What to see: The Primate’s Palace, Bratislava

Bratislava, formerly known as Pressburg or Pozsony, is now the capital of the Republic of Slovakia, but was for a long time the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary – its kings were crowned in the city’s St Martin’s Cathedral. Since the middle of the 15th century the Archbishop of Esztergom had had his residence in a house located in the square behind the Town Hall.
The present building, known as the Primate’s Palace, was built when Archbishop Joseph Batthyany decided to pull down the old house and have a new and more modern one built. The task was given to the Austrian-born architect Melchior Hefele, who built the new, neoclassical palace between 1778 and 1781. Queen-Empress Maria Theresa had died the previous year and her son Joseph II’s transferred the Hungarian state institutions to Buda, while Batthyany’s successors later moved to Esztergom, meaning that the new Primate’s Palace never really came to be used for what it had been built for.
The palace was used to house visiting archbishops and royals, for offices, apartments and schools until the Archbishop sold it to the city of Bratislava in 1903. The old Town Hall had become too small and the Primate’s Palace was turned into the new town hall, which it remained until the 1940s, when yet another town hall was built opposite it. Today the Primate’s Palace is used for representation and as a picture gallery.
The Mirror Hall (third picture) serves as a session hall for the city representation. This hall was where on 26 December 1805, following the Battle of Austerlitz, the Peace of Pressburg was signed, whereby the Austrian Emperor ceded the Veneto, Istria, Dalmatia and Tyrol to Napoléon I. A memorial plaque in Slovak and German (fourth photo) was put up 100 years later, but unfortunately misspells Liechtenstein – it was of course not the artist Roy Lichtenstein but Sovereign Prince Johann I of Liechtenstein who signed the peace treaty on behalf of Austria, with Talleyrand signing for France.
The plaque is placed in the columned entrance vestibule (fifth photo), from where a grand staircase (sixth picture) leads up to the first floor. In the Red Drawing Room (seventh photo) are three of six valuable 17th century English tapestries which were discovered when the Primate’s Palace was renovated after the city bought it in 1903.

An interview with Mikhail Gorbachev

Twenty years after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Ginny Dougary of The Times has interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, the last (and first) President of the Soviet Union, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for allowing the peaceful revolutions. In the interview, which appeared in yesterday’s edition of the newspaper, Gorbachev talks about the events which brought down the Communist system, his views on Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and Margaret Thatcher, the Western view of Russia and the loss of his wife Raisa Gorbacheva, who died ten years ago this month.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6816872.ece

What to see: The State Hall of the Austrian National Library, Vienna

The State Hall of the Austrian National Library is rightly considered one of the world’s most beautiful libraries and also one of the best Baroque interiors in Europe. It was built for Emperor Karl VI after plans drawn up by his court architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1665-1723). It was however Fischer von Erlach’s son Joseph Emanuel (1693-1742) who saw the plans through in the years 1723-1726.
The State Hall measures 77.7 by 14.2 metres and is 19.6 metres high, except for the cupola, which reaches nearly 30 metres to the sky. The allegorical ceiling frescoes were done by Daniel Gran and completed in 1730. The motif on the central cupola shows the apotheosis of Karl VI and beneath it is a statue of the Emperor as “Hercules Musarum” by the brothers Peter and Paul Strudel.
The nutwood bookcases hold some 200,000 books printed between 1501 and 1850. The 15,000 books placed in the library’s oval centre belonged to Prince Eugen of Savoy. Altogether 7.8 million books and other items are to be found in the collections of the Austrian National Library. The Austrian National Library’s website: www.onb.ac.at

Scottish Government wants independence referendum next year

When presenting the Scottish government’s plans for next year the day before yesterday, First Minister Axel Salmond from the populist Scottish National Party announced a forthcoming Referendum Bill to enable Scotland to hold a referendum on full independence in 2010. However, there will most likely be no referendum as the bill is unlikely to garner the necessary support in the Scottish Parliament; the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats having made clear their intention to vote against it.
As Tom Peterkin commented in The Scotsman yesterday, such a rejection of the bill “by opposition MSPs would enable Mr Salmond to go into the next Scottish election basing his campaign on claims that the other parties had denied the people the right to choose their constitutional future”. On the other side there is at present no majority in the Scottish people for independence from the United Kingdom.

What to see: The Parliament Building, Vienna

It was in 1857 that Emperor Franz Joseph I decided that Vienna’s so-called Glacis would be the home of new monumental buildings for parliament, university and city hall. The plan was that there would be separate buildings for the House of Deputies and the House of Lords, which at the time made up the Council of the Realm, but in the end the Danish-born architect Theophilius Hansen (1813-1891, later ennobled as Baron Theophil von Hansen) won the commission with a plan for a building incorporating both chambers in one building, which was more to the frugal Emperor’s taste.
Work began in 1874 and the building was completed in 1883. Unusually for such a late date the Austrian Parliament is in Greek neoclassical style. Hansen had spent a long time in Athens, where he and his brother, Christian Hansen, were responsible for several important buildings after the independence of Greece. The neoclassical style was often chosen for 19th century parliaments because of democracy’s Greek “roots”, but this style was quite outdated in the second half of the 19th century – when Theophil von Hansen in 1884 was asked to design a new palace in Copenhagen after the second Christiansborg had burnt down, his plans for a grand neoclassical structure were immediately put away. The grandiose, unfashionable parliament building in Vienna could perhaps be read as a metaphor of the once so great Austro-Hungarian Empire’s beginning decline.
Hansen viewed the building as a “Gesamtkunstwerk”, which meant that he was himself in charge of all decoration, furniture and fittings. He also planned the huge statue of Pallas Athene in front of the main entrance (first and second photos), but it was only executed by the sculptor Carl Kundmann eleven years after Hansen’s death. Above the entrance’s columned portico is a tympanum with a relief showing Emperor Franz Joseph granting his subjects the right to participate in the legislative process.
A rear view of a model of the building (photo 4) shows how the grand Columned Hall is placed in the middle of the building. The idea was that the members of House of Deputies and the House of Lords could meet in this hall, but in reality this rarely happened – for the simple reason that the members of the two chambers did not really want to meet. Hansen’s idea that the Emperor would perform the State Opening of Parliament by reading a Speech from the Throne in this hall also fell to the ground because Franz Joseph I declared that he “had not been educated for a constitutional monarchy” and therefore could not be expected to feel any enthusiasm for it.
The semi-circular room to the right on the model is the former House of Lords, a room which is now used by the 192 members of the National Council, the elected representatives of the Austrian people (fifth picture). The hall was hit by two bombs during WWII and rebuilt in 1956 by architects Max Fellerer and Eugen Wörle, making it one of the ugliest parliamentary chambers in Europe.
Across the corridor is the rather small room which was originally an anteroom for the House of Lords, but is now used by the Federal Council (sixth photo), which is made up of representatives of the nine provincial assemblies and has certain delaying powers over legislation.
The large chamber seen to the left on the model and in the seventh and eighth photo was formerly used by the House of Deputies and retains Hansen’s original décor. It is now used for the quite rare joint sessions of the two chambers, which are then called the Federal Assembly, and for ceremonial events such as the inauguration of a new president – were the President to be impeached, the trial would also take place in this hall.
Towards the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the current plenary hall was a rather noisy place. The imperial Austrian Parliament had 516 members speaking a total of eleven languages with no translations provided, German being the official language supposed to be used. While one MP spoke, for as long as he pleased, the other MPs would slam the drawers of their desks, shout, heckle him, sing, throw inkwells and play the musical instruments they had brought along. Today Austria is governed in a more polite way.

What to see: Oscarshall Palace, Oslo

Last week Oscarshall Palace in Oslo reopened to the public after four years of extensive renovation works. This romantic, neo-Gothic pleasure palace is situated on a hilltop overlooking the water at the peninsula Bygdøy, a spot which according to legend was chosen by the sons of King Oscar I when they were out sailing.
Oscarshall was built between 1847 and 1852 and became the second palace built by the Bernadottes in the Norwegian capital. The long process of building the Royal Palace between 1825 and 1849 meant that many foreign artisans came to Norway and that Norwegian workers from them learnt new techniques on a higher level. At the same time the mid-19th century was a time when Norwegian art blossomed and it has been said that King Oscar I and Queen Josephina, both great patrons of art with artistic talents themselves, chose to let Norwegian workers build this palace and Norwegian artists decorate it to demonstrate what could be achieved in this country.
Unlike the Royal Palace, Oscarshall was paid for by the royal couple themselves – most of the money was probably Queen Josephina’s, which has led some people, including the current Queen, to suggest that it should perhaps have been called Josephineshall rather than Oscarshall.
The architect, Johan Henrik Nebelong (1817-1871), was a Dane who had himself come to Norway when the Royal Palace was built, acting as one of architect Hans D. F. Linstow’s assistants. The work on Oscarshall turned into a rather bitter affair for him, as he came into a conflict with Baron Ferdinand Wedel Jarlsberg, head of the Norwegian Court, who eventually managed to have him fired.
The slightly classicist, early neo-Gothic style of Oscarshall was at the time referred to as “English” in Norway, but the architectural inspiration should rather be sought in Germany. Two German palaces in particular have been pointed out as possible inspiration for Oscarshall – Babelsberg in Potsdam, built for the future Emperor Wilhelm I, and Hohenschwangau in Bavaria, built for Queen Josephina’s cousin, the future King Maximilian II of Bavaria.
Oscarshall is smaller than both of them. The main rooms are on the ground floor – the Dining Room is housed in a separate block, linked to the main block by a Tudor-inspired arch (third picture). The Dining Room is decorated with paintings by two of the most famous painters of the time – huge landscapes by Joachim Frich and a series of ovals showing idealised scenes from the lives of peasants by Adolph Tidemand. The walls of the main Drawing Room are covered in dark red velvet and have sculptures of medieval kings of Norway.
On the first floor is the King’s Drawing Room, perhaps the most important in addition to the Dining Room. The main attraction here, apart from the stunning view of the sea, are four huge landscapes painted by Hans Gude, a giant of Norwegian art history, and a frieze by Christopher Borch showing scenes from the 14th century legend of Fridthjof and Ingeborg. Next door is the King’s Bedroom, with a bed reminiscent of the Empire style. It has sometimes been claimed that Oscar I spent one night at Oscarshall, but the sources for this information are uncertain. On the second floor is the Queen’s Drawing Room and the Prince’s Room, which do not have their original furniture.
Oscarshall was never meant to be lived in, but as a place for excursions from the Royal Palace. Oscar I fell gravely ill the year it was completed, which meant that he rarely came there. In 1863 his heirs sold it to the state, but the King retained the right to use it. Oscar II thought of making it more inhabitable as a summer house, but in the end had several small villas built nearby and turned Oscarshall into a museum for the Bernadotte dynasty and their reign in 1881. The museum naturally closed with the deposal of the Bernadotte dynasty in 1905.
In 1929 it was decided that Oscarshall should become the residence of Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha and an architectural contest for its reconstruction was held. None of the proposals were however quite satisfactory and eventually the newlyweds settled at Skaugum in Asker.
Oscarshall is sometimes used for official representation – there was for instance a lunch there to celebrate the silver wedding of the present King and Queen in 1993 – there are concerts in the summer and in 2005 there was an exhibition on King Oscar II and Queen Sophia to mark the centenary of the end of the union. With Oscarshall now restored and brought back to its former glory it is planned that it will be used more by the royal family in the future.
The renovation means that there are now modern facilities such as toilets and cloakrooms for the visitors, while the former kitchen building will be used for exhibitions. Most importantly the interiors have been returned to their original appearance. Before the palace closed in 2005, the velvet on the walls of the King’s Bedroom was for example faded into a brownish green. Now it is once again dark blue, which gives the room quite another appearance. The exterior of the palace is now white again, having been pink since shortly after the end of WWII.
The renovation also means that certain works of art and items of furniture added after 1852 have been removed. This is not entirely unproblematic as the absence of such traces may give the impression that Oscarshall has no history after the year it was completed.
The garden was originally in the English landscape style, but was changed into a more linear and classicist garden in 1927. The garden has not yet been returned to its original shape.
Pictures of the interiors can be seen here:

http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/bildeserier/article3226353.ece

http://www.kongehuset.no/c79774/seksjonstekst/vis.html?tid=79779

In the future Oscarshall will be open to visitors during June, July and August, while the palace this year will stay open throughout September. Visitor information may be found at the Royal Court’s website:

http://www.kongehuset.no/c79786/artikkel/vis.html?tid=79791

What to see: The Imperial Furniture Collection, Vienna

Half hidden away in a backyard off the bustling shopping street Mariahilfestrasse is the Imperial Furniture Collection, a large museum dedicated to the pieces of furniture and loose items available to the Kaiserliches Hofmobiliendepot, founded by Empress Maria Theresia inn1747. With only the Viennese palaces permanently furnished, it fell to the Imperial Furniture Collection to equip the many other imperial residences when they were to be used, making this the Habsburg equivalent of Sweden’s Royal Collections Department (Kungliga Husgerådskammaren) with its roots in the 16th century.
The imperial collection has been supplemented with furniture from the post-imperial time, making this also a museum of the history of Austrian furniture and interiors up to the present date. But the imperial pieces are in majority. And they are many – 165,000 to be exact.
Among them are rococo chairs and a desk from the reign of Maria Theresia (first picture) and the funeral regalia including a replica of the Imperial Crown of Austria, made of brass, false pearls and glass stones (second picture). As the third photo shows, there is a huge number of chairs of all styles, including the throne of Emperor Franz Joseph I (fourth photo) and the two 18th century folding chairs for use on travels (photo 5). There are also whole interiors, such as an imperial bedroom from the reign of Ferdinand I (sixth photo), and one may also find row upon row of mirrors, chandeliers, vases etc. (last photo).
To make the collection come alive there are screens here and there showing excerpts from some of the many films which have been made about Empress Elisabeth where one can see how the original pieces of furniture were used in the films.

Official website:
http://www.hofmobiliendepot.at/en/home.html

Funeral of Senator Kennedy

The funeral of US Senator Edward M. Kennedy took place at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston today.
In his eulogy, which was met with a standing ovation, President Obama described Senator Kennedy as “the greatest legislator of our time”, saying that “the greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy’s shoulders because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because of who he became” and quoting what Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis once wrote to her brother-in-law: “On you the carefree youngest brother fell a burden a hero would have begged to be spared. We are all going to make it because you were always there with your love”.
Among those attending were also First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Jill Biden, former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush, with the frail George H. W. Bush the only living president not to attend. Former Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dan Quayle were also in attendance, as well as Ireland’s Prime Minister Brian Cowen and the British Prime Minister’s wife Sarah Brown.
Following the funeral mass in Boston the coffin was flown to Washington, where the motorcade will make a short stop outside Congress, Kennedy’s working place for 46 years, before continuing on to Arlington National Cemetery outside the capital, where the Senator will rest near his two assassinated elder brothers John F. and Robert F. Kennedy.
On the orders of President Obama the flags flew at half staff of federal buildings today, including the US Embassy in Oslo.

New books: Oscarshall Palace

Oscarshall, the neo-Gothic pleasure palace at Bygdøy in Oslo which was built on the orders of King Oscar I and Queen Josephina in 1847-1852, reopened to the public two days ago after four years of renovation works. To coincide with the reopening, Cappelen Damm has published a short new book on the palace. Titled simply Oscarshall, it is written by Nina E. Høye, an art historian who has earlier written a guide book to the Royal Palace, where she is in charge of the guiding service.
The book is lavishly illustrated, mostly with photos of the interiors as they now appear after the restoration, but also with some historical images. The book starts with the background, the building process and the architectural context, continues on through the park and the smaller buildings on the estate, before dealing with the palace itself and its interiors room by room. At the end there is a chapter which briefly sums up the history of Oscarshall since it was completed in 1852.
The book is an easy read and well written, and although some names are spelt wrongly it is without the factual mistakes which somewhat clouded the author’s otherwise excellent earlier book on the Royal Palace. There are some topics which one feels could be dealt with more extensively, but given the limited space accorded to the author in this book of 93 pages it is understandable that not everything can be covered as thoroughly and she has done a good job in at least touching on most of the relevant aspects of this palace.
A more extensive book by Gunnar Hjelde was published in 1978. What this new book adds is mainly a thorough description of the recent renovation and some of the new knowledge resulting from this process. It is also more detailed on the building process in 1847-1852 and the conflict between the architect, Johan Henrik Nebelong, and the head of the Royal Court, Ferdinand Wedel Jarlsberg, but this story was also told by Poul J. Neubert in an article on Oscarshall in the Danish yearbook Archictectura in 2006, so it is not really new for this book.

From the publisher’s website:
http://www.cappelendamm.no/main/katalog.aspx?f=10119&isbn=9788202303822

An “aristocratic” wedding

Last week’s issue of Svensk Damtidning (no 35 – 2009) reports on the wedding of Ebba Løvenskiold and Sam Giertz in Maglehem Church in Scania, Sweden’s southernmost province. The bride belongs to one of the most prominent families of the former aristocracy of Norway, which was abolished in 1821.
Her uncle, Herman Løvenskiold, resides at Fossum Manor in Skien, Norway, while her father, Jacob Løvenskiold, lives at Borrestad Manor in Scania, which was built by his maternal grandfather, Count Pontus De la Gardie.
The bride and groom live in New York. She is a freelance writer while he is managing director of Nordaq Fresh.

King of Sweden appoints new Marshal of the Realm

King Carl Gustaf two days ago appointed Professor Svante Lindqvist as Marshal of the Realm (roughly equivalent of Lord Chamberlain in other countries) from 1 January 2010. Lindqvist is 61 years old, president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and director of the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. He will succeed Ingemar Eliasson, who has been head of the Swedish Royal Court since 2003.

http://www.kungahuset.se/ovrigt/pressrum/pressmeddelanden/aretsarkiv/professorsvantelindqvistnyriksmarskalk.5.4d52a9051226f69aa7780006183.html

€ 155 million for Prussian palaces

Berliner Morgenpost and Der Tagesspiegel last week reported on a deal having been reached which grants the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens € 155 million for restoration works until 2017. The federal state will contribute € 77.5 million, the state of Berlin € 24.5 million and the state of Brandenburg € 53 million. The foundation, which is in charge of 150 buildings, including 30 palaces which attract 7 million visitors a year, annually receives € 32.2 million from the federation and the two states.
This huge special grant comes after the General Director of the Foundation, Hartmut Dorgerloh, last year warned that some of the palaces are in such a condition that cultural and historical values are in danger of being lost. Among the palaces which are in most need of repairs are Charlottenburg in Berlin and the New Palace and Babelsberg in Potsdam. The latter palace is pictured above shortly after it reopened to visitors in 2008, although the interior at the time still looked most of all like a construction site.

Book news: Susanna Popova on Swedish royal wedding

It was reported in the Swedish media a while ago that the journalist Susanna Popova has been given the commission to write the official book on the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling. It is said that the book will cover the engagement, the preparations for the wedding and of course the wedding festivities. It is expected to be published as soon as possible after the wedding on 19 June 2010.
Popova is educated a psychologist but has worked as a journalist for nearly thirty years. She has written five books, of which I have only read Överklass – En bok om klass och identitet, which was first published in 2007 and deals with the Swedish upper class. I found the book interesting although I felt that she could have done something more out of it than letting the interviews with members of the upper class speak for themselves. Nevertheless I find Popova a more interesting choice for the wedding book than some fawning journalist like Herman Lindqvist.

What to see: Shoes on the Danube (Holocaust memorial), Budapest

Perhaps the most moving Holocaust memorial in Europe is that in Budapest. It is also one of the simplest. On the bank of the Danube, not far from Hungary’s impressive Parliament building, stands a long row of sixty pairs of empty, abandoned shoes, cast in bronze. The memorial is a work by Gyula Pauer and Can Togay and was dedicated in 2005. On this spot Jews and other citizens who had tried to help them were shot by militiamen from the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party in 1944 and 1945. As shoes were valuable at the time, the victims had to remove theirs before they were executed and fell into the river. Now the shoes stand there forever and no-one will ever come back for them.

Walburga Habsburg Douglas on her role in 1989

In the latest issue of the Budapest Times (volume 7, issue 33-35, dated 10-30 August 2009) there is a long interview with Walburga Habsburg Douglas, youngest daughter of Otto von Habsburg, the last Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince, in which she talks about the role she played in the 1989 revolution.
On 19 August that year, Walburga Habsburg as secretary-general of the Pan-European Union and her father’s representative, arranged a “Pan-European picnic” in Sopron where she symbolically used a wire cutter to make cuts to the fence separating Austria from Hungary, literally cutting open the Iron Curtain. The event had been planned as a symbolic meeting between Austrians and Hungarians by Walburga, her father, Hungarian human right groups and the opposition Hungarian Democratic Forum. The fact that they were joined by Imre Pozsgay, leader of the reformist communists, turned it into a larger event. He persuaded the Hungarian government to let a gate at the border stay open for four hours and that border guards would pretend not to notice those illegally crossing the frontier.
A large numbers of refugees from East Germany were at this time stuck in Hungary and many of them took the opportunity to escape through Austria to West Germany. An estimated 660 refugees escaped through the “symbolic gate” at Sopron that day, while some 1,400 managed to cross the border elsewhere that day. The event has been considered a trial for the general opening of the Hungarian border on 11 September.
In the interview, Douglas rejects the journalist’s suggestion that she may have been concerned that events might get out of hand and turn ugly: “I am not somebody who is afraid. The evening before we considered whether everything could get out of hand. But then we said: ‘Even if it gets out of hand, the main thing is that the broad direction is right.’ Together with other organisers we simply didn’t have the feeling that anything bad could happen. We intuitively sensed that there was no danger. In that respect we relied not least on our Hungarian co-organisers”.
She also claims that it was only later when she heard of the GDR leader Honecker’s rage that she realised the significance of what they had done: “We didn’t realise that our border opening would ultimately lead to the opening of the Iron Curtain. In the concrete situation my primary aim was to help as many people as people [sic, should be: possible] out of their difficult situation. I didn’t anticipate the possibility of doing politics on the world stage. I was happy that I could help people in need based on the principles of my organisation and not least my inner conviction. When I gradually realised what it could all lead to I was even more enthusiastic. For many years my social involvement had been directed towards finally getting rid of the dreadful Iron Curtain. On 19 August I was not yet fully aware of the significance of the events. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. I simply did what my conscience dictated. I only really realised the significance of the event two days later when by chance I heard a German-language broadcast by Radio Moscow. An interview with SED chairman Honecker was being broadcast in which he spoke incredibly angrily and disparagingly about our picnic. That’s when I realised what a major blow the event was to the East German regime and that it must have really hit home”.
Now married to a Swedish count, Walburga Habsburg Douglas was elected to the Swedish Parliament for the Conservative Party in 2006. Her father, the former Crown Prince, will be 97 this autumn. The interview in its entirety can be read here:
http://www.budapesttimes.hu/content/view/12785/27/

“Prince Eugen followed his conscience”

This is the title of an interesting article on Prince Eugen which appeared in Svenska Dagbladet yesterday. In it, Jesús Alcalá regrets that the Prince is today remembered almost solely as “the Painter Prince”, which he considers a bit diminishing. Alcalá wants us to remember Prince Eugen the man, who went against many of the norms and values of his class and his time. He attended the funeral of the great, controversial author August Strindberg in 1912, he advocated a dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union before 1905, he showed public support for an officer who was frozen out for joining the Salvation Army, he found it a good thing if reformist social democrats would work with liberals, and, perhaps most importantly, he was a staunch opponent of Nazism which irritated large parts of the Swedish establishment during the Second World War. The author points out Prince Eugen as an excellent example of “a human being who is filled by the realisation that personal responsibility also extends to what is beyond the closest circle of persons”. The article is well worth reading both for those who are familiar with the Prince’s views and for those who are not:

http://www.svd.se/kulturnoje/understrecket/artikel_3405481.svd

At the road’s end: Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009), US Senator and head of the Kennedy clan

In the forest of American politics it was one of the biggest trees that fell when the Kennedy family today announced that Senator Edward M. Kennedy died in his home in Hyannis Port late yesterday night local time. “Ted”, the last of the Kennedy brothers, was 77 and had been a member of the US Senate for 46 years. His funeral will take place on Saturday and he will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, where his slain brothers John and Robert already rest.
Born on 22 February 1932, he was the youngest of the nine Kennedy siblings which by their great talents and glamorous appearance came to be seen as something near an American royal family. The death of Ted Kennedy today and his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver exactly two weeks earlier leaves the youngest sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, as the only survivor of the siblings. The passing of that generation of the “dynasty” has lead to discussion about the future of the Kennedy legacy. Some consider that the Kennedy story is now over, while others point out that several members of the younger generation have chosen to serve society, but in another way, i.e. not from elected offices – such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is a noted environmentalist.
With the tragic death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. in a plane crash in 1999 and his sister Caroline’s failed attempt to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate this winter, the only younger Kennedy now to hold a political office is Ted Kennedy’s second son, Patrick J. Kennedy. It has however been rumoured that Robert F. Kennedy’s son Christopher is considering running for one of Illinois’s seats in the Senate at the next election.
Having received a law degree in 1959, Edward M. Kennedy took part in his older brother John’s successful campaigns for re-election to the Senate in 1958 and for the presidency in 1960. In 1962 he won the special election held to fill the Senate seat for Massachusetts which had been vacated when John became president. He was only 30 at the time, the minimum age for membership of the US Senate. He took his seat in January 1963, the year which would end with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November. With his only surviving brother Robert F. Kennedy shot to death during his presidential primary campaign in 1968, Ted suddenly found himself the patriarch of the clan, whose hopes now rested on him, and surrogate father to a crowd of nephews and nieces.
Having declined to run for president himself following Bobby’s assassination, Ted was seen as a likely candidate to challenge Nixon for the presidency in 1972. This “inevitability” became an impossibility through the incident at Chappaquiddick in the summer of 1969 when Kennedy drove his car off a bridge and a female passenger drowned and it was nearly ten hours before the senator reported the accident to the police.
The amazing thing about Kennedy’s career is that he managed to build himself up from this political and surely also personal nadir to become one of the most respected politicians in his country. He turned down the Democratic nominee George S. McGovern’s offer of the vice presidency in 1972 and his attempt to challenge Jimmy Carter for the presidential re-nomination in 1980 was no success.
The way he ended his speech at the Democratic convention in 1980 is often regarded as oratorical highlights, although it may seem quite pompous to those of us who are used to a less turgid style of political speeches: “For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die”.
Kennedy uttered similar words at the party convention in 2008, when he in his last great speech declared that the torch had been passed again to a new generation. He was by then suffering from the brain cancer which claimed his life last night. Both Kennedy and his niece Caroline had been early supporters of Barack Obama and their investing him with the Kennedy mantle was seen as a serious blow to Hillary Clinton’s candidature.
Edward M. Kennedy was one of the most liberal members of the US Senate and made society’s less fortunate members his most important cause, which he would advocate to the end of his life. He was one of the most important champions of civil rights and also put health care, education, immigration and labour law high on his agenda. In later years he was one of the few senators to dared to oppose the war against Iraq from the beginning and counted his vote against the war as the best vote of his long career in Senate.
Health care was what he described as “the cause of my life” and “a defining issue for our society”. Through his work he helped ensure access to health care for millions of people to whom it had earlier been denied. His voice, absent due to his terminal illness, has been missed by many in the debate on health care reform which is currently perhaps the most important issue of American politics. His death means that his Senate seat will probably remain vacant until a successor is elected in some months’ time, something which may create difficulties for the process of passing the Obama administration’s health care reform.
A hallmark of Kennedy’s career was that he, despite his liberal stance, was able to work with and form friendships with his political opponents in the Republican party in a constructive and result-orientated way. He worked with George W. Bush on education reform and even joined forces with a natural opponent, the staunchly racist Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, on crime legislation. Through his ability to work with friends and foes to achieve results, he came to be one of the most respected members of the American legislature and perhaps also its most popular senator.
The question is if Edward M. Kennedy through his 46 years in the Senate and by the huge amount of important legislation he played a vital role in enacting did not actually leave a greater imprint on American society than his elder brothers were able to do in the comparatively short careers which were granted to those shooting stars.
When receiving an honorary degree from Harvard last December, Senator Kennedy said in his speech: “We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make”.

New books: 1989 – The fall of the Eastern bloc

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 which brought down the authoritarian communist regimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany and Hungary and trigged the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. To mark the anniversary Weidenfeld & Nicolson some weeks ago published Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by the Hungarian-born British journalist Victor Sebestyen, whose first book, Twelve Days, on the doomed Hungarian uprising of 1956, was met with critical acclaim in 2006.
In this excellent new book, Sebestyen singles out certain key events – such as the election of a Polish pope in 1978 and his momentous visit to his homeland, the strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk and the emergence of Solidarity, the Hungarian “palace coup” directed at János Kádár, the mellowing of Ronald Reagan and the rise of the dynamic Mikhail Gorbachev following a succession of Soviet leaders virtually at death’s door – but also other events less directly related but of some political or symbolical significance – such as Matthias Rust landing his plane in the Kremlin in 1987, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the Soviet failure in Afghanistan.
The gripping narrative shows how the communist regimes were gradually weakened and binds these events together until climax is reached with the events of 1989 – the round table talks and subsequent almost free elections in Poland, the stolen local elections in the GDR and the protests which drove Honecker from office, the opening of the Hungarian border, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the coup in Bulgaria, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the executions of the Ceausescus on Christmas Day. In the final chapter the Vatican band plays “the Internationale” as the Gorbachevs are received by the Pope and Czechoslovakia’s new president Václav Havel addresses the crowds outside Prague Castle on New Year’s Day 1990.
There are only two things I miss in this book. When dealing with the pro-democracy demonstrations directed at the communist regimes in 1989 I think it could have been of some value to try and see the Tiananmen Square protests in relation to those in Europe. And as the author charts the (long) background for the downfall of the Soviet “empire” in Eastern Europe it would seem natural to me not to end the story in the New Year of 1990, but to take it through all the way to 1991 and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself.
Nevertheless this does not detract from that this is a great book, one of the best of 2009, and warmly recommended to anyone with an interest in recent European history.

From the publisher’s website:
http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/HB-40424/Revolution-1989.htm

Decline of the British cabinet

In an interesting article on their first page yesterday, the Guardian revealed how four men who held the position of cabinet secretary between 1979 and 2005 in giving evidence to a House of Lords committee investigating the workings of the cabinet office have criticised how prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown by their presidential style have bypassed both the cabinet and the civil service.
The interesting thing is that Downing Street does not deny it. Quite on the contrary; Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, told the committee: “The cabinet is not the right body in which to attempt to make difficult decisions, it has too many members for a proper debate ... it is for that reason that since at least the late 1970s the cabinet has been used to ratify decisions rather than take them”.
I can imagine that there would have been quite an outcry here in Norway if a similar thing had been said in such a matter-of-fact way. Of course there is an “inner cabinet” consisting of the three party leaders in the coalition, but to say that the rest of the ministers are not and should not be involved in decision-making would be quite unheard of.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/23/civil-service-criticise-labour

Incidentally, yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the Guardian’s dropping “Manchester” from its name. The newspaper moved to London five years later, despite promising at the time of the name change that “we shall on no account abandon our northern home”.

At the road’s end: Kim Dae-jung (1924-2009), Korean ex-president and Nobel laureate

Kim Dae-jung, the former president of South Korea who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, died from a heart attack on 18 August, probably aged 85 (though there is some uncertainty about which year he was actually born). Kim was a driving force in his country’s transition from an authoritarian to a democratic state. He was jailed, exiled or put under house arrest on several occasions through these decades, something which led to his occasionally being referred to, perhaps a bit exaggerated, as “Asia’s Mandela”.
Kim Dae-jung was elected president in December 1997, by a margin of half a percent. As president he initiated the so-called “sunshine policy” which aimed at reconciliation, interaction and co-operation between the two Koreas and for a time led to a detente in the relations with North Korea. In June 2000 Kim paid an official visit to Pyongyang and six months later he came to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
His presidency was sadly clouded by corruption scandals which involved both advisors and sons of Kim. They were a huge embarrassment to a president who had made an election pledge that no member of his family would be involved in corruption. It was however clear that the president himself was not tainted by corruption, unlike his successor Roh Moo-hyun, who took over as president when Kim left office after completing his five-year term in 2003. Faced with allegations of corruption, Roh committed suicide in May this year by throwing himself from a cliff.
In the Guardian’s obituary John Gittings concludes about Kim Dae-jung: “His narrow power base in the southwest, and reliance on the Korean disease of faction-building, thwarted any real transformation of the political culture. Yet Kim’s story remains one of unusual persistence and bravery in the face of death, and he will be remembered as a moral hero of modern Korea”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/18/obituary-kim-dae-jung