DW Travel (March 1, 2023) – You’ve likely heard of Germany’s famous Neuschwanstein castle, or Potsdam’s Sanssouci palace. But did you know one of the country’s best-known castles only became famous as a ruin? And that some German castles served as fortified customs offices? Here are some of the biggest misconceptions involving German castles palaces.
Video timeline: 0:00 Intro 0:28Neuschwanstein – a medieval castle? 2:06Sanssouci – palace or garden hut? 3:35 Is it too expensive to rebuild Heidelberg castle? 5:00 Why do so many castles line river Rhine? 6:25 Are all German castles and palaces owned by the state?
CBS Sunday Morning (February 26, 2023) – Utah’s Great Salt Lake has been in decline, owing to climate change, drought, and over-use of water resources, and is now one-third the size it was in the 1980s. A new scientific report out this month warns that, without dramatic and immediate cuts in water consumption, the lake could vanish in just five years. Correspondent Lee Cowan talks with Sen. Mitt Romney, who co-sponsored a bill studying the lake’s problems, and with experts who say aggressive action is needed.
National Geographic (February 19, 2023) – Abraham Lincoln is revered as America’s abolitionist president, but his thoughts about ending slavery were far from ideal. It would take the steady influence of the abolitionist movement and one of its leaders, Frederick Douglass, to guide Lincoln to becoming “The Great Emancipator”. Douglass was himself born enslaved and through the power of education became a giant that influenced American history.
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or 1818– February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his orator and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
Found guilty of the Temple Murders in 1733, Sarah Malcolm became the most notorious woman in Britain. Did she commit the crime alone? Did she commit it at all?
FRANCE 24 (February 16, 2023) – A glimpse of some of the incredible artworks saved from the devastating fire at Notre Dame Cathedral and now on display in a new exhibition at the Cité de l’architecture in Paris.
Sotheby’s (February 3, 2023) – Reminiscent of a landscape, or the strata of a Monet waterlily painting, the horizontal swathes of paint migrate across Abstraktes Bild in wave like-motion across the breadth of the canvas. Texture, colour and structure are here deployed with spectacular force, with the gliding scrape of the squeegee revealing the kaleidoscopic architectural structure of the artist’s underpainting.
It is a masterpiece created during the critical year of 1986, which saw the artist’s first large-scale touring retrospective and was also the year in which Richter first took up the squeegee as his principal compositional tool. He has only ever produced 24 Abstraktes Bild of this magnitude (with a width greater than 380 cm), of which half of these reside in museum collections across the globe.
Gerhard Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany. Throughout his career, Richter has negotiated the frontier between photography and painting, captivated by the way in which these two seemingly opposing practices speak to and challenge one another. From exuberant canvases rendered with a squeegee and acerbic color charts to paintings of photographic detail and close-ups of a single brushstroke, Richter moves effortlessly between the two mediums, reveling in the complexity of their relationship, while never asserting one above the other.
House & Garden (February 3, 2023) – Peter Sheppard and Keith Day welcome us into Wolterton Hall, an 18th-century English country house in Norfolk, England. Both Peter & Keith have been steadily restoring and redecorating Wolterton Park since they bought the estate in 2016 — bringing the state rooms back to their original glory and creating beautiful, practical living spaces.
Video timeline: 00:00 – Boudoir: “The walls were covered with a green hessian” 02:30 – Saloon: “This is where we have our best parties” 05:29 – State Bedroom: “It’s really funny to have a state bedroom when your friends come and stay…” 06:17 – State Bathroom: “It’s not conventional to have a bath of this size” 07:30 – Kitchen: “You shouldn’t hide away beautiful things” 08:49 – Living Room: “This was the Walpole’s library” 09:57 – Picture Room: “A 20th-century collection of paintings”
Watch the full episode of Design Notes as we tour Wolterton Hall and Peter & Keith explain how they live in the Palladian rooms of the piano nobile, from the State Bathroom with its alabaster-panelled bath to the Saloon that looks out on 500 acres of parkland. #HouseTour#ManorHouse#CountryHouse#England#HomeDesign
DW News – 75 years ago today, Mahatma Gandhi, who led the campaign for India’s independence, was assassinated in Delhi. The former lawyer is often called the “Father of the Nation” and credited with leading a non-violent struggle for independence from British rule.
Gandhi wanted an independent, peaceful India that protected religious freedom. But that was challenged by growing Muslim and Hindu nationalism. In 1947, India gained independence from the British, but at the cost of Partition – Muslim majority Pakistan and Hindu majority but secular India, came into being. Religous riots followed and Gandhi went on hunger strike to oppose the violence.
On January 30th, 1948, he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist who believed Gandhi had been too accommodating to Muslims during the Partition. Around a million people turned out for his funeral. That was in 1948. But the India of 2023 is rather different. Hindu nationalism has been emboldened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi – leaving Gandhi’s legacy in tatters, as DW Correspondent Manira Chaudhary finds out.
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