Anschluss Research Articles

The problem of synonyms

I read with great interest the recent paper by Al Aboud [1], about the problem of synonyms in medical literature. I concur with the author that this problem needs to be addressed by the concerned people, now before later. Dr Al Aboud elaborated on the synonyms of multiple symmetric lipomatosis. However, in medicine, one can find multiple synonyms for dozen, if not hundreds of diseases. In this letter, I am giving another example with Menkes disease, for which there are eight names in medical literature. Menkes disease is a very rare X-chromosome disorder affecting copper metabolism [2,3]. Menkes et al. in 1962 [4], first described the disease in a family of English-Irish descent living in New York, who presented by early retardation in growth, peculiar hair, and focal cerebral and cerebellar degeneration [4]. The disease leads to psychomotor retardation, pili torti, pallor, seizures and death in infancy or early childhood. There is marked skin pallor and laxity resembling cutis laxa. The responsible gene has been identified as a coppertransporting ATPase. Disruption of copper-dependent oxidation of tyrosine to dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) results in diminished tyrosinase activity which manifests clinically as diffuse cutaneous hypopigmentation [3]. The initial diagnosis of Menkes disease is suggested by clinical features. Serum copper and ceruloplasmin levels are low, but interpretation may be difficult in the first Months of life. Definitive diagnosis can be made by demonstration of abnormal intracellular accumulation of copper in cultured fibroblasts. Examination for hair shaft Abnormalities can usually be accomplished with light microscopy using phase contrast optics. Unfortunately, the prognosis for MKHS is still grim, with most patients dying by the age of 3-4 years. Administrations of oral and parenteral copper have not proven successful [2]. The disease is named after John Hans Menkes [5-7] (19282008) (Fig. 1). Menkes, was born in Vienna. In 1939, following the German annexation of Austria, the family fled Austria and immigrated to the USA via Ireland. Menkes was then eleven years old. Menkes, son and grandson of physicians, followed the family tradition and studied medicine, despite his wish to become a journalist [6]. Menkes became head of pediatric neurology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and later at the University of California, Los Angele (UCLA) [6]. In 1974 he entered private practice but returned to academic medicine in 1984 as professor of neurology and pediatrics at UCLA [6]. In 1997 he was named director of pediatric neurology at the Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He identified Menkes disease, maple syrup urine disease and other congenital disorders of the neural system and established the pediatric neurology program at UCLA5. Menkes has published numerous papers and a textbook of child neurology. He has also written several novels. He has received some literary prizes [6]. He was named one of the „Best Doctors in America” in 1992, 1994 and 1996 and was among the „American Men and Women of Science” in 1996 [6]. He died Nov. 22 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications of chemotherapy for colonic carcinoma. He was 79 [5]. Over the years, there was a debate about the best name for Menkes disease. Some authors think that, “Kinky hair disease” proved a designation useful in detection of new cases, since the hair change is an easily remembered feature by which physicians can be alerted to the condition. While others, pointed out that the hair may not be abnormal, and that serum copper determination is a simple and reliable diagnostic test, therefore they suggested “congenital hypocupraemia”, as a preferred designation [8]. Table I, illustrate the discrepancy in the number of citations obtained using the synonyms for this disease. Although , this medical condition fits well into a „syndrome’’, „Menkes disease’’, seems to be the most currently and frequently, used for this condition. Finally, I agree with Dr Al Aboud, about the importance of having a uniform and standard terminology in medical field, although this goal is difficult to achieve [1].

Portugal, Salazar, and the Jews (review)

Reviewed by: Portugal, Salazar, and the Jews Marion Kaplan Portugal, Salazar, and the Jews, by Avraham Milgram, translated by Naftali Greenwood. Jerusalem: Yad Vashen, 2011. 324 pp. $50.00. In his densely researched book, Portugal, Salazar, and the Jews, Avraham Milgram focuses on the gap between the rescue potential of Portugal, a European nation that, surprisingly, resisted rabid and rampant antisemitism, and the number of Jews who actually received permission to enter Portugal during World War II. Unique in its more open approach to Jews, it nevertheless hobbled Jewish immigration when Jews most needed it. Milgram provides important background first. Starting with the Inquisition, he shows that, with few significant exceptions, Portugal began to accept Jews in the late eighteenth century, opening its gates to North African Jewish immigration in the nineteenth and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth centuries. A very small and diverse Jewish community made up of Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and former crypto Jews thrived in the early twentieth century. As the absolutist state of the nineteenth century consolidated itself, [End Page 165] its leaders disdained the Inquisition as anachronistic. "Antisemitism seems to have petered out in Portugal" (p. 43), as the state adopted a utilitarian and liberal attitude towards Jews. Indeed, the vast majority of rightists, monarchists, and anti-liberal circles marginalized racist antisemitism and pointed to intellectuals, liberals, and Freemasons as the new enemies. (Milgram does not explore if the Right assumed that Jews belonged to these stigmatized groups, or if Portuguese citizens understood these terms as code words for "Jews.") A liberal Republic emancipated Jews fully in 1911. Conservatives aimed their ire at liberalism, not at the minuscule number of Jews in Portugal. Milgram insists, and is convincing on this point, that modern antisemitism failed "to establish even a toehold in Portugal" (p. 11) while it grew racist and virulent elsewhere in early twentieth-century Europe. Moreover, António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal's dictator, rose to power in 1932 without antisemitic rhetoric or violence. Even Portuguese fascists (the Blue Shirts) eschewed the antisemitism that proponents of their ilk espoused in the north. They admired Hitler, yet did not oppose Jews coming to Portugal to escape his violent persecution. This is impressive. Still, readers may wonder about this lack of prejudice, especially since Salazar dreaded and stigmatized "communism," "republicanism," and "liberalism"—more code words for "Jews," at least among Portugal's neighbors. In addition, Milgram admits that the police harbored antisemitism, transposing their general dislike of foreigners onto Jews. But even as the police harassed and threatened Jews, they did not turn them over to the Germans. Salazar and his minions performed a precarious balancing act before and during the war. At first they tried to please both sides, the Allies and the Germans. Starting in 1938 with the annexation of Austria, Portugal provided an important escape route for refugees to havens overseas. Then, in the summer of 1940 when the Germans overran France, a veritable flood of refugees— Jewish and non-Jewish—sought safety in Portugal. The largest number of Jews (13,000-15,000, according to Jewish sources) passed through Portugal, entering when, as Milgram notes, "the Germans called the shots" (p. 12). Milgram's statistics radically challenge long-established but fuzzy numbers ranging between Yehuda Bauer's estimate of 40,000 Jews passing through Portugal in 1940-41 (p. 61) and the American Jewish Yearbook's (1944) estimate of 100,000 mostly Jewish refugees. Still, Jewish sources cannot tell the whole story, since Jews also passed through Portugal on their own, without the assistance of Jewish organizations. Numbers aside, Milgram underlines that only in the summer of 1940 did the Portuguese ease their strictures and only for a few months. Since most of these refugees hoped to flee Europe and since local business people welcomed them as consumers in the small resort towns where the government [End Page 166] placed them (and where they were forbidden to compete with Portuguese businesses), why did Salazar insist on 30-day tourist visas and limit the number of refugees? Salazar feared all aliens, Jewish and non-Jewish, as potential communists and liberals who would undermine his regime. Before allowing entry, he demanded assurance...

Dora Teleky – Ein frühes Mitglied der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Urologie

Dora Teleky (1879/81-1963) was one of the first female Physicians in Austria and the first woman, who was member of the old Deutsche Gesellschaft für Urologie (German Society of Urology). She was a specialist for gynaecology with great interest in urology, what was reflected in her scientific publications. Furthermore she tried to strengthen the women's position in the male-dominated medicine. In 1939 she emigrated to the USA, because as a Jewish descendant she was pursued after the Austrian "Anschluss" to Germany (Austria's annexation to the German "Third Reich"). There she continued working as specialist for gynaecology. After she had retired, she came back to Europe and died 1963 in Switzerland.

The Collapse of Interwar Vienna: Oskar Morgenstern's Community, 1925–50

Using as a window the life and career of one of its members, Oskar Morgenstern, this essay explores the development and demise of the economics community of interwar Vienna. As product of the Austrian school of economics, director of the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research, and promoter of the mathematical economics of Karl Menger and Abraham Wald, Morgenstern played a central role in Viennese economic life. His involvements cast light on the community's constituent groups, on the tensions that pervaded them, and on the ultimate demise of Viennese intellectual life with the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938.

'Most-Cited Psychoanalyst' Continues Pioneering Ways

'Most-Cited Psychoanalyst' Continues Pioneering Ways

Bureaucratic Response to Human Tragedy: American Consuls and the Jewish Plight in Vienna, 1938 1941

In the period following the German annexation of Austria, the American consulate in Vienna found itself in the difficult position of responding to a refugee crisis while facing pressure from the Department of State to enforce restrictive immigration policies. Under the leadership of Consul General John Wiley, American consuls worked to maintain the letter of the law while providing as many qualified applicants as possible with immigration visas. Wiley's “middle ground” allowed consuls to fulfill their bureaucratic tasks and advance in their careers as Foreign Service officers while displaying compassion in their interactions with visa applicants. Despite frequent tensions between the Department of State and the Vienna consulate, and an institutional “mindset” that discouraged sensitivity to local conditions, American consuls consistently filled their visa quotas.

Let Us Be Human: Primo Levi and Ludwig Wittgenstein

Let Us Be Human:Primo Levi and Ludwig Wittgenstein Davide Sparti The demolition of a man is difficult, almost as much as creating one. — Primo Levi1 The modest but also remarkable ambition of Primo Levi's most important book Se questo è un uomo is "to provide material for a quiet [pacato] study of certain aspects of the human soul [animo umano]."2 More precisely, its ethical core (and its title) concerns itself with the loss of our humanity, with the inexorable destruction of what is human.3 The book describes such patterns of dehumanizing through a number of mechanisms operating in the concentration camps of Auschwitz–Birkenau, where Levi was deported. By showing how the Nazis viewed the camp inmates as completely disconnected from their own lives, Levi bears witness to the Nazis' restricted willingness to grant humanity, to their denial of the internal relation which ties them to the inmates. Since the book offers insights for those who ask themselves "what is it to be human?" (and what remains of the human in extreme situations?), its main philosophical issue is whether or not something admits being seen as human.4 Wittgenstein describes the attitudes we adopt in reacting to other creatures by analyzing the grammar of "seeing something as something:" only of a living human being, he famously adds, can we say: he [End Page 444] or she has a soul (see also PI, § 281).5 That the human body stands as one of the criteria for the ascription of psychological predicates—that human beings are endowed with an expressive power that neither statues nor animals possess; that human beings around us exert by their very presence a power which belongs uniquely to them—is suggested by the fact that even when we fantasize about living chairs or tables, for example in cartoons, we tend to lend human features to such animated furniture. So, according to Wittgenstein there is a conceptual connection between psychological predicates and certain kinds of human expression. But, one must add, this connection is achieved only through use, and is given only within the context of a form of life. The context of a shared form of life is needed because without it those forms of expressive behavior would not be intelligible: only if I am prepared to regard the object before me as a human being will I smile back and even talk to it. A living body is hence not enough: what is needed is a role through which such expressions are performed and have a point. In a similar vein, Levi shows the extent to which our experience of something as human depends on our relation to it—on the quality of our stance towards it. If it makes sense to speak of seeing somebody as a human being, it is because we can imagine individuals who lack or lose such a capacity or willingness. And it is precisely within the context of the concentration camp that what admits being seen as human changes drastically. In this essay I will draw lines of connection between Levi and Wittgenstein by relying on Stanley Cavell's crucial notions of avoidance and acknowledgment. After showing how such notions play a role in Wittgenstein's remarks on the so called "other mind" problem, I will turn to Levi and show how his remarks on the denial of the human in the concentration camp supplement Wittgenstein's grammatical remarks and can also be fruitfully read using the categories of avoidance and acknowledgment.6 Although Wittgenstein does offer some remarks on Nazism, was personally engaged in protecting his family after the annexation of Austria, and mentions the Russian gulags in conversation with Rhees, he was never concerned with any empirical analysis of specific, let alone extreme, human situations. In light of this, it is clear that life in the concentration camp cannot be grasped and explained by simply relying on a few Wittgensteinian categories. However, the points Levi raises, as I will show in the conclusion, reveal an analogy with some of the [End Page 445] questions that worried Wittgenstein. This will also lead me to discuss a stylistic element that links the Austrian philosopher to the...

Effects of "unification" on Austrian nursing

During the time of the National Socialism nurses in Austria were also responsible for crimes against humanity. Particularly personnel from nursing homes participated in euthanasia; personnel that mostly had only been trained in courses offered by the institution itself. The following article shows that the new regimentation for education in nursing, the nursing profession and its organisation aimed at creating the necessary conditions and structures to support the influence the NS-body of thought, to guarantee the exertion of influence of their ideology and--last but not least--to enable the political parties and the government to control nursing and the nursing staff. This article is part of a long years' project of the Institute of Nursing and Health Care Research at the University Linz, Dept. Nursing Research to investigate the role of nursing in Austria in the 19th and 20th century.

Pioneers in Oral Biology: The Stories of Gottlieb, Kronfeld, Orban, Weinmann, and Sicher and Their Vienna‐to‐America Migrations

Following the annexation of Austria by Hitler's Germany in 1938, officials at the eminent University of Vienna Medical School purged faculty ranks of Jews. Among those forced out were several distinguished physician dentists, several of whom emigrated to the United States. The assimilation of foreign‐trained dentists raised questions at national meetings of the American Association of Dental Schools and the National Association of Dental Examiners. Already existing ties between dental schools in Chicago and the University of Vienna, including the 1928 appointment of Rudolf Kronfeld to the faculty at Loyola, led to the relocation of Balint Orban, Harry Sicher, and Joseph Peter Weinmann to that city. Bernhard Gottlieb, who had been director of the Dental Institute in Vienna, transplanted less easily, but eventually found a niche at the Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas. The careers of the Vienna dentist‐scientists strengthened the scientific foundations of clinical dentistry in the United States, contributed to the development of a stronger research establishment, and enlarged the scope of oral biology.

The Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna 60 Years Following Austria's Annexation

On 13 March 1998, we commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany and her integration into the Third Reich. Already the night of 11–12 March had marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of terror against the Jewish citizens of Austria—e.g., Nobel Laureate Otto Loewi was arrested during this first night [1]—which swiftly resulted in inconceivable acts of humiliation, in the deprivation of Jewish citizens’ basic civil rights, the dismissal from professional positions, forced expulsion from their homes, theft of their private property, and their eventual exile. Those unable to escape were incarcerated in concentration camps, and more than one third of the prewar Jewish population of Austria perished or was exterminated in the Holocaust. It is with shame 60 years later that we remember the brutal expulsion of a major part of the faculty members from their positions at the University of Vienna, a process which commenced immediately after the takeover by the Nazis. The medical faculty was particularly severely affected. More than 50 percent of the senior staff were dismissed, mainly for racial, but in some cases for political reasons, inflicting irreparable damage to the Viennese Medical School, which was one of the largest in Europe and held a leading place in the hierarchy of medical excellence. Not only four Nobel Laureates originated from within the faculty—namely Robert Baranyi, Karl Landsteiner, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, and Otto Loewi—but also a series of scientists and physicians of world-wide renown: among many others one might name Anton von Eiselsberg, Adolf Lorenz, Clemens von Pirquet, Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Adler. However, attention should not only be drawn to the famous names, but also to the innumerable nameless doctors,

Asset Prices and History: The Case of Austria

Historical events are reflected in asset prices. Looking at Austrian government bond prices traded on the Swiss stock exchange during WWII provides therefore a useful way of interpreting the importance the thousands of people directly and indirectly engaged in stock markets attributed to various war events. An econometric analysis of the relationship between government bond values and events in Austrian history reveals that some generally considered crucial events connected with WWII are clearly reflected in Austrian government bond prices. This holds, in particular for the beginning and the end of the war. The annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938 which seemingly looked as being overwhelmingly and passionately welcomed by the Austrian population negatively affected the evaluation of Austrian government bonds, i.e. it was considered to be to the disadvantage of Austria by the people who put their own personal fortune at risk.

„Mit ihm erkämpft und mit ihm baut deutsche Technik ein neues Abendland": Die Technische Hochschule in Wien in der NS-Zeit

Most official publications on the Vicnna Technical Univcrsity (TH) do not deal extensively with the period betwcen 1938 and 1945. Rare references to the war years usually emphasize the faculty members' determination to resist German attacks on universitarian autonomy. The Nazi's also tried to sever the traditional links between Austrian industry and higher technical education by removing industrial experts from the TH's examination boards. By such measures they arouscd suspicion even among the ranks of decidedly pro-German TH-professors, who after Hitler's defeat claimed to always have been sceptical about national socialist university politics. Yet this was clearly not the case. The annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938 made hopes of the TH soar. Immediately following the Anschluss and the sub-sequent purge of Jewish professors and students, the Rector presented the German authorities an ambitious project of renewal and enlargement, both of the university building and the staff. Such plans were frustrated in the course of the following year. Resulting disappointment on the part of the TH-professors should not be misinterpreted as fundamental opposition against Nazism, however.

Von der Vaterschaftsbestimmung zum Rassegutachten. Der erbbiologische Ähnlichkeitsvergleich als ‚österreichisch-deutsches Projekt’ 1926-1945

The anthropological paternity test basing on a comparative examination of resemblances between a presumptive father and the child was developed in a ‘joint venture’ by Austrian and German anthropologists. After the Nazi rise to power the test was more and more abused to clarify questions of ‘dubious Aryan descent’ whereas in Austria its original function was retained until Austria's annexation by the German Reich. Then Austrian anthropologists too rushed to offer their services to the National Socialist racial legislation. The author shows that accusations by German state officials of the Austrian anthropologist rendering to many expert opinions in favour of the Jewish population, a legend repeated after the war, cannot be upheld any longer.

Pioneers in oral biology: the migrations of Gottlieb, Kronfeld, Orban, Weinmann, and Sicher from Vienna to America.

Following the annexation of Austria by Hitler's Germany in 1938, officials at the eminent University of Vienna Medical School purged faculty ranks of Jews. Among those forced out were several distinguished physician dentists, several of whom emigrated to the United States. The assimilation of foreign-trained dentists raised questions at national meetings of the AADS and the National Association of Dental Examiners. Already existing ties between dental schools in Chicago and the University of Vienna, including the 1928 appointment of Rudolf Kronfeld to the faculty at Loyola, led to the relocation of Balint Orban, Harry Sicher, and Joseph Peter Weinmann in that city. Bernhard Gottlieb, who had been director of the Dental Institute in Vienna, transplanted less easily, but eventually found a niche at the Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas. The careers of the Vienna dentist-scientists strengthened the scientific foundations of clinical dentistry in the United States, contributed to the development of a stronger research establishment, and enlarged the scope of oral biology.

Samuel Mandel: International Teacher of Hydrogeology

Dr. Samuel Mandel, most recently a retired professor of hydrogeology from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was born in Austria in 1918. After completing high school, he studied chemistry atthe University ofVienna. In 1938, his studies were interrupted due to the annexation of Austria by Germany. He escaped from Austria and went to Palestine as an illegal immigrant, workipg as a labourer in the Dead Sea potash plant. During World War II, he joined the British Army and served in Lebanon, Egypt, and Greece. After the war, he studied physics and geology in Jerusalem and then specialized in hydrology at the University of Grenoble, France. In 1961, he receive a Ph.D. from the Israel Institute of Technology for his work on the Cenomanian-Turonian limestone aquifer of western Israel. Tahal Consulting Engineers, Ltd., employed Dr. Mandel as the chief of groundwater investigations and later as the head of the Department of Hydrological Research. During his years in Tahal, he worked in many developing countries in exploration, assessment, and utilization of groundwater for domestic and irrigation supplies. With this varied experience, in 1966 he joined the Ground Water Research Centre of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. When Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs started the UNESCO-sponsored "International PostGraduate Diploma Course in Groundwater" at the university in 1968, Prof. Mandel was appointed as the Course Director, a position that he held for more than 20 years. This course became very popular among mid-level hydrogeologists, especially those from developing countries. In 1969, I was fortunate to get admission to this course and to become one of Prof. Mandel's students. Prof. Mandel was a devoted field hydrogeologist and a great teacher. "Coastal aquifers" was his favourite subject, and he supervised the construction of a parallel-plate Hele-Shaw model to demonstrate seawater intrusion to his students. Even after the advent of computer modeling in groundwater studies, he insisted that his students should always keep in mind the basic principles of hydrogeology, realize the importance of good quality field work, and avoid over-simplification of natural conditions while modeling. In the classroom, his casehistories included his personal experiences on projects from various countries such as M~xico, Uruguay, Nepal, Iran, Israel, and Korea. Prof. Mandel had a special skill of making his lectures interesting and engrossing by adding witty comments and remarks from time to time. He liked to refer to the water table or piezometric head as the "pulse" of the aquifer, which his students should monitor in order to prevent the aquifer from becoming "ill." He loved his students and was always prepared

Bruckner's Annexation Revisited: A Response to Manfred Wagner

Manfred Wagner's opinion piece focuses on and the aesthetics of Richard Wagner reception from the nineteenth century through the modem era; the role of ideology within this context is both important and problematic. Though some scholars, most recently Margaret Notley and Benjamin Korstvedt, have addressed the issue, I agree with Wagner that much remains to be done. But as large and important as this issue may be, it was not part of my essay for this journal. My article focused on the ways in which was useful for National Socialist political strategies beginning in summer 1937, nine months before the annexation of Austria, and during the war as well. I was specifically interested in the way was used to justify Goebbels's ban on art criticism, as well as the formulation of a new religious confession, Gottgldubig (God-believing), some months later. Wagner, indeed, says little of substance about my article. I shall start with some comments concerning the relevant points he does address, and then I would like to offer some of my own views about the aesthetic problem that Manfred Wagner addresses in his short essay. Wagner begins his essay with three vaguely worded points. Without an agent the first point (the lack of familiarity with foreignlanguage publications in both the German and the Anglo-American literature) can assume various meanings. If he refers to scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, I would heartily agree that there is room for improvement. Certainly one step forward was the important fourday Connecticut College-Yale School of Music International Conference (1994) that I highlighted in my conclusion and which goes unmentioned in Wagner's piece. It was the first of its kind in the United States, and in a footnote I even listed the various panels. At that conference my paper on and the National Socialists was, more specifically, preceded by Margaret Notley's (United States) Bruckner and His Symphonies in Wagnerian Ideologies of the Late

Lise Meitner’s escape from Germany

Lise Meitner (1878–1968) achieved prominence as a nuclear physicist in Germany; although of Jewish origin, her Austrian citizenship exempted her from Nazi racial laws until the annexation of Austria in 1938 precipitated her dismissal. Forbidden to emigrate, she narrowly escaped to the Netherlands with the help of concerned friends in the international physics community.

Vienna is different: 50 years after the Anschluss

Vienna is different: 50 years after the Anschluss

Und ihr habt doch gesiegt, 1988

Every fall since 1968, a cultural festival known as the Styrian Autumn has been held in Graz, the capital of the Austrian province of Styria. The festival presents concerts, theater, and opera productions, film showings, symposia by writers, and art exhibitions. Although constituted as an independent organization, its director is chosen by a board on which representatives of the provincial and the city government play an important role. In 1988, the board was chaired by Professor Kurt Jungwirth, the deputy governor of Styria and a prominent member of the conservative party (OVP). Graz was represented by its social democratic mayor, Alfred Stingl (SPO), and its commissioner of culture Helmut Strobl (OVP). The festival is funded by the province, the city of Graz, and the Austrian government. Dr. Peter Vujica, the director of the Styrian Autumn in 1988, chose for the twentieth anniversary of the festival the motto Guilt and Innocence of Art and suggested that reference be made to Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938. The Anschluss was the theme of a number of public events in Austria in the year of its fiftieth anniversary. Inevitably, the enthusiastic welcome Hitler received when his troops marched into Austria became the subject of agitated public debate. That debate was further fuelled by the controversy surrounding the role the recently elected Austrian president, Kurt Waldheim, had played as a Wehrmacht officer in the Balkans during World War II. Dr. Vujica commissioned Dr. Werner Fenz, the curator of the city's Neue Galerie, to organize the visual arts section for 1988. Dr. Fenz invited artists from various countries to produce works for temporary installation in selected public places in Graz. He chose as Points of Reference 381/88 locations that had played a significant role during the Nazi regime, such as the police/Gestapo headquarters, city hall, squares where Nazi rallies had been held, the Hitler Youth headquarters, the bishop's palace, and so forth. One of the city's older monuments, the Marienstiule (Column of the Virgin Mary), rises in a square at the south end of Herrengasse, the most prominent street of Graz. A fluted column on a massive base, crowned by a gilded statue of the Virgin on a crescent moon, it was erected late in the seventeenth century to

Public Opinions and Middle Eastern Railways: The Russo-German Negotiations of 1910–11

the russo-japanese War and the Revolution of 1905 revealed to the world Russia's inadequacies as a great power.1 Austria's annexation of Bosnia three years later re-emphasized Russia's impotence and added to its humiliation. After both crises, the tsar's ministers became aware that they needed to make foreign policy adjustments to fit new realities, especially where the German empire was concerned. Considering Germany the power behind Aehrenthal's fiat and judging that empire eager to strengthen its presence on Russia's periphery, the government of 1910 looked for a means of convincing Germany to restrain Austrian activity in the Balkans and to honour Russian interests in the border regions. While relying chiefly on the entente, the minister of foreign affairs, S.D. Sazonov, hoped that, by renewing good relations between the two emperors at a meeting scheduled for early November 19 10, and by making concessions over Persia and the Baghdad railway, Russia could induce Germany to curb Austria and acknowledge Russian interests in the Near and Middle East. Only then would the peace that Russia so desperately needed be secure.