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Fort Novosel

Fort Novosel (formerly Fort Rucker) is a United States Army post located primarily in Dale County, Alabama, United States. It is named in honor of Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Novosel, an Army aviator and Medal of Honor recipient. It was previously named for a Civil War officer, Confederate Colonel Edmund Rucker. The post is the primary flight training installation for U.S. Army Aviators and is home to the United States Army Aviation Center of Excellence (USAACE) and the United States Army Aviation Museum. Small sections of the post also lie in Coffee, Geneva, and Houston counties. Part of the Dale County section of the base is a census-designated place; its population was 4,636 at the 2010 census.

The main post has entrances from three bordering cities, Daleville, Ozark and Enterprise. In the years before the September 11, 2001 attacks, the main post (except airfields and other restricted areas) was an open post with unmanned gates allowing civilians to drive through. Following the attacks, this policy was changed, and the post is now closed to unauthorized traffic and visitors.

It was one of the U.S. Army installations named for Confederate soldiers that was recommended for renaming by The Naming Commission. Their recommendation was that the post be renamed Fort Novosel. On 5 January 2023 William A. LaPlante, US under-secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment (USD (A&S)) directed the full implementation of the recommendations of the Naming Commission, DoD-wide. The post was redesignated Fort Novosel on 10 April 2023.

Military facilities
Coordinates:
 * Fort Novosel: 31.33675°N, -85.71154°W
 * Cairns Army Airfield: 31.27716°N, -85.71313°W
 * Hanchey Army Heliport: 31.34378°N, -85.6533°W
 * Knox Army Heliport: 31.31879°N, -85.67366°W
 * Lowe Army Heliport: 31.3549°N, -85.74871°W
 * Shell Army Heliport: 31.36254°N, -85.84891°W
 * Echo Army Heliport: 31.3925°N, -85.75249°W

The U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence is the dominant military facility at Fort Novosel. Training, doctrine, and testing are all key parts of the center's mission to develop Army Aviation's capabilities. All Army Aviation training has been undertaken at Fort Novosel since 1973, as well as training of United States Air Force (USAF) and ally helicopter pilots and air crew. The center was home to the U.S. Army Aviation Technical Test Center (ATTC), which conducts developmental aircraft testing for Army Aviation. In 2005, as part of the Base Re-alignment and Closure (BRAC) decision, ATTC was moved north to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, and combined with the Redstone Technical Test Center to form the Redstone Test Center. The United States Army Operational Test and Evaluation Command's Test and Evaluation Coordination Office and TH-67 Creek primary and instrument training are both located at Cairns Army Airfield. The last TH-67 was retired in 2021 as the Army moved to the Eurocopter UH-72 Lakota as its trainer aircraft.

Operational units on the post include the 1st Aviation Brigade and the 110th Aviation Brigade handling Army Aviation training, and the USAF 23d Flying Training Squadron for the training of Air Force helicopter pilots and air crew.

The 110th Aviation Brigade consists of four battalions using three different sites. 1st Battalion, 11th Aviation Regiment, operates and manages air traffic control services for USAACe/Fort Novosel and the National Airspace System. 1st Battalion, 13th Aviation Regiment trains future air traffic controllers and aviation operations specialists who have recently graduated United States Army Basic Training, or are transferring from another Military Occupational Specialty. 1st Battalion, 14th Aviation Regiment operates from Hanchey Army Heliport and conducts graduate level training using the AH-64E Apache Longbow helicopters. 1st Battalion, 212th Aviation Regiment operates from Lowe Army Heliport and Shell Army Heliport and conducts combat and night operational training, using the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. 1st Battalion, 223d Aviation Regiment operates from Cairns Army Airfield and Shell Army Heliport flying the Eurocopter UH-72 Lakota for introductory helicopter pilot training, and Knox Army Heliport for training pilots who fly the CH-47 Chinook helicopter.

Additionally, due to the large number of warrant officers stationed there, the Warrant Officer Candidate School and Warrant Officer Career College are both located at Fort Novosel. Aviation branched warrant officers remain at Fort Novosel to complete flight training and the Aviation Warrant Officer Basic Course. Upon completion of their training, aviation warrant officers receive the Army Aviator Badge.

Support and other facilities at Fort Novosel include the Lyster Army Health Clinic, United States Army Aeromedical Research Lab, United States Army School of Aviation Medicine, United States Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center and Army Aviation Museum.

History
The original name of the post was Ozark Triangular Division Camp, but before the camp was officially opened during World War II on 1 May 1942, the War Department named it Camp Rucker. The post was named in honor of Colonel Edmund W. Rucker, a Civil War Confederate officer, who was given the honorary title of "General," and who became an industrial leader in Birmingham after the war. Fort Novosel (situated on 58000 acre of sub-marginal farmland, and formerly a wildlife refuge) was opened on 1 May 1942 as "Camp Rucker". It had quarters for 3,280 officers and 39,461 enlisted personnel.

In September 1942, 1,259 additional acres south of Daleville were acquired to construct an airfield to support the training camp. It was known as Ozark Army Airfield until January 1959, when the name was changed to Cairns Army Airfield. The first troops to train at Camp Rucker were those of the 81st Infantry Division; the 81st Division left Rucker for action in the Pacific Theater in March 1943. Three other infantry divisions received training at Camp Rucker during the war—the 35th, the 98th, and the 66th. The 66th (Panther) Division left for the European Theater in October 1944.

Camp Rucker was also used to train dozens of units of less than division size; these included tank, infantry replacement, and Women's Army Corps units. During the latter part of World War II, several hundred German and a few Italian prisoners of war were housed in stockades near the railroad east of the warehouse area, on the southern edge of the post. The 91st Infantry Division was sent to Camp Rucker at the war's end, deactivated in December 1945.

Camp Rucker was inactive from March 1946 until August 1950. It was reopened during the Korean War. The Minnesota Army National Guard's 47th Infantry Division was mobilized and sent to Camp Rucker in the fall of 1950; the division provided cadre that would conduct basic training of soldiers, who would later on, be sent as replacements to units in Korea. The 47th Infantry Division would remain at Camp Rucker throughout the war. After another short deactivation, it reopened and expanded when it became a helicopter training base. The name was changed to "Fort Rucker" in October 1955.

The Hanchey Army Airfield became the home of the Department of Rotary Wing Training of the Army Aviation School on 5 October 1959, marking the first time the department was centralized.

Fort Rucker suffered damage from three significant tornadoes within two years in 1972 and 1973. The first, rated F2, struck on 13 January 1972. It damaged buildings and helicopters on the post and devastated two nearby trailer parks, killing four people and injuring 88, all army dependents. An F3 tornado struck the post on 29 December 1973, causing minor damage to residences and striking a tank storage area. A second F3 tornado hit a day later, heavily damaging 30 government and residential buildings at Fort Rucker, 5 of which were destroyed.

Renaming
The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act calls for the establishment of an eight-person committee to develop a plan to remove all names, symbols, displays, and monuments that honor or commemorate the Confederacy from all Department of Defense assets, including the former Fort Rucker. In 2021, the family of Hal Moore started a petition to rename the fort in honor of Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the first black brigadier general in the USAF.

The Naming Commission later recommended that the fort be renamed in honor of Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Novosel, an Army aviator. The post was officially renamed on 10 April 2023.

Geography
Fort Novosel is located at 31°20'37" north, 85°42'29" west (31.343654, -85.707995).

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the CDP area of the base has a total area of 10.9 square miles (28.2 km$2$), of which 10.9 square miles (28.2 km$2$) is land and 0.04 square mile (0.1 km$2$) (0.18%) is water.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 6,052 people, 1,399 households, and 1,347 families residing on the base. The population density was 556.8 PD/sqmi. There were 1,544 housing units at an average density of 142.0 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the base was 68.5% White, 18.1% Black or African American, 0.9% Native American, 2.1% Asian, 0.7% Pacific Islander, 5.3% from other races, and 4.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 11.7% of the population.

There were 1,399 households, out of which 79.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 85.4% were married couples living together, 8.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 3.7% were non-families. 3.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 0.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.47 and the average family size was 3.51.

On the base the population was spread out, with 35.3% under the age of 18, 15.9% from 18 to 24, 46.2% from 25 to 44, 2.4% from 45 to 64, and 0.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 24 years. For every 100 females, there were 131.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 145.1 males.

The median income for a household on the base was $34,603, and the median income for a family was $33,664. Males had a median income of $29,321 versus $18,750 for females. The per capita income was $14,495. About 6.1% of families and 7.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.3% of those under the age of 18 and 16.7% of those 65 and older.

Education
Fort Novosel is in the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) as its local school district. Ellis D. Parker Elementary School is the on-post school.

Students beyond the elementary level may attend non-DoDEA schools for secondary levels, with an on-post family choosing one of the following three options: Daleville City School System, Enterprise City School System, or Ozark City Schools. Enterprise operates Enterprise High School and Ozark operates Carroll High School.

Notable people

 * Leonard Byrd, sprinter
 * Mayte Garcia, dancer and singer, ex-wife of Prince
 * Brian Gay, professional golfer
 * James Forbes, basketball player
 * Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States; spent time as an enlisted man assigned to Fort Rucker
 * Rusty Greer, former Major League Baseball outfielder
 * Edgar Jones, former National Basketball Association player
 * Kris Kristofferson, American singer, songwriter and actor. "After joining the Army, Kristofferson received flight instruction at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and became a helicopter pilot. He also successfully completed one of the military's most physically challenging courses: Ranger School."
 * Hal Morris, former Major League Baseball first baseman
 * Blake Percival, whistleblower; spent time as an enlisted man assigned to Fort Rucker
 * Jeffrey N. Steenson, prelate of the Roman Catholic Church; currently serves as the first ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter

title: Fort Novosel


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Grimes, Alabama

Grimes is a town in Dale County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 558, up from 459 in 2000. It is part of the Enterprise–Ozark Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Geography
Grimes is located in southeastern Dale County at 31.30222°N, -85.45111°W (31.302270, -85.451042). It is partially bordered to the north, south, east, and west by the city of Dothan, and also to the north by the town of Napier Field. Grimes is 7.5 mi northwest of the center of Dothan.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 3.24 km2, all land.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 459 people, 180 households, and 124 families residing in the town. The population density was 361.9 PD/sqmi. There were 208 housing units at an average density of 164.0 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 60.78% White, 36.38% Black or African American, 0.22% Native American, 0.22% Asian, 0.22% from other races, and 2.18% from two or more races. 0.65% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 180 households, out of which 33.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.2% were married couples living together, 17.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.1% were non-families. 23.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.55 and the average family size was 3.01.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 27.9% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 31.6% from 25 to 44, 21.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 86.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.0 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $28,839, and the median income for a family was $31,389. Males had a median income of $26,346 versus $19,063 for females. The per capita income for the town was $14,884. About 5.6% of families and 9.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 13.6% of those under age 18 and 18.2% of those age 65 or over.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Grimes, Alabama


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Level Plains, Alabama

Level Plains is a small town in Dale County, Alabama, United States. At the 2020 census, the population was 1,825. It is part of the Ozark micropolitan statistical area. Level Plains was ranked as a city from 2010 to 2020, but due to a population decline reverted to a town after the 2020 Census.

Mayor Ronnie Thompson is the current and ninth mayor to serve since the town was incorporated on April 30, 1965. Thompson previously served as councilmember.

Geography
Level Plains is located in southwestern Dale County at 31.31361°N, -85.76722°W (31.313659, -85.767307), between Daleville to the east and Enterprise to the west. U.S. Route 84 passes through the middle of the community.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 7.9 km2, all land.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 1,825 people, 719 households, and 518 families residing in the town.

2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 2,085 people with 866 housing units with 801 occupied in the incorporated area. The increase in population by 541 people from the 2000 census changed Level Plains' designation from a town to a small city. The population density was 527.2 PD/sqmi. There were 713 housing units at an average density of 243.5 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 90.86% White, 9.42% Black or African American, 1.00% Native American, 0.56% Asian, 1.36% from other races, and 2.91% from two or more races. 3.04% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 602 households, out of which 36.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 58.5% were married couples living together, 11.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.2% were non-families. 21.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.55 and the average family size was 2.95.

In the town the population was spread out, with 26.5% under the age of 18, 7.3% from 18 to 24, 33.3% from 25 to 44, 23.0% from 45 to 64, and 10.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 104.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101.2 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $38,269, and the median income for a family was $44,432. Males had a median income of $33,182 versus $20,313 for females. The per capita income for the town was $17,423. About 8.9% of families and 9.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.1% of those under age 18 and 16.7% of those age 65 or over.

Government
The Town Hall is located at 1708 Joe Bruer Road, which is also known as the old Alabama state route 134. The Level Plains town government includes a mayor and five town council members, a town clerk, a court magistrate, a police department, water department and a volunteer fire department. The town is served by both the Daleville and Enterprise U.S. Postal offices, with the town hall using the Daleville 36322 postal address. The primary north-south road is Dale County Road 1, with U.S. Highway 84 bisecting west to east through the middle of the incorporated areas.

title: Level Plains, Alabama


text:
Midland City, Alabama

Midland City is a town in Dale County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 U.S. Census the population was 2,344. It incorporated in 1890. It is part of the Ozark Micropolitan Statistical Area.

2013 hostage standoff
On January 29, 2013, 65-year-old Vietnam War-era veteran Jimmy Lee Dykes climbed aboard a school bus and fatally shot the driver; he then abducted at random a five-year-old boy named Ethan, who was sitting at the closest seat. He took Ethan into an underground bunker, where he held him captive. About a week after the incident, FBI agents were able to storm the bunker, kill Dykes, and rescue Ethan.

Geography
Midland City is located in southeastern Dale County at 31.30806°N, -85.49056°W (31.307945, -85.490606). It is bordered to the east by the town of Napier Field, to the southeast by the city of Dothan, and to the west by the town of Pinckard. U.S. Route 231 passes through the town, leading northwest 13 mi to Ozark, the Dale County seat, and southeast 9 mi to the center of Dothan. Alabama State Route 134 passes through the center of Midland City, leading east 10 mi to Headland and west 7 mi to Newton via Pinckard.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Midland City has a total area of 15.7 km2, all land.

2000 census
At the 2000 census there were 1,703 people, 707 households, and 477 families in the town. The population density was 282.1 PD/sqmi. There were 805 housing units at an average density of 133.3 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 70.58% White, 25.19% Black or African American, 0.70% Native American, 0.35% Asian, 0.12% from other races, and 3.05% from two or more races. 0.76% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Of the 707 households 34.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.7% were married couples living together, 21.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.5% were non-families. 28.7% of households were one person and 10.5% were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 2.41 and the average family size was 2.93.

The age distribution was 29.7% under the age of 18, 8.6% from 18 to 24, 27.2% from 25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 12.9% 65 or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.3 males.

The median household income was $20,000 and the median family income was $24,474. Males had a median income of $26,927 versus $17,174 for females. The per capita income for the town was $11,438. About 26.0% of families and 30.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 44.1% of those under age 18 and 22.2% of those age 65 or over.

2010 census
At the 2010 census there were 2,344 people, 944 households, and 636 families in the town. The population density was 392 PD/sqmi. There were 1,014 housing units at an average density of 169 per square mile (65/km$2$). The racial makeup of the town was 70.4% White, 23.3% Black or African American, 0.5% Native American, 0.4% Asian, 1.7% from other races, and 3.7% from two or more races. 4.1% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Of the 944 households 32.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.6% were married couples living together, 22.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.6% were non-families. 26.9% of households were one person and 7.5% were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 2.48 and the average family size was 2.98.

The age distribution was 28.0% under the age of 18, 10.8% from 18 to 24, 28.4% from 25 to 44, 22.4% from 45 to 64, and 10.5% 65 or older. The median age was 31.6 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.4 males.

The median household income was $29,591 and the median family income was $39,071. Males had a median income of $33,305 versus $23,897 for females. The per capita income for the town was $16,283. About 26.7% of families and 27.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.9% of those under age 18 and 11.0% of those age 65 or over.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 2,239 people, 818 households, and 465 families residing in the town.

Notable people

 * Bobby Bright, U.S. congressman from Alabama
 * Earl Hutto, congressman from Florida from 1979 to 1995
 * Nathan Mathis, former state representative

In August 2016, Interim Mayor, Patsy Capshaw Skipper garnered national attention due to a racist Facebook comment. When asked about the election by a Facebook friend, Patsy Capshaw Skipper replied, "I lost. The nigger won", referring to her opponent Joann Grimsley who was elected as Midland City's first black mayor.

title: Midland City, Alabama


text:
Napier Field, Alabama

Napier Field is a town in Dale County, Alabama. At the 2020 census, the population was 409. It is part of the Ozark micropolitan statistical area. The town was originally constructed as a military air base during the Second World War. It is currently adjacent to Dothan Regional Airport. While the airport itself lies within Dothan's city limits, the adjacent housing units and other buildings constitute the incorporated town of Napier Field.

Geography
Napier Field is located at 31.31528°N, -85.45444°W (31.315265, -85.454340).

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.3 sqmi, all land.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 404 people, 183 households, and 109 families residing in the town. The population density was 1,520.7 PD/sqmi. There were 234 housing units at an average density of 880.8 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 85.40% White, 11.39% Black or African American, 0.25% Native American, 0.74% from other races, and 2.23% from two or more races. 2.72% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 183 households, out of which 24.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.3% were married couples living together, 9.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.9% were non-families. 32.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.21 and the average family size was 2.85.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 21.0% under the age of 18, 9.9% from 18 to 24, 28.5% from 25 to 44, 24.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.2 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $27,868, and the median income for a family was $45,179. Males had a median income of $29,375 versus $19,583 for females. The per capita income for the town was $18,769. About 6.2% of families and 11.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.4% of those under age 18 and 12.3% of those age 65 or over.

title: Napier Field, Alabama


text:
Newton, Alabama

Newton is a town in Dale County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census its population was 1,511. Once the county seat of Dale County, Newton lost this distinction to nearby Ozark in 1870, and is now a small farming community. It incorporated in 1887. The city currently forms a part of the Ozark micropolitan statistical area.

Geography
Newton is located at 31°21′N 85°36′W (31.344,-85.593).

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 14.3 sqmi, of which 14.3 sqmi is land and 0.04 sqmi (0.21%) is water.

The Choctawhatchee River flows just to the north and west of Newton. At one time this waterway was navigable by steamboat from its mouth in Choctawhatchee Bay, Florida all the way to Newton.

Alabama State Route 123 and Alabama State Route 134 both pass through Newton.

History
Newton was founded in 1843 after the formation of Coffee County from Dale County's western half, which rendered the original county seat of Daleville off-center. The town was a scene for Confederate recruiting during the Civil War, and was the site of a battle in March 1865 between local Home Guard troops and elements of the 1st Florida Cavalry (US) operating out of Florida. The Federals were led by Joseph Sanders, a Dale County resident who had previously been a captain in the 31st Georgia Infantry, but had later switched sides and joined the Federals. Seeking to burn the county courthouse, the attackers were repulsed when local troops ambushed their column as they entered the town. This event is commemorated by a monument located in downtown Newton, and by annual re-enactments.

On December 3, 1864, a local Methodist minister named Bill Sketoe was lynched just north of Newton by local Home Guardsmen led by Captain Joseph Brear. Since Sketoe was tall, a hole had to be dug beneath his feet to accommodate his large frame. Local legend insists that "the hole that won't stay filled" never vanished—even after being filled in numerous times during the years that followed. Though covered in 1979 by a new bridge and tons of rip-rap, "Sketoe's hole" remains a local attraction, and was documented by Alabama writer Kathryn Tucker Windham in 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey. A monument to Sketoe was dedicated near the hanging site in 2006, and the local museum displays items of Sketoe memorabilia.

Following a fire which destroyed the courthouse in March 1869, and the formation of Geneva County in 1870 from the southern third of Dale and Coffee Counties, voters relocated the county seat to Ozark, which was more centralized.

The Southern Star, one of the oldest newspapers in the Wiregrass area, was first published in Newton in 1867. It later relocated to Ozark, where it continues to be published today. Newton remained a port for river boats on the nearby Choctawhatchee, until the railroad arrived in 1890. The Baptist Collegiate Institute operated in the city from 1898 to 1929; its main building now houses the city's public library.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 1,708 people, 693 households, and 510 families residing in the town. The population density was 119.5 PD/sqmi. There were 790 housing units at an average density of 55.3 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 82.20% White, 15.52% Black or African American, 0.18% Native American, 0.06% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.06% from other races, and 1.93% from two or more races. 1.23% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 693 households, out of which 31.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 56.6% were married couples living together, 13.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.4% were non-families. 24.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 2.93.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 24.0% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 27.2% from 25 to 44, 25.8% from 45 to 64, and 14.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.8 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $33,021, and the median income for a family was $35,795. Males had a median income of $28,924 versus $19,559 for females. The per capita income for the town was $15,263. About 13.3% of families and 13.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.8% of those under age 18 and 8.5% of those age 65 or over.

2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 1,511 people, 650 households, and 439 families residing in the town. The population density was 105.7 PD/sqmi. There were 738 housing units at an average density of 51.6 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 83.6% White, 13.0% Black or African American, 0.7% Native American, 0.5% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 0.0% from other races, and 2.1% from two or more races. 1.5% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 650 households, out of which 23.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.5% were married couples living together, 13.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.5% were non-families. 29.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.32 and the average family size was 2.84.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 20.3% under the age of 18, 8.1% from 18 to 24, 22.6% from 25 to 44, 32.6% from 45 to 64, and 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 43.9 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.1 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $33,750, and the median income for a family was $47,019. Males had a median income of $43,021 versus $30,368 for females. The per capita income for the town was $21,781. About 9.2% of families and 14.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.8% of those under age 18 and 5.7% of those age 65 or over.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 1,607 people, 655 households, and 479 families residing in the town.

Schools
Newton has its own Elementary School.

title: Newton, Alabama


text:
Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.

Childhood and youth
Heine was born on 13 December 1797, in Düsseldorf, in what was then the Duchy of Berg, into a Jewish family. He was called "Harry" in childhood but became known as "Heinrich" after his conversion to Lutheranism in 1825. Heine's father, Samson Heine (1764–1828), was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as "Betty"), née van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician.

Heinrich was the eldest of four children. He had a sister, Charlotte (later Charlotte Embden), and two brothers, Gustav (later Baron Heine-Geldern and publisher of the Viennese newspaper Fremden-Blatt), and Maximilian, who became a physician in Saint Petersburg. Heine was also a third cousin once removed of philosopher and economist Karl Marx, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland, with whom he became a frequent correspondent in later life.

Düsseldorf at the time was a town with a population of around 16,000. The French Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars involving Germany complicated Düsseldorf's political history during Heine's childhood. It had been the capital of the Duchy of Jülich-Berg, but was under French occupation at the time of his birth. It then passed to the Elector of Bavaria before being ceded to Napoleon in 1806, who turned it into the capital of the Grand Duchy of Berg, one of three French states he established in Germany. It was first ruled by Joachim Murat, then by Napoleon himself. Upon Napoleon's downfall in 1815 it became part of Prussia.

Thus Heine's formative years were spent under French influence. The adult Heine would always be devoted to the French for introducing the Napoleonic Code and trial by jury. He glossed over the negative aspects of French rule in Berg: heavy taxation, conscription, and economic depression brought about by the Continental Blockade (which may have contributed to his father's bankruptcy). Heine greatly admired Napoleon as the promoter of revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality and loathed the political atmosphere in Germany after Napoleon's defeat, marked by the conservative policies of Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich, who attempted to reverse the effects of the French Revolution.

Heine's parents were not particularly devout. They sent him as a young child to a Jewish school where he learned a smattering of Hebrew, but thereafter he attended Catholic schools. Here he learned French, which became his second language – although he always spoke it with a German accent. He also acquired a lifelong love for Rhenish folklore.

In 1814 Heine went to a business school in Düsseldorf where he learned to read English, the commercial language of the time. The most successful member of the Heine family was his uncle Salomon Heine, a millionaire banker in Hamburg. In 1816 Heine moved to Hamburg to become an apprentice at Heckscher & Co, his uncle's bank, but displayed little aptitude for business. He learned to hate Hamburg, with its commercial ethos, but it would become one of the poles of his life alongside Paris.

When he was 18 Heine almost certainly had an unrequited love for his cousin Amalie, Salomon's daughter. Whether he then transferred his affections (equally unsuccessfully) to her sister Therese is unknown. This period in Heine's life is not clear but it seems that his father's business deteriorated, making Samson Heine effectively the ward of his brother Salomon.

Universities
Salomon realised that his nephew had no talent for trade, and it was decided that Heine should enter law. So, in 1819, Heine went to the University of Bonn (then in Prussia). Political life in Germany was divided between conservatives and liberals. The conservatives, who were in power, wanted to restore things to the way they were before the French Revolution. They were against German unification because they felt a united Germany might fall victim to revolutionary ideas. Most German states were absolutist monarchies with a censored press. The opponents of the conservatives, the liberals, wanted to replace absolutism with representative, constitutional government, equality before the law and a free press.

At the University of Bonn, liberal students were at war with the conservative authorities. Heine was a radical liberal and one of the first things he did after his arrival was to take part in a parade which violated the Carlsbad Decrees, a series of measures introduced by Metternich to suppress liberal political activity.

Heine was more interested in studying history and literature than law. The university had engaged the famous literary critic and thinker August Wilhelm Schlegel as a lecturer and Heine heard him talk about the Nibelungenlied and Romanticism. Though he would later mock Schlegel, Heine found in him a sympathetic critic for his early verses. Heine began to acquire a reputation as a poet at Bonn. He also wrote two tragedies, Almansor and William Ratcliff, but they had little success in the theatre.

After a year at Bonn, Heine left to continue his law studies at the University of Göttingen. Heine hated the town. It was part of Hanover, then also rulers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the power Heine blamed for bringing Napoleon down.

Here the poet experienced an aristocratic snobbery absent elsewhere. He hated law as the Historical School of law he had to study was used to bolster the reactionary form of government he opposed. Other events conspired to make Heine loathe this period of his life: he was expelled from a student fraternity due to anti-Semitism reasons and he heard the news that his cousin Amalie had become engaged. When Heine challenged another student, Wiebel, to a duel (the first of ten known incidents throughout his life), the authorities stepped in and he was suspended from the university for six months. His uncle then decided to send him to the University of Berlin.

Heine arrived in Berlin in March 1821. It was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city he had ever visited (its population was about 200,000). The university gave Heine access to notable cultural figures as lecturers: the Sanskritist Franz Bopp and the Homer critic F. A. Wolf, who inspired Heine's lifelong love of Aristophanes. Most important was the philosopher Hegel, whose influence on Heine is hard to gauge. He probably gave Heine and other young students the idea that history had a meaning which could be seen as progressive. Heine also made valuable acquaintances in Berlin, notably the liberal Karl August Varnhagen and his Jewish wife Rahel, who held a leading salon.

Another friend was the satirist Karl Immermann, who had praised Heine's first verse collection, Gedichte, when it appeared in December 1821. During his time in Berlin Heine also joined the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, a society which attempted to achieve a balance between the Jewish faith and modernity. Since Heine was not very religious in outlook he soon lost interest, but he also began to investigate Jewish history. He was particularly drawn to the Spanish Jews of the Middle Ages. In 1824 Heine began a historical novel, Der Rabbi von Bacherach, which he never managed to finish.

In May 1823 Heine left Berlin for good and joined his family at their new home in Lüneburg. Here he began to write the poems of the cycle Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming"). He returned to Göttingen where he was again bored by the law. In September 1824 he decided to take a break and set off on a trip through the Harz mountains. On his return he started writing an account of it, Die Harzreise.

On 28 June 1825 Heine converted to Protestantism. The Prussian government had been gradually restoring discrimination against Jews. In 1822 it introduced a law excluding Jews from academic posts and Heine had ambitions for a university career. As Heine said in self-justification, his conversion was "the ticket of admission into European culture". In any event, Heine's conversion, which was reluctant, never brought him any benefits in his career.

Julius Campe and first literary successes
Heine now had to search for a job. He was only really suited to writing but it was extremely difficult to be a professional writer in Germany. The market for literary works was small and it was only possible to make a living by writing virtually non-stop. Heine was incapable of doing this so he never had enough money to cover his expenses. Before finding work, Heine visited the North Sea resort of Norderney which inspired the free verse poems of his cycle Die Nordsee.

In Hamburg one evening in January 1826 Heine met Julius Campe, who would be his chief publisher for the rest of his life. Their stormy relationship has been compared to a marriage. Campe was a liberal who published as many dissident authors as he could. He had developed various techniques for evading the authorities. The laws of the time stated that any book under 320 pages had to be submitted to censorship (the authorities thought long books would cause little trouble as they were unpopular). One way around censorship was to publish dissident works in large print to increase the number of pages beyond 320.

The censorship in Hamburg was relatively lax but Campe had to worry about Prussia, the largest German state and largest market for books (it was estimated that one-third of the German readership was Prussian). Initially, any book which had passed the censor in a German state was able to be sold in any of the other states, but in 1834 this loophole was closed. Campe was reluctant to publish uncensored books as he had bad experiences with print runs being confiscated. Heine resisted all censorship; this issue became a bone of contention between the two.

However, the relationship between author and publisher started well: Campe published the first volume of Reisebilder ("Travel Pictures") in May 1826. This volume included Die Harzreise, which marked a new style of German travel-writing, mixing Romantic descriptions of nature with satire. Heine's Buch der Lieder followed in 1827. This was a collection of already published poems. No one expected it to become one of the most popular books of German verse ever published, and sales were slow to start with, picking up when composers began setting Heine's poems as Lieder. For example, the poem "Allnächtlich im Traume" was set to music by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. It contains the ironic disillusionment typical of Heine:

 Allnächtlich im Traume seh ich dich, Und sehe dich freundlich grüßen, Und laut aufweinend stürz ich mich Zu deinen süßen Füßen.

Du siehst mich an wehmütiglich, Und schüttelst das blonde Köpfchen; Aus deinen Augen schleichen sich Die Perlentränentröpfchen.

Du sagst mir heimlich ein leises Wort, Und gibst mir den Strauß von Zypressen. Ich wache auf, und der Strauß ist fort, Und das Wort hab ich vergessen.

 Nightly I see you in dreams – you speak, With kindliness sincerest, I throw myself, weeping aloud and weak At your sweet feet, my dearest.

You look at me with wistful woe, And shake your golden curls; And stealing from your eyes there flow The teardrops like to pearls.

You breathe in my ear a secret word, A garland of cypress for token. I wake; it is gone; the dream is blurred, And forgotten the word that was spoken. (Poetic translation by Hal Draper)

Starting from the mid-1820s, Heine distanced himself from Romanticism by adding irony, sarcasm, and satire into his poetry, and making fun of the sentimental-romantic awe of nature and of figures of speech in contemporary poetry and literature. An example are these lines:

 Das Fräulein stand am Meere Und seufzte lang und bang. Es rührte sie so sehre der Sonnenuntergang.

Mein Fräulein! Sein sie munter, Das ist ein altes Stück; Hier vorne geht sie unter Und kehrt von hinten zurück.

 A mistress stood by the sea sighing long and anxiously. She was so deeply stirred By the setting sun

My Fräulein!, be gay, This is an old play; ahead of you it sets And from behind it returns.

The blue flower of Novalis, "symbol for the Romantic movement", also received withering treatment from Heine during this period, as illustrated by the following quatrains from Lyrisches Intermezzo:

Am Kreuzweg wird begraben Wer selber brachte sich um; dort wächst eine blaue Blume, Die Armesünderblum'.

Am Kreuzweg stand ich und seufzte; Die Nacht war kalt und stumm. Im Mondschein bewegte sich langsam Die Armesünderblum'. At the cross-road will be buried He who killed himself; There grows a blue flower, Suicide’s flower.

I stood at the cross-road and sighed The night was cold and mute. By the light of the moon moved slowly Suicide’s flower.

Heine became increasingly critical of despotism and reactionary chauvinism in Germany, of nobility and clerics but also what he viewed as “narrow mindedness” of ordinary people and of the rising German form of nationalism, especially in contrast to the French and the revolution. Nevertheless, he made a point of stressing his love for his Fatherland: Plant the black, red, gold banner at the summit of the German idea, make it the standard of free mankind, and I will shed my dear heart's blood for it. Rest assured, I love the Fatherland just as much as you do.

Travel and the Platen affair
The first volume of travel writings was such a success that Campe pressed Heine for another. Reisebilder II appeared in April 1827. It contains the second cycle of North Sea poems, a prose essay on the North Sea as well as a new work, Ideen: Das Buch Le Grand, which contains the following satire on German censorship:  The German Censors ——  ——  ——  ——  —— —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——      idiots     ——  —— —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——

Heine went to England to avoid what he predicted would be controversy over the publication of this work. In London he cashed a cheque from his uncle for £200 (equal to £0 today), much to Salomon's chagrin. Heine was unimpressed by the English: he found them commercial and prosaic, and still blamed them for the defeat of Napoleon.

On his return to Germany, Cotta, the liberal publisher of Goethe and Schiller, offered Heine a job co-editing a magazine, Politische Annalen, in Munich. Heine did not find work on the newspaper congenial, and instead tried to obtain a professorship at Munich University, with no success. After a few months he took a trip to northern Italy, visiting Lucca, Florence and Venice, but was forced to return when he received news that his father had died. This Italian journey resulted in a series of new works: Die Reise von München nach Genua (Journey from Munich to Genoa), Die Bäder von Lucca (The Baths of Lucca) and Die Stadt Lucca (The Town of Lucca).

Die Bäder von Lucca embroiled Heine in controversy. The aristocratic poet August von Platen had been annoyed by some epigrams by Immermann which Heine had included in the second volume of Reisebilder. He counter-attacked by writing a play, Der romantische Ödipus, which included anti-Semitic jibes about Heine. Heine was stung and responded by mocking Platen's homosexuality in Die Bäder von Lucca. This back-and-forth ad hominem literary polemic has become known as the.

Foreign correspondent
Heine left Germany for France in 1831, settling in Paris for the remainder of his life. His move was prompted by the July Revolution of 1830 that had made Louis-Philippe the "Citizen King" of the French. Heine shared liberal enthusiasm for the revolution, which he felt had the potential to overturn the conservative political order in Europe. Heine was also attracted by the prospect of freedom from German censorship and was interested in the new French utopian political doctrine of Saint-Simonianism. Saint-Simonianism preached a new social order in which meritocracy would replace hereditary distinctions in rank and wealth. There would also be female emancipation and an important role for artists and scientists. Heine frequented some Saint-Simonian meetings after his arrival in Paris but within a few years his enthusiasm for the ideology – and other forms of utopianism – had waned.

Heine soon became a celebrity in France. Paris offered him a cultural richness unavailable in the smaller cities of Germany. He made many famous acquaintances (the closest were Gérard de Nerval and Hector Berlioz) but he always remained something of an outsider. He had little interest in French literature and wrote everything in German, subsequently translating it into French with the help of a collaborator. In Paris, Heine earned money working as the French correspondent for one of Cotta's newspapers, the Allgemeine Zeitung. The first event he covered was the Salon of 1831. His articles were eventually collected in a volume entitled Französische Zustände ("Conditions in France"). Heine saw himself as a mediator between Germany and France. If the two countries understood one another there would be progress. To further this aim he published De l'Allemagne ("On Germany") in French (begun 1833). In its later German version, the book is divided into two: Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany") and Die romantische Schule ("The Romantic School"). Heine was deliberately attacking Madame de Staël's book De l'Allemagne (1813) which he viewed as reactionary, Romantic and obscurantist. He felt de Staël had portrayed a Germany of "poets and thinkers", dreamy, religious, introverted and cut off from the revolutionary currents of the modern world. Heine thought that such an image suited the oppressive German authorities. He also had an Enlightenment view of the past, seeing it as mired in superstition and atrocities. "Religion and Philosophy in Germany" describes the replacement of traditional "spiritualist" religion by a pantheism that pays attention to human material needs. According to Heine, pantheism had been repressed by Christianity and had survived in German folklore. He predicted that German thought would prove a more explosive force than the French Revolution.

Heine had had few serious love affairs, but in late 1834 he made the acquaintance of a 19-year-old Paris shopgirl, Crescence Eugénie Mirat, whom he nicknamed "Mathilde". Heine reluctantly began a relationship with her. She was illiterate, knew no German, and had no interest in cultural or intellectual matters. Nevertheless, she moved in with Heine in 1836 and lived with him for the rest of his life (they were married in 1841).

Young Germany and Ludwig Börne
Heine and his fellow radical exile in Paris, Ludwig Börne, had become the role models for a younger generation of writers who were given the name "Young Germany". They included Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg. They were liberal, but not actively political. Nevertheless, they still fell foul of the authorities.

In 1835, Gutzkow published a novel, Wally die Zweiflerin ("Wally the Sceptic"), which contained criticism of the institution of marriage and some mildly erotic passages. In November of that year, the German Diet consequently banned publication of works by the Young Germans in Germany and – on Metternich's insistence – Heine's name was added to their number. Heine, however, continued to comment on German politics and society from a distance. His publisher was able to find some ways of getting around the censors and he was still free, of course, to publish in France. Heine's relationship with his fellow dissident Ludwig Börne was troubled. Since Börne did not attack religion or traditional morality like Heine, the German authorities hounded him less although they still banned his books as soon as they appeared.

Börne was the idol of German immigrant workers in Paris. He was also a republican, while Heine was not. Heine regarded Börne, with his admiration for Robespierre, as a puritanical neo-Jacobin and remained aloof from him in Paris, which upset Börne, who began to criticise him (mostly semi-privately). In February 1837, Börne died. When Heine heard that Gutzkow was writing a biography of Börne, he began work on his own, severely critical "memorial" of the man.

When the book was published in 1840 it was universally disliked by the radicals and served to alienate Heine from his public. Even his enemies admitted that Börne was a man of integrity so Heine's ad hominem attacks on him were viewed as being in poor taste. Heine had made personal attacks on Börne's closest friend Jeanette Wohl so Jeannette's husband challenged Heine to a duel. It was the last Heine ever fought – he received a flesh wound in the hip. Before fighting, he decided to safeguard Mathilde's future in the event of his death by marrying her.

Heine continued to write reports for Cotta's Allgemeine Zeitung (and, when Cotta died, for his son and successor). One event which really galvanised him was the 1840 Damascus Affair in which Jews in Damascus had been subject to blood libel and accused of murdering an old Catholic monk. This led to a wave of anti-Semitic persecution.

The French government, aiming at imperialism in the Middle East and not wanting to offend the Catholic party, had failed to condemn the outrage. In contrast, the Austrian consul in Damascus had assiduously exposed the blood libel as a fraud. For Heine, this was a reversal of values: reactionary Austria standing up for the Jews while France temporised. Heine responded by dusting off and publishing his unfinished novel about the persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages, Der Rabbi von Bacherach.

Political poetry and Karl Marx
German poetry took a more directly political turn when the new Frederick William IV ascended the Prussian throne in 1840. Initially it was thought he might be a "popular monarch" and during this honeymoon period of his early reign (1840–42) censorship was relaxed. This led to the emergence of popular political poets (so-called Tendenzdichter), including Hoffmann von Fallersleben (author of Deutschlandlied, the German anthem), Ferdinand Freiligrath and Georg Herwegh. Heine looked down on these writers on aesthetic grounds – they were bad poets in his opinion – but his verse of the 1840s became more political too.

Heine's mode was satirical attack: against the Kings of Bavaria and Prussia (he never for one moment shared the belief that Frederick William IV might be more liberal); against the political torpor of the German people; and against the greed and cruelty of the ruling class. The most popular of Heine's political poems was his least typical, Die schlesischen Weber ("The Silesian Weavers"), based on the uprising of weavers in Peterswaldau in 1844.

In October 1843, Heine's distant relative and German revolutionary, Karl Marx, and his wife Jenny von Westphalen arrived in Paris after the Prussian government had suppressed Marx's radical newspaper. The Marx family settled in Rue Vaneau. Marx was an admirer of Heine and his early writings show Heine's influence. In December Heine met the Marxes and got on well with them. He published several poems, including Die schlesischen Weber, in Marx's new journal Vorwärts ("Forwards"). Ultimately Heine's ideas of revolution through sensual emancipation and Marx's scientific socialism were incompatible, but both writers shared the same negativity and lack of faith in the bourgeoisie.

In the isolation he felt after the Börne debacle, Marx's friendship came as a relief to Heine, since he did not really like the other radicals. On the other hand, he did not share Marx's faith in the industrial proletariat and remained on the fringes of socialist circles. The Prussian government, angry at the publication of Vorwärts, put pressure on France to deal with its authors, and Marx was deported to Belgium in January 1845. Heine could not be expelled from the country because he had the right of residence in France, having been born under French occupation. Thereafter Heine and Marx maintained a sporadic correspondence, but in time their admiration for each other faded. Heine always had mixed feelings about communism. He believed its radicalism and materialism would destroy much of the European culture that he loved and admired.

In the French edition of "Lutetia" Heine wrote, one year before he died: "This confession, that the future belongs to the Communists, I made with an undertone of the greatest fear and sorrow and, oh!, this undertone by no means is a mask! Indeed, with fear and terror I imagine the time, when those dark iconoclasts come to power: with their raw fists they will batter all marble images of my beloved world of art, they will ruin all those fantastic anecdotes that the poets loved so much, they will chop down my Laurel forests and plant potatoes and, oh!, the herbs chandler will use my Book of Songs to make bags for coffee and snuff for the old women of the future – oh!, I can foresee all this and I feel deeply sorry thinking of this decline threatening my poetry and the old world order – And yet, I freely confess, the same thoughts have a magical appeal upon my soul which I cannot resist .... In my chest there are two voices in their favour which cannot be silenced .... because the first one is that of logic ... and as I cannot object to the premise "that all people have the right to eat", I must defer to all the conclusions....The second of the two compelling voices, of which I am talking, is even more powerful than the first, because it is the voice of hatred, the hatred I dedicate to this common enemy that constitutes the most distinctive contrast to communism and that will oppose the angry giant already at the first instance – I am talking about the party of the so-called advocates of nationality in Germany, about those false patriots whose love for the fatherland only exists in the shape of imbecile distaste of foreign countries and neighbouring peoples and who daily pour their bile especially on France".

In October–December 1843, Heine made a journey to Hamburg to see his aged mother and to patch things up with Campe with whom he had had a quarrel. He was reconciled with the publisher who agreed to provide Mathilde with an annuity for the rest of her life after Heine's death. Heine repeated the trip with his wife in July–October 1844 to see Uncle Salomon, but this time things did not go so well. It was the last time Heine left France. At the time, Heine was working on two linked but antithetical poems with Shakespearean titles: Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (Germany. A Winter's Tale) and Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum (Atta Troll: A Midsummer Night's Dream). The former is based on his journey to Germany in late 1843 and outdoes the radical poets in its satirical attacks on the political situation in the country. Atta Troll (actually begun in 1841 after a trip to the Pyrenees) mocks the literary failings Heine saw in the radical poets, particularly Freiligrath. It tells the story of the hunt for a runaway bear, Atta Troll, who symbolises many of the attitudes Heine despised, including a simple-minded egalitarianism and a religious view which makes God in the believer's image (Atta Troll conceives God as an enormous, heavenly polar bear). Atta Troll's cubs embody the nationalistic views Heine loathed.

Atta Troll was not published until 1847, but Deutschland appeared in 1844 as part of a collection Neue Gedichte ("New Poems"), which gathered all the verse Heine had written since 1831. In the same year Uncle Salomon died. This put a stop to Heine's annual subsidy of 4,800 francs. Salomon left Heine and his brothers 8,000 francs each in his will. Heine's cousin Carl, the inheritor of Salomon's business, offered to pay him 2,000 francs a year at his discretion. Heine was furious; he had expected much more from the will and his campaign to make Carl revise its terms occupied him for the next two years.

In 1844, Heine wrote series of musical feuilletons over several different music seasons discussing the music of the day. His review of the musical season of 1844, written in Paris on 25 April of that year, is his first reference to Lisztomania, the intense fan frenzy directed toward Franz Liszt during his performances. However, Heine was not always honorable in his musical criticism. That same month, he wrote to Liszt suggesting that he might like to look at a newspaper review he had written of Liszt's performance before his concert; he indicated that it contained comments Liszt would not like. Liszt took this as an attempt to extort money for a positive review and did not meet Heine. Heine's review subsequently appeared on 25 April in Musikalische Berichte aus Paris and attributed Liszt's success to lavish expenditures on bouquets and to the wild behaviour of his hysterical female "fans". Liszt then broke relations with Heine. Liszt was not the only musician to be blackmailed by Heine for the nonpayment of "appreciation money". Meyerbeer had both lent and given money to Heine, but after refusing to hand over a further 500 francs was repaid by being dubbed "a music corrupter" in Heine's poem Die Menge tut es.

Last years: the "mattress-grave"

In May 1848, Heine, who had not been well, suddenly fell paralyzed and had to be confined to bed. He would not leave what he called his "mattress-grave" (Matratzengruft) until his death eight years later. He also experienced difficulties with his eyes. It had been suggested that he suffered from multiple sclerosis or syphilis, although in 1997 it was confirmed through an analysis of the poet's hair that he had suffered from chronic lead poisoning. He bore his sufferings stoically and he won much public sympathy for his plight. His illness meant he paid less attention than he might otherwise have done to the revolutions which broke out in France and Germany in 1848. He was sceptical about the Frankfurt Assembly and continued to attack the King of Prussia.

When the revolution collapsed, Heine resumed his oppositional stance. At first he had some hope Louis Napoleon might be a good leader in France but he soon began to share the opinion of Marx towards him as the new emperor began to crack down on liberalism and socialism. In 1848 Heine also returned to religious faith. In fact, he had never claimed to be an atheist. Nevertheless, he remained sceptical of organised religion.

He continued to work from his sickbed: on the collections of poems Romanzero and Gedichte (1853 und 1854), on the journalism collected in Lutezia, and on his unfinished memoirs. During these final years Heine had a love affair with the young Camille Selden, who visited him regularly. He died on 17 February 1856 and was interred in the Paris Cimetière de Montmartre.

His tomb was designed by Danish sculptor Louis Hasselriis. It includes Heine's poem Where? (Wo?) engraved on three sides of the tombstone.

 Wo wird einst des Wandermüden Letzte Ruhestätte sein? Unter Palmen in dem Süden? Unter Linden an dem Rhein?

Werd ich wo in einer Wüste Eingescharrt von fremder Hand? Oder ruh ich an der Küste Eines Meeres in dem Sand?

Immerhin! Mich wird umgeben Gotteshimmel, dort wie hier, Und als Totenlampen schweben Nachts die Sterne über mir.

 Where shall I, the wander-wearied, Find my haven and my shrine? Under palms will I be buried? Under lindens on the Rhine?

Shall I lie in desert reaches, Buried by a stranger's hand? Or upon the well-loved beaches, Covered by the friendly sand?

Well, what matter! God has given Wider spaces there than here. And the stars that swing in heaven Shall be lamps above my bier. (translation in verse by L.U. )

His wife Mathilde survived him, dying in 1883. The couple had no children.

Legacy
Among the thousands of books burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following the Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, were works by Heinrich Heine. To memorialize the event, one of the most famous lines of Heine's 1821 play Almansor, spoken by the Muslim Hassan upon hearing that Christian conquerors burned the Quran at the marketplace of Granada, was engraved in the ground at the site: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." ("That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.")

In 1835, 98 years before Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power in Germany, Heine wrote in his essay "The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany": Christianity – and that is its greatest merit – has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ...

Do not smile at my advice – the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.

The North American Heine Society was formed in 1982.

Heine in Nazi Germany
Heine's writings were abhorred by the Nazis and one of their political mouthpieces, the Völkischer Beobachter, made noteworthy efforts to attack him. Within the pantheon of the "Jewish cultural intelligentsia" chosen for anti-Semitic demonization, perhaps nobody was the recipient of more National Socialist vitriol than Heinrich Heine. When a memorial to Heine was completed in 1926, the paper lamented that Hamburg had erected a "Jewish Monument to Heine and Damascus...one in which Alljuda ruled!". Editors for the Völkischer Beobachter referred to Heine's writing as degenerate on multiple occasions as did Alfred Rosenberg. Correspondingly, as part of the effort to dismiss and hide Jewish contribution to German art and culture, all Heine monuments were removed or destroyed during Nazi Germany and Heine's books were suppressed and, from 1940 on, banned. The popularity of many songs to Heine's lyrics represented a problem for the policy of silencing and proposals such as bans or rewriting the lyrics were discussed. However, in contrast to an often-made claim, there is no evidence that poems such as "Die Lorelei (song)" were included in anthologies as written by an "unknown author".

Music
Many composers have set Heine's works to music. They include Robert Schumann (especially his Lieder cycle Dichterliebe), Friedrich Silcher (who wrote a popular setting of "Die Lorelei", one of Heine's best known poems), Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Edward MacDowell, Clara Ross, Elise Schlick, Elise Schmezer, Sophie Seipt, Charlotte Sporleder, Maria Anna Stubenberg, Pauline Volkstein, Clara Schumann and Richard Wagner; and in the 20th century Lord Berners, Yehezkel Braun, Hans Werner Henze, Paul Lincke, Nikolai Medtner, Carl Orff, Harriet P. Sawyer, Marcel Tyberg Lola Carrier Worrell.

Heine's play William Ratcliff was used for the libretti of operas by César Cui (William Ratcliff) and Pietro Mascagni (Guglielmo Ratcliff). Frank Van der Stucken composed a "symphonic prologue" to the same play.

In 1964, Gert Westphal and the Attila-Zoller Quartet released the vinyl "Heinrich Heine Lyrik und Jazz". In 2006 Philips/Universal launched a republication on CD.

Wilhelm Killmayer set 37 of his poems in his song book Heine-Lieder, subtitled Ein Liederbuch nach Gedichten von Heinrich Heine, in 1994.

Morton Feldman's I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstemberg was inspired by a vision he had of the dead Heine as he walked through Heine's old neighborhood in Paris: "One early morning in Paris I was walking along the small street on the Left Bank where Delacroix's studio is, just as it was more than a century ago. I'd read his journals, where he tells of Chopin, going for a drive, the poet Heine dropping in, a refugee from Germany. Nothing had changed in the street. And I saw Heine up at the corner, walking toward me. He almost reached me. I had this intense feeling for him, you know, the Jewish exile. I saw him. Then I went back to my place and wrote my work, I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstemberg."

Controversy
In the 1890s, amidst a flowering of affection for Heine leading up to the centennial of his birth, plans were made to honor Heine with a memorial; these were strongly supported by one of Heine's greatest admirers, Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria. The empress commissioned a statue from the sculptor Louis Hasselriis. This statue, originally located at Achilleion, Empress Elisabeth's palace in Corfu, was later removed by Kaiser Wilhelm II after he acquired Achilleion in 1907, but it eventually found a home in Toulon. This became the inspiration for Tony Harrison's 1992 film-poem, The Gaze of the Gorgon.

Another memorial, a sculpted fountain, was commissioned for Düsseldorf. While at first the plan met with enthusiasm, the concept was gradually bogged down in anti-Semitic, nationalist, and religious criticism; by the time the fountain was finished, there was no place to put it. Through the intervention of German American activists, the memorial was ultimately transplanted into the Bronx, New York City (in Philadelphia already in 1855 was printed the complete edition of Heine's works in German language). While the memorial is known in English as the Lorelei Fountain, Germans refer to it as the Heinrich Heine Memorial. Also, after years of controversy, the University of Düsseldorf was named Heinrich Heine University. Today the city honours its poet with a boulevard (Heinrich-Heine-Allee) and a modern monument.

In Israel, the attitude to Heine has long been the subject of debate between secularists, who number him among the most prominent figures of Jewish history, and the religious who consider his conversion to Christianity to be an unforgivable act of betrayal. Due to such debates, the city of Tel Aviv delayed naming a street for Heine, and the street finally chosen to bear his name is located in a rather desolate industrial zone rather than in the vicinity of Tel Aviv University, suggested by some public figures as the appropriate location.

Ha-‘Ir (העיר – The City, a left-leaning Tel Aviv magazine) sarcastically suggested that "The Exiling of Heine Street" symbolically re-enacted the course of Heine's own life. Since then, a street in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem and, in Haifa, a street with a beautiful square and a community center have been named after Heine. A Heine Appreciation Society is active in Israel, led by prominent political figures from both the left and right camps. His quote about burning books is prominently displayed in the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. (It is also displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and in the pavement in Frankfurt am Main.)

Works
A list of Heine's major publications in German. All dates are taken from.

 * 1820 (August): Die Romantik ("Romanticism", short critical essay)
 * 1821 (20 December ): Gedichte ("Poems")
 * 1822 (February to July): Briefe aus Berlin ("Letters from Berlin")
 * 1823 (January): Über Polen ("On Poland", prose essay)
 * 1823 (April): Tragödien nebst einem lyrischen Intermezzo ("Tragedies with a Lyrical Intermezzo") includes:
 * Almansor (play, written 1821–1822)
 * William Ratcliff (play, written January 1822)
 * Lyrisches Intermezzo (cycle of poems)
 * 1826 (May): Reisebilder. Erster Teil ("Travel Pictures I"), contains:
 * Die Harzreise ("The Harz Journey", prose travel work)
 * Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming", poems)
 * Die Nordsee. Erste Abteilung ("North Sea I", cycle of poems)
 * 1827 (April): Reisebilder. Zweiter Teil ("Travel Pictures II"), contains:
 * Die Nordsee. Zweite Abteilung ("The North Sea II", cycle of poems)
 * Die Nordsee. Dritte Abteilung ("The North Sea III", prose essay)
 * Ideen: das Buch le Grand ("Ideas: The Book of Le Grand")
 * Briefe aus Berlin ("Letters from Berlin", a much shortened and revised version of the 1822 work)
 * 1827 (October): Buch der Lieder ("Book of Songs"); collection of poems containing the following sections:
 * Junge Leiden ("Youthful Sorrows")
 * Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming", originally published 1826)
 * Lyrisches Intermezzo ("Lyrical Intermezzo", originally published 1823)
 * "Aus der Harzreise" (poems from Die Harzreise, originally published 1826)
 * Die Nordsee ("The North Sea: Cycles I and II", originally published 1826/1827)
 * 1829 (December): Reisebilder. Dritter Teil ("Travel Pictures III"), contains:
 * Die Reise von München nach Genua ("Journey from Munich to Genoa", prose travel work)
 * Die Bäder von Lucca ("The Baths of Lucca", prose travel work)
 * Anno 1829
 * 1831 (January): Nachträge zu den Reisebildern ("Supplements to the Travel Pictures"), the second edition of 1833 was retitled as Reisebilder. Vierter Teil ("Travel Pictures IV"), contains: Reisebilder.tif
 * Die Stadt Lucca ("The Town of Lucca", prose travel work)
 * Englische Fragmente ("English Fragments", travel writings)
 * 1831 (April): Zu "Kahldorf über den Adel" (introduction to the book "Kahldorf on the Nobility", uncensored version not published until 1890)
 * 1833: Französische Zustände ("Conditions in France", collected journalism)
 * 1833 (December): Der Salon. Erster Teil ("The Salon I"), contains:
 * Französische Maler ("French Painters", criticism)
 * Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski ("From the Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski", unfinished novel)
 * 1835 (January): Der Salon. Zweiter Teil ("The Salon II"), contains:
 * Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany")
 * Neuer Frühling ("New Spring", cycle of poems)
 * 1835 (November): Die romantische Schule ("The Romantic School", criticism)
 * 1837 (July): Der Salon. Dritter Teil ("The Salon III"), contains:
 * Florentinische Nächte ("Florentine Nights", unfinished novel)
 * Elementargeister ("Elemental Spirits", essay on folklore)
 * 1837 (July): Über den Denunzianten. Eine Vorrede zum dritten Teil des Salons. ("On the Denouncer. A Preface to Salon III", pamphlet)
 * 1837 (November): Einleitung zum "Don Quixote" ("Introduction to Don Quixote", preface to a new German translation of Don Quixote)
 * 1838 (November): Der Schwabenspiegel ("The Mirror of Swabia", prose work attacking poets of the Swabian School)
 * 1838 (October): Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen ("Shakespeare's Girls and Women", essays on the female characters in Shakespeare's tragedies and histories)
 * 1839: Anno 1839
 * 1840 (August): Ludwig Börne. Eine Denkschrift ("Ludwig Börne: A Memorial", long prose work about the writer Ludwig Börne)
 * 1840 (November): Der Salon. Vierter Teil ("The Salon IV"), contains:
 * Der Rabbi von Bacherach ("The Rabbi of Bacharach", unfinished historical novel)
 * Über die französische Bühne ("On the French Stage", prose criticism)
 * 1844 (September): Neue Gedichte ("New Poems"); contains the following sections:
 * Neuer Frühling ("New Spring", originally published in 1834)
 * Verschiedene ("Sundry Women")
 * Romanzen ("Ballads")
 * Zur Ollea ("Olio")
 * Zeitgedichte ("Poems for the Times")
 * it also includes Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (Germany. A Winter's Tale, long poem)
 * 1847 (January): Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum (Atta Troll: A Midsummer Night's Dream, long poem, written 1841–46)
 * 1851 (September): Romanzero; collection of poems divided into three books:
 * Erstes Buch: Historien ("First Book: Histories")
 * Zweites Buch: Lamentationen ("Second Book: Lamentations")
 * Drittes Buch: Hebräische Melodien ("Third Book: Hebrew Melodies")
 * 1851 (October): Der Doktor Faust. Tanzpoem ("Doctor Faust. Dance Poem", ballet libretto, written 1846)
 * 1854 (October): Vermischte Schriften ("Miscellaneous Writings") in three volumes, contains:
 * Volume One:
 * Geständnisse ("Confessions", autobiographical work)
 * Die Götter im Exil ("The Gods in Exile", prose essay)
 * Die Göttin Diana ("The Goddess Diana", ballet scenario, written 1846)
 * Ludwig Marcus: Denkworte ("Ludwig Marcus: Recollections", prose essay)
 * Gedichte. 1853 und 1854 ("Poems. 1854 and 1854")
 * Volume Two:
 * Lutezia. Erster Teil ("Lutetia I", collected journalism about France)
 * Volume Three:
 * Lutezia. Zweiter Teil ("Lutetia II", collected journalism about France)

Posthumous publications

 * Memoiren ("Memoirs", first published in 1884 in the magazine Die Gartenlaube). Published as a book in English as The Memoirs of Heinrich Heine and Some Newly-Discovered Fragments of His Writings with an Introductory Essay by Thomas W. Evans, M.D. (1884). London: George Bell & Sons.

Editions in English

 * Poems of Heinrich Heine, Three hundred and Twenty-five Poems, Translated by Louis Untermeyer, Henry Holt, New York, 1917.
 * The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English Version by Hal Draper, Suhrkamp/Insel Publishers Boston, 1982. ISBN 3-518-03048-5
 * Religion and Philosophy in Germany, a fragment, Tr. James Snodgrass, 1959. Boston, MA (Beacon Press). Available online.
 * On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings, Ed. Terry Pinkard, Tr. Howard Pollack-Milgate. New York (Cambridge University Press), 2007. ISBN 978-0-521-86129-8

title: Heinrich Heine


text:
Things to Come

Things to Come (also known as Shape of Things to Come and in promotional material as H. G. Wells' Things to Come) is a 1936 British science fiction film produced by Alexander Korda, directed by William Cameron Menzies, and written by H. G. Wells. The film stars Raymond Massey, Edward Chapman, Ralph Richardson, Margaretta Scott, Cedric Hardwicke, Maurice Braddell, Sophie Stewart, Derrick De Marney, and Ann Todd.

H. G. Wells conceived his treatment as "a new story" meant to display the "social and political forces and possibilities" that he had outlined in his 1933 book The Shape of Things to Come, a work he considered less a novel than a "discussion" in fictional form that presented itself as the notes of a 22nd-century diplomat. The film was also influenced by previous works, including his 1897 story "A Story of the Days to Come" and his 1931 work on society and economics, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind. The cultural historian Christopher Frayling called Things to Come "a landmark in cinematic design".

Plot
In 1940, businessman John Cabal, living in the city of Everytown in southern England, cannot enjoy Christmas Day as the news speaks of possible war. His guest, Harding, shares his worries, while another friend, the over-optimistic Pippa Passworthy, believes that it will not come to pass, and if it does, it will accelerate technological progress. An aerial bombing raid on the city that night results in general mobilisation and then global war with the unnamed enemy. Cabal becomes a Royal Air Force pilot and serves bravely, even attempting to rescue an enemy pilot he has shot down.

The war continues into the 1960s, long enough for the people of the world to have forgotten why they are fighting. Humanity enters a new dark age. Every city in the world is in ruins, the economy has been devastated by hyperinflation, and there is little technology left other than greatly depleted air forces. A pestilence known as "wandering sickness" is inflicted by aerial bombing and causes its victims to walk around aimlessly in a zombie-like state before dying. The plague kills half of humanity and extinguishes the last vestiges of government.

By 1970, the warlord Rudolf, known as the "Boss", has become the chieftain of what is left of Everytown and eradicated the pestilence by shooting the infected. He has started yet another war, this time against the "hill people" of the Floss Valley to obtain coal and shale to render into oil for his ragtag collection of prewar biplanes.

On May Day that year, a sleek new monoplane lands in Everytown, startling the residents, who have not seen a new aircraft in many years. The pilot, a now elderly John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of engineers and mechanics have formed an organisation called "Wings Over the World". They are based in Basra, Iraq, and have outlawed war and are rebuilding civilisation throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean. Cabal offers the Boss the opportunity to join Wings, but he immediately rejects the offer and takes Cabal prisoner, forcing him to repair the obsolete biplanes.

With the assistance of Cabal, the Boss's disillusioned mechanic Gordon contacts Wings Over the World. Gigantic flying wing aircraft arrive over Everytown and saturate its population with a "Gas of Peace" that temporarily renders them unconscious. The people awaken to find themselves under the control of Wings Over the World and the Boss dead from a fatal allergic reaction to the gas. Cabal promises them that Wings Over the World will usher in a new age of progress and peace.

Under Cabal's guidance, Wings Over the World quickly rebuilds civilisation to even greater heights. By 2036, a stable mankind is now living in modern underground cities, including the new Everytown, and civilisation is at last devoted to peace and scientific progress. All is not well, however. The sculptor Theotocopulos incites the populace to demand a "rest" from all the rush of progress, symbolised by the coming first crewed flight around the Moon. When the mob threatens to destroy the space gun that will launch the ship to the Moon, Oswald Cabal, the grandson of John Cabal and current head of government, is forced to move the launch ahead of schedule.

Oswald Cabal's daughter Catherine and fellow scientist Maurice Passworthy are the astronauts. After the projectile is launched and just a tiny light in the night sky, Cabal debates the desirability of human progress with Passworthy's anxious father. To Passworthy's concern that humanity shall never be able to rest, Cabal retorts that humans have no choice but to conquer the universe and its mysteries: "All the universe or nothingness? Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?"

Cast

 * Raymond Massey as John Cabal and Oswald Cabal
 * Edward Chapman as Pippa Passworthy and Raymond Passworthy
 * Ralph Richardson as Rudolf, "The Boss"
 * Margaretta Scott as Roxana Black and Rowena Cabal
 * Cedric Hardwicke as Theotocopulos
 * Maurice Braddell as Dr. Edward Harding
 * Sophie Stewart as Mrs Cabal
 * Derrick De Marney as Richard Gordon
 * Ann Todd as Mary Gordon
 * Pearl Argyle as Catherine Cabal
 * Kenneth Villiers as Maurice Passworthy
 * Ivan Brandt as Morden Mitani
 * Anne McLaren as The Child (2036)
 * Patricia Hilliard as Janet Gordon
 * Charles Carson as Great Grandfather (2036)

Uncredited
 * Patrick Barr as World Transport official
 * John Clements as enemy pilot
 * Anthony Holles as Simon Burton
 * Allan Jeayes as Mr. Cabal (1940)
 * Pickles Livingston as Horrie Passworthy
 * Abraham Sofaer as Wadsky

+ Cast notes
 * Theotocopulos's scenes were originally shot with Ernest Thesiger. Wells found his performance to be unsatisfactory, so he was replaced with Cedric Hardwicke and the footage reshot.
 * Terry-Thomas, who would become known for his comic acting, has an uncredited appearance as an extra in the film, playing a "man of the future." It was his seventh film appearance.
 * Margaretta Scott is credited with the dual role of Roxana Black and Rowena Cabal, but the latter character does not appear in the longest surviving cut of the film.

Production
Things to Come sets out a future history from 1940 to 2036. In the screenplay, or "treatment" that Wells published in 1935, before the film was released, the story ends in "A.D. 2054".

Wells is sometimes incorrectly assumed to have had a degree of control over the project that was unprecedented for a screenwriter. Posters and the main title bill the film as "H. G. Wells' Things to Come", with "an Alexander Korda production" appearing in smaller type. In fact, Wells ultimately had no control over the finished product, with the result that many scenes, although shot, were either truncated or not included in the finished film. The rough-cut reputedly ran to 130 minutes; the version submitted to the British Board of Film Censors was 117m 13s; it was released as 108m 40s (later cut to 98m 06s) in the UK, and 96m 24s in the United States (see below for later versions). Wells's script (or "film treatment") and selected production notes were published in book form in 1935 and reprinted in 1940 and 1975. An academic edition annotated by Leon Stover was published in 2007. The script contains many scenes that were either never filmed or no longer exist, although the extant footage also includes scenes not in the published script (e.g. the Boss's victory banquet after the capture of the colliery).

Wells originally wanted the music to be recorded in advance, and have the film constructed around the music, but this would have impeded editing, and so the score, by Arthur Bliss, was fitted to the film afterwards in a more conventional way. A concert suite drawn from the film has remained popular; as of 2015, numerous recordings of it were still in print.

The film was made at Denham Film Studios, while the site was still under construction.

After filming had already begun, the Hungarian abstract artist and experimental filmmaker László Moholy-Nagy was commissioned to produce some of the effects sequences for the re-building of Everytown. Moholy-Nagy's approach was partly to treat it as an abstract light show, but only some 90 seconds of material was used, e.g. a protective-suited figure behind corrugated glass. In the autumn of 1975 a researcher found a further four sequences which had been discarded.

The art design in the film is by Vincent Korda, brother of the producer. The futuristic city of Everytown in the film is based on London: a facsimile of St Paul's Cathedral can be seen in the background.

Reception
Things to Come was voted the ninth best British film of 1936 by Film Weekly's readers. It was the 16th most popular film at the British box office in 1935–36. In 2005, it was nominated for the AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores, a list of the top 25 film scores unveiled by the American Film Institute.

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 93%, based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 7.46/10. The site's consensus read: "Eerily prescient in its presentation of a dystopian future, Things to Come 's special effects may be somewhat dated, but its potent ideas haven't aged at all."

Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a mixed review. Although he made it clear that "a third of the film is magnificent", he felt that the second third (as the world of tomorrow reverts to barbarism and anarchy) seemed implausible, and began to lose interest with the introduction of the "Great Conspiracy" (an international force of airmen bent on restoring Earth's former glory) in the last third of the film. The optimism and idealism comes off as naive for him.

Science fiction historian Gary Westfahl has stated, "Things to Come qualifies as the first true masterpiece of science fiction cinema, and those who complain about its awkward pace and uninvolving characters are not understanding Wells's message, which is that the lives and actions of individuals are unimportant when compared to the progress and destiny of the entire human race". He also considered that "the film's episodic structure and grand ambitions make it the greatest ancestor of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey".

Indeed, during early development of what would become 2001, co-writer Arthur C. Clarke had Kubrick watch Things to Come as an example of a grounded science fiction film; Kubrick, however, disliked it. After seeing 2001, Frederik Pohl complained in a 1968 Galaxy editorial: "The science-fiction movie we've all been waiting for still hasn't come along. We think it's a disgrace that the most recent science-fiction movie made with a big budget, good actors and an actual sf writer preparing the script, not aimed at a juvenile market and uncontaminated by camp, is Things to Come... produced in 1936."

Duration, releases, and surviving versions
The rough cut of the film was 130 minutes in length, while the version submitted for classification by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) was 117m 13s. By the time of the 21 February 1936 UK premiere and initial release, this had been reduced to 108m 41s, while the American print premiered on 18 April 1936 was further cut to 96m 31s. By late 1936, a 98m 07s print was in circulation in the UK, and a 76m 07s print was resubmitted for classification by the BBFC and was passed – after further cuts – at 72m 13s for a reissue in 1943 by Exclusive Films, a film distribution company co-founded by William Hinds.

The 96m 31s American print was cut down to 93m 19s by the removal of three sections of footage for a reissue by British Lion Films in 1948, and subsequently to 92m 44s by the removal of one more segment. A continuity script exists for a version of approximately 106m 04s, which contains all the material in the 96m 31s and 92m 44s versions, plus a number of other sequences. It is not known if a version of this duration was actually in circulation at any time, or if it was simply an intermediate stage between the premiere and release versions.

For many years, the principal surviving version of the film was the 92m 44s print (in countries using PAL or SECAM video systems, it runs to 89m exactly). From at least the late-1970s until 2007, this was the only version "officially" available from the rights holders in the UK. In the United States, although the 92m 44s version was most prevalent, a version was also in circulation that included the four pieces of footage that were in the 96m 31s print, but not the 92m 44s version, although due to other cuts, actually ran shorter than the latter.

Home media
A cut version of the 92m 44s print was digitally restored and colourised by Legend Films, under the supervision of Ray Harryhausen (who had no connection with the making of the film) and released on DVD in the United States in early 2007.

In May 2007, Network DVD in the UK released a digitally restored copy of the 96m 31s version, the longest version remaining of the film. The two-disc set also contains a "Virtual Extended Version" with most of the missing and unfilmed parts represented by production photographs and script extracts. In 2011 Network released an updated and expanded version of this edition on Blu-ray in HD.

The Criterion Collection released the 96m 31s print on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on 18 June 2013. This includes the unused Moholy-Nagy footage as an extra.

Copyright status
Although the film lapsed into the public domain in the US in 1964 due to non-renewal, copyright remained in force in the UK, the European Union, and elsewhere. In the UK, copyright for films as "dramatic works" subsists for seventy years after the end of the year of release, or the death of either the director, the writer (or author of original story), or the composer of original music, whichever is the latest. As the composer, Arthur Bliss, did not die until 1975, copyright will not expire until after 31 December 2045. The current copyright holder is ITV Global Entertainment Ltd., while the longest surviving original nitrate print is held by the BFI National Archive, a copy of the 96m 31s print donated by London Films to the newly formed National Film Library in March 1936.

The film came back into copyright in the US in 1996 under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which, among other measures, amended US copyright law to reinstate copyright on films of non-US origin if they were still in copyright in their country of origin. The URAA was subsequently challenged in Golan v. Gonzales, initially unsuccessfully, later with partial success, but the challenge was ultimately defeated in Golan v. Holder and a new principle established that international agreements could indeed restore copyright to works which had previously come into the public domain.

title: Things to Come