisoned as an "anti-Bolshevik" and expelled from Russia.[1]:26–27

She lived in Berlin between 1922 and 1925 where she resumed her photographic career.[1]:29–43 She and Kurt Hübschmann (later to be known as Kurt Hutton) worked together in a Berlin studio between 1922 and 1924. Among other photographs Krull produced in Berlin were a series of nudes (recently disparaged by an unimpressed 21st-century critic as "almost like satires of lesbian pornography"[6]).

Having met Dutch filmmaker and communist Joris Ivens in 1923, she moved to Amsterdam in 1925.[1]:40–43 After Krull returned to Paris in 1926, Ivens and Krull entered into a marriage of convenience between 1927 and 1943 so that Krull could hold a Dutch passport and could have a "veneer of married respectability without sacrificing her autonomy."[1]:67–70[7]

Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens (18 November 1898 – 28 June 1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker and propagandist. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed are A Tale of the Wind,...

A Tale of the Wind is a 1988 French film directed by Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan. It is also known as A Wind Story. It stars Ivens as he travels in China and tries to capture winds on film, while he reflects on his life and career. The film blends real and fictional elements; it ranges from documentary footage to fantastical dream sequences and Peking opera. It was Ivens' last film.

-- A Tale of the Wind, by Wikipedia

The Spanish Earth,...

The Spanish Earth is a 1937 propaganda film made during the Spanish Civil War in support of the democratically elected Republicans, whose forces included a wide range from the political left like communists, socialists, anarchists, to moderates like centrists, and liberalist elements. The film was directed by Joris Ivens, written by John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, narrated by Orson Welles and re-recorded by Hemingway (with Jean Renoir doing the narration in the French release), with music composed by Marc Blitzstein and arranged by Virgil Thomson.

-- The Spanish Earth, by Wikipedia

Rain, ...A Valparaiso, Misère au Borinage (Borinage),...

Misère au Borinage (French, literally "Poverty in the Borinage"), also known as Borinage, was a 1934 Belgian documentary film directed by Henri Storck and Joris Ivens. Produced during the Great Depression, the film's theme was intensely socialist, covering the poor living conditions of the workers and coal miners of Belgium's industrialised Borinage region. It is considered a classic work of political cinema and has been described as "one of the most important references in the documentary genre".

Misère au Borinage was shot in black and white and is a silent film. Its intertitles are in French and Dutch languages. It opens with a title card, bearing the slogan: "Crisis in the Capitalist World. Factories are closed down, abandoned. Millions of proletarians are hungry!" and shows footage of the repression of a 1933 strike in Ambridge, Pennsylvania in the United States. The film then shifts to the Borinage, an industrial region in Belgium's Province of Hainaut, during and after the general strike of 1932. The majority of the film focuses on the plight of Borinage coal miners who have been evicted from their houses and made unemployed following their participation in the strike. It also shows the poor living conditions of the miners and their families. The film makes the argument that strike action could be justified by the poor conditions in which Belgian workers lived.

-- Misère au Borinage, by Wikipedia

17th Parallel: Vietnam in War,...

17th Parallel: Vietnam in War is a 1968 French documentary film directed by Joris Ivens. The film sets out to show the effects of the American bombing campaign on the Vietnamese people, who were mainly peasant farmers.

In 1968, between South Vietnam under the control of the US Army and North Vietnam struggling for independence, a demilitarized zone was created around the 17th parallel. Joris Ivens and his wife, Marceline Loridan, went to this area around the village of Vinh Linh for two months to live among the peasants who had taken refuge in cellars in an attempt to survive the incessant bombing of the American artillery.

-- 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War, by Wikipedia

The Seine Meets Paris, Far from Vietnam,...

In seven different segments, Godard, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais and Varda show their sympathy and support for the North Vietnamese army during the Vietnam war.

-- Far from Vietnam, by imdb

Pour le Mistral and How Yukong Moved the Mountains.

How Yukong Moved the Mountains is a series of 12 documentary films about China directed by Joris Ivens. This film, whose title references the old Chinese story of an old man who moved the mountains (Yugong Yishan), deals with the last days of the Cultural Revolution.

-- How Yukong Moved the Mountains, by Wikipedia

Born Georg Henri Anton Ivens into a wealthy family, Ivens went to work in one of his father's photo supply shops and from there developed an interest in film. Under the direction of his father, he completed his first film at 13; in college he studied economics with the goal of continuing his father's business, but an interest in class issues distracted him from that path. He met photographer Germaine Krull in Berlin in 1923, and entered into a marriage of convenience with her between 1927 and 1943...

In 1929, Ivens went to the Soviet Union and was invited to direct a film on a topic of his own choosing which was the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk. Before commencing work, he returned to the Netherlands to make Industrial Symphony for Philips Electric which is considered to be a film of great technical beauty. He returned to the Soviet Union to make the film about Magnitogorsk, Song of Heroes in 1931 with music composed by Hanns Eisler. This was the first film on which Ivens and Eisler worked together. It was a propaganda film about this new industrial city where masses of forced laborers and communist youth worked for Stalin's Five Year Plan. With Henri Storck, Ivens made Misère au Borinage (Borinage, 1933), a documentary on life in a coal mining region. In 1943, he also directed two Allied propaganda films for the National Film Board of Canada, including Action Stations, about the Royal Canadian Navy's escorting of convoys in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the Naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany, announced the day after the declaration of war, and Germany's subsequent counter-blockade. The campaign peaked from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943.

The Battle of the Atlantic pitted U-boats and other warships of the German Kriegsmarine (Navy) and aircraft of the Luftwaffe (Air Force) against the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, United States Navy, and Allied merchant shipping. Convoys, coming mainly from North America and predominantly going to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, were protected for the most part by the British and Canadian navies and air forces. These forces were aided by ships and aircraft of the United States beginning September 13, 1941. The Germans were joined by submarines of the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) after Germany's Axis ally Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940....

It involved thousands of ships in more than 100 convoy battles and perhaps 1,000 single-ship encounters, in a theatre covering millions of square miles of ocean. The situation changed constantly, with one side or the other gaining advantage, as participating countries surrendered, joined and even changed sides in the war, and as new weapons, tactics, counter-measures and equipment were developed by both sides. The Allies gradually gained the upper hand, overcoming German surface-raiders by the end of 1942 and defeating the U-boats by mid-1943, though losses due to U-boats continued until the war's end. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill later wrote "The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the 'Battle of Britain'."

-- Battle of the Atlantic, by Wikipedia

From 1936 to 1945, Ivens was based in the United States. For Pare Lorentz's U.S. Film Service, in the year 1940, he made a documentary film on rural electrification called Power and the Land. It focused on a family, the Parkinsons, who ran a business providing milk for their community. The film showed the problem in the lack of electricity and the way the problem was fixed.

Pare Lorentz (December 11, 1905 – March 4, 1992) was an American filmmaker known for his film work about the New Deal...

As the most influential documentary filmmaker of the Great Depression, Lorentz was the leading American advocate for government-sponsored documentary films. His service as a filmmaker for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II was formidable, including technical films, documentation of bombing raids, and synthesizing raw footage of Nazi atrocities for an educational film on the Nuremberg Trials. Nonetheless, Lorentz perennially will be known best as "FDR′s filmmaker."...

Roosevelt was impressed ... and in 1936, as president of the United States, invited Lorentz to make a government-sponsored film about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

Despite not having any film credits, Lorentz was appointed to the Resettlement Administration as a film consultant. He was given US$6,000 to make a film, which became The Plow That Broke the Plains, a film that showed the natural and man–made devastation caused by the Dust Bowl. Though the tight budget and his inexperience occasionally showed through in the film, Lorentz's script, combined with Thomas Hardie Chalmers′s narration and Virgil Thomson′s score, made the 30-minute movie powerful and moving. The film, which had its first public showing on May 10, 1936 at Washington, D.C′s Mayflower Hotel, had a preview screening in March at the White House. Roosevelt was impressed and, after his re-election in 1936, gave Lorentz the opportunity to make a film about one of the president's favorite subjects: conservation. Lorentz made The River, a film celebrating the exploits of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The TVA mitigated flooding but, more importantly to Lorentz and to Roosevelt, it put a stop to the prodigious pillaging of the forests by providing cheap, readily available hydro–electric power to a wide area. This film won the Best Documentary at the Venice International Film Festival. The text of The River appeared in book form, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry the same year. It generally is considered his most masterful work...

Lorentz served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, more specifically the Air Transport Command (ATC), accompanied by Floyd Crosby, who became an outstanding cinematographer during World War II. He was promoted to the rank of colonel. While serving, he made 275 pilot navigational films and minor documentaries for the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), and filmed over 2,500 hours of bombing raids. (Note: Lorentz's name is not associated with any OWI or USIA films; his son Pare Lorentz, Jr., may have worked on a USIA film though most of his work was for USAID.) In 1946, Lorentz made a federally funded movie about the Nuremberg trials, intended to help educate the German people as to what had happened during the war. In the process of compiling material, Lorentz reviewed over 1 million hours of footage about the Nazis and their atrocities. Nuremberg, the film that resulted, played to "capacity audiences" in Germany for two years. However, it was not released in the United States until 1979. This film was produced for the Civil Affairs Division of the Government of Military Occupation (OMGUS). Lorentz's role and contributions to this production are not entirely clear because he prematurely resigned and the Hollywood director Budd Schulberg is given credit for completing it.

-- Pare Lorentz, by Wikipedia

In 1938 he traveled to China. The 400 Million (1939) depicted the history of modern China and the Chinese resistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War, including dramatic shots of the Battle of Taierzhuang. Robert Capa did camerawork, Sidney Lumet worked on the film as a reader, Hanns Eisler wrote the musical score, and Fredric March provided the narration. It, too, had been financed by the same people as those of Spanish Earth. Its chief fundraiser was Luise Rainer, recipient of the best actress Oscar two years in a row; and the entire group called themselves this time, History Today, Inc . The Guomindang government censored the film, fearing that it would give too much credit to left-wing forces. Ivens was also suspected of being a friend of Mao Zedong and especially Zhou Enlai.

In early 1943, Frank Capra hired Ivens to supervise the production of Know Your Enemy: Japan for his U.S. War Department film series Why We Fight. The film's commentary was written largely by Carl Foreman. Capra fired Ivens from the project because he felt that his approach was too sympathetic toward the Japanese. The film's release was held up because there were concerns that Emperor Hirohito was being depicted as a war criminal, and there was a policy shift to portray the Emperor more favorably after the war as a means of maintaining order in post-war Japan.

With the emerging "Red Scare" of the late 1940s, Ivens was forced to leave the country in the early months of the Truman administration. Ivens' leftist politics also put the kibosh on his first feature film project which was to have starred Greta Garbo. In fact, Walter Wanger, the film's producer, was adamant about "running [Ivens] out of town."

In 1946, commissioned to make a Dutch film about Indonesian 'independence', Ivens resigned in protest over what he considered ongoing imperialism; the Dutch were in his view resisting decolonization. Instead, Ivens filmed Indonesia Calling in secret, for which he received funding from the International Workers Order.

Indonesia Calling is a 1946 Australian short documentary film directed by Joris Ivens and produced by the then Waterside Workers' Federation. The film gives a glimpse of immediate post-World War II Sydney as trade union seamen and waterside workers refuse to service Dutch ships (known as the "Black Armada") containing arms and ammunition destined for Indonesia to suppress the country's independence movement.

-- Indonesia Calling, by Wikipedia

For around a decade Ivens lived in Eastern Europe, working for several studios there. His position concerning Indonesia and his taking sides for the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War annoyed the Dutch government. Over a period of many years, he was obliged to renew his passport every three or four months....

From 1965 to 1970 he filmed two propaganda films about North Vietnam during the war: he made 17e parallèle: La guerre du peuple (17th Parallel: Vietnam in War) and he participated in the collective work Loin du Vietnam (Far from Vietnam). He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize for the year 1967.

From 1971 to 1977, he shot How Yukong Moved the Mountains, a 763-minute propaganda documentary about the Cultural Revolution in China. He was given unprecedented access because of his pro-communist views and his old personal friendships with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong.

-- Joris Ivens, by Wikipedia

In Paris between 1926 and 1928, Krull became friends with Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Eli Lotar, André Malraux, Colette, Jean Cocteau, André Gide and others; her commercial work consisted of fashion photography, nudes, and portraits.[1]:83–89 During this period she published the portfolio Métal (1928) which concerned "the essentially masculine subject of the industrial landscape."[5] Krull shot the portfolio's 64 black-and-white photographs in Paris, Marseille, and Holland during approximately the same period as Ivens was creating his film De Brug ("The Bridge") in Rotterdam, and the two artists may have influenced each other.[1]:70–77 The portfolio's subjects range from bridges, buildings (e.g., the Eiffel Tower), and ships to bicycle wheels; it can be read as either a celebration of machines or a criticism of them.[1]:77–82 Many of the photographs were taken from dramatic angles, and overall the work has been compared to that of László Moholy-Nagy and Alexander Rodchenko.[6] In 1999–2004 the portfolio was selected as one of the most important photobooks in history.[8][9][10][11]

By 1928 Krull was considered one of the best photographers in Paris, along with André Kertész and Man Ray.[1]:90 Between 1928 and 1933, her photographic work consisted primarily of photojournalism, such as her photographs for Vu, a French magazine.;[1]:97–112[5] also in the early 1930s,she also made a pioneering study of employment black spots in Britain for Weekly Illustrated (most of her ground-breaking reportage work from this period remains immured in press archives and she has never received the credit which is her due for this work).[12] Her book Études de Nu ("Studies of Nudes") published in 1930 is still well-known today.[5][10] Between 1930 and 1935 she contributed photographs for a number of travel and detective fiction books.[1]:113–125

In 1935–1940, Krull lived in Monte Carlo where she had a photographic studio.[13] Among her subjects during this period were buildings (such as casinos and palaces), automobiles, celebrities, and common people.[13] She may have been a member of the Black Star photojournalism agency which had been founded in 1935, but "no trace of her work appears in the press with that label."[1]:127

Black Star, also known as Black Star Publishing Company, was started by refugees from Germany who had established photographic agencies there in the 1930s. Today it is a New York City-based photographic agency with offices in London and in White Plains, New York. It is known for photojournalism, corporate assignment photography and stock photography services worldwide. It is noted for its contribution to the history of photojournalism in the United States. It was the first privately owned picture agency in the United States, and introduced numerous new techniques in photography and illustrated journalism. The agency was closely identified with Henry Luce's magazines Life and Time.

Black Star was formed in December 1935. The three founders were Kurt Safranski, Ernest Mayer and Kurt Kornfeld. In 1964, the company was sold to Howard Chapnick. The three founders; Safranski, Mayer and Kornfeld were German Jews who fled Berlin during the Nazi regime. They brought with them a wealth of knowledge and some new ideas for the American press.

Safranski was a graphic designer and editor for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ), which was part of the Ullstein publishing house. During the early 1930s, Ullstein Verlag was Germany's largest publisher of books, newspapers and magazines. BIZ's circulation was over one million. While an editor at BIZ, Safranski was using two or more photos placed together to create a story which surpassed the need for text. Not only was this visually appealing, but it attracted more readers as well.

This drew the attention of the top American mass media publishers. William Randolph Hearst, a powerful media mogul of the day, was intrigued by the European advances in photography and printing. Hearst invited Safranski over to the United States to produce a dummy magazine using photos to tell the stories. Hearst liked the proposed idea but initially didn't move forward on it. Mayer then brought to idea to the experimental editorial department of Henry Luce, the largest publisher of the day, with periodicals such as Time and Fortune. Luce collaborated with Black Star to produce a new weekly magazine called Life. Life would use artistic photos in a new format. These pictures would be large and take up the majority of the page. They could capture not only a moment in time, but an emotion and story that would be paramount to the text. Prior to this, photojournalism in the U.S. was relegated to regional newspapers where text was more important than photos. Photos would sometimes be staged or posed or re-created to help a news article. But this all changed with the advent of the 35mm camera. The Leica, which was developed in Germany in 1925, was a small and easier to use camera. Advances in half-tone printing made using photographs in periodicals easier. Safranski and Mayer were already familiar with photographers who used this new technology to capture more candid moments.

Mayer owned the publishing company and photo agency, Mauritius, in Berlin. Forced by the Nazis to sell his business, he brought negatives, and connections to European photographers with him to the United States. The contacts included the notable photographers Dr. Paul Wolff and Fritz Goro. These contacts with European-based photographers, and the photographic negatives he brought with him, became the foundation for the new business.

Kornfeld was a literary agent back in his native Germany where he had a talent for bringing together authors and editors. Originally the idea for the company was to be a publishing house and a photo agency just like Mayer's Mauritius. However, the publishing business never took off and more profit was to be found in selling photos. Even though he had no experience with photography, Kornfeld became Black Star's best picture agent. He had a talent for creating rapport between client and artist. Therefore, Kornfeld handled their most important client, Life magazine, providing up to 200 photos a week.

Although Life was the agency's most high-profile client, Black Star also served other periodicals, newspapers, advertisers and publishers. Its stock of iconic photography represents a pictorial history of the 20th century beginning in the 1930s. This archive was anonymously donated to Ryerson University in 2005.

Noted Black Star photographers include Robert Capa, Andreas Feininger, Germaine Krull, Philippe Halsman, Martin Munkácsi, Kurt Severin, W. Eugene Smith, Marion Post-Wolcott, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Charles Moore, James Nachtwey, Lee Lockwood, Mario Giacomelli and Spider Martin.

-- Black Star (photo agency), by Wikipedia

In World War II, she became disenchanted with the Vichy France government, and sought to join the Free French Forces in Africa.[6] Due to her Dutch passport and her need to obtain proper visas, her journey to Africa included over a year (1941–1942) in Brazil where she photographed the city of Ouro Preto.[1]:227–231 Between 1942 and 1944 she was in Brazzaville in French Equatorial Africa, after which she spent several months in Algiers and then returned to France.[1]:231–243

After World War II, she traveled to Southeast Asia as a war correspondent, but by 1946 had become a co-owner of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, a role that she undertook until 1966.[1]:245–252[6] She published three books with photographs during this period, and also collaborated with Malraux on a project concerning the sculpture and architecture of Southeast Asia.[1]:252–255

After retiring from the hotel business in 1966, she briefly lived near Paris, then moved to Northern India and converted to the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism.[1]:257–260 Her final major photographic project was the publication of a 1968 book Tibetans in India that included a portrait of the Dalai Lama.[1]:257–263 After a stroke, she moved to a nursing home in Wetzlar, Germany, where she died in 1985.[1]:265

Selected works

• Krull's archives are kept at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.
• Detroit Public Library Digital Collection houses a portrait of singer Adelaide Hall by Germaine Krull dated 1929, photographed during Blackbirds residency at the Moulin Rouge, Paris.[14]

Books

• Krull, Germaine. Métal. Paris: Librairie des arts décoratifs, 1928. (New facsimile edition published in 2003 by Ann and Jürgen Wilde, Köln.)
• Krull, Germaine. 100 x Paris. Berlin-Westend: Verlag der Reihe, 1929.
• Bucovich, Mario von. Paris. New York: Random House, 1930. (With photographs by Krull.)
• Colette. La Chatte. Paris: B. Grasset, 1930. (With photographs by Krull.)
• Krull, Germaine. Études de Nu. Paris: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, 1930.
• Nerval, Gérard de, and Germaine Krull. Le Valois. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1930.
• Warnod, André. Visages de Paris. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1930. (With photographs by Krull.)
• Krull, Germaine, and Claude Farrère. La Route Paris-Biarritz. Paris: Jacques Haumont, 1931.
• Morand, Paul, and Germaine Krull. Route de Paris à la Méditerranée. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1931.
• Simenon, Georges, and Germaine Krull. La Folle d'Itteville. Paris: Jacques Haumont, 1931.
• Krull, Germaine, and André Suarès. Marseille. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1935.
• Krull, Germaine, Raúl Lino, and Ruy Ribeiro Couto. Uma Cidade Antiga do Brasil, Ouro Preto. Lisboa: Edições Atlântico, 1943.
• Vailland, Roger. La Bataille d'Alsace (Novembre-Décembre 1944). Paris: Jacques Haumont, 1945. (With photographs by Krull.)
• Krull, Germaine. Chiengmai. Bangkok: Assumption Printing Press, 1950–1959?
• Krull, Germaine, and Dorothea Melchers. Bangkok: Siam's City of Angels. London: R. Hale, 1964.
• Krull, Germaine, and Dorothea Melchers. Tales from Siam. London: R. Hale, 1966.
• Krull, Germaine. Tibetans in India. Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1968.
• Krull, Germaine. La Vita Conduce la Danza. Firenze: Filippo Giunti, 1992. ISBN 88-09-20219-8. (Unpublished autobiography of Krull in French, La Vie Mène la Danse or "Life Leads the Dance", translated into Italian by Giovanna Chiti.)

Films

• Six pour Dix Francs (France, 1930)
• Il Partit pour un Long Voyage (France, 1932)

Further reading

• MacOrlan, Pierre. Germaine Krull: Photographes Nouveaux. Paris: Gallimard, 1931.
• Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. Germaine Krull: Fotografien 1922–1966. Köln: Rheinland-Verlag, 1977. ISBN 3-7927-0364-5.
• Bouqueret, Christian, and Michèle Moutashar. Germaine Krull: Photographie 1924–1936. Arles: Musée Réattu, 1988.
• Sichel, Kim. From Icon to Irony: German and American Industrial Photography. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. ISBN 1-881450-06-6.
• Kosta, Barbara. "She was a Camera." Women's Review of Books, volume 17, issue 7, pages 9–10, April 2000.
• Sichel, Kim. "Germaine Krull and L'Amitié Noire: World War II and French Colonialist Film." In Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place, edited by Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-27495-8.
• Sichel, Kim. Germaine Krull: Photographer of Modernity, The MIT Press, 1999; ISBN 0262194015; ISBN 978-0262194013
• Specker, Heidi. Bangkok - Heidi Specker Germaine Krull im Sprengel-Museum Hannover, 9. Oktober 2005 bis 25. Juni 2006. Zülpich: Albert-Renger-Patzsch-Archiv, 2005. ISBN 3-00-017658-6.
• Sichel, Kim. Germaine Krull à Monte-Carlo = Germaine Krull: the Monte Carlo Years. Montréal: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, 2006. ISBN 2-89192-306-5.
• Bertolotti, Alessandro. Books of Nudes. New York: Abrams, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8109-9444-7.
• Dumas, Marie Hélène. "Lumières d'Exil". Paris: Gallimard and Éditions Joëlle Losfeld, 2009. ISBN 978-2-07-078770-8. (A novel in French about Krull's life.)

References

1. Sichel, Kim. Germaine Krull: Photographer of Modernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1999. ISBN 0-262-19401-5.
2. "New National Museum of Monaco Exhibition: Three Questions to Jean-Michel Bouhours, Chief Curator". Government of Monaco. 3 August 2007. Archived from the original on February 24, 2010. Retrieved 16 April 2010.
3. Union List of Artist Names. "Krull, Germaine (French Photographer, 1897–1985)". J. Paul Getty Trust. Retrieved 16 April2010.
4. "Maker List" (PDF). J. Paul Getty Museum, Department of Photographs. December 2006. Retrieved 16 April 2010.
5. Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers, 2nd edition. New York: Abbeville Press, 2000. ISBN 0-7892-0658-7.
6. Baker, Kenneth. "Germaine Krull's Radical Vision / Photographer's Work Featured at SFMOMA." San Francisco Chronicle, 15 April 2000. Retrieved 4 April 2010.
7. Schoots, Hans. Living Dangerously: a Biography of Joris Ivens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000. ISBN 90-5356-433-0.
8. Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919–1939. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 1999. ISBN 84-8026-125-0.
9. Roth, Andrew, editor. The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the 20th Century. New York: PPP Editions in association with Roth Horowitz LLC, 2001. ISBN 0-9670774-4-3.
10. Parr, Martin, and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: a History. Volume I. London & New York: Phaidon, 2004. ISBN 0-7148-4285-0.
11. Roth, Andrew, editor. The Open Book: a History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present. Göteborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center, 2004.
12. Ian Jeffrey,text written by.The Photo Book. London: Phaidon, 2000. p.255.
13. "Portrait of Hedonism with Glasses Half Empty." The Gazette (Montreal), 30 December 2006.
14. Portrait of singer Adelaide Hall by Germaine Krull, Paris, 1929":https://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A198931

External links

• Germaine Krull: Jeu de Paume exhibition, 2015
• O'Hagan, Sean Germaine Krull: the woman Man Ray named his equal
• "Germaine Krull, German Photographer" (slide show with 42 images).
• "In plain sight: Germaine Krull in Paris, The work of the maverick photographer gains new exposure in an exhibition in the French capital," by Claire Holland, The Financial Times, June 13-14, 2015
• "Contortions of Technique: Germaine Krull’s Experimental Photography," by Kim Sichel. In Mitra Abbaspour, Lee Ann Daffner, and Maria Morris Hambourg, eds. Object:Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection 1909–1949. An Online Project of The Museum of Modern Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014.

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Germaine Krull: 1897 — POZNAŃ, POLAND | 1985 — WETZLAR, GERMANY
German naturalised French photographer
by AwareWomenArtists.com


Germaine Krull, Autoportrait, Paris, 1927, gelatin silver print, 23.9 x 17.9 cm, Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, André Malraux, 1930, gelatin silver print, 23 x 17.3 cm, Museum Folkwang, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang, Essen


Germaine Krull, Assia, de profil, ca. 1930, gelatin silver print, 22.2 x 15.8 cm, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Au bon coin, Paris, 1929, gelatin silver print, 14.2 x 10.5 cm, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Étude publicitaire pour Paul Poiret, 1926, Centre Pompidou, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Jean Cocteau, 1929, gelatin silver print, 23.7 x 17,2 cm, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Nu féminin, 1928, gelatin silver print, 21.6 x 14.4 cm, Centre Pompidou, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Pol Rab (illustrateur), 1930, photomontage, gelatin silver print, 19.5 x 14.5 cm, Amsab-Institut d’Histoire Sociale, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Pont roulant, Rotterdam, ca. 1928, gelatin silver print, 21.9 x 15.3 cm, Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Publicité Gibbs L’Illustration, N 4533, 18 janvier 1930, 1930, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang


Germaine Krull, Rue Auber à Paris, ca. 1928, gelatin silver print, MoMA, © Estate Germaine Krull, Museum Folkwang, Essen


Germaine Krull, Usine électrique Issy les Moulineaux, 1928, gelatin silver print, 22.6 x 16.6 cm, Amsab-Institut d’Histoire Sociale, © Estate Germaine Krull/ Museum Folkwang

Considered in France as the representative of (New Objectivity), a German realist movement that introduced geometric motifs to photography, Germaine Krull remains known as the woman of Métal, named after one of her prestigious series. Born in Germany she had a hectic youth: expelled from Munich in 1918 thanks to her revolutionary activities, she moved to Berlin and began specialising in portraiture. Well integrated in the Berlin art scene, she published in literary magazines and photographed buildings and train tracks from new angles, focusing predominantly on the geometry of the city. From 1921 she lived in the Netherlands, where from 1924 to 1925 she and her future husband, filmmaker Joris Ivens, used industrial architecture as their main subject. She arrived in Paris in 1926, connecting with the Parisian artistic scene, working in fashion with Sonia Delaunay, and in commercial and industrial photography for Peugeot and Shell. With the help of Robert Delaunay she exhibited her series Métal – comprised of Dutch bridges, low-angle shots of the Eiffel Tower and images of automobiles – at the Salon d’automne. The 64 plates were published under the same name by the publisher Calavas in 1927. Despite the mediocre printing quality, Métal was a success and appeared to be the manifesto of a new vision. These reversed photographs reveal an interplay of volumes, abstract details and geometric motifs, and through their unusual cropping constitute a “manifesto of the modern perspective”, according to Christian Bouqueret, and symbolise the new aesthetic awareness of industrial beauty.

During the same period, her nude photographs of the young model Assia show fragments of the body that slip into abstraction (1930). At the end of the 1920s she had gained recognition and Walter Benjamin included her in A Short History of Photography (1931). She appeared thus as the leader of the Nouvelle Vision (New vision), a movement that considered photography, with its technical and artistic possibilities, as giving a new perspective of the world. Her portrait of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1930) is emblematic of the style: tight framing, low-angle lighting and theatricality. In 1928 she exhibited at the first Salon des indépendants de la photographie, known as the Salon de l’escalier, in Paris, at Film und Foto in Stuttgart in 1929, and later in Munich and Brussels. She spent time with Berenice Abbott, André Kertész and Man Ray, and worked in close collaboration with Eli Lotar with whom she realised photomontages and exchanged negatives. During the same period, she worked for illustrated magazines (Vu, Voilà, Détective, Jazz) at the height of their golden years. She realised series on diverse subjects, such as the banks of the Seine, the Spanish Revolution and Javanese dancers. Her preference was for the Paris of Francis Carco and Pierre Mac Orlan – a marginal, working-class Paris. She photographed the zone and created a reportage on the homeless. She also participated in a series of books on the capital (Paris by Mario von Bucovich, 1928, 100 x Paris, 1929). In 1931 a monograph titled Germaine Krull was published in the collection “Photographes nouveaux” with texts by Pierre Mac Orlan was a “true consecration”, of her, as C. Bouqueret wrote. She then travelled throughout Europe and moved to the South of France where she conducted local reports. A discreet activist and friend of André Malraux, she emigrated to the United States in 1940, then to Brazil, and joining the Resistance. She directed the photographic service of Free France and photographed General De Gaulle in Algiers. After 1945 she become a war reporter in Germany, Italy and Indochina for various newspapers and illustrated magazines. She then left for Thailand and India, returning to Germany just before her death. Thanks to A. Malraux, a retrospective of her work was presented at the Cinémathèque Française in 1967, and some of her photographs were exhibited at Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977. During her lifetime, she did not receive recognition as a photographer, probably because of the loss of her old negatives, recently found, and the dispersion of her production during the interwar years. However, internationally known for her engagement and personality, she has influenced entire generations of photographers.

Anne Reverseau

Translated from French by Katia Porro.

From the Dictionnaire universel des créatrices
© 2013 Des femmes – Antoinette Fouque
© Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions

*********************************


Artist: Germaine Krull (German, 1897–1985)Title: Two nude studies from der akt , ca. 1925Medium:
photogravures; size: 10.2 x 8.3 cm. (4 x 3.3 in.)


Nus, 1924, Collection Dietmar Siegert


Autoportrait à l’Icarette, vers 1925; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle; Achat grâce au mécénat de Yves Rocher, 2011. Ancienne collection Christian Bouqueret; Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/image Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI


Architecture ancienne : imprimerie de l’Horloge, 1928; Amsab-Institut d’Histoire Sociale, Gand


Étalage : les mannequins, 1928; Amsab-Institut d’Histoire Sociale, Gand


Marseille, juin 1930; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Thomas Walther Collection; Gift of Thomas Walther; Photo © 2015. Digital Image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence


Étude pour La Folle d’Itteville, 1931; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle; Achat grâce au mécénat de Yves Rocher, 2011 Ancienne collection Christian Bouqueret; Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, ;Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Guy Carrard


Cérémonie religieuse tibétaine, offrande; de l’écharpe blanche, vers 1960; Museum Folkwang, Essen

[admin]

Alpha Females: Deadlier Than the Male?
by Gill Corkindale
Harvard Business Review
November 09, 2007

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on alpha males. Since then I’ve been wondering about their female counterparts. The received wisdom seems to be that alpha females are pretty much an extension of the alpha male profile, but I’m not so sure. In fact, I have been wondering, is female of the species deadlier than the male?

Just for a moment I want to put aside all the usual debates about women at work — the glass ceiling, the difficulties of combining a career with a family, the prejudices, age, appearance, and the different standards of behaviour for men and women. Instead, I want to look at alpha females as a unique phenomenon, something that transcends the usual commentary about women in the workplace.

The first thing I’ve noticed is that alpha females are usually one-off characters, women who defy categorisation. Unlike alpha males, who like to be part of a pack, it’s difficult to put them in a group as they seem to rise above any stereotyping. The second thing is that they are instantly recognisable. You immediately know when an alpha female walks into the room. The third point is that they can be surprising and full of contradictions.

In London there are a number of alpha females who are worth studying. Here are three who have stood out in recent years for being truly impressive and groundbreaking in their respective fields and I am sure there are many more who will come to light in the coming years.

The first is Nicola Horlick, a 46-year-old billion dollar fund manager who was dubbed ‘Superwoman’ in the 1990s for combined an adrenalin-charged career with bringing up seven children (one of whom died of leukemia. Last year, she fought off an armed robber who tried to mug her outside her home. Even though she had a handgun pushed into her stomach and was pistol-whipped across the back of her head, she fought off the attackers and was back at work the next day, sporting a large bruise from the attack. Ms Horlick ascribed her success to her support systems, her mother, nanny, and husband. “It is women that do not have or cannot afford this type of support that are the real superwomen,” she has said.

Next is Karren Brady, the 38-year-old managing director of Birmingham City Football Club, the first woman to hold such a post in English league soccer. Appointed in 1992, when she was only 23, she was responsible for its flotation in 1997 and became the youngest Managing Director of a UK plc in the process. She has written four books: two novels, a factual account of her first season at the club, and Playing to Win, about successful women in business. [[Shas two childrean and had brain surgery last year, aged 36.?]] Ms Brady says 10 principles kept her going through the good and bad times: ambition, determination, courage, charm, hard work, attitude, humour, confidence, focus and communication.

Finally, Dame Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, Britain’s home intelligence service, burst on to the landscape over a decade ago when the service decided to increase public transparency and reveal details of its activities. Under intense public scrutiny and pressure, MI5’s real-life ‘M’ guided the service into a new era of modernity and, upon retirement, wrote her memoir and several novels. “My whole life has been a surprise to me because I never expected a career at all and I certainly would not have expected to be director general of MI5,” she said.

These women are all very different in personality and approach, but a common thread is that their lives and career paths have not always run smoothly. Each has shown, courage, determination and dogged belief in themselves, their people and their organisations during hard times. It is this, together with their intellect, style that marks them out as true alpha females.

Interestingly, Britain has always had a strong alpha female in public life right down the ages, from Boudicca, the Celtic queen who led an uprising against the Romans, to Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher and the current Queen. A clue to why this is so can be found in the work of Geert Hofstede, the Dutch expert on culture. He believes that societies place different values on traditionally male or female values, with Japan being the most ‘masculine’ culture and Sweden the most ‘feminine’. Britain is unusual in that its culture is balanced between the two, with females often displaying male values and males female values — which might make the Britain the best place to be if you are an alpha female.

Are you an alpha female or do you work with one? What are their characteristics? What do you think distinguishes them from alpha males?

[admin]

A Journey Through the Past: Thailand 1967-1971
by Maxmilian Wechsler
BigChilli
9/2/2018

As pointed out by renowned scientist Carl Sagan, ‘You have to know the past to understand the present’. If for no other reason, the events that shaped modern-day Thailand are worth revisiting to get an understanding of how the country has developed. Starting from February, The BigChilli will recap important news stories of the past 50 years, from 1967 to 2017, a period in which Thailand made the remarkable journey from Southeast Asian backwater to one of the world’s premier tourist destinations. Each issue will cover a five-year period and is sure to offer surprises for even the most knowledgeable Thai history buffs.

1967

1967 was the year Thai Rung Engineering Company was founded by Vichien Phaoenchoke. It was the first and only Thai automobile manufacturing company. Other major news stories of 1967 include:

January

• For the first time Thai troops were deployed to South Vietnam. About 1,000 Thai soldiers joined in military operations alongside South Vietnamese forces backed by the US.
• Nobel Prize-winning American author John Steinbeck arrived in Bangkok following a four-month ‘fact-finding mission’ to Vietnam. Steinbeck predicted that the US would win the war and condemned anti-war protesters.

March

• US officials admitted for the first time that the US planes were using Thai bases to bomb North Vietnam. Around 35,000 US personnel were stationed in Thailand at the time.
• American Jim Thompson failed to return from a trip to Malaysia. It was learned that he disappeared in the jungle around the Cameron Highlands after taking a walk from a cottage where he was staying. Thompson was a former intelligence officer who had been attached to the US Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA). He settled in Thailand in 1946 and was responsible for making Thai silk famous around the world.

James Harrison Wilson Thompson (March 21, 1906 – March 26, 1967 disappeared) was an American businessman who helped revitalise the Thai silk industry in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time of his disappearance he was one of the most famous Americans living in Asia. Time magazine claimed he "almost singlehanded(ly) saved Thailand's vital silk industry from extinction".

Jim Thompson was born in Greenville, Delaware in 1906. He was the youngest of five children of Henry and Mary Thompson. His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer; his mother was the daughter of James Harrison Wilson (1837–1925), a noted Union general during the American Civil War....

From 1931 to 1940, he practised in New York City with Holden, McLaughlin & Associates, designing homes for the East Coast rich. During this period, he led an active social life and sat on the board of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

The Original Ballet Russe (originally named Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo) was a ballet company established in 1931 by René Blum and Colonel Wassily de Basil as a successor to the Ballets Russes, founded in 1909 by Sergei Diaghilev. The company assumed the new name Original Ballet Russe after a split between de Basil and Blum. De Basil led the renamed company, while Blum and others founded a new company under the name Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. It was a large scale professional ballet company which toured extensively in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the United States, and Central and South America. It closed down operations in 1947.

-- Original Ballet Russe, by Wikipedia

In 1941, he quit his job and enlisted with the Delaware National Guard. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, he was transferred to a military outpost in Fort Monroe, Virginia. While he was here, he got to know Second Lieutenant Edwin Fahey Black, a fresh graduate from the US Military Academy, West Point. It was Black who encouraged him to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

At the height of the Second World War, Thompson was recruited by major general William Joseph Donovan (1883–1959) to serve as an operative in the OSS.

His first assignment was with the French Resistance in North Africa. He was then sent to Europe. After Victory in Europe Day (May 7–8, 1945), he was transferred to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to work with the pro-Allied Seri Thai (Free Thai Movement). Their mission was to help liberate Thailand from the occupying Japanese Army. The group had the support of Pridi Panomyong, the regent to King Ananda Mahidol of Thailand, and Seni Pramoj, the Thai ambassador to the United States.

In August 1945, Thompson was about to be sent into Thailand, when the Surrender of Japan officially ended World War II. He arrived in Thailand shortly after Victory over Japan Day and organised the Bangkok OSS office. It was here he got to know Constance (Connie) Mangskau, an Allied Services translator, who later became one of his closest friends.

In the spring of 1946, Thompson went to work as military attaché at the United States legation for his former Princeton classmate Charles Woodruff Yost, the US Minister to Thailand. Thompson used his contacts with the Free Thai and Free Lao groups to gather information and defuse conflicts on Thailand's borders. Working with him in the Legation was Kenneth Landon, an American missionary whose wife, Margaret Landon, was the author of Anna and the King of Siam, which was the inspiration for a 1946 film of the same name, and The King and I in 1956.

In late 1946, Thompson headed for home to seek his discharge from the army. After his divorce from Patricia Thraves (1920–1969), he returned to Thailand to join a group of investors to buy The Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. While working on its restoration, he had some differences with his associates and this resulted in him giving up his shares. He subsequently switched his focus to silk.

In 1948,[13] he partnered with George Barrie to found the Thai Silk Company Limited. It was capitalised at US$25,000. They each bought eighteen percent of the shares. The remaining sixty-four percent were sold to Thai and foreign investors.

The firm achieved a coup in 1951 when designer Irene Sharaff made use of Thai silk fabrics for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I. From then on, the company prospered.... It was only after Thompson's disappearance that the Thai Silk Company relocated its weaving operations to Korat, a city which serves as a base of operations for the Royal Thai Army....

In 1958, he began what was to be the pinnacle of his architectural achievement – the construction of a new home to showcase his objets d'art.

Using parts of old up-country houses – some as old as a hundred years – he succeeded in constructing a masterpiece that involved the reassembling of six Thai dwellings on his estate. Most of the units were dismantled and brought over by river from Ayutthaya, but the largest – a weaver's house (now the living room) – came from Bangkrua. On arrival, the woodwork was offloaded and pieced together....

After he was through with its creation, he filled his home with the items he had collected in the past. Decorating his rooms were Chinese blue-and-white Ming pieces, Belgian glass, Cambodian carvings, Victorian-era chandeliers, Benjarong earthenware, Thai stone images, Burmese statues, and a dining table which was once used by King Rama V of Thailand....

Thompson disappeared from Malaysia's Cameron Highlands on Sunday, March 26, 1967. His disappearance from the hill station generated one of the largest land searches in Southeast Asian history, and is one of the most famous mysteries in the region.

-- Jim Thompson (designer), by Wikipedia

• Chulalongkorn University, Thailand’s first university named after King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), celebrated its 50th anniversary. Their Majesties King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit opened the festivities which took place on the campus over a three-day period.

June

• A fascinated crowd watched the first Thai colour TV show on eight 24-inch colour sets placed outside the Royal Hotel in Bangkok. TV sets were sold in the shops but cost at least twice as much as black and white sets.

September

• Thai security forces arrested 37 members of the Communist Party of Thailand, both males and females, including some alleged leaders. Most of the arrests were made in Bangkok. Under the Article 17 of the new interim constitution those arrested faced a possible death sentence.

October

• An emotional ceremony was held for the first two Thai soldiers killed in Vietnam. The soldiers were reportedly killed by a booby trap while on patrol near Saigon. Their bodies were flown to Don Muang airport.
• Establishment of Prince of Songkhla University, the first university in southern Thailand. The King christened the university in honour of his father, His Royal Highness Prince Mahidol Adulyadej, Prince of Songkhla. An initial plan to construct the university in Pattani province was scrapped and Hat Yai in Songkhla province was chosen instead.

November

• Establishment of the Association of Thai Industries (FTA), a private sector organization designed to assist and promote Thai industries.
• The Dalai Lama arrived in Bangkok at the invitation of the Buddhist Association of Thailand. While in Thailand he met with local religious leaders and government officials including Prince Dhani Nivat, president of the Privy Council, and Prime Minister Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn.

Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn (11 August 1911 – 16 June 2004) was a Thai military dictator. A staunch anti-communist, Thanom oversaw a decade of military rule in Thailand from 1963 to 1973, during which he staged a self-coup, until public protests which exploded into violence forced him to step down. His return from exile in 1976 sparked protests which led to a massacre of demonstrators, followed by a military coup....

After serving in the Shan States of Burma during World War II, then Lieutenant Colonel Thanom took part in a successful 1947 coup headed by Colonel Sarit Thanarat. He became a regimental commander and was head of the Lopburi military department. He was soon promoted to colonel, commanding the 11th Infantry Division. Thanom was appointed a member of parliament in 1951, his first political role. He was promoted to major general the same year.

In February 1953, Thanom led the suppression of a rebellion against military rule, and was rewarded with promotion to lieutenant general. He represented Thailand at the ceremony to mark the end of the Korean War in July 1953 and was later promoted as commander of the 1st Region Army.

He was appointed deputy cooperatives minister in 1955. Thanom supported Sarit in his coup against the government of Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, and was subsequently appointed defence minister in Pote Sarasin's puppet regime in 1957.

Pote Sarasin (Thai: พจน์ สารสิน, RTGS: Phot Sarasin, pronounced [pʰót sǎː.rā.sǐn]; 25 March 1905 – 28 September 2000) was a Thai diplomat and politician from the influential Sarasin family. He served as foreign minister from 1949 to 1951 and then served as ambassador to the United States. In September 1957 when Sarit Thanarat seized power in a military coup, he appointed Pote to be the acting prime minister. He resigned in December 1957. Pote also served as the first Secretary General of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization from September 1957 until 1964....

Pote was a scion of the Sarasin family, one of Bangkok's oldest and wealthiest assimilated Chinese families. The Sarasins had always cultivated good relations with the bureaucratic elite of the 19th century, and by the early 1950s held substantial interests in real estate and rice trading. His father, Thian Hee (Chinese: 黄天喜, whose official title was Phraya Sarasinsawamiphakh), was the son of a traditional Chinese doctor and pharmacist who had immigrated from Hainan to Siam in the early 19th century.

Pote's sons are Pong, a leading businessman, Police General Pao, who once served as the Chief of the Royal Thai Police, and Arsa, who, like his father, was also one of the former foreign ministers of Thailand and was serving as the late King Bhumibol's Principal Private Secretary. All three sons–Pong, Arsa and Pao Sarasin had all served as the Deputy Prime Ministers of Thailand.

-- Pote Sarasin, by Wikipedia

Thanom consolidated his power base as the second military leader and right-hand man of Sarit. A few days after the December 1957 general election, in which the pro-government Sahaphum Party ("United Land") had performed disappointingly, Thanom co-founded the National Socialist Party (Chat Sangkhomniyom).

National Socialist Party was a short-lived pro-military political party in Thailand. It was founded on 21 December 1957 by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat.

-- National Socialist Party (Thailand)

He became the deputy leader of this party, designed to extend the pro-government camp and win over former members of Phibunsongkhram's Seri Manangkhasila Party who had been reelected to parliament as independents.

In 1958, he was made a full general and assumed the offices of prime minister and defence minister. He was prime minister for nine months, after which he was replaced by Sarit himself and made deputy prime minister, defence minister, and armed forces deputy supreme commander.

Thanom was appointed prime minister one day after Sarit's death in 1963. He subsequently appointed himself commander-in-chief of the army. One year later, he promoted himself to the concurrent ranks of field marshal, admiral of the fleet, and Marshal of the Royal Thai Air Force. Thanom continued the pro-American and anti-communist politics of his predecessor, which helped to ensure massive US economic and financial aid during the Vietnam War. Although he was personally popular, his regime was known for massive corruption. He established and led the United Thai People's Party (Saha Prachathai) in October 1968.

Thanom reappointed himself prime minister in February 1969 after general elections had been completed. The following year saw the beginnings of the 1970s peasant revolts in Thailand. Then, in November 1971, he staged a coup against his own government, citing the need to suppress communist infiltration. He dissolved parliament and appointed himself Chairman of the National Executive Council, and served as a caretaker government for one year. In December 1972, he appointed himself prime minister for a fourth time, also serving as the defence and foreign ministers. Thanom, his son Colonel Narong, and Narong's father-in-law General Praphas Charusathien became known as the "three tyrants".

Public discontent grew, along with demands for a general election to choose a new parliament. Student-led demands for a return to constitutional government, the so-called "14 October 1973 uprising", led to three days of violence followed by the sudden downfall of his government. Thanom and the other "tyrants" flew to exile in the United States and Singapore. Thanom's departure was followed by a restoration of a democratic rule in Thailand.

In October 1976, Thanom returned to Thailand in the robes of a novice monk, to stay at Bangkok's Wat Bowonniwet. Even though he announced he had no desire to enter politics, his return triggered student protests, which eventually moved onto the campus of Thammasat University. This was only a year after South Vietnam and Thailand's neighbors Laos and Cambodia had fallen to the communists, and right-wing Thais suspected the protesters wished the same fate for their own country. On 6 October 1976, right-wing militants, aided by government security forces, stormed the Thammasat campus, violently broke up the protests, and killed many protesters. That evening, the military seized power from the elected civilian government of Democrat MR Seni Pramoj and installed hard-line royalist Thanin Kraivichien as premier.

Thanom soon left the monkhood, but he kept his word never to take part in politics again. Late in his life, he attempted to rehabilitate his tarnished image and recover properties seized when his government was overthrown.

In March 1999, Thanom was nominated to be a member of the honorary Royal Guard by Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, which led to controversy. Thanom settled the matter himself by turning down the appointment.

-- Thanom Kittikachorn, by Wikipedia

• According to the Public Health Ministry, the incidence of venereal diseases had increased in Thailand by 50 percent over the previous five years. The ministry said most infections were contracted through prostitutes and asked the United Nations for assistance. The UN Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization promised to help.
• Jacqueline Kennedy, the widow of assassinated US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, visited Thailand. She met with the King and Queen during her short stay.
• The first Thailand National Games, also known as Phra Nakhon 1967, were held in Bangkok. The multi-sport venue hosted 103 events in 15 disciplines. A total of 716 athletes from all regions of the country participated in the games.

1968

1968 was the year the separatist Islamic group called Pattani United Liberation Organization was formed, with the aim of using military and political means to achieve independence for Muslim-majority areas of southern Thailand.

January

• PM Thanom announced that US warplanes taking off from Thai air force bases were bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. It was the first official admission that US bombing raids were launched from Thai soil. The PM justified the action by saying it was “for the defence of our country”.
• The Shan of Iran and Empress Farah made a week-long state visit to Thailand. They were greeted at Don Muang Airport by the King and the Queen, who had visited Iran in February 1967.
• Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda made a five-day state visit to Thailand during which they met with the King and the Queen.

February

• PM Thanom inaugurated Thailand’s first steel manufacturing plant, GS Steel, in a ceremony in Samut Prakan province. The plant was a joint venture between GS and Japan’s Mitsubishi Shoki Kaisha and Kawaishi-Gisho companies. The plant complex consisted of 14 buildings.

March

• Around 1,000 taxi drivers formed the Taxi Drivers Cooperative, making it the first labour union in Thailand. The stated aim of the cooperative was to improve the working conditions of taxi drivers and provide a better experience for passengers.
• Tanayong Public Company Limited was founded. Now called BTS Group Holding, the company is the majority shareholder of Bangkok Mass Transit System PCL, which operates both the BTS Skytrain and Bangkok BRT.

May

• The country’s first satellite communications earth station was opened at Tung Sukhla in Si Racha district of Chonburi province. The station was linked to an IntelSat II satellite in orbit 22.300 miles above the Pacific Ocean, facilitating communication by voice, television and data. It was the first such station in Southeast Asia.
• Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie made a state visit to Thailand lasting three days, during which he met with the King. His Majesty said that the Emperor’s visit “marks the first time that a reigning monarch from Africa has made a state visit to Thailand” and praised the Emperor’s “wise and benevolent leadership”.

July

• For the first time in Thai medical history doctors at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok succeeded in separating conjoined twins. The twins were joined at the liver and the complicated procedure to separate them was performed by a team of five Thai doctors led by the chief of the hospital’s paediatrics department, Dr Snoh Indrasukhsri.

August

• Popular 38-year-old singer Surapol Sombatcharoen, hailed as ‘Thailand’s Elvis’, was shot dead by an assassin after getting into his car at a car park following a performance at Saengchand Theatre in Nakhon Pathom province. Thousands of mourners came to his funeral at Wat Paknam in Thonburi.

October

• The last nine trams were removed from Bangkok streets after it was determined they were too expensive to maintain and they blocked vehicular traffic. The trams had been introduced to Bangkok about 70 years earlier.

November

• The first King’s Cup, the country’s first international football tournament organized by the Football Association of Thailand, kicked off at National Stadium and carried on to December. The Cup was won by Indonesia, who beat Burma 1-0 in the final. Thailand finished third. Three bottle bombs exploded during a semifinal between Thailand and Burma, injuring seven spectators at the stadium. Authorities suspected that the incident was the work of communist insurgents.

December

• The King opened the National Cancer Institute on Rama IV Road near Ramathibodi Hospital. The institute was partially financed by Japan. The King proclaimed December 10 as Anti-Cancer Day.

1969

1969 saw the transition of Assumption University, established in 1938, to an autonomous educational institution, as well as the founding of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Surat Thani province. The area was evangelized by the Salesians of Don Bosco in the 1930s. 1969 was also the year Sahakol Air was formed as an air-taxi service. It was the first privately owned domestic airline in Thailand and under contract to the Overseas International Construction Company, US Operation Mission and other organizations involved in oil and natural gas exploration in the Gulf of Thailand. The airline was rebranded as Bangkok Airways in 1989.

February

• An IBM 1800 computer was delivered to Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, a gift from the US Pentagon. The computer was installed inside the Engineering Faculty. The computer was intended for scientific and industrial work and also available to American and Thai military personnel.
• A professional bout between two Thai boxers at Ratchadamnoen Stadium was refereed by former world heavyweight boxing champion Rocco Francis Marchegiano, better known as Rocky Marciano. About 12,000 people were in attendance. Marciano won all 49 fights of his career, 43 by KO.
• The first national election in 11 years was held. More than 1,500 candidates from a dozen parties and independents vied for 219 seats in the House of Representatives. PM Thanom’s United Thai People Party won 75 seats and 72 went to independents. After the elections 30 of the 72 independents joined the UTPP.

April

• A US Air Force EC-121 spy plane crashed on takeoff near Korat killing all 18 crew-members. The crash was in an unpopulated area about five kilometers northwest of Korat’s Royal Thai Air Force Base.

May

• Three electricity generating companies, Yanhee Electricity Authority, Lignite Electricity and Northeast Electricity Authority joined to form the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT). The merger was designed to reduce costs. EGAT became the largest power producer in Thailand.
• Fifty three Thai fishermen were freed by Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk after spending five to eight years in Cambodian custody. The fishermen had been captured in Cambodian waters, charged with illegal fishing and jailed. The Burmese Ambassador representing Thai interests in Cambodia was partly responsible for the release.

June

• The King authorized the purchase of new printing presses to produce high quality banknotes. The Bank of Thailand’s Banknote Printing Division said that using high quality paper and modern printing techniques machines would deter counterfeiters. The first running of the new presses produced notes of five and 10 baht denomination.

July

• US President Richard Nixon and his wife Pat made a visit to Thailand and were received by the King and the Queen. They also met with PM Thanom and other officials, including the Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger joined the president in various meetings.

August

• PM Thanom told the National Cultural Council to ban mini-skirts.

September

• English language bookseller Asia Books was established.
• The US began the withdrawal of 48,000 troops and giant B52 bombers from Thailand amid growing anti-war protests and increasing criticism from Congress on the management of the war. State Department Secretary William Rogers said Congress was worried that the US could be dragged into another land war in Thailand. An agreement was reached on September 20 between the US and Thailand specifying that the first 6,000 US troops would leave Thailand by July 1, 1970.

November

• Thousands of Thai Marines were sent to help police in the struggle against communists and Muslim separatists in the jungles of South Thailand. The strategy of the insurgents was to destroy the economy by attacking infrastructure and spreading fear among workers at rubber plantations. On November 12 in Songkhla province insurgents killed seven policemen and critically injured three others.

December

• Bangkok Bank was the first financial institution in Thailand to computerize its operations. Bank officials said customers would be able to deposit and withdraw money from the 38 branches in Bangkok and Thonburi more conveniently.

1970

1970 brought new rules for foreign workers in the country in an effort to reduce the number of immigrants who were taking jobs from Thais. It was announced that regulations requiring foreigners to have work permits would soon be introduced.

1970 saw the founding of the following enterprises and institutions which are still with us: Provincial Electricity Football Club,now known as Buriram United FC; Wat Phra Dhammakaya Buddhist temple in Pathum Thani province, founded by the maechi (nun) Chandra Khonnokyoong and Luang Por Dhammajayo; Thai motion picture production and distribution company Sahamongkol Film International, or Mongkol Film; and Suriya College, renamed Sripatum University in 1987.

The Queen’s Cup annual football competition took place for the first time in 1970, but was discontinued in 2010.

February

• The Dusit Thani Hotel opened its doors on the corner of Silom and Rama IV roads. Founded by Chanut Piyaoui, it was the highest building in Bangkok at the time.

March

• Indonesian President Hajji Suharto and his wife made a two-day official visit to Thailand. The president was welcomed at the airport by the King, who said that both nations faced ‘critical dangers’. Both Thailand and Indonesia supported America’s program of communist suppression throughout the region.
• Color Television Channel 3 (TV3) began broadcasting at 10am on March 26. It was the first Thai commercial television station. TV3 was officially launched during a ceremony attended by PM Thanom.

May

• Cambodia asked Thailand for a military aid, one year after the Americans began bombing communist Vietnamese targets in Cambodia. Links between Thailand and Cambodia improved with the opening of the Aranyaprathet border crossing and re-establishment of diplomatic relations.

July

• Cambodian Prime Minister Lon Nol was the first Cambodian premier to make an official visit to Thailand in 20 years. Lon Nol led a successful bloodless military coup d'état in May which overthrew the regime of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. He was later overthrown by the Khmer Rouge in 1975.

July

• A tax was introduced on more than 200 imported and locally made items. Dubbed the Midnight Tax Decree, the new regulations increased the import duty on cars from an already high 60% to 80%, while sales taxes went up to 30 percent. The duty on cosmetics increased almost 100%. The government defended the increases as necessary to increase the military budget to fund communist suppression efforts and fend off other national security threats.

September

• More than 4,000 students from Chulalongkorn University broke through the main gate of the Parliament building and demanded the suspension of three professors allegedly involved in corruption in the lease of campus land to private businesses.

October

• Superstar actor Mitr Chaibancha (born Pichet Pumhem) fell 90 meters to his death from a helicopter while filming the final scene of his new movie Insee Thong (Golden Eagle) at Dongtan Beach, Jomtien, Pattaya. The 36-year-old actor appeared in 266 films between 1956 and 1970 was injured several times during his career. Around 100,000 fans came to a memorial service for Mitr held the day after his accident at Bangkok’s Wat Sunthorn Thammathan.

November

• A French monorail company approached the Bangkok municipality with a proposal to do a feasibility study into a mass rail line for Bangkok. The city accepted the proposal.

December

• A five-hour fire destroyed half of the commercial centre of Saraburi, laying waste to homes and businesses and leaving over 3,000 people homeless. Hundreds of shop houses, three banks, two insurance companies, a theatre, a market and two schools were destroyed. The King sent relief supplies to families affected by the fire.

1971

1971 saw the launch of the Chao Phraya Express transport service operating on the Chao Phraya River. The service still provides convenient transportation between Bangkok and Nonthaburi for locals and tourists. Ramkhamhaeng University, a public and open university named after King Ramkhamhaeng the Great of Sukhothai, was established. The King is credited with creating the Thai alphabet. Sirindhorn Dam, named after Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, was commissioned in 1971. The dam is located in Sirindhorn district of Ubon Ratchathani province and was built to serve as a hydropower facility and to supply water for irrigation.

January

• Mitr Chaibancha was cremated at Wat Thepsirin in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of fans attended the cremation ceremony.

March

• Martial law was suspended in 34 provinces including Bangkok, and the government said that Thonburi and Chiang Mai were no longer considered ‘communist infested’ areas. However, emergency powers remained in force in 37 Thai provinces, including the whole Northeast.

April

• A blaze at the Imperial Hotel in Bangkok claimed 24 lives, including six children. Many guests jumped from windows of the 107-room hotel to escape the blaze.

May

• FM Khoman referred to China as “the People’s Republic of China” during a press conference in a real sign of warming between the two countries. It was the first time any cabinet official used the official name of China.

July

• Nation Multimedia Group was formed and English-language newspaper The Nation was launched by former Bangkok Post journalist Suthichai Yoon on July 1. The front-page headline was: “The How and Why of The Nation.” The first issue reportedly sold 3,000 copies.
• The government considered various proposals on how to support the car manufacturing industry. Ministries worked together to come up with recommendations to promote car assembly and the manufacture of component parts. One proposal was to widen the import tax differential between completely built-up cars – to be taxed at higher rate – and cars which were assembled in Thailand.

August

• Scientists warned that unless something was done to prevent further subsidence, Bangkok could be below sea level in 20 years’ time. Two professors in geotechnical engineering from the Asian Institute of Technology claimed said there was evidence that many areas in Bangkok were subsiding because too much underground water had been pumped from beneath the city to meet the rapid increase in water demand.

September

• Transvestites (katoey) from Bangkok and Thonburi formed an association to protect their interests and to end what they claimed was prejudice against them. Among other aims, the group’s leaders said they wanted a law to allow them to marry. The group estimated there were around 10,000 katoey living in Bangkok and Thonburi.

October

• Mobs of football fans, mostly youths, rioted at the National Stadium after heavy rain led to cancellation of the Queen’s Cup semifinal match between Vee Foh and Rajathevi. The fans tore down goalposts, smashed seats and lit bonfires on the pitch. The match was attended by about 20,000 fans. An unknown number participated in the riot after players failed to show after half-time.
• The government approved a proposal to transform and develop the island of Koh Samui into a major holiday destination in an effort to boost the ailing tourist industry. Among other attempts to stimulate tourism was an extension of the length of time tourists could stay without a visa.

November

• PM Thanom staged a coup on November 17 against his own government, citing the need to suppress communist infiltration. In a shocking announcement made on Bangkok Radio at 7pm, PM Thanom declared martial law, abrogating the constitution, dissolving Parliament and disbanding the cabinet. All authority was placed in the hands of security forces chiefs. Thanom also announced the establishment of a nine-member Executive Council to direct affairs of state for five years.

December

• The Supreme Patriarch Somdej Phra Ariyawongsakhatayan passed away after injuries suffered in a car accident. The accident happened in Bang Phli district of Samut Prakan province as the supreme patriarch was on his way to deliver a sermon. His limousine crashed head-on with a pickup truck. The country went into a 15-day mourning period. A tearful Thanom paid homage to the patriarch at Police Hospital in Bangkok, where the body was taken.

*Sources for this story include archives of UPI, AFP, AP, the Bangkok Post, The Nation and Wikipedia.

[admin]

Rudolf Otto
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/29/20

"As a student, athlete, politician, mystic, and writer, Baba Pyare Lal Bedi, better known as Baba Bedi XVI, considered the sixteenth descendant of Nanak, who was in the past, one of the best known and active Sikh teachers.

Father of the well-known actor, Kabir Bedi, he spread a Sikh spirituality. Its setting is different from that of the Sikh master Yogi Bhajan who founded in Toronto, in 1968, the 3HO organization, also known as Sikh Dharma. Master of the Occult Circle of India, he is the descendant of the sixteenth generation of Sat Guru Baba Nanak, Founding Master of the Sikh faith, in the 15th century. Born in 1909 in Punjab, Northern India, he graduated from universities Punjab and Oxford; he was a researcher at the University of Berlin with a scholarship named after Alexander Von Humboldt, working with Prof. Werner Sombart and with Prof. Rudolf Otto of the University of Marburg.

As an athlete he won the championship in the hammer throw in the Indian Olympic race, and at the English inter-university meeting in Oxford. Returning to India in 1934, he began to participate, as a leftist revolutionary, in the liberation battle of India, and passed a few years in concentration camps and in English prisons....

In 1953, after 20 years of political activity, he gave up politics, and turned to mystical life. In 1961, to dig deeper into the heart of the occult, he founded the "Institute for Inquiry into the Unknown" (Institute of Investigation into the Unknown).

In 1963 he added a new dimension to his work by starting the Center for Psychic Art (Center for Psychic Art).

From 1972 onwards, he came to Italy where, after numerous conferences in Rome and Turin, he stopped in Milan, where he founded and lead the Aquarian Philosophy Center, from which he dissociated and opened his School of New Philosophical Thought by developing his philosophy for the Aquarian Age, taking courses to learn Vibration Therapy, and helping the development of human personality through the Psychic expression. His teachings are about meditation, awareness of God, psychophysical well-being, and evolution of personality.

In 1981 he chaired the International Congress on Reincarnation, held in Milan, and began the World Movement to "live according to Ethical Consciousness," as a means for achieve social Peace.

In the Italian years, Baba Bedi XVI published 3 reference books of Aquarian philosophy: "Total Man" (1975), "Man in the Age of Aquarius" (1982), and "Consciousness, eye of the Soul "(1991). Furthermore, in 1981, he founded and directed the Aquarian philosophy magazine “La Resonance".

He revealed truly new positive dynamics to humanity, which can be implemented on all levels, and at every level, as long as one desires it first. He never tired of repeating: “You can't bring the horse to the river and force him to drink, even if he is thirsty; no violation is possible to free will."

His works published jointly with his wife Freda M. Houlston Bedi* are:

• *India analyzed, work in 4 volumes (1933-1934 London, Victor Gollancz);
• *Gandhi: Mahatma Gandhi, Saint and statesman, with a preface by Prof. Rudolf Otto, London 1934);
• Karl Marx - Letters on India, Lahore, Contemporary India Publication (1936);
• Sheikh Abdullah: his life and ideals (1949);
• Harvest from the Desert, Sir Ganga Ram Trust Society (1940);
• Muslims in USSR, Lahore, Indian Printing Works (1947);
• Mystic India, (3 vol.), The Unity Book club of India, New Delhi;
• Hands off West Irian: Indonesia's national demand from Dutch colonialists (1962);
• Prophet of the Full Moon: Guru Baba Nanak, founder master of Sikhism, New Delhi, Chaudhari Publishers, (1966);
• The art of the tetress, Bombay, Pearl books (1968), translated into Italian by La nuova Via ed. 1972;
• The pilgrim's way, with a preface by the Indian President S. Radhakrishanan, India (1969), Patiala, Punjabi University;
• *Dynamics of the New Age, New Delhi (1970);
• Conscience as Dynamics of the Psychic for Human Well-being, New Delhi, Institute for Inquiry Into the Unknown;
• Mystic & Ecstacy Eros, New Delhi, Institute for Inquiry Into the Unknown;
• The dynamics of the occult, New Delhi, Unity Publishers;
• The total man, Age of Uranus ed. 1977;
• Soul Eye Consciousness, ed. Zanfi, 2008, second edition of Cittadella Instit. Aquarian pedagogy.

-- Biographical note of Baba Pyare Lal Bedi XVI, by Alleva Franca

Rudolf Otto
Born: 25 September 1869, Peine, North German Confederation
Died: 6 March 1937 (aged 67), Marburg, Germany
Academic background
Alma mater: University of Erlangen, University of Göttingen
Influences: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Immanuel Kant, Jakob Fries
Academic work
Discipline: Theology and comparative religion
School or tradition: History of religions school
Notable works: The Idea of the Holy
Notable ideas: The numinous
Influenced: Eliade, Jung, Campbell, C. S. Lewis, Tillich, Barth, Rahner, Heidegger, Wach, Horkheimer, Gadamer

Rudolf Otto (25 September 1869 – 7 March 1937) was an eminent German Lutheran theologian, philosopher, and comparative religionist. He is regarded as one of the most influential scholars of religion in the early twentieth century and is best known for his concept of the numinous, a profound emotional experience he argued was at the heart of the world's religions.[1]

In the drala teachings, each of the senses is considered an “unlimited field of perception” in which there are sights, sounds and feelings “we have never experienced before” –- no one has ever experienced! Each sense moment, if we are present for it, is a gate into the elemental wisdom of the world, even a cold sip of coffee could ignite the experience of Yeats: “While on the shop and street I gazed / My body of a sudden blazed.” Every perception is a pure perception; from the feel of a meager pebble stuck in our shoe to the meow of a house cat. Through this kind of perception we discover that we live in a vast, singular and unexplored world....

Sometimes a stone, a tree, a teacup or a violin processes an intangible presence, a numinousity, that cannot be explained.

-- The Drala Principle, by Bill Scheffel

While his work started in the domain of liberal Christian theology, its main thrust was always apologetical, seeking to defend religion against naturalist critiques.[2] Otto eventually came to conceive of his work as part of a science of religion, which was divided into the philosophy of religion, the history of religion, and the psychology of religion.[2]

Life

Born in Peine near Hanover, Otto was raised in a pious Christian family.[3] He attended the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim and studied at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen, where he wrote his dissertation on Martin Luther's understanding of the Holy Spirit (Die Anschauung von heiligen Geiste bei Luther: Eine historisch-dogmatische Untersuchung), and his habilitation on Kant (Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht).

It is difficult to understand the behavior of most German Protestants in the first Nazi years unless one is aware of two things: their history and the influence of Martin Luther. [v] The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews and when they were sent away he advised that they be deprived of "all their cash and jewels and silver and gold" and, furthermore, "that their synagogues or schools be set on fire, that their houses be broken up and destroyed ... and they be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies ... in misery and captivity as they incessantly lament and complain to God about us" -- advice that was literally followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler.

In what was perhaps the only popular revolt in German history, the peasant uprising of 1525, Luther advised the princes to adopt the most ruthless measures against the "mad dogs," as he called the desperate, downtrodden peasants. Here, as in his utterances about the Jews, Luther employed a coarseness and brutality of language unequaled in German history until the Nazi time. The influence of this towering figure extended down the generations in Germany, especially among the Protestants. Among other results was the ease with which German Protestantism became the instrument of royal and princely absolutism from the sixteenth century until the kings and princes were overthrown in 1918. The hereditary monarchs and petty rulers became the supreme bishops of the Protestant Church in their lands. Thus in Prussia the Hohenzollern King was the head of the Church. In no country with the exception of Czarist Russia did the clergy become by tradition so completely servile to the political authority of the State. Its members, with few exceptions, stood solidly behind the King, the Junkers and the Army, and during the nineteenth century they dutifully opposed the rising liberal and democratic movements. Even the Weimar Republic was anathema to most Protestant pastors, not only because it had deposed the kings and princes but because it drew its main support from the Catholics and the Socialists. During the Reichstag elections one could not help but notice that the Protestant clergy -- Niemoeller was typical -- quite openly supported the Nationalist and even the Nazi enemies of the Republic. Like Niemoeller, most of the pastors welcomed the advent of Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship in 1933.

-- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, by William L. Shirer

By 1906, he held a position as extraordinary professor, and in 1910 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Giessen.

Otto's fascination with non-Christian religions was awakened during an extended trip from 1911-1912 through North Africa, Palestine, British India, China, Japan, and the United States.[4] He cited a 1911 visit to a Moroccan synagogue as a key inspiration for the theme of the Holy he would later develop.[3] Otto became a member of the German parliament in 1913 and retained this position through the First World War.[4] In 1917, he spearheaded an effort to simplify the system of weighting votes in Prussian elections.[2] He then served in the post-war constituent assembly in 1918, and remained involved in the politics of the Weimar Republic.[4]

Meanwhile, in 1915, he became ordinary professor at the University of Breslau, and in 1917, at the University of Marburg's Divinity School, then one of the most famous Protestant seminaries in the world. Although he received several other calls, he remained in Marburg for the rest of his life. He retired in 1929 but continued writing afterward. On 6 March 1937, he died of pneumonia, after suffering serious injuries falling about twenty meters from a tower in October 1936. There were lasting rumors that the fall was a suicide attempt but this has never been confirmed.[2] He is buried in the Marburg cemetery.

Thought

Influences

In his early years Otto was most influenced by the German idealist theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher and his conceptualization of the category of the religious as a type of emotion or consciousness irreducible to ethical or rational epistemologies.[4] In this, Otto saw Schleiermacher as having recaptured a sense of holiness lost in the Age of Enlightenment. Schleiermacher described this religious feeling as one of absolute dependence; Otto eventually rejected this characterization as too closely analogous to earthly dependence and emphasized the complete otherness of the religious feeling from the mundane world (see below).[4] In 1904, while a student at the University of Göttingen, Otto became a proponent of the philosophy of Jakob Fries along with two fellow students.[2]

Fries' most important treatise, the Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Vernunft (2nd ed., 1828–1831), was an attempt to give a new foundation of psychological analysis to the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In 1811 he published his System der Logik (ed. 1819 and 1837), and in 1814 Julius und Evagoras, a philosophical romance.[3] He was also involved in public polemics, and in 1816 wrote Ueber die Gefährdung des Wohlstandes und des Charakters der Deutschen durch die Juden (On the Danger Posed by the Jews to German Well-Being and Character), advocating among other things a distinct sign on the dress of Jews to distinguish them from the general population, and encouraging their emigration from German lands. He blamed the Jews for the ascendant role of money in society and called for Judaism to be "extirpated root and branch" from German society.

In 1816 he was invited to Jena to fill the chair of theoretical philosophy (including mathematics, physics, and philosophy proper), and entered upon a crusade against the prevailing Romanticism. In politics he was a strong Liberal and Unionist, and he did much to inspire the organization of the Burschenschaft. He also published a pamphlet calling for the exclusion of the Jews from public life in Germany. In 1816 he had published his views in a brochure, Von deutschem Bund und deutscher Staatsverfassung, dedicated to "the youth of Germany", and his influence gave a powerful impetus to the agitation which led in 1819 to the issue of the Carlsbad Decrees by the representatives of the German governments.[3]...

Fries was involved in a dispute with the contemporary German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. In the preface to his Philosophy of Right, Hegel criticised Fries' participation in student events and his role in the Burschenschaft.

Its motto was “honor, freedom, fatherland”...

The Burschenschaften were student associations that engaged in numerous social activities. However, their most important goal was to foster loyalty to the concept of a united German national state as well as strong engagement for freedom, rights, and democracy. Quite often Burschenschaften decided to stress extreme nationalist or sometimes also liberal ideas, leading in time to the exclusion of Jews, who were considered to be un-German....

In the 1880s, a renaissance movement, the Reformburschenschaften, led by the ideas of Küster, arose and many new B!B! were founded. It was also during this time until the 1890s when members turned increasingly towards anti-Semitic outlook since it provided an approach to achieving the fraternity's fundamental goal. Members viewed the Jews as a problem that hampered the unification of Germany and the achievement of new values the organization advanced. There were members who resigned to protest a resolution adopted at an Eisenach meeting declaring that Burschenschaft "have no Jewish members and do not plan to have any in the future." Historical records show that the fraternity again accepted Jewish members later on since it was not in favor of racist antisemitism...

Some Nazis (e.g. Ernst Kaltenbrunner) and Nazi opponents (Karl Sack, Hermann Kaiser) were members of Burschenschaften. Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jewish journalist who founded modern political Zionism, was also a member of a Burschenschaft. However, he resigned two years after he joined because of the fraternity's antisemitism....

Roughly 160 Burschenschaften still exist today and many are organized in different organizations ranging from progressive to nationalistic. Among the latter is the Deutsche Burschenschaft organization (DB), which represents about a third of the Burschenschaften....

Many Burschenschaften, often found in certain "umbrella" organisations (such as the Burschenschaftliche Gemeinschaft), are associated with right-wing or far-right ideas, in particular with the wish for a German state encompassing Austria. In 2013 one Bonn fraternity proposed that only students of German origin should be eligible to join a Burschenschaft. Reportedly half of member clubs threatened to leave in a row over proposed ID cards and a decision to label an opponent of Adolf Hitler a "traitor".

-- Burschenschaft, by Wikipedia

Fries responded by accusing Hegel of defending the existing order and his own privileged position within it. He argued that "Hegel's metaphysical mushroom has grown not in the gardens of science but on the dunghill of servility." For Fries, Hegel's theories merely added up to a defence of the establishment and, specifically, the Prussian authorities.

-- Jakob Friedrich Fries, by Wikipedia

Early works

Otto's first book, Naturalism and Religion (1904) divides the world ontologically into the mental and the physical, a position reflecting Cartesian dualism. Otto argues consciousness cannot be explained in terms of physical or neural processes, and also accords it epistemological primacy by arguing all knowledge of the physical world is mediated by personal experience. On the other hand, he disagrees with Descartes' characterization of the mental as a rational realm, positing instead that rationality is built upon a nonrational intuitive realm.[2]

In 1909, he published his next book, The Philosophy of Religion Based on Kant and Fries, in which he examines the thought of Kant and Fries and from there attempts to build a philosophical framework within which religious experience can take place. While Kant's philosophy said thought occurred in a rational domain, Fries diverged and said it also occurred in practical and aesthetic domains; Otto pursued Fries' line of thinking further and suggested another nonrational domain of the thought, the religious. He felt intuition was valuable in rational domains like mathematics, but subject to the corrective of reason, whereas religious intuitions might not be subject to that corrective.[2]

These two early works were influenced by the rationalist approaches of Immanuel Kant and Jakob Fries. Otto stated that they focused on the rational aspects of the divine (the "Ratio aeterna") whereas his next (and most influential) book focused on the nonrational aspects of the divine.[5]

The Idea of the Holy

Otto's most famous work, The Idea of the Holy, was first published in German in 1917 as Das Heilige - Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen. It was one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century, has never gone out of print, and is now available in about 20 languages. The first English translation was published in 1923 under the title The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Otto felt people should first do serious rational study of God, before turning to the non-rational element of God as he did in this book.[5][6]:vii

In The Idea of the Holy, Otto writes that while the concept of "the holy" is often used to convey moral perfection—and does entail this—it contains another distinct element, beyond the ethical sphere, for which he coined the term numinous based on the Latin word numen ("divine power").[6]:5–7 (The term is etymologically unrelated to Immanuel Kant's noumenon, a Greek term which Kant used to refer to an unknowable reality underlying sensations of the thing.) He explains the numinous as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self". This mental state "presents itself as ganz Andere,[7] wholly other, a condition absolutely sui generis and incomparable whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed."[8] Otto argues that because the numinous is irreducible and sui generis it cannot be defined in terms of other concepts or experiences, and that the reader must therefore be "guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reach the point at which 'the numinous' in him perforce begins to stir... In other words, our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind."[6]:7 Chapters 4 to 6 are devoted to attempting to evoke the numinous and its various aspects. He writes:[4][6]:12–13

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its “profane,” non-religious mood of everyday experience. [...] It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures.

He describes it as a mystery (Latin: mysterium) that is at once terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans).[9] Otto felt that the numinous was most strongly present in the Old and New Testaments, but that it was also present in all other religions.[6]:74

According to Mark Wynn in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Idea of the Holy falls within a paradigm in the philosophy of emotion in which emotions are seen as including an element of perception with intrinsic epistemic value that is neither mediated by thoughts nor simply a response to physiological factors. Otto therefore understands religious experience as having mind-independent phenomenological content rather than being an internal response to belief in a divine reality. Otto applied this model specifically to religious experiences, which he felt were qualitatively different from other emotions.[10]

Later works

In Mysticism East and West, published in German in 1926 and English in 1932, Otto compares and contrasts the views of the medieval German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart with those of the influential Hindu philosopher Adi Shankara, the key figure of the Advaita Vedanta school.[2]

Influence

Otto left a broad influence on theology, religious studies, and philosophy of religion, which continues into the 21st century.[11]

Christian theology

Karl Barth, an influential Protestant theologian contemporary to Otto, acknowledged Otto's influence and approved a similar conception of God as ganz Andere or totaliter aliter,[12] thus falling within the tradition of apophatic theology.[13][14] Otto was also one of the very few modern theologians to whom C. S. Lewis indicates a debt, particularly to the idea of the numinous in The Problem of Pain. In that book Lewis offers his own description of the numinous:[15]

Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told "There is a ghost in the next room," and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is "uncanny" rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a mighty spirit in the room," and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words "Under it my genius is rebuked." This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.

German-American theologian Paul Tillich acknowledged Otto's influence on him,[2] as did Otto's most famous German pupil, Gustav Mensching (1901–1978) from Bonn University.[16] Otto's views can be seen in the noted Catholic theologian Karl Rahner's presentation of man as a being of transcendence. More recently, Otto has also influenced the American Franciscan friar and inspirational speaker Richard Rohr.[17]:139

Non-Christian theology and spirituality

Otto's ideas have also exerted an influence on non-Christian theology and spirituality. They have been discussed by Orthodox Jewish theologians including Joseph Soloveitchik[18] and Eliezer Berkovits.[19] The Iranian-American Sufi religious studies scholar and public intellectual Reza Aslan understands religion as "an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors [...] with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence."[20] Further afield, Otto's work received words of appreciation from Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi.[16] Aldous Huxley, a major proponent of perennialism, was influenced by Otto; in The Doors of Perception he writes:[21]

The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in-compatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God.

Religious studies

In The Idea of the Holy and other works, Otto set out a paradigm for the study of religion that focused on the need to realize the religious as a non-reducible, original category in its own right. The eminent Romanian-American historian of religion and philosopher Mircea Eliade used the concepts from The Idea of the Holy as the starting point for his own 1954 book, The Sacred and the Profane.[11][22] The paradigm represented by Otto and Eliade was then heavily criticized for viewing religion as a sui generis category,[11] until around 1990, when it began to see a resurgence as a result of its phenomenological aspects becoming more apparent. Ninian Smart, who was a formative influence on religious studies as a secular discipline, was influenced by Otto in his understanding of religious experience and his approach to understanding religion cross-culturally.[11]

Psychology

Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytic psychology, applied the concept of the numinous to psychology and psychotherapy, arguing it was therapeutic and brought greater self-understanding, and stating that to him religion was about a "careful and scrupulous observation... of the numinosum".[23] The American Episcopal priest John A. Sanford applied the ideas of both Otto and Jung in his writings on religious psychotherapy.

THE YEARS, OF WHICH I HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU, when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then. -- C.G. Jung, 1957

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

Philosophy

The philosopher and sociologist Max Horkheimer, a member of the Frankfurt School, has taken the concept of "wholly other" in his 1970 book Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen ("longing for the entirely Other").[24][25] Other philosophers to acknowledge Otto were, for instance, Martin Heidegger,[16] Leo Strauss,[16] Hans-Georg Gadamer (who was critical when younger but respectful in his old age), Max Scheler,[16] Edmund Husserl,[16] W. T. Stace, Joachim Wach,[3][16] and Hans Jonas. The war veteran and writer Ernst Jünger and the historian and scientist Joseph Needham also cited his influence.

Ecumenical activities

Otto was heavily involved in ecumenical activities between Christian denominations and between Christianity and other religions.[4] He experimented with adding a time similar to a Quaker moment of silence to the Lutheran liturgy as an opportunity for worshipers to experience the numinous.[4]

Works

• A full bibliography of Otto's works is given in Robert F. Davidson, Rudolf Otto's Interpretation of Religion (Princeton, 1947), pp. 207–9

In German

• Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht (1904)
• Die Kant-Friesische Religions-Philosophie (1909)
• Das Heilige - Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (Breslau, 1917)
• West-östliche Mystik (1926)
• Die Gnadenreligion Indiens und das Christentum (1930)
• Reich Gottes und Menschensohn (1934)

English translations

• Naturalism and Religion, trans J. Arthur Thomson and Margaret Thomson (London: Williams and Norgate, 1907), [originally published 1904]
• The Life and Ministry of Jesus, According to the Critical Method (Chicago: Open Court, 1908), ISBN 0-8370-4648-3 – Full text online at Internet Archive
• The Idea of the Holy, trans JW Harvey, (New York: OUP, 1923; 2nd edn, 1950; reprint, New York, 1970), ISBN 0-19-500210-5 [originally published 1917] (full text)
• Christianity and the Indian Religion of Grace (Madras, 1928)
• India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted, trans FH Foster, (New York; London, 1930)
• 'The Sensus Numinis as the Historical Basis of Religion', Hibbert Journal 29, (1930), 1-8
• The Philosophy of Religion Based on Kant and Fries, trans EB Dicker, (London, 1931) [originally published 1909]
• Religious essays: A supplement to 'The Idea of the Holy', trans B Lunn, (London, 1931)
• Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism, trans BL Bracey and RC Payne, (New York, 1932) [originally published 1926]
• 'In the sphere of the holy', Hibbert Journal 31, (1932-3), 413-6
• The original Gita: The song of the Supreme Exalted One (London, 1939)
• The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man: A Study in the History of Religion, trans FV Filson and BL Wolff, (Boston, 1943)
• Autobiographical and Social Essays (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), ISBN 3-11-014518-9

See also

• Christian philosophy
• Christian ecumenism
• Christian mysticism
• Neurotheology
• Argument from religious experience
• Hard problem of consciousness
• The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
• Perceiving God by William Alston
• The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley
• The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
• I and Thou by Martin Buber

References

1. Adler, Joseph. "Rudolf Otto's Concept of the Numinous". Gambier, Ohio: Kenyon College. Retrieved 19 October 2016.
2. Alles, Gregory D. (2005). "Otto, Rudolf". Encyclopedia of Religion. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
3. "Louis Karl Rudolf Otto Facts". YourDictionary.com. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
4. Meland, Bernard E. "Rudolf Otto | German philosopher and theologian". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
5. Ross, Kelley. "Rudolf Otto (1869-1937)". Retrieved 19 October 2016.
6. Otto, Rudolf (1923). The Idea of the Holy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-500210-5. Retrieved 31 December2016.
7. Otto, Rudolf (1996). Alles, Gregory D. (ed.). Autobiographical and Social Essays. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. p. 30. ISBN 978-3-110-14519-9. ISBN 3-11014519-7.
8. Eckardt, Alice L.; Eckardt, A. Roy (July 1980). "The Holocaust and the Enigma of Uniqueness: A Philosophical Effort at Practical Clarification". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Sage Publications. 450 (1): 165–178. doi:10.1177/000271628045000114. JSTOR 1042566. P. 169. Cited in: Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, ed. (1991). A Traditional Quest. Essays in Honour of Louis Jacobs. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-567-52728-8. ISBN 0-56752728-X.
9. Otto, Rudolf (1996). Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
10. Wynn, Mark (19 December 2016). "Section 2.1 Emotional feelings and encounter with God". Phenomenology of Religion. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
11. Sarbacker, Stuart (August 2016). "Rudolf Otto and the Concept of the Numinous". Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
12. Webb, Stephen H. (1991). Re-figuring Theology. The Rhetoric of Karl Barth. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. p. 87. ISBN 978-1-438-42347-0. ISBN 1-43842347-0.
13. Elkins, James (2011). "Iconoclasm and the Sublime. Two Implicit Religious Discourses in Art History (pp. 133–151)". In Ellenbogen, Josh; Tugendhaft, Aaron (eds.). Idol Anxiety. Redwood City, California: Stanford University Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-804-76043-0. ISBN 0-80476043-8.
14. Mariña, Jacqueline (2010) [1997]. "26. Holiness (pp. 235–242)". In Taliaferro, Charles; Draper, Paul; Quinn, Philip L. (eds.). A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 238. ISBN 978-1-444-32016-9. ISBN 1-44432016-5.
15. Lewis, C.S. (2009) [1940]. The Problem of Pain. New York City: HarperCollins. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-0-007-33226-7. ISBN 0-00733226-2.
16. Gooch, Todd A. (2000). The Numinous and Modernity: An Interpretation of Rudolf Otto's Philosophy of Religion. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016799-9.
17. Rohr, Richard (2012). Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-1-118-42154-3.
18. Solomon, Norman (2012). The Reconstruction of Faith. Portland: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. pp. 237–243. ISBN 978-1-906764-13-5.
19. Berkovits, Eliezer, God, Man and History, 2004, pp. 166, 170.
20. Aslan, Reza (2005). No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, And Future of Islam. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. p. xxiii. ISBN 1-4000-6213-6.
21. Huxley, Aldous (2004). The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. Harper Collins. p. 55.
22. Eliade, Mircea (1959) [1954]. "Introduction (p. 8)". The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-156-79201-1. ISBN 0-15679201-X.
23. Agnel, Aimé. "Numinous (Analytical Psychology)". Encyclopedia.com. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Retrieved 9 November 2016.
24. Adorno, Theodor W.; Tiedemann, Rolf (2000) [1965]. Metaphysics. Concept and Problems. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford University Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-804-74528-4. ISBN 0-80474528-5.
25. Siebert, Rudolf J. (1 January 2005). "The Critical Theory of Society: The Longing for the Totally Other". Critical Sociology. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. 31 (1–2): 57–113. doi:10.1163/1569163053084270.

Further reading

• Almond, Philip C., 'Rudolf Otto: An Introduction to his Philosophical Theology' (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).
• Davidson, Robert F, Rudolf Otto's Interpretation of Religion, (Princeton, 1947)
• Gooch, Todd A, The Numinous and Modernity: An Interpretation of Rudolf Otto's Philosophy of Religion. Preface by Otto Kaiser and Wolfgang Drechsler. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000). ISBN 3-11-016799-9.
• Ludwig, Theodore M, ‘Otto, Rudolf’ in Encyclopedia of Religion, vol 11 (1987), pp139–141
• Melissa, Raphael, Rudolf Otto and the concept of holiness, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
• Mok, Daniël (2012). Rudolf Otto: Een kleine biografie. Preface by Gerardus van der Leeuw. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Abraxas. ISBN 978-90-79133-08-6.
• Mok, Daniël et al. (2002). Een wijze uit het westen: Beschouwingen over Rudolf Otto. Preface by Rudolph Boeke. Amsterdam: De Appelbloesem Pers (i.e. Uitgeverij Abraxas). ISBN 90-70459-36-1 (print), 978-90-79133-00-0 (e-Book).
• Moore, John Morrison, Theories of Religious Experience, with special reference to James, Otto and Bergson, (New York, 1938)

External links

• Otto and the Numinous
• Numinous – references from several thinkers at Earthpages.ca
• International Congress: Rudolf Otto – University of Marburg, 2012
• Works by Rudolf Otto at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Rudolf Otto at Internet Archive
• Newspaper clippings about Rudolf Otto in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

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Bhadralok
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/1/20

Bhadralok (Bengali: ভদ্রলোক bhôdrôlok, literally 'gentleman', 'well-mannered person') is Bengali for the new class of 'gentlefolk' who arose during British rule in India (approximately 1757 to 1947) in Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent.

Caste and class makeup

Most, though not all, members of the bhadralok class are upper caste, mainly Baidyas, Brahmins, Kayasthas, and later Mahishyas. There is no precise translation of bhadralok in English, since it attributes economic and class privilege on to caste ascendancy. Many bhadraloks in the nineteenth century came from the privileged Brahmin or Priest caste or middle-level merchant class (such as Rani Rashmoni). Anybody who could show considerable amount of wealth and standing in society was a member of the bhadralok community.[1]

The bhadralok community includes all gentlefolk belonging to the rich as well as middle-class segments of the Bengali society. Amongst the upper middle classes, a zamindar, or landowner, normally bearing the title Chaudhuri or Roy Chaudhuri at the end of the name, and Babu at the beginning would be considered to be a bhadralok. A zamindar bearing the title Raja or Maharaja would be considered to be higher than middle-class, but would still be a bhadralok 'gentleman'. All members of the professional classes, i.e. those belonging to the newly emerging professions, such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, university professors, and higher civil servants, were members of the bhadralok community. However, an individual bearing the title Esquire at the end of the name, denoting a rank just below a Knight, was also considered to be higher than a bhadralok.

Colonial factors

The two biggest factors that led to the rise of the bhadralok were the huge fortunes many merchant houses made from aiding the English East India Company's trade up the Ganga valley, and Western-style education (at the hands of the colonial rulers and of missionaries). The steep rise in real estate prices in Calcutta also led some petty landlords in the area to become wealthy overnight. The first identifiable bhadralok figure is undoubtedly Ram Mohan Roy, who bridged the gap between the Persianised nobility of the Sultanate era in Bengal and the new, Western-educated, nouveau riche comprador class.

The Bengal Renaissance

The Bengal Renaissance was largely carried out and participated in by bhadralok. In addition, the rise of the Brahmo Samaj and various other samajes (a category halfway between 'society' and 'community') was also largely a bhadralok phenomenon. To be a bhadralok was to embrace some Western and Northern European values (though not always the same ones in each case), to have a modicum of education, and a sense of entitlement to (and consequently grievance against) favours or employment from the colonial government. While the bhadralok were influenced by the West (in terms of their morals, dress, and eating habits) they were also the people who reacted most strongly against the West, and the most scathing critiques, as well as the most spirited defences of Westernisation, were made by bhadralok writers.

Babus

The term Babu means an individual of rank and dignity. It is most commonly used to refer to the gentleman, but is meant for anybody who enjoys a position of dominance in his immediate social circle. An Indian zamindar, as well as an Indian member of the higher government services, was referred to as a Babu. Amongst the landlords, a Babu in the former Bengal Presidency, especially in Bengal and Behar, was normally a substantial and extremely wealthy zamindar in the same rank as a Thakur or a Mirza, and would rank just below a Raja. The term Babu has been historically used to refer to the upper echelons of Indian society, including the ruling classes.

In British India, the term was derogatorily used to refer to members of the indigenous community, especially in law courts and revenue establishments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where most members were appointed as Munsifs from respectable and/or zamindari families.

Popular Culture

Bhadralok class is copiously referred in the popular Bengali literature including in the novel and stories of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore. Kaliprasanna Singha sarcastically criticized the class' social attitude and hypocrisy during its accession to prominence in the nineteenth century in his famous book, titled Hutom Pyanchar Naksha. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chandrabindoo brings forward the class' dilemma and hypocritical attitude in their songs including Sokale Uthiya Ami Mone Mone Boli, Amar Modhyobitto Bheeru Prem, Amra Bangali Jaati and many more.

Economy

Among others, Joya Chatterji, Lecturer in History of Modern South Asia at Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College, accuses the Bhadralok class for the economic decline of the state of West Bengal after India's independence in 1947.[2] She writes in her book, titled "The Spoils of Partition" [3]:

In these ways, Bengal’s partition frustrated the plans and purposes of the very groups who had demanded it. Why their strategy failed so disastrously is a question which will no doubt be debated by bhadralok Bengal long after the last vestiges of its influence have been swept away. Many excuses have already been made, and different scapegoats remain to be identified and excoriated. But perhaps part of the explanation is this: for all their self-belief in their cultural superiority and their supposed talent for politics, the leaders of bhadralok Bengal misjudged matters so profoundly because, in point of fact, they were deeply inexperienced as a political class. Admittedly, they were highly educated and in some ways sophisticated, but they had never captured the commanding heights of Bengal’s polity or its economy. They had been called upon to execute policy but not to make it. They had lived off the proceeds of the land, but had never organised the business of agriculture. Whether as theorists or practitioners, they understood little of the mechanics of production and exchange, whether on the shop floor or in the fields. Above all, they had little or no experience in the delicate arts of ruling and taxing people. Far from being in the vanguard as they liked to believe, by 1947 Bengal’s bhadralok had become a backward-looking group, living in the past, trapped in the aspic of outdated assumptions, and so single-mindedly focussed upon their own narrow purposes that they were blind to the larger picture and the big changes that were taking place around them.

See also

• Christianity in West Bengal
• Nastanirh

References

1. K. L. Sharma, ed. (2013). Readings in Indian Sociology: Volume II: Sociological Probings in Rural Society. Sage Publications.
2. "Bengal's sorrow". frontline.thehindu.com. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
3. Chatterji, Joya. (3 March 2011). The spoils of partition : Bengal and India, 1947-1967. p. 317. ISBN 9780521188067. OCLC 816808562.
• Subho Basu and Sikata Banerjee, 'The Quest for Manhood: Masculine Hinduism and Nation in Bengal in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
• Bhadralok in Banglapedia
• Indira Choudhuri, The Fragile Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
• Tithi Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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Yehudi Menuhin
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/30/20

The move to a bigger property at Dalhousie also allowed for some modest expansion of the school, requiring more volunteers and a gearing up of the administration. Cherry Armstrong, an eighteen-year-old whose mother was active in the Buddhist Society in London, arrived towards the end of the school's first summer in the hills.

Her role was a loosely defined mix of administrative and secretarial, particularly helping with the correspondence generated by the Tibetan Friendship Group and Freda's scheme for pen friends for young Tibetan refugees.

The western friend would include a small monetary gift, usually in the form of money orders ... In return the Tibetan pen friend would send a little photograph or a prayer written in Tibetan ... My job initially was to keep this scheme working and it was often a life-saver for individuals with no financial aid. It was a system that needed no overheads -- once the connection was established the money went directly to the person for whom it was intended and usually continued for years.

Freda was good at delegating, and at multitasking. Every morning she 'held court' with a pile of papers (the morning post) on her lap. Tibetan matters were handed over to Trungpa Tulku who acted as her interpreter and scribe (as well as doing his own religious and language studies). Indian matters were handed to the Indian administrator of the school, Attar Singh; English letters were handed to me, while Freda herself would be simultaneously writing her own more important letters. During this time there would be frequent Tibetan or Indian visitors asking for help or for Freda to use her influence on their behalf and everyone was attended to with care and foresight. Sitting beside her whilst all this was going on I could see that her method of coping was to give her undivided attention to the specific matter in hand; a kind of purposeful concentration to the exclusion of all other matters. When one matter was dealt with, the next had her exclusive attention .... She had an immense capacity for work.19

Cherry learnt to type, often with an old typewriter balanced on her lap or on her bed. It was rudimentary but it worked. Alongside the daily grind, Freda was also adept at maintaining connections with those of influence. When a couple of months after the move to Dalhousie Anita Morris headed home to England, she carried a package for Christmas Humphreys, the judge and doyen of the Buddhist Society in London, and for the renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

-- 14: The Young Lamas' Home School, Excerpt from The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

Menuhin in 1937

Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM KBE (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American-born violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the great violinists of the 20th century. He played the Soil Stradivarius, considered one of the finest violins made by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari.

Early life and career


Menuhin with Bruno Walter (1931)

Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City to a family of Lithuanian Jews. Through his father Moshe, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist,[1] he was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty. In late 1919, Moshe and his wife Marutha (née Sher) became American citizens, and changed the family name from Mnuchin to Menuhin.[2] Menuhin's sisters were concert pianist and human rights activist Hephzibah, and pianist, painter and poet Yaltah.

Menuhin's first violin instruction was at age four by Sigmund Anker (1891–1958);[3] his parents had wanted Louis Persinger to teach him, but Persinger refused. Menuhin displayed exceptional musical talent at an early age. His first public appearance, when he was seven years old, was as solo violinist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1923. Persinger then agreed to teach him and accompanied him on the piano for his first few solo recordings in 1928–29.

Julia Boyd records:

On 12 April 1929 it [the Semperoper] cancelled its advertised programme to make way for a performance by the twelve-year-old Yehudi Menuhin. That night he played the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms violin concertos to an ecstatic audience... The week before, Yehudi had played in Berlin with the Philharmonic under Bruno Walter to an equally rapturous response.[4]

It was said of his Berlin performance: "There steps a fat little blond boy on the podium, and wins at once all hearts as in an irresistibly ludicrous way, like a penguin, he alternately places one foot down, then the other. But wait: you will stop laughing when he puts his bow to the violin to play Bach's violin concerto in E major no.2."[5]


The city of Basel: place of study under the guidance of Adolf Busch

When the Menuhins moved to Paris, Persinger suggested Menuhin go to Persinger's old teacher, Belgian virtuoso and pedagogue Eugène Ysaÿe. Menuhin did have one lesson with Ysaÿe, but he disliked Ysaÿe's teaching method and his advanced age. Instead, he went to Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, under whose tutelage he made recordings with several piano accompanists, including his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Adolf Busch in Basel. He stayed in the Swiss city for a bit more than a year, where he started to take lessons in German and Italian as well.

According to Henry A. Murray, Menuhin wrote:

Actually, I was gazing in my usual state of being half absent in my own world and half in the present. I have usually been able to "retire" in this way. I was also thinking that my life was tied up with the instrument and would I do it justice?

— Yehudi Menuhin, personal communication, 31 October 1993[6]

His first concerto recording was made in 1931, Bruch's G minor, under Sir Landon Ronald in London, the labels calling him "Master Yehudi Menuhin". In 1932 he recorded Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor for HMV in London, with the composer himself conducting; in 1934, uncut, Paganini's D major Concerto with Emile Sauret's cadenza in Paris under Pierre Monteux. Between 1934 and 1936, he made the first integral recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin, although his Sonata No. 2, in A minor, was not released until all six were transferred to CD.

His interest in the music of Béla Bartók prompted him to commission a work from him – the Sonata for Solo Violin, which, completed in 1943 and first performed by Menuhin in New York in 1944, was the composer's penultimate work.

World War II musician


Menuhin in 1943

He performed for Allied soldiers during World War II [over 500 concerts for wounded servicemen and Allied troops] and, accompanied on the piano by English composer Benjamin Britten, for the surviving inmates of a number of concentration camps in July 1945 after their liberation in April of the same year, most famously the Bergen-Belsen. He returned to Germany in 1947 to play concerto concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler as an act of reconciliation, the first Jewish musician to do so in the wake of the Holocaust, saying to Jewish critics that he wanted to rehabilitate Germany's music and spirit.

He and Louis Kentner (brother-in-law of his wife, Diana) gave the first performance of William Walton's Violin Sonata, in Zürich on 30 September 1949. He continued performing, and conducting (such as Bach orchestral works with the Bath Chamber Orchestra), to an advanced age, including some nonclassical music in his repertory.

World interactions

For Menuhin's notable students, see List of music students by teacher: K to M § Yehudi Menuhin.
Menuhin credited German philosopher Constantin Brunner with providing him with "a theoretical framework within which I could fit the events and experiences of life".[7]

Following his role as a member of the awards jury at the 1955 Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, Menuhin secured a Rockefeller Foundation grant for the financially strapped Grand Prize winner at the event, Argentine violinist Alberto Lysy. Menuhin made Lysy his only personal student, and the two toured extensively throughout the concert halls of Europe. The young protégé later established the International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA)[8] in Gstaad, in his honor.[9]

Menuhin made several recordings with the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had been criticized for conducting in Germany during the Nazi era. Menuhin defended Furtwängler, noting that the conductor had helped a number of Jewish musicians to flee Nazi Germany.

Furtwängler made his London debut in 1924, and continued to appear there before the outbreak of World War II as late as 1938, when he conducted Richard Wagner's Ring [Die Nibelungen]...

On 10 April 1933, Furtwängler wrote a public letter to Goebbels ...

"If the fight against Judaism concentrates on those artists who are themselves rootless and destructive and who seek to succeed in kitsch, sterile virtuosity and the like, then it is quite acceptable; the fight against these people and the attitude they embody (as, unfortunately, do many non-Jews) cannot be pursued thoroughly or systematically enough. If, however, this campaign is also directed at truly great artists, then it ceases to be in the interests of Germany's cultural life [...] It must therefore be stated that men such as Walter, Klemperer, Reinhardt etc. must be allowed to exercise their talents in Germany in the future as well, in exactly the same way as Kreisler, Huberman, Schnabel and other great instrumentalists of the Jewish race"...

Goebbels and Göring ordered their administration to listen to Furtwängler's requests...

The violinist Yehudi Menuhin was, with Arnold Schoenberg, Bronisław Huberman, and Nathan Milstein, among the Jewish musicians who had a positive view of Furtwängler. In February 1946, he sent a wire to General Robert A. McClure in February 1946:

"Unless you have secret incriminating evidence against Furtwängler supporting your accusation that he was a tool of Nazi Party, I beg to take violent issue with your decision to ban him. The man never was a Party member. Upon numerous occasions, he risked his own safety and reputation to protect friends and colleagues. Do not believe that the fact of remaining in one's own country is alone sufficient to condemn a man. On the contrary, as a military man, you would know that remaining at one's post often requires greater courage than running away. He saved, and for that we are deeply his debtors, the best part of his own German culture... I believe it patently unjust and most cowardly for us to make of Furtwängler a scapegoat for our own crimes."...

At the end of his life, Yehudi Menuhin said of Furtwängler, "It was his greatness that attracted hatred".

-- Wilhelm Furtwängler, by Wikipedia

In 1957, he founded the Menuhin Festival Gstaad in Gstaad, Switzerland. In 1962, he established the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey. He also established the music program at The Nueva School in Hillsborough, California, sometime around then. In 1965 he received an honorary knighthood from the British monarchy. In the same year, Australian composer Malcolm Williamson wrote a violin concerto for Menuhin. He performed the concerto many times and recorded it at its premiere at the Bath Festival in 1965. Originally known as the Bath Assembly,[10] the festival was first directed by the impresario Ian Hunter in 1948. After the first year the city tried to run the festival itself, but in 1955 asked Hunter back. In 1959 Hunter invited Menuhin to become artistic director of the festival. Menuhin accepted, and retained the post until 1968.[11]



Menuhin also had a long association with Ravi Shankar, beginning in 1966 with their joint performance at the Bath Festival and the recording of their Grammy Award-winning album West Meets East (1967). During this time, he commissioned composer Alan Hovhaness to write a concerto for violin, sitar, and orchestra to be performed by himself and Shankar. The resulting work, entitled Shambala (c. 1970), with a fully composed violin part and space for improvisation from the sitarist, is the earliest known work for sitar with western symphony orchestra, predating Shankar's own sitar concertos, but Menuhin and Shankar never recorded it. Menuhin also worked with famous jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli in the 1970s on Jalousie, an album of 1930s classics led by duetting violins backed by the Alan Claire Trio.

In 1975, in his role as president of the International Music Council, he declared October 1 as International Music Day. The first International Music Day, organised by the International Music Council, was held that same year, in accordance with the resolution taken at the 15th IMC General Assembly in Lausanne in 1973.[12]

In 1977, Menuhin and Ian Stoutzker founded the charity Live Music Now, the largest outreach music project in the UK. Live Music Now pays and trains professional musicians to work in the community, bringing the experience to those who rarely get an opportunity to hear or see live music performance. At the Edinburgh Festival Menuhin premiered Priaulx Rainier's violin concerto Due Canti e Finale, which he had commissioned Rainier to write. He also commissioned her last work, Wildlife Celebration, which he performed in aid of Gerald Durrell's Wildlife Conservation Trust.

In 1983, Menuhin and Robert Masters founded the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists, today one of the world's leading forums for young talent. Many of its prizewinners have gone on to become prominent violinists, including Tasmin Little, Nikolaj Znaider, Ilya Gringolts, Julia Fischer, Daishin Kashimoto and Ray Chen.

In the 1980s, Menuhin wrote and oversaw the creation of a "Music Guides" series of books; each covered a musical instrument, with one on the human voice. Menuhin wrote some, while others were edited by different authors.

In 1991, Menuhin was awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize by the Israeli Government. In the Israeli Knesset he gave an acceptance speech in which he criticised Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank:

This wasteful governing by fear, by contempt for the basic dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people, should be the very last means to be adopted by those who themselves know too well the awful significance, the unforgettable suffering of such an existence. It is unworthy of my great people, the Jews, who have striven to abide by a code of moral rectitude for some 5,000 years, who can create and achieve a society for themselves such as we see around us but can yet deny the sharing of its great qualities and benefits to those dwelling amongst them.[13]

Later career


Stéphane Grappelli (left) with Menuhin in 1976

Menuhin regularly returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, sometimes performing with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. One of the more memorable later performances was of Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto, which Menuhin had recorded with the composer in 1932.

On 22 April 1978, along with Stéphane Grappelli, Yehudi played Pick Yourself Up, taken from the Menuhin & Grappelli Play Berlin, Kern, Porter and Rodgers & Hart album as the interval act at the 23rd Eurovision Song Contest for TF1. The performance came direct from the studios of TF1 and not that of the venue (Palais des Congrès), where the contest was being held.

Menuhin hosted the PBS telecast of the gala opening concert of the San Francisco Symphony from Davies Symphony Hall in September 1980.

His recording contract with EMI lasted almost 70 years and is the longest in the history of the music industry. He made his first recording at age 13 in November 1929, and his last in 1999, when he was nearly 83 years old. He recorded over 300 works for EMI, both as a violinist and as a conductor. In 2009 EMI released a 51-CD retrospective of Menuhin's recording career, titled Yehudi Menuhin: The Great EMI Recordings. In 2016, the Menuhin centenary year, Warner Classics (formerly EMI Classics) issued a milestone collection of 80 CDs entitled The Menuhin Century, curated by his long-time friend and protégé Bruno Monsaingeon, who selected the recordings and sourced rare archival materials to tell Menuhin's story.

In 1990 Menuhin was the first conductor for the Asian Youth Orchestra which toured around Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong with Julian Lloyd Webber and a group of young talented musicians from all over Asia.

Personal life


Menuhin and author Paulo Coelho in 1999 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

Menuhin was married twice, first to Nola Nicholas, daughter of an Australian industrialist and sister of Hephzibah Menuhin's first husband Lindsay Nicholas. They had two children, Krov and Zamira (who married pianist Fou Ts'ong). Following their 1947 divorce he married the British ballerina and actress Diana Gould, whose mother was the pianist Evelyn Suart and stepfather was Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt.

Admiral Sir Cecil Halliday Jepson Harcourt GBE KCB (11 April 1892 – 19 December 1959) was a British naval officer. He was the de facto governor of Hong Kong as commander-in-chief and head of the military administration from September 1945 to June 1946. He was called by the Chinese name "Ha Kok", a reference to the fourth-century Chinese nobleman Chung Kok... On 18 December 1945, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB). In 1946, he was promoted to vice-admiral.

-- Cecil Harcourt, by Wikipedia

The couple had two sons, Gerard, notable as a Holocaust denier and far right activist, and Jeremy, a pianist. A third child died shortly after birth.

Gerard Menuhin (born 1948 in Scotland) is a Holocaust denier and far-right activist, associated with the neo-Nazi movement in Germany.

His book Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil, published in 2015, argues that the Holocaust is "the biggest lie in history", that Jews are an "alien, demonic force which seeks to dominate the world", that Jews are flooding Europe with non-white races, to create a "society of racial mongrels, under the rule of a “new Jewish nobility”", and plan to create a one-world government. Menuhin argues that "the world owes Adolf Hitler an apology".

He is the son of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and dancer Diana Gould, and brother of pianist Jeremy Menuhin.

-- Gerard Menuhin, by Wikipedia

The name Yehudi means "Jew" in Hebrew. In an interview republished in October 2004, he recounted to New Internationalist magazine the story of his name:

Obliged to find an apartment of their own, my parents searched the neighbourhood and chose one within walking distance of the park. Showing them out after they had viewed it, the landlady said: "And you'll be glad to know I don't take Jews." Her mistake made clear to her, the antisemitic landlady was renounced, and another apartment found. But her blunder left its mark. Back on the street my mother made a vow. Her unborn baby would have a label proclaiming his race to the world. He would be called "The Jew".[14]

Menuhin died in Martin Luther Hospital[15] in Berlin, Germany, from complications of bronchitis. Soon after his death, the Royal Academy of Music acquired the Yehudi Menuhin Archive, which includes sheet music marked up for performance, correspondence, news articles and photographs relating to Menuhin, autograph musical manuscripts, and several portraits of Paganini.[16]

Interest in yoga

Collection: The LIFE Picture Collection
Date created: January 01, 1953

In 1953, Life published photos of him in various esoteric yoga positions.[17] In 1952, Menuhin was in India, where Nehru, the new nation's first Prime Minister, introduced him to an influential yogi B. K. S. Iyengar, who was largely unknown outside the country.[17] Menuhin arranged for Iyengar to teach abroad in London, Switzerland, Paris, and elsewhere. He became one of the first prominent yoga masters teaching in the West.

Menuhin also took lessons from Indra Devi, who opened the first yoga studio in the U.S. in Los Angeles in 1948.[18]

Her first spiritual awakening happened while attending a gathering of Theosophists in Ommen in the Netherlands in 1926, to listen to Jiddu Krishnamurti. Devi was moved, became a vegetarian, and traveled to the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, India.

-- Indra Devi, by Theosophy Wiki

Krishna[murti] visited Aldous Huxley, who was glad to see him. Huxley described him as looking well, but curiously different from former times, for he was now "a small bright old man, with a bald head ringed by white hair." Huxley made plans to hear Krishna's talks in Gstaad, Krishna's destination after London. Vanda Scaravelli met Krishna in Geneva and from there they went on to a chalet she rented at Gstaad, near Saanen. He gave talks in the Saanen Town Hall to about 350 people at gatherings which would become an annual event.

Krishna's process was ongoing in Saanen. In his Notebook on 13 July 1961 he wrote sagely that the urge for repetition of a pleasant experience was the soil in which sorrow grew, and the brain had to stop making its own ways and become passive. On 16 July he described a sacredness or power that filled the room, which Vanda also felt. This was what everyone craved -- monk, priest, sannyasi -- and because they craved it, it eluded them. Vanda also wrote about her experience of Krishna's 'process.' He fainted and there was a change in his face, his eyes becoming larger. Then she felt a powerful "presence" of another dimension -- simultaneously empty and full. Krishna did allow Vanda to touch him during the experience, she said, but no one else. Again, the next day, Vanda took notes to explain to Krishna what happened when he "went off."

Aldous Huxley and his second wife, Laura, visited Gstaad to hear Krishna speak several times at the end of July 1961, along with Huxley's friend, Yehudi Menuhin. Huxley said the talks were among the most impressive things he'd ever listened to. He likened the experience to that of listening to a discourse by the Buddha: "such power, such intrinsic authority, such an uncompromising refusal to allow the homme moyen sensual any escapes or surrogates, any gurus, saviours, fuhrers, churches." Krishna showed one how to end sorrow but if one didn't choose to fulfil these conditions, sorrow would continue indefinitely.

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher (1895-1986): His Life and Thoughts, by C. V. Williams

Precisely because Huxley was plugged into the transcendental, his prose had power to liberate. You have to know that there actually is a transcendental something, if you are going to free anybody from anything -- if there is no beyond-the-given, there is no freedom from the given, and liberation is futile. Today's postmodern writers, who hug the given, stick to the obvious, cling to the shadows, celebrate the surface, have nowhere else to go, and so emancipation is the last of what they offer ... or you get.

No wonder that one of Aldous's best friends for several decades was Krishnamurti (the sage on whom I cut my spiritual teeth). Krishnamurti was a supreme liberator, at least on occasion, and in books such as "Freedom from the Known," this extraordinary sage pointed to the power of nondual choiceless awareness to liberate one from the binding tortures of space, time, death, and duality. When Huxley's house (and library) burned down, the first books he asked to be replaced were Krishnamurti's "Commentaries on Living."

Yehudi Menuhin wrote of Aldous: "He was scientist and artist in one -- standing for all we most need in a fragmented world where each of us carries a distorting splinter out of some great shattered universal mirror. He made it his mission to restore these fragments and, at least in his presence, men were whole again. To know where each splinter might belong one must have some conception of the whole, and only a mind such as Aldous's, cleansed of personal vanity, noticing and recording everything, and exploiting nothing, could achieve so broad a purpose."

-- One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality, by Ken Wilber, Shambhala Publications

1940s BKS Iyengar, Jiddu Krishnamurti and Yehudi Menuhin

Both Devi and Iyengar were students of Krishnamacharya, a famous yoga master in India.

Violins

Menuhin used a number of famous violins, arguably the most renowned of which is the Lord Wilton Guarnerius 1742. Others included the Giovanni Bussetto 1680, Giovanni Grancino 1695, Guarneri filius Andrea 1703, Soil Stradivarius, Prince Khevenhüller 1733 Stradivari, and Guarneri del Gesù 1739.

In his autobiography Unfinished Journey Mehunin wrote: "A great violin is alive; its very shape embodies its maker's intentions, and its wood stores the history, or the soul, of its successive owners. I never play without feeling that I have released or, alas, violated spirits."[19]

Awards and honours

• Freedom of the City (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1965).
• Appointed to the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1965. At the time of his appointment, he was an American citizen. As a result, his knighthood was honorary and he was not entitled to use the style 'Sir'. In 1993, he became The Right Honourable The Lord Menuhin, OM, KBE (see below).[20][21]
• The Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding (1968).[22]
• Became President of the International Music Council (1969–1975)[23]
• Became President of Trinity College of Music (now Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance), 1970.[24]
• The Léonie Sonning Music Prize (Denmark, 1972).
• Nominated as president of the Elgar Society (1983).
• The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (1984).
• The Kennedy Center Honors (1986).
• Appointed as a member of the Order of Merit (1987).[25]
• His recording of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor with Julian Lloyd Webber won the 1987 BRIT Award for Best British Classical Recording (BBC Music Magazine named this recording "the finest version ever recorded").
• The Glenn Gould Prize (1990), in recognition of his lifetime of contributions.
• Wolf Prize in Arts (1991).
• Ambassador of Goodwill (UNESCO, 1992).
• On 19 July 1993, Menuhin was made a life peer, as Baron Menuhin, of Stoke d'Abernon in the County of Surrey.[26][27]
• Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship the highest honour conferred by Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama (1994).[28]
• The Konex Decoration (Konex Foundation, Argentina, 1994).
• The Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin (1997).
• Honorary Doctorates from 20 universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Bath (1969).[29]
• The room in which concerts and performances are held at the European Parliament in Brussels is named the "Yehudi Menuhin Space".
• Menuhin was honored as a "Freeman" of the cities of Edinburgh, Bath, Reims and Warsaw.
• He held the Gold Medals of the cities of Paris, New York and Jerusalem.
• Honorary degree from Kalamazoo College.[30]
• Elected an Honorary Fellow of Fitzwilliam College in 1991.
• He received the 1997 Prince of Asturias Award in the Concord category along with Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
• In 1997, he received the Grand Cross 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
• On 15 May 1998, Menuhin received the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint James of the Sword (Portugal).[31]

Coat of arms of Yehudi Menuhin

Crest

Out of an eastern crown Or inscribed on either side with a crotchet rest a sharp semi-quaver a flat and semi-quaver rest Sable a pair of cubit arms Proper supporting a terrestrial globe the land Vert fimbriated Or the sea Azure.

Escutcheon

Azure four bendlets between as many violin bridges Gold.

Supporters

On either side a representation of a firebird à la Benois wings elevated and addorsed Gules beaked and membered with wings tipped Or the tail Bleu Celeste that to the dexter Gorged with a chain Or pendent therefrom a hurt fimbriated and charged with a menorah Or the candles Argent enflamed Proper that to the sinister gorged with a like chain pendent therefore a bezant charged with a representation of the gypsy flag mon Proper the compartment a grassy mound with bluebells and blue poppies growing therefrom all Proper with at the centre thereof a plough Gold.[32]

Cultural references

• The catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" popular in the 1930s and 1940s was inspired by Menuhin's guest appearance on a radio show, where Jerry Colonna turned "Yehoodi" into a widely recognized slang term for a mysteriously absent person. It eventually lost all of its original connection with Menuhin.
• Menuhin was also "meant" to appear on The 1971 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show but could not do so as he was "opening at the Argyle Theatre, Birkenhead in Old King Cole". He was replaced by Eric Morecambe in the famous "Grieg's Piano Concerto by Grieg" sketch featuring the conductor André Previn; he was also invited to appear on their 1973 Christmas Show to play his "banjo" as they said playing his violin would not be any good; he ruefully said that "I can't help you".
• A picture of Menuhin as a child is sometimes used as part of a Thematic Apperception Test.[33]

Bibliography

• Rolfe, Lionel Menuhin (2014). The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey. Los Angeles: Createspace. ISBN 978-1-4414-9399-6.
• Menuhin, Diana (1984). Fiddler's Moll. Life With Yehudi. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-28819-0.
• Menuhin, Yehudi (1977). Unfinished Journey. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-41051-3.
• Menuhin, Yehudi (1997). Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later. New York: Fromm Intl. ISBN 0-88064-179-7.
• L. Subramaniam, Y. Menuhin; Directed by Jean Henri Meunier (1999). Violin From the Heart (DVD).
• Bailey, Philip (2008). Yehudiana – Reliving the Menuhin Odyssey|Book One. Australia: Fountaindale Press. ISBN 978-0-9804499-0-7.
• Bailey, Philip (2010). Yehudiana – Reliving the Menuhin Odyssey Book Two. Australia: Fountaindale Press. ISBN 978-0-9804499-1-4.
• Burton, Humphrey (2000). Yehudi Menuhin: a life. Northeastern. ISBN 978-1-55553-465-3.

Films

• 1943 – Menuhin was a featured performer in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen. Introduced only as "Mr. Menuhin," he performed two violin solos, "Ave Maria" and "Flight of the Bumble Bee" for an audience of servicemen, volunteer hostesses and celebrities from stage and screen.
• 1946 – Menuhin supplied the violin solos in the film The Magic Bow.
• 1979 – The Music of Man (television series)
• The Mind of Music

References

1. Jacqueline Kent, An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin, pp. 11, 158, 190
2. Jacqueline Kent, An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin, p. 18
3. "Sigmund Anker". Find a Grave. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
4. Julia Boyd, Travellers in the Third Reich, Elliott and Thompson Limited, London, 2018, ISBN 978-1-78396-381-2, page 73, paraphrasing Edward Sackville-West
5. Unnamed critic in the Berliner Zeitung, 12 April 1929, quoted in translation in Boyd, page 73
6. Hindle, Kevin; Klyver, Kim (1 January 2011). Handbook of Research on New Venture Creation. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-85793-306-5.
7. Conversations with Menuhin: 32–34
8. "International Menuhin Music Academy". menuhinacademy.ch. Gstaad. 2019. Retrieved 18 November2019.
9. "Alberto Lysy: maestro busca talentos". lanacion.com.ar. 18 July 2004. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
10. "The Third Bath Assembly – Festival of the Arts". The Canberra Times. 18 April 1950. Retrieved 18 March 2009.
11. Bullamore, Tim (1999). Fifty Festivals. Mushroom Books. ISBN 978-1-899142-29-3. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
12. "International Music Day". International Music Council.
13. "Wolf Prize winner raps government". Jerusalem Post, 6 May 1991.
14. "Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999)". New Internationalist. 2 October 2004. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
15. Kozinn, Allan (13 March 1999). "Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Violinist, Conductor and Supporter of Charities, Is Dead at 82". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
16. Yehudi Menuhin Archive Saved For The Nation Archived27 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine 26 February 2004, TourDates.Co.UK, retrieved 28 September 2013.
17. Rolfe, Lionel (17 April 2015). "Indra Devi Was Not Just a Nice Old Lady". Huffington Post. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
18. Martin, Douglas (30 April 2002). "Indra Devi, 102, Dies; Taught Yoga to Stars and Leaders". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
19. Faber, Tony (2004). Stradivari's Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection. Random House. ISBN 1588362140. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
20. "No. 53332". The London Gazette (Supplement). 11 June 1993. p. 1.
21. Velde, François. "British and Other Honours in Music". Heraldica. Retrieved 23 May 2013.
22. "List of the recipients of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award". ICCRwebsite. Archived from the original on 1 September 2013. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
23. "Current and Past Presidents". International Music Council. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
24. "History of Trinity Laban". Trinity Laban website. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
25. "No. 50849". The London Gazette. 3 March 1987. p. 2855.
26. "No. 53379". The London Gazette. 22 July 1993. p. 12287.
27. "Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin". thepeerage.com. Retrieved 4 August 2007.
28. "SNA: List of Sangeet Natak Akademi Ratna Puraskarwinners (Akademi Fellows)". Official website. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
29. "Corporate Information". bath.ac.uk.
30. "History – Kalamazoo College".
31. "Cidadãos Estrangeiros Agraciados com Ordens Portuguesas" [Foreign Citizens Granted with Portuguese Orders] (in Portuguese). Lisbon: Presidência da República Portuguesa. Retrieved 19 March 2017. Search result for "Yehudi Menuhin".
32. Debrett's Peerage. 2000.
33. "A young boy is contemplating a violin..." University of Tennessee. Retrieved 27 January 2007.

External links

• Official website
• Yehudi Menuhin performing works by Bach, Bartók, Lalo, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Paganini and Tchaikovsky on Archive.org
• Yehudi Menuhin interview, 31 January 1987
• Text and pictures from Yehudi Menuhin by french film director Bruno Monsaingeon
• Yehudi Menuhin's life in Alma
• Yehudi Menuhin Collection (ARS.0040), Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound

[admin]

B. K. S. Iyengar
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/30/20

-- Iyengar’s Charisma of Incoherence, and Selected Indoctrination Defence Statements, by Matthew Remski

The videos below show two different instances of BKS Iyengar teaching at a yoga convention back in the 1990s.

The first one is particularly disturbing to watch. The student has cervical spondylosis and BKSI is shown dangerously pulling her out of position in Salamba Sarvangasana. Her neck could easily have been injured and she is clearly distressed by the reckless adjustment.

In the second video the student shown has lower back issues. BKSI treats his body as not much better than a slab of meat.

Can you imagine if a teacher up for certification had behaved in this way during a teaching assessment?

There is nothing admirable in this behavior. The arrogant, misplaced ownership BKSI asserts over his student's bodies is unnecessary and robs them of their personhood and self agency. He shows no sense of presence or connection to the many complex layers of the people that he is interacting with. In doing so, he leads them straight into harm's way.

There will be many ardent devotees who will try to explain this behavior away. Some will even try to glorify it. They will tell you not to believe what your eyes and gut are telling you about the violence you see. But once you strip the spiritual veneer away, that's what it is, violence, plain and simple.

I'm not denying BKS Iyengar's otherwise remarkable knowledge. But his delivery of that knowledge was mired in another, more brutal era. His methods were infused with the Indian caste culture and impacted by the British colonial rule that he was born into. Add to that the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his own teacher and you have a merciless, severe teaching style that has no place in contemporary culture.

I thoroughly reject the ongoing tradition in Iyengar Yoga of teachers treating another person's body with ownership and such a lack of care. Body treated as object, versus body treated as part of the continuum of the Self.

Let's keep the best of what BKSI had to offer and leave the rest behind. Or, as a dear friend said, "compost what is harmful so we can grow something healing and beautiful."

Our body should not be forced or punished like this. It should be honored and revered as temple to our Soul. Iyengar Yoga needs to and can evolve. It would be sad to see it become trapped in this wounded and antiquated type of behavior. Obsolete and lost to the wrong side of history.

Cassie Jackson
Liz Anne Potamianos
Karen Rain
Matthew Remski
Donna Farhi

-- Ann Tapsell West

B.K.S. Iyengar
Iyengar on his 86th birthday in 2004
Born: 14 December 1918, Bellur, Kolar district, Kingdom of Mysore (now Karnataka, India)
Died: 20 August 2014 (aged 95), Pune, Maharashtra, India
Occupation: Yoga teacher, author
Known for: Iyengar Yoga
Spouse(s): Ramamani
Children: Geeta and 5 others

Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar (14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014), better known as B.K.S. Iyengar, was the founder of the style of yoga as exercise known as "Iyengar Yoga" and was considered one of the foremost yoga teachers in the world.[1][2] He was the author of many books on yoga practice and philosophy including Light on Yoga, Light on Pranayama, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and Light on Life. Iyengar was one of the earliest students of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who is often referred to as "the father of modern yoga".[3] He has been credited with popularizing yoga, first in India and then around the world.[4]

The Indian government awarded Iyengar the Padma Shri in 1991, the Padma Bhushan in 2002 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2014.[5][6] In 2004, Iyengar was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.[7][8]

Early years

B.K.S. Iyengar was born into a poor Sri Vaishnava Iyengar family[9] in Bellur, Kolar district,[10] Karnataka, India. He was the 11th of 13 children (10 of whom survived) born to Sri Krishnamachar, a school teacher, and Sheshamma.[11] When Iyengar was five years old, his family moved to Bangalore. Four years later, the 9-year-old boy lost his father to appendicitis.[11]

Iyengar's home town, Bellur, was in the grip of the influenza pandemic at the time of his birth, and an attack of that disease left the young boy sickly and weak for many years. Throughout his childhood, he struggled with malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and general malnutrition. "My arms were thin, my legs were spindly, and my stomach protruded in an ungainly manner," he wrote. "My head used to hang down, and I had to lift it with great effort."[12]

Education in yoga

In 1934, his brother-in-law, the yogi Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, asked the 15-year-old Iyengar to come to Mysore, so as to improve his health through the practice of yoga asanas.[11][13] Krishnamacharya had Iyengar and other students give asana demonstrations in the Maharaja's court at Mysore, which had a positive influence on Iyengar.[11][14] Iyengar considers his association with his brother-in-law a turning point in his life[11] saying that over a two-year period "he (Krishnamacharya) only taught me for about ten or fifteen days, but those few days determined what I have become today!"[15] K. Pattabhi Jois has claimed that he, and not Krishnamacharya, was Iyengar's guru.[16] In 1937, Krishnamacharya sent Iyengar to Pune at the age of eighteen to spread the teaching of yoga.[11][17]

Though Iyengar had very high regard for Krishnamacharya,[15] and occasionally turned to him for advice, he had a troubled relationship with his guru during his tutelage.[18] In the beginning, Krishnamacharya predicted that the stiff, sickly teenager would not be successful at yoga. He was neglected and tasked with household chores. Only when Krishnamacharya's favorite pupil at the time, Keshavamurthy, left one day did serious training start.[19] Krishnamacharya began teaching a series of difficult postures, sometimes telling him to not eat until he mastered a certain posture. These experiences would later inform the way he taught his students.[20]

Iyengar reported in interviews that, at the age of 90, he continued to practice asanas for 3 hours and pranayamas for an hour daily. Besides this, he mentioned that he found himself performing non-deliberate pranayamas at other times.[15][18]

International recognition

Further information: Iyengar Yoga


In 1954, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin invited Iyengar to teach in Europe.

In 1952, Iyengar befriended the violinist Yehudi Menuhin.[21] Menuhin gave him the opportunity that transformed Iyengar from a comparatively obscure Indian yoga teacher into an international guru. Because Iyengar had taught the famous philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, he was asked to go to Bombay to meet Menuhin, who was known to be interested in yoga. Menuhin said he was very tired and could spare only five minutes. Iyengar told him to lie down in Savasana (on his back), and he fell asleep. After one hour, Menuhin awoke refreshed and spent another two hours with Iyengar. Menuhin came to believe that practising yoga improved his playing, and in 1954 invited Iyengar to Switzerland. At the end of that visit, he presented his yoga teacher with a watch on the back of which was inscribed, "To my best violin teacher, BKS Iyengar". From then on Iyengar visited the west regularly.[22] In Switzerland he also taught Vanda Scaravelli, who went on to develop her own style of yoga.[23]

He taught yoga to several celebrities including Krishnamurti and Jayaprakash Narayan.[24] He taught sirsasana (head stand) to Elisabeth, Queen of Belgium when she was 80.[25] Among his other devotees were the novelist Aldous Huxley, the actress Annette Bening, the film maker Mira Nair and the designer Donna Karan, as well as prominent Indian figures, including the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor.[12]

Iyengar made his first visit to the United States in 1956, when he taught in Ann Arbor, Michigan and gave several lecture-demonstrations; he came back to Ann Arbor in 1973, 1974, and 1976.[26]

In 1966, Iyengar published his first book, Light on Yoga. It became an international best-seller. As of 2005, it had been translated into 17 languages and sold three million copies.[2] It was followed by 13 other books, covering pranayama and aspects of yoga philosophy.[27]


Iyengar Yoga in Britain: Iyengar with yoga teacher Malcolm Strutt at Iyengar Centre House, London, 1971

In 1967, the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) called for classes in "Hatha Yoga", free of yoga philosophy, but including asanas and "pranayamas (sic)" suitable especially for people aged over 40. The ILEA's Peter McIntosh watched some of Iyengar's classes, was impressed by Light on Yoga, and from 1970 ILEA-approved yoga teacher training in London was run by one of Iyengar's pupils, Silva Mehta. Iyengar was careful to comply with the proscription of yoga philosophy, and encouraged students to follow their own religious traditions, rather than trying to follow his own family's Visistadvaita, a qualified non-dualism within Hinduism.[28][29]

In 1975, Iyengar opened the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, in memory of his late wife. He officially retired from teaching in 1984, but continued to be active in the world of Iyengar Yoga, teaching special classes, giving lectures, and writing books. Iyengar's daughter, Geeta, and son, Prashant, have gained international acclaim as teachers.[8]

Iyengar attracted his students by offering them just what they sought – which tended to be physical stamina and flexibility.[18] He conducted demonstrations and later, when a scooter accident dislocated his spine, began exploring the use of props to help disabled people practice Yoga. He drew inspiration from Hindu deities such as Yoga Narasimha and stories of yogis using trees to support their asanas.[20] He was however thought by his students to be somewhat rough with his adjustments when setting people into alignment; the historian of yoga Elliott Goldberg records that, as well as being known for barking orders and yelling at students,[30] he was nicknamed, based on his initials B. K. S., "Bang, Kick, Slap".[30] In Goldberg's view, Iyengar "rationalized his humiliation of his followers as a necessary consequence of his demand for high standards",[31] but this was consistent with his childhood response to the rough and abusive treatment he received from Krishnamacharya, taking offence quickly, being suspicious of other people's intentions, and belittling others: "In other words, he sometimes behaved like Krishnamacharya".[31] Goldberg concludes, however, that Iyengar hid "a compassion of which Krishnamacharya was never capable", and his students remembered his playfulness as well as his unpredictable temper.[31]

Philanthropy and activism

Iyengar supported nature conservation, stating that it is important to conserve all animals and birds.[32] He donated Rs. 2 million to Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens, Mysore, thought to be the largest donation by an individual to any zoo in India.[32] He also adopted a tiger and a cub in memory of his wife, who died in 1973.[32]

Iyengar helped promote awareness of multiple sclerosis with the Pune unit of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of India.[33]

Iyengar's most important charitable project involved donations to his ancestral village of Bellur, in the Kolar district of Karnataka. Through the Bellur Trust fund which he established, he led a transformation of the village, supporting a number of charitable activities there. He built a hospital, India's first temple dedicated to Patanjali, a free school that supplies uniforms, books, and a hot lunch to the children of Bellur and the surrounding villages, a secondary school, and a college.[34]

Family

In 1943, Iyengar married 16-year-old Ramamani in a marriage that was arranged by their parents in the usual Indian manner. He said of their marriage: "We lived without conflict as if our two souls were one."[22] Together, they raised five daughters and a son. Ramamani died in 1973 aged 46; Iyengar named his yoga institute in Pune, the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, after her.[35]

Both Iyengar's eldest daughter Geeta (1944-2018) and his son Prashant have become internationally-known teachers in their own right. His other children are Vanita, Sunita, Suchita, and Savita.[36] Geeta, having worked extensively on yoga for women, published Yoga: A Gem for Women (2002); Prashant is the author of several books, including A Class after a Class: Yoga, an Integrated Science (1998), and Yoga and the New Millennium (2008). Since Geeta's death, Prashant has served as the director of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI) in Pune.[37] Iyengar's granddaughter, Abhijata Sridhar Iyengar, trained for a number of years under his tutelage, and is now a teacher both at the Institute in Pune and internationally.

Iyengar died on 20 August 2014 in Pune, aged 95.[38][39]

Legacy

3 October 2005 was declared as "B.K.S. Iyengar Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.[2] Anthropologist Joseph S. Alter of the University of Pittsburgh stated that Iyengar "has by far had the most profound impact on the global spread of yoga."[2] In June 2011, he was presented with a commemorative stamp issued in his honour by the Beijing branch of China Post. At that time there were over thirty thousand Iyengar yoga students in 57 cities in China.[40]

The noun "Iyengar", short for "Iyengar Yoga", is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as "a type of Hatha yoga focusing on the correct alignment of the body, making use of straps, wooden blocks, and other objects as aids in achieving the correct postures."[41]

On 14 December 2015, what would have been Iyengar's 97th birthday, he was honoured with a Google Doodle. It was shown in India, North America, much of Europe, Russia, and Indonesia.[42]

Bibliography

• (1966; revised ed. 1977) Light on Yoga. New York: Schocken. ISBN 978-0-8052-1031-6
• (1981) Light on Pranayama: The Yogic Art of Breathing. New York: Crossroad. ISBN 0-8245-0686-3
• (1985) The Art of Yoga. Boston: Unwin. ISBN 978-0-04-149062-6
• (1988) The Tree of Yoga. Boston: Shambhala. ISBN 0-87773-464-X
• (1996) Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. London: Thorsons. ISBN 978-0-00-714516-4
• (2005) Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom. (with Abrams, D. & Evans, J.J.) Pennsylvania: Rodale. ISBN 1-59486-248-6
• (2007) Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health. New York: Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 978-0-7566-3362-2
• (2000–2008) Astadala Yogamala: Collected Works (8 vols) New Delhi: Allied Publishers.
• (2009) Yoga Wisdom and Practice. New York: Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 0-7566-4283-3
• (2010) Yaugika Manas: Know and Realize the Yogic Mind. Mumbai: Yog. ISBN 81-87603-14-3
• (2012) Core of the Yoga Sutras: The Definitive Guide to the Philosophy of Yoga. London: HarperThorsons. ISBN 978-0007921263

References

1. Aubrey, Allison. "Light on life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga insights". Morning Edition: National Public Radio, 10 November 1995. (full text) Retrieved 4 July 2007
2. Jump up to:a b c d Stukin, Stacie (10 October 2005). "Yogis gather around the guru". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
3. Iyengar, B.K.S. (2000). Astadala Yogamala. New Delhi, India: Allied Publishers. p. 53. ISBN 978-8177640465.
4. Sjoman 1999, p. 41.
5. "Ruskin Bond, Vidya Balan, Kamal Haasan honoured with Padma awards". Hindustan Times. HT Media Limited. 25 January 2014. Retrieved 22 August 2014.
6. "Padma Awards Announced". Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs. 25 January 2014. Retrieved 26 January2014.
7. 2004 TIME 100 – B.K.S. Iyengar Heroes & Icons, TIME.
8. Iyengar, B.K.S. "Yoga News & Trends – Light on Iyengar". Yoga Journal. Archived from the original on 31 August 2007. Retrieved 15 November 2012.
9. "B. K. S. Iyengar Biography". Notablebiographies.com. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
10. Iyengar, B.K.S. (1991). Iyengar – His Life and Work. C.B.S. Publishers & Distributors. p. 3.
11. Iyengar, B.K.S. (2006). Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom. USA: Rodale. pp. xvi–xx. ISBN 9781594865244. Retrieved 8 January 2013.
12. "B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95". The New York Times. 21 August 2014.
13. Smith & White 2014, p. 124.
14. Singleton, Mark (2010). Yoga Body : the origins of modern posture practice. Oxford University Press. pp. 184, 192. ISBN 978-0-19-539534-1. OCLC 318191988.
15. Interview by R. Alexander Medin. "3 Gurus, 48 Questions" (PDF). Namarupa (Fall 2004): 9. 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 March 2013. Retrieved 30 March 2013.
16. Sjoman 1999, p. 49.
17. Iyengar, B.K.S. (2000). Astadala Yogamala. New Delhi, India: Allied Publishers. p. 57. ISBN 978-8177640465.
18. "Being BKS Iyengar: The enlightened yogi of yoga(part1-2)". YouTube. 22 June 2008. Retrieved 15 November 2012.
19. Pag, Fernando. "Krishnamacharya's Legacy". Yogajournal.com. Retrieved 15 November 2012.
20. "Being BKS Iyengar: The enlightened yogi of yoga(part2-2)". YouTube. 22 June 2008. Retrieved 15 November 2012.
21. SenGupta, Anuradha (22 June 2008). "Being BKS Iyengar: The yoga guru". IBN live. Retrieved 8 January 2013.
22. "BKS Iyengar obituary". The Guardian. 20 August 2014.
23. Wishner, Nan (5 May 2015). "The Legacy of Vanda Scaravelli". Yoga International.
24. "Life is yoga, yoga is life". Sakal Times. 13 December 2012. Archived from the original on 16 February 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
25. "Light on Iyengar". Yoga Journal. San Francisco: 96. September–October 2005. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
26. "Yogacharya B. K. S. Iyengar Dies August 20" (PDF). IYNAUS. 20 August 2014.
27. "au:B. K. S. Iyengar". WorldCat. Retrieved 6 October 2019.
28. Newcombe 2007.
29. Newcombe 2019, pp. 99, 236-239.
30. Goldberg 2016, p. 382.
31. Goldberg 2016, p. 384.
32. "Zoo felicitates B.K.S. Iyengar". The Hindu. 10 June 2009.
33. "BKS Iyengar to participate in multiple sclerosis awareness drive". The Indian Express. 22 May 2010. Retrieved 9 January2013.
34. "Bellur Trust". Iyengar Yoga UK. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
35. "The Pune Institute". Iyengar Yoga (UK). Retrieved 16 October 2019.
36. BKS Iyengar Archive Project 2007. IYNAUS. 2007. [ISBN unspecified]
37. Biography: Geeta Iyengar
38. "Yoga guru B. K. S. Iyengar passes away". The Hindu. 20 August 2014.
39. "B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95". The New York Times. 20 August 2014. B. K. S. Iyengar ... died on Wednesday in the southern Indian city of Pune. He was 95. ... The cause was heart failure, said Abhijata Sridhar-Iyengar, his granddaughter. ...
40. Krishnan, Ananth (21 June 2011). "Indian yoga icon finds following in China". The Hindu. Chennai, India. Retrieved 22 June2011.
41. Oxford Dictionaries. "Iyengar". Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
42. "97th birthday of B. K. S. Iyengar". Google Doodles Archive. 14 December 2015. Retrieved 14 December 2015.

Sources

Goldberg, Elliott (2016). The Path of Modern Yoga :The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice. Inner Traditions. ISBN 978-1-62055-567-5. OCLC 926062252.
Newcombe, Suzanne (2007). "Stretching for Health and Well-Being: Yoga and Women in Britain, 1960–1980". Asian Medicine. 3 (1): 37–63. doi:10.1163/157342107X207209.
——— (2019). Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis. Bristol, England: Equinox Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78179-661-0.
Smith, Frederick M.; White, Joan (2014). Singleton, Mark; Goldberg, Ellen (eds.). Chapter 6. Becoming an Icon: B. K. S. Iyengar as a Yoga Teacher and a Yoga Guru. Gurus of Modern Yoga. Oxford University Press. pp. 122–146. ISBN 978-0-19-993871-1.
Sjoman, Norman E. (1999). The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. New Delhi, India: Abhinav Publications. ISBN 81-7017-389-2.

External links

• Official website
• B. K. S. Iyengar on IMDb
• BBC World Service article and programme by Mark Tully
• Leap of faith (2008), Trivedi & Makim, Documentary about the life of BKS Iyengar
• BKS Iyengar – 97th birthday on YouTube. Google Doodle Collection. 13 December 2015. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
• BKS Iyengar Google Doodle. 97th Birthday of "Iyengar Yoga" Founder on YouTube. Rajamanickam Antonimuthu. 14 December 2015. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
• Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute at Google Cultural Institute

**************************

Yoga Reconsiders the Role of the Guru in the Age of #MeToo
by Eliza Griswold
The New Yorker
July 23, 2019


In the Western context, yoga gurus such as Sharath Jois and Bikram Choudhury (pictured) become rock stars, and students compete for their favor.Photograph by Bob Riha, Jr. / Getty

Last week on Instagram, Sharath Jois, a grandson of Pattabhi Jois, the hugely influential founder of Ashtanga yoga, which has millions of followers worldwide, finally responded to several years’ worth of claims of sexual misconduct against his grandfather, who died in 2009, at the age of ninety-three. Since 2010, more than a dozen former students have come forward to accuse Guruji, as his followers called him, of sexually assaulting them in his yoga studio in Mysore, India, and during workshops while he was on tour in the United States. Their allegations include that he rubbed his genitals against their pelvises while they were in extreme backbends, lay on top of them while they were prostrate on the floor, and inserted his fingers into their vaginas—an action that fellow-students excused as an adjustment to their mula bandhas, the body’s lowest chakra, which lies between the genitals and the anus. After his grandfather’s death, Sharath became the director of the Shri K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute, and the paramguru (or “guru’s guru”) of Ashtanga. “It brings me immense pain that I also witness him giving improper adjustments,” Sharath wrote in the post. “I am sorry it caused pain for any of his students. After all these years I still feel pain from my grandfather’s actions.”

This is only the latest in a string of scandals involving powerful men within the yoga community that date back decades. In 1991, protesters accused Swami Satchidananda, the famous yogi who issued the invocation at Woodstock, of molesting his students, and carried signs outside a hotel where he was staying in Virginia that read “Stop the Abuse.” (Satchidananda denied all claims of misconduct.) In 1994, Amrit Desai, the founder of the Kripalu Centre for Yoga, a well-known yoga-retreat center, was accused of sleeping with his students while purporting to practice celibacy. (Desai eventually admitted to having sexual contact with three women.) More recently, Bikram Choudhury, the founder of “hot,” or Bikram, yoga, has faced several civil lawsuits for sexual misconduct, including one filed in 2013 by his own lawyer, Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, who said that he not only harassed her but also forced her to cover up allegations of misconduct against other women. (Bikram has denied all allegations.) After Bikram failed to pay Jafa-Bodden a seven-million-dollar judgment issued against him by a California court, in 2017, the judge issued an arrest warrant, and Bikram reportedly fled the country. In 2012, John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga, admitted to sleeping with several students. He was also accused of running a Wiccan coven called Blazing Solar Flames, where members often went naked. (In a public statement, Friend denied any involvement in “a sex coven.”) Friend withdrew for a time from public life but has since launched another form of yoga, called Sridaiva. Not all of the recent scandals have been sexual; some have involved financial impropriety or the physical abuse of students. During his workshops, B. K. S. Iyengar, who died in Pune, India, in 2014, openly slapped and kicked his students while telling them, according to the Times of India, “It’s not you I’m angry with, not you I kick. It’s the knee, the back, the mind that is not listening.”

Jois was born in 1915, in the rural village of Kowshika, in South India, and spent the first thirty-two years of his life living under British colonial rule. One day at school, when he was twelve, he attended a lecture in which a yoga instructor named Sri Krishnamacharya demonstrated several asanas, or poses. Jois ran away from home at fourteen, reunited with Krishnamacharya a few years later, and proceeded to study with him for twenty-five years. He went on to create Ashtanga, a form of yoga that involves a series of rigorous athletic poses that students are encouraged to practice six times a week. Beginning in the seventies, students flocked to Mysore to study with Jois, and, as his following grew, so did his fame and influence. Some students stayed in Mysore for months or even years to perfect their poses. Others came to venerate the teacher, prostrating themselves at his feet. Female students later complained that he sometimes kissed them on the mouth without their consent, and patted their buttocks when they hugged him or bowed before him. Jubilee Cooke, a fifty-three-year-old former student who says that she was groped by Jois during yoga sessions, didn’t realize that his behavior was something that she could report. “I didn’t know it was called sexual assault until I heard political pundits talking about what Trump had done on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tapes,” she told me.

Alex Auder, the forty-eight-year-old founder of Magu Yoga, a studio in Philadelphia, has been one of Jois’s most vocal critics. During the late nineteen-nineties, Auder taught at Jivamukti, in New York City, one of the places where Ashtanga first grew popular in the United States. But, in the past decade, she has become increasingly skeptical of some aspects of the practice. Initially, her criticisms focussed on the poses themselves, which she believes Jois designed with little regard for how they would be enacted by women. “The physical practice is totally off base—it’s patriarchal,” she told me. “For many women’s bodies, it simply doesn’t work.” (To illustrate this point, she recently posted a picture on Instagram of Sharath Jois assisting a pregnant woman to “drop back” from a standing position into a backbend, which struck Auder as ill-advised.) For the past five years, Auder has written about the increasing commodification of yoga, which she calls “neo-spiritualism”—an alliance between yoga and neoliberalism. Such criticism is not taken lightly in the Ashtanga community; according to Auder and others, those who speak out are often ostracized. “Sharath kicked anyone off the list of sanctioned teachers who ever criticized Pattabhi Jois or Ashtanga,” she told me. (Sharath did not respond to requests for comment on this article.)

For Karen Rain, a fifty-one-year-old former student who says that Jois repeatedly assaulted her between 1994 and 1998, at his studio in Mysore, the fear of being ostracized kept her from telling anyone about the abuse. “I knew it would bring me criticism and slander,” she told me. She was certain that her fellow-students would turn on her if she made her allegations public, and, in 2002, she left Ashtanga. “It destroyed my life as I knew it,” she said. “I loved the practice and was hoping to build my life and career around it.” In 2018, she told her story on Medium and included photographs showing Jois pressing his crotch to hers while she lifted her leg above her head. “Since the images are still photographs, you don’t really see that he’s humping me,” she told me.

Anneke Lucas, a fifty-six-year-old former student, who now works as an advocate for survivors of sexual abuse and is the founder of Liberation Prison Yoga, confronted Jois the moment he groped her crotch, during a class in Manhattan in 2001, and told him that he could go to prison for touching her like that. After she spoke out, she felt that her experience wasn’t taken seriously by other students and teachers, which she found more harmful than the assault. “I was far more hurt by the culture of silence and ignoring the victim and victim-blaming than the abuse itself,” she told me. “If there would’ve been support from the community, and it had been dealt with, it would have gone away.” Cooke has called out the magazine Yoga Journal for favorable articles that it published about Jois in the nineties. “Whether or not they did it consciously, it was grooming,” she said. “Encouraging people to go study with Pattabhi Jois and expect good things from him.”

Last year, Auder became Facebook friends with Rain, Lucas, and Cooke, and the four began discussing what they saw as Ashtanga’s toxic sexual culture. At first, Auder wasn’t sure how to process the severity of the women’s claims. “I’m a product of the seventies,” she told me, “and I don’t mind a pat on the ass.” But as the number of accusers grew over the last year she came to see that what others called “inappropriate adjustment” was really a pattern of sexual abuse, and that the powerful following that had grown up around Jois had helped to keep his accusers silent. After that, on Instagram, she called for an official response from Ashtanga leaders.

Instead of putting the controversy to rest, the statement that Sharath issued last week has kicked off a flurry of angry responses from people who argue that it comes too late, and that it reads like an attempt to end the controversy rather than a genuine effort to set things right. Critics accused Sharath of shirking blame for himself or his family and instead accusing other students of failing to protect their fellow-practitioners. “Why did they not act in support of their fellow students, peers, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, friends and speak against this?” he asks. He followed this up with another statement, in which he grew more defensive. “You can criticize me what ever you want,” he wrote on Instagram, punctuating his post with crying-face emojis. “I have always respected & supported women my students know it & god knows it.” The post has since been deleted.

But the scandal has prompted other leaders, including Eddie Stern, a fifty-one-year-old yoga instructor who, for twenty-five years, was the head of one of the most influential Ashtanga schools in the United States, to speak out about Jois’s abuses. Stern studied under Jois for eighteen years and has since authored three books about Ashtanga. After the allegations were made public, he received letters from current students asking him to respond. “People have considered me to be part of this problem because I haven’t spoken publicly,” he told me. Although Stern has been talking in private to concerned students and fellow-teachers, now that Sharath has issued a statement, Stern has decided to speak to me for this article.

Jois’s abuses remained hidden for so long in part because of his overwhelming authority as a guru, which may reflect a larger problem within the culture of yoga. In traditional yogic practice, a guru is a mediator—a translator of sorts—through whom a set of teachings is passed down. Devotion to the guru is meant to symbolize devotion to the teachings, not to the man. But in the Western context gurus become rock stars, and students compete to curry favor with them. This gives gurus significant influence over their students, which is sometimes misused. “I had this idea in me that the guru was supposed to be this all-encompassing everything,” Stern said. “I, along with other people, superimposed these mythologies on top of a human being . . . It was a misunderstanding of what the relationship was supposed to be.

For Rain, apologies from Ashtanga teachers have come too late. She is less interested in public statements and more interested in specific measures that schools can take to change their cultures. Some yoga communities have begun instituting official checks on how teachers are allowed to touch their students, including issuing “consent cards,” which students fill out to indicate whether they are willing to be touched and place at the edge of their mats. Rain wants Ashtanga teachers to pledge to offer free copies of articles about the accusations against Jois at their studios and to post unedited accounts of the allegations on their Web sites. She told me, “I’m offering them a way to make amends by giving the narrative to us.”

Eliza Griswold, a contributing writer covering religion, politics, and the environment, has been writing for The New Yorker since 2003. She won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America,” in 2019.