text:
Talk:Christian II of Denmark

Untitled
Original text from 1911 EB - please update

I broke this up into paragraphs and made some links to various European royalty, etc, but someone should check. Article could use some further organization, probably someone who knows more could update it from the 1911 version. Ortolan88

C. the Good
There is a rumour in Sweden that he was in Denmark known as Christian the Good. The rumour is not true. I have reverted the insertion of it once, and it is the only reason I have to have the page on my watchlist. For an explaination of the rumour look at the page on swedish wikipedia sv:Kristian II or sepearate article sv:Kristian den gode. If anyone can find a place to add this piece of info to this article, please do so; I don't know where it would fit, as a Swedish rumour is not so intresting on English wikipedia. --Fred-Chess July 1, 2005 06:22 (UTC)

 * Right. That's a rather common myth in Sweden. Although it's kind of hard to see how anyone knowing something of Christian could believe it; He was after all dethroned and imprisoned. Hardly a common fate for a 'good' king. Swedish historian Alf Henrikson pointed out another thing which is perhaps noteworthy in this context: Christian himself probably wouldn't have minded being called a 'tyrant' at all, since that word had quite different connotations to an early 16th century ruler. It's known that he had read Machiavelli's The Prince and wanted it translated. (Henrikson doesn't say if that wish was carried out though). --BluePlatypus 16:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

 * The article on The Prince states that the work wasn't publicised before 1532. Since Christian was deposed already in 1523 and imprisoned in 1532, he wouldn't have been able to order anybody to do anything at all, unless somebody had been so kind to provide him with an advance copy between 1513 and 1532. :) Valentinian T / C 10:07, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Fra da:wiki: I skånsk-dansk historie omtaltes han med tilnavnet den Gode eller Bondekjær, al den stund han holdt med "småkårsfolkene" mod den mægtige adel og rigsrådet. --Comanche cph 20:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Do you have any aspirations in contributing encyclopedic and accurate contents? The Danish article says Det er dog en myte, at han i skånsk/dansk historie omtales med tilnavnet den Gode eller Bondekjær, fordi han holdt med "småkårsfolkene" mod den mægtige adel og rigsrådet. I landflygtigheden beskrev kongen sig selv som Christian den Gode i et forsøg på at vinde tilhængere, og det har forledt nogen til at tro, at det også var et reelt anvendt tilnavn.
 * Fred-Chess 20:12, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Just for the record; neither Store Danske Encyklopædi or Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon even mentions this alleged byname. Valentinian T / C 09:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that we atleast have to add his swedish nickname "Christian the Tyrant" in the beginning of the article cause that is what people in general are saying when they mention his name in Sweden(compare with Ivan the Terrible) and after all the swedish. Christian is a rather unknown king in Europe outside Scandinavia, but I would say that he is the most famous historic regent (perhaps with the exception of the Union Queen Margaret) for the common people in Sweden, much more than Christian 4, for an example. In the end Sweden with Finland was approximately half part of his kingdom and therefor it feels natural to do so.

Ok, I can agree with you that it make some sense, I just wanted it to have a little bit more nordic touch:) But another thing more important, that I think schould be mentioned, is the hostage of six swedish nobelmen(Gustav Vasa included) that Christian was taking in 1518 without fulfilling his promise to negotiate about peace. The reason I want this in the text is because it gives more information why he later in Sweden was regarded as notorious deceiver. The promise that he would forget earlier hostilities with the swedish and after that promise ordering Stockholm Bloodbath under the lame excuse that he did not have to keep promises to heretics is another example. I know that this is page about Christian, I just thought that this event was important to understand why Christian lost the throne in Sweden to a rather obscure swedish nobelman. And after all it seems we have two ways of looking at him in Sweden and Denmark, were the danish emphasize what he did for Denmark and the swedish what he did against Sweden, so its just good for the objectivity and understanding if both sides are reflected in the article also because Christian is the most wellknown danish King in swedish history eduction. Awakened82 (talk) 17:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

 * No need for it to appear in the intro as it is already mentioned in the article in the section called "The Stockholm Bloodbath". --Saddhiyama (talk) 12:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

 * (reply to the addition to talks post): You are welcome to add details about his actions in the article, but remember it is important that sources are cited. Especially as it seems your interest in the subject is the historical reception and the historiography concerning Christian II, which can very well end up with POV or original research if not properly sourced. And by the way, as noted in the old discussion under this subject heading it seems to be an old Swedish myth that he is remembered in Denmark for "what he did for Denmark and the Swedish what he did against Sweden". As far as I know he is mainly seen as a failure by Danish historians, and I have yet to hear any Dane (except for possible extremists) having the opinion that the Stockholm Bloodbath was in anyway a positive thing. Furthermore I do not think that this article (of which I think the original core is from the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 which still shows in some areas of the text in the colourful language "his brain teeming with great designs", the frequent use of "patriotic" etc) is particularly biased towards a positive view of him, far from it in fact, which is a good thing, as no article should be biased in any way. --Saddhiyama (talk) 18:26, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Children?
Why not mention his children and link to them? They are present in en.wikipedia! //Astor Piazzolla 09:39, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Not verified tag (Renata of Lorraine)
I've raised the not verified tag as there is a need to clarify the relation between Renata of Lorraine and Charles XV of Sweden. In the article on the mother of the latter, Josephine of Leuchtenberg, it is claimed that she is an ancestor of Renata of Lorraine, and thereby of her great-grandfather Christian II of Denmark. See also my comment on Talk:Josephine of Leuchtenberg. I have not seen this information in any other place than these two articles and I would like this information to be verified by some external source. --Astor Piazzolla 21:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Verified!
''I have removed the non-verified tag. I mixed to Renatas of Lorraine. My mistake! --Astor Piazzolla 10:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)'' (For some reason, this post was deleted, I've put it back.) --Astor Piazzolla 12:44, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

POV
''As viceroy of Norway (1506 – 1512) he had already displayed a singular capacity for ruling under exceptionally difficult circumstances. Patriotism, insight, courage, statesmanship, energy -- these great qualities were indisputably his; but unfortunately they were vitiated by obstinacy, suspicion and a sulky craftiness, beneath which simmered a very volcano of vengeful cruelty.''

very culcano of cruelty is hardly NPOV. Could you please provide sources to verify this claim or is this simply another example of original research by Swedish nationalists who think Wikipedia is a propaganda tool in a 500 year old dispute. It's 500 years ago people! Let's get over it! MartinDK 10:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I can't see how that paragraph could end up both sourced and NPOV, so I've removed it and toned down the sentence about his administration in Norway. (What are the sources that his administration in Norway was any brilliant?) It is bad historical practice to attempt a psychological analysis on dead persons unless the sources surviving are absolutely excellent. I haven't heard this to be the case with Christian II. I'd also like to see well-sourced references that Christian's rule was exceptional in a European context. Killing off 80 people you don't trust is drastic, yes, but application of massive force is not unique in European history. E.g., Italian history contains pretty brutal episodes. I also noted the discrepancy between this paragraph and the articles about certain Swedish kings that treated Scania very harshly. Let's stick to well-sourced and NPOV material and apply the same standard for both Danes and Swedes. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 11:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I have added an attempt at a more neutral introduction. It is mostly based on the Great Danish Encyclopedia. The Norwegian Wikipedia article also looks pretty interesting. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 12:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

 * In this context, I tried to write an article on Christians admiral de:Søren Norby in the German Wikipedia, and found that both, the Danish as well as the Swedish article - unsourced - as they are, were not of great help. I didn't find really good English or German sources on the topic.--Kresspahl 15:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Title in infobox
Shouldn't his whole title be included in the infobox? I mean the title used in official documents: "Christiern med Gudz Naade, Danmarckis, Suerrigis, Norrigis, Vendis, och Gottis Koninng, Hertug i Slesuig, Holsten, Staarmaaren, och Dyttmersken, Greffue vdj Oldenborg, och Delmenhorst" (Christian by the grace of God, king of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Vends and the Goths, Duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn and Dithmarschen, Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst). The question also applies for all the other monarchs as well of course: Is the intention of the "title" in the infobox to give the full formal title they used, or just a bland listing of the realms they were monarch of? I would prefer the former.--Barend 16:34, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

NPOV
I have removed the worst Dane bashing from the article but it still needs sources and substantial rewriting before it represents a decent article. Large parts of the article is written as if it was copied from a narrative history book and has no sources despite making some pretty substantial claims. It's been 500 years... isn't it time to bury the hatchet and work together? EconomicsGuy (talk) 08:36, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, these nationalist swedes won't ever forget what Christian did, its a black mark on their feeble and vain national pride. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.165.156.236 (talk) 15:21, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

 * The man has gone down in history of course, but I wouldn't say most Swedes today are this vengeful about the age-old conflicts with Denmark. To me it reads like something out of an early 20th century schoolbook (some edition of Odhner's "The History of our Fatherland" for instance, a title that incidentally was given many decades before the word'fatherland' became vitiated by Nazi associations).

There are more balanced assessments of Christian and the strain he was under as a king from modern Swedish historians; the danish nobles opposed him too, as well as the german Hansa. Gustav Vasa, who won out and whose father was beheaded at the Stockholm bloodbath, could certainly be just as Machiavellian as Christian II. Vilhelm Moberg, one of the greatest and most loved writers of modern Sweden, and an unabashed king-basher, once wrote a book on medieval history which included two chapters titled "Tyrant 1: Christian II" and "Tyrant 2: Gustav I" - I'll take a look at this article and try to recast and source it from sensible Swedish, Danish and English-speaking writers. (I'm fluent in both Swedish and Danish and know my way around serious historical research) Strausszek 26 November 2008, 21:56 (CET)

 * OK, I edited the biography section of the article for POV, and more work is required. See my edit notes in the history; I did lots of chopping for things I couldn't fix. I don't know enough to fix this article without substantial research, and the writing is too heavily influenced by POV for a simple fix. There seem to be lots of awkward constructions, too, like "the delegates could not be prevailed upon." What does that mean? Try to write at a fifth-grade level. Clarity could use some work in this article. --Jp07 (talk) 07:15, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Christian II and Machiavelli
Regarding the discussion above about Christian wanting a translation of The Prince. I have found a passage in Frederik Schiern Historiske Studier, volume 2 (1857) p. 4 that kind of supports the claim (the essay is found on Danish wikisource here). Apparently the theory was started by the Danish church historian Christen Olivarius (1710-45) in his work De vita et scriptis Pauli Eliæ Carmelitæ (1741) p. 48, 159 which is a biography of Poul Helgesen. Helgesen was the person Christian II wanted to translate the book. Olivarius' work is based on Helgesens written works and it is from this work that the mention of a book being sent to Helgesen by Christian II with an order to translate it comes from. It is not mentioned which book but Helgesen refused to translate the book on account of "she teaches more to sin than to improve and denounce". Unfortunately Schiern does not mention if it is Olivarius that proposes the book to be The Prince or if it is Schiern himself, but Schiern at least mentions this theory. The Prince was written in 1514 and was circulating in royal circles in manuscript long before it was printed. Of course there are several problems with this in regard to wikipedia, most importantly that it is only some (older) historians theory that the book in question was Machiavellis The Prince, and I do not know if it is a theory that is still accepted amongst contemporary historians (Alf Henrikson seems to subscribe to it). --Saddhiyama (talk) 01:05, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Interesting. Alf Åberg, a well-known Swedish historian, called the Stockholm Bloodbath "a typical renaissance drama" (in Vår svenska historia, 1978) and it certainly feels more italian than reminiscent of earlier party fighting in Scandinavia. Michael Roberts, an English historian who specialized in Scandinavia, points out hat it must have seemed shockingly unusual because of the severity and bluntness of the vengeance. So Christian could have found inspiration in Machiavelli - but is there any indication that the king knew Italian? Whichever the book, it was not translated, so he wouldn't be able to read it unless he could read Italian anyway.Strausszek 6 December 2008, 05:20 (CET)

Encyclopedias!!
(Imagine a sharp tone of irritation and disgust directed towards "professional" encyclopedias) The origin of this POVvy and a weird article seems to be Encyclopædia Britannica 11ed/1911, and aside from having a pathological amateurish attitude worse than peacock wordings, it makes me giggle for the fool formulations. About his mistress mom Sigbrit Willoms:
 * Dyveke's mother Sigbrit, a born administrator and a commercial genius of the first order

(Hihihihi! So geniuses have orders! Sure!)
 * She soon became the soul of a middle-class inner council

(Hehehehe! They lacked a soul, and she was incorporeal! Sure!)

And C2 had a heritage from Sverker, Eric and all Swedish kings, while Gustav I Wasa had only one line, in the section Reconquest of Sweden. How much do we care?

Other samples: Never had King Christian seemed so powerful as upon[Citation needed!], Unfortunately these reforms, excellent in themselves, suggested [Says who?]. In a way the article is quite hilarious! Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 07:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Nonsential discourse
The poor 1911 anonymous author (may he/she forever be anonymous for this deed) didn't succeed to reflect the real history very well: the alleged Swedish competitor at the Reconquest of Sweden, Gustav Vasa was a sole internal Swedish refugee belonging to the Sture party at the time of reconquest. It is generally believed that he had no intention of becoming a king at that time, and so he was not a competing candidate for kingship, at that specific historical event. However, when the reconquest resulted in a general uprising, led by Gustav Vasa, some among Gustavs adherents/financers forced(?)/convinced(?) him to be a candidate for the Swedish throne. The article text is confusing about these details, listing heritage lines instead of political considerations, attending to irrelevant details instead of presenting a clear chain of events.

Similarly the downfall section attends to a lot of details of "laudable" reasons of "evil" this-or-that for C2 acting this-and-that way, but suddenly, in one very short paragraph, he is deposed! The reason is that despite his general heroism and laudability, surrounded by first order incorporeal geniuses, he had alienated each and every power around him!!?? The writing style is really confusing because of the nonsential discourse that ascribes him this and that glorious purpose. The text s*ckxs! Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 08:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Weird sentence in section "Downfall"
"Unfortunately these reforms, excellent in themselves, suggested the standpoint not of an elected ruler, but of a monarch by divine right"

While i of course agree that slavery and is wrong and while i agree that "divine right" doesn't hold any weight, the "unfortunately these reforms, excellent in themselves"-part seem a tad bit strong, but i'm not well versed in this particular person of history, so maybe it is just me. Swedra (talk) 18:21, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

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Background - the note about sources on the article can be deleted
I think the note about sources on the article can be deleted. Perhaps it can be noted that older descriptions of history had other starting points, mainly the winners' political propaganda activities at the time of the deeds and what suits the successors.

Frankly, without this background description, the article completely lacks logic and then becomes very difficult to understand (money made the political turns possible). The Swedish War of Liberation, the Count's Feud and the Reformation will be very difficult to understand otherwise.

The source for Margareta Skantze is enough. It is a summary of a modern generally accepted view in university research in Sweden as a reaction to a previously older strongly politically described development largely based on the victorious kings of the time (Gustav Vasa and Christian III) who have a bit character of a saga.

Margareta Skantze's description is the one that constitutes descriptions in the history of Swedish Radio Science, where for instance professor Dick Harrison describes Stockholm bloodbath from this point of view. Where, for example, everything is carefully planned in advance and not a result of Didrik Slagheck's improvisations, but not least the fight for the money. Corresponding actions but on a much smaller scale also took place earlier in Norway.

The perception is now that power and money drive history and a long accepted view is the downfall of the Hanseatic League after the Count's Feud, but here Jacob Fugger, the pope's and emperor's part, highlights, not least the money, a lot of money, the reason why Christian II took his wife. What distinguishes the period is the enormous influx of resources, mercenaries (Christian II rises) and the enormous fluctuation of resources (Christian II fall) through Fuggers and the Hansa's funding initiatives. But also the pope's lack of adaptation in the changed situation as the direct reason why northern Europe became Lutheran through 15 years of interdict. We are talking about a package view of a process that ends with Count's Feud, and starts a new era.

This changed view suddenly makes Christian II's regime, Gustav Vasa's elevation to king, Christian III's successes and the Reformation in Sweden/Reformation in Denmark completely logical. The old version is logical as a fairy tale.

--Zzalpha (talk) 15:27, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Christian I of Denmark which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 21:16, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Christian II of Denmark


text:
Ribena

Ribena is a brand of blackcurrant-based soft drink (both uncarbonated and carbonated), and fruit drink concentrate designed to be mixed with water. It is available in bottles, cans and multi-packs. Originally of English origin, it was produced by the pharmaceutical company  GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) until 2013, when the brand was sold to Japanese beverage conglomerate Suntory.

The brand originally had a strong reputation as a healthy product for children, stemming from its distribution to children as a vitamin C supplement during World War II by the British government. Beecham, a company that has been part of GSK since 2000, bought the brand in 1955 and developed many soft drink versions. A series of scandals in the 2000s, concerning vitamin C levels, sugar levels, and the amounts of actual fruit in some of the brands, damaged its reputation as a healthy product, and by 2013, the brand was widely regarded as a soft drink.

In 2013, annual worldwide sales were around £500 million. That year, GSK sold Ribena and another consumer line, Lucozade, to the Japanese multinational Suntory for £1.35 billion (equivalent to £ in ). In April 2018, in the United Kingdom, Ribena's longstanding recipe was changed by the addition of artificial sweeteners in response to the introduction of a sugary drinks tax by the UK government.

Development
Ribena was originally manufactured in England by the Bristol-based food and drink company HW Carter as a blackcurrant squash. Development research into pure fruit syrups for the manufacture of milkshakes had been done at the Long Ashton Agriculture and Horticulture Research Station in North Somerset using a pectinase enzyme process; Ribena was developed by biochemist Audrey Green and Vernon Charley, a scientist at the University of Bristol in 1933. The blackcurrant variety was found to contain high levels of vitamin C. The drink was named Ribena (from the botanical name of the blackcurrant, Ribes nigrum), by Mr S. M. Lennox of Bristol in 1938.

Second World War
During the Second World War, other fruits rich in vitamin C, like oranges, became very difficult to obtain in the United Kingdom, due to German submarine attacks on cargo ships. Blackcurrant cultivation was encouraged by the government, and the yield of the nation's crop increased significantly. Rose hips were also collected to make syrup.

The government started the Vitamin Welfare Scheme in December 1941. This provided blackcurrant syrup and cod liver oil free of charge to children under the age of two. In April 1942, the blackcurrant syrup was replaced by orange juice which was then provided by the US Lend-Lease program.

Post-war
Production moved to the new Royal Forest Factory at Coleford in the Forest of Dean in late 1947, where production takes place today.

Carters was bought out by the Beecham Group in 1955. In 1989, Beecham and SmithKline Beckman merged to form SmithKline Beecham, and in 2000, SmithKline Beecham and GlaxoWellcome merged to form GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Through the years GSK and its predecessors developed many soft drink versions of Ribena but it retained an image as a "healthy food" in the UK and other Commonwealth countries.

In 2001, a formulation of the diluted Ribena cordial, sold as Ribena Toothkind (and endorsed by the British Dental Association as being less damaging to teeth than other soft drinks), was judged by the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority to have been advertised in a misleading manner, and claims that the drink did not encourage tooth decay should be removed from the packaging. The opinion was upheld by a hearing in the High Court. In 2003, the Food Commission in the United Kingdom criticised the sugar levels in regular Ribena as contributing to childhood obesity.

In 2004, Jenny Suo and a classmate in a New Zealand secondary school conducted a science experiment to determine the vitamin C levels of their favourite fruit drinks. They discovered that the "Ready to Drink Ribena" product they tested had undetectable levels of vitamin C, contrary to the brand's reputation and advertisements which said that "the blackcurrants in Ribena contain four times the vitamin C of oranges". The television consumer affairs show Fair Go broadcast the story nationwide in October 2004. Following further testing, in March 2007, the New Zealand Commerce Commission brought 15 charges in the Auckland District Court against GlaxoSmithKline under the Fair Trading Act. In March 2007, GSK pleaded guilty and was fined NZ$217,500 by Auckland District Court for misleading consumers, and were ordered to run a series of corrective advertisements and place a statement on its website. GSK maintained the issue only affects Australia and New Zealand, and Ribena products sold in other markets, such as the United Kingdom, contain the levels of vitamin C stated on the product label.

In January 2007, a study conducted by the Australian Consumers' Association for Choice magazine reported that blackcurrant juice (from concentrate) only constituted 5% of the Ribena fruit drink product.

By 2013, the brand had annual worldwide sales of about £500 million. In April 2013, GSK put Ribena, along with Lucozade, up for sale to focus on its pharmaceutical business. The eventual sale to Japanese company Suntory for £1.35 billion was announced in September 2013.

A sparkling version released in 2011 but discontinued in 2014. It was brought back to supermarket shelves in 2020, launching in two flavours, blackcurrant and raspberry. This was in response to growth in the flavoured carbonate market that year.

In 2022, as part of a promotion with Hasbro, a Ribena themed Monopoly edition was created. This set was distributed to 10,000 customers through an online competition.

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

title: Ribena


text:
Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name and the 2021 television series of the same name.

He is the father of English-American authors and documentary filmmakers Marcel and Louis Theroux, the brother of authors Alexander Theroux and Peter Theroux, and uncle of the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux.

Early life
Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the third of seven children, and son of Catholic parents; his mother, Anne (née Dittami), was Italian American, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was of French-Canadian descent. His mother was a former grammar school teacher and painter, and his father was a shoe factory leather salesman for the American Leather Oak company. Theroux was a Boy Scout and ultimately achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.

His brothers are Eugene, Alexander, Joseph and Peter. His sisters are Ann Marie and Mary.

Theroux was educated at Medford High School, followed by the University of Maine, in Orono (1959–60), and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he obtained a B.A. in English in 1963.

According to his older brother Alexander, Paul affects a "fake British accent" despite growing up in a working-class Boston suburb.

Career
After he finished his university education, Theroux joined the Peace Corps in 1963 as a teacher in Malawi. In a later life interview, he described himself as an "angry and agitated young man" who felt he had to escape the confines of Massachusetts and a hostile U.S. foreign policy. At the time, the Peace Corps was relatively new, having sent its first volunteers overseas in 1961. Theroux helped a political opponent of Prime Minister Hastings Banda escape to Uganda. For this, Theroux was expelled from Malawi and thrown out of the Peace Corps in 1965. He was declared persona non grata by Banda in Malawi for sympathizing with Yatuta Chisiza. As a consequence, his later novel Jungle Lovers, which concerns an attempted coup in the country, was banned in Malawi for many years.

He moved to Uganda in 1965 to teach English at Makerere University, where he also wrote for the magazine Transition. While at Makerere, Theroux began his friendship with Rajat Neogy, founder of Transition Magazine, and novelist V.S. Naipaul, then a visiting scholar at the university. During his time in Uganda, an angry mob at a demonstration threatened to overturn the car in which his pregnant wife was riding, and Theroux decided to leave Africa.

In November 1968, the couple moved with their son Marcel to Singapore, where a second son, Louis, was born. After two years of teaching at the National University of Singapore, Theroux and his family settled in England in November 1971. They lived first in Dorset, and then in south London. When his marriage ended, early in 1990, Theroux returned to the United States, where he has since settled.

Theroux's sometimes caustic portrait of Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul in his memoir Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998) contrasts sharply with his earlier, admiring portrait of the same author in V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to his Work (1972). They had a long friendship, but Theroux said that events during the 26 years between the two books colored his perspective in the later book. The two authors attempted a reconciliation in 2011 after a chance meeting at the Hay Literary Festival, an episode described in postscript to the subsequent paperback edition of Sir Vidia’s Shadow, and remained close friends until the death of Naipaul in 2018.

His novel Saint Jack (1973) was banned by the government of Singapore for 30 years. Both were banned because they were considered too critical of the government's leader(s), or cast the country in an unfavorable light. All Theroux's books were banned by the apartheid government in South Africa, but in 1995 after South Africa's transition to democracy, under the presidency of Nelson Mandela, the South African Department of Education made Theroux's “The Mosquito Coast” required reading as a set book for 12th grade students sitting their final (“Matric”) exam.

In 2001, prior to his 60th birthday, Theroux returned to Africa to retrace his footsteps and "[take] the pulse of the continent." Despite undergoing various hardships during the trip, he came away with a positive impression of Africa and African people and optimistic views of its future. However, his experiences soured his attitudes towards foreign tourists and activists. He wrote about this journey in the book Dark Star Safari.

Theroux has criticized celebrity activists like Bono, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as "mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth." He has said that "the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help—not to mention celebrities and charity concerts—is a destructive and misleading conceit".

In a 2009 interview, he stated that he now has "the disposition of a hobbit," and had become more optimistic than in his youth. He further commented that he "need[s] happiness to write well."

In an op-ed in The New York Times on October 22, 2016, Theroux recommended that President Obama pardon John Walker Lindh. In the article, he compared his association with rebel ministers and own unwitting involvement, while a Peace Corps volunteer, in a plot to assassinate President Hastings Banda of Malawi (noted above) to the complexities in the case of the convicted American citizen who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Literary work
Theroux published his first novel, Waldo (1967), during his time in Uganda; it was moderately successful. He published several more novels over the next few years, including Fong and the Indians, Jungle Lovers, and The Mosquito Coast. On his return to Malawi many years later, he found that Jungle Lovers, which was set in that country, was still banned. He recounted that in his book Dark Star Safari (2002).

After moving to London in 1972, Theroux set off on an epic journey by train from Great Britain to Japan and back. His account of this journey was published as The Great Railway Bazaar, his first major success as a travel writer and now a classic in the genre. The Nigerian reviewer Noo Saro-Wiwa writes “Theroux’s book The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) sold 1.5 million copies and is often credited with launching the travel-writing boom of the late twentieth century." He has since written a number of travel books, including traveling by train from Boston to Argentina (The Old Patagonian Express), walking around the United Kingdom (The Kingdom by the Sea), kayaking in the South Pacific (The Happy Isles of Oceania), visiting China (Riding the Iron Rooster), and traveling from Cairo to Cape Town across Africa (Dark Star Safari). In 2015, he published "Deep South" detailing four road trips through the southern states of the United States. In 2019 he published On the Plain of Snakes, his account of his extensive travels in his own car throughout Mexico. He is noted for his rich descriptions of people and places, laced with a heavy streak of irony, or even misanthropy. Nonfiction by Theroux includes Sir Vidia's Shadow, an account of his personal and professional friendship with Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul, which ended abruptly after 30 years.

Theroux has worked extensively with the celebrated photographer Steve McCurry. Their book The Imperial Way appeared in 1987, and McCurry's photographs are included in Theroux's Deep South and On the Plain of Snakes . Magazines such as Smithsonian and the National Geographic have paired Theroux and McCurry on assignments.

A number of Theroux's books have been made into movies. His 1972 novel Saint Jack was filmed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1979, and starred Ben Gazzara. His novella Doctor Slaughter was filmed as “Half Moon Street,” in 1986, with Michael Caine and Sigourney Weaver. Peter Weir's film “The Mosquito Coast” (1986) had Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren and River Phoenix in the cast. Theroux's set of short stories The London Embassy became a six-part TV series on British television in 1987. “Christmas Snow,” a 1986 TV movie starring Sid Caeser was adapted from Theroux's novel London Snow . Theroux wrote the Hong Kong story on which the Wayne Wang film Chinese Box (1997) was based. In 2019, Apple Films announced that The Mosquito Coast was in production as a ten-part series that was broadcast in 2021.

Personal life
His 2017 semi-autobiographical novel Mother Land (and earlier related short story in The New Yorker magazine, set in Puerto Rico) refer to an older son born in Puerto Rico in 1961 whither his college girlfriend and he had travelled for the birth, giving the baby up for adoption; later, Theroux's son returned into his life.

When Theroux was in Uganda, his friends found him a teaching position at Makerere University in Kampala. There he met Anne Castle, an English graduate student teaching at an upcountry girls' secondary school in Kenya, via Voluntary Service Overseas. They married in 1967. After leaving Asia and Dorset, they moved to South London in 1971, because it was cheaper than the United States. They had two sons: Marcel and Louis, both of whom are writers and documentarians. Theroux and Castle divorced in 1993.

Theroux married a second time to Sheila Donnelly, on November 18, 1995. His wife runs a luxury travel/hotel PR agency. They reside in Hawaii and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

In popular culture

 * In the 2004 remake Flight of the Phoenix, Captain Towns (played by Dennis Quaid) owns a copy of Theroux's travel book The Happy Isles of Oceania
 * Theroux is namechecked in the Pearl Jam song "Never Destination".

Select awards and honors
Theroux has received numerous awards and honors.
 * Fellow, Royal Society of Literature and Royal Geographical Society in UK
 * Honorary doctorate in literature from Trinity College in Washington, D.C.
 * Honorary doctorate in literature from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts
 * 2015: Patron's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in UK
 * 1990: Maria Thomas Fiction Award, lifetime achievement award
 * 1983: American Book Award nominee – The Mosquito Coast
 * 1981: James Tait Black Memorial Prize – The Mosquito Coast
 * 1981: American Book Award nominee – The Old Patagonian Express
 * 1989: Thomas Cook Travel Book Award – Riding the Iron Rooster
 * 1978: Whitbread Prize for Best Novel – Picture Palace
 * 1977: American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award for literature
 * 1972, 1976, 1977, and 1979: the Playboy Editorial Award for Best Story
 * 1984: elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Adaptations

 * Saint Jack was filmed by director Peter Bogdanovich (1979).
 * Doctor Slaughter was adapted as the film Half Moon Street (1986).
 * The Mosquito Coast was made into a film of the same name (1986) and The Mosquito Coast (TV series) in 2021.
 * Chinese Box (1997), a film about the British handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, credits Theroux as a source for the story, based on themes he explored in his 1997 novel Kowloon Tong.
 * A Christmas Card was a radio play dramatized by Nick Warburton and directed by Marilyn Imrie for BBC Radio 4, 29 December 1997.
 * The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro was a radio play directed by Lu Kemp for BBC Radio 4, 17 December 2004.

title: Paul Theroux


text:
Deutsche Bahn

The Deutsche Bahn AG (abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany, and a state-owned enterprise under the control of the German government. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company (AG) and the largest railway company in the world.

DB was founded after the merger between the Deutsche Bundesbahn and the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1994 after the unification of Germany and has been operating ever since. Deutsche Bahn is the second-largest transport company in Germany, after the German postal and logistics company Deutsche Post / DHL. DB provides both long-distance and regional transport, serving around 132 million long distance passengers and 1.6 billion regional passengers in 2022. In 2022, DB transported 222 million tons of cargo.

Company profile
The group is divided into several companies, including DB Fernverkehr (long-distance passenger), DB Regio (local passenger services) and DB Cargo (rail freight). The Group subsidiary DB Netz also operates large parts of the German railway infrastructure, making it the largest rail network in Europe.

The company generates about half of its total revenue from operating rail transport, with the other half of the business comprising further transport and logistics businesses, as well as various service providers. The company generates further revenue through public transport contracts and support services for infrastructure maintenance and expansion. The Deutsche Bahn Group is divided into various organizational units that perform their tasks with subsidiaries.

Rail transport
DB Personenverkehr is the unit that manages passenger travel within Germany. Originally called Reise & Touristik (English: Travel and Tourism), this group is responsible for the managing, servicing and running of German passenger services. This group is divided into DB Fernverkehr and DB Regio.

DB Fernverkehr
DB Fernverkehr AG is a semi-independent division of Deutsche Bahn that operates long-distance passenger trains in Germany. It was founded in 1999 in the second stage of the privatisation of German Federal Railways under the name of DB Reise & Touristik and renamed in 2003.

DB Fernverkehr operates all Intercity Express and Intercity trains in Germany as well as in some neighboring countries and several EuroCity and EuroCityExpress trains throughout Europe. Unlike its sister companies DB Regio and DB Cargo, DB Fernverkehr still holds a de facto monopoly in its segment of the market as it operates hundreds of trains per day, while all competitors' long-distance services combined amount to no more than 10–15 trains per day.

Additionally DB Fernverkehr operated a few long-distance coach services throughout Germany, called IC Bus, which since have been terminated.

DB Regio
DB Regio AG is the subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn that operates passenger trains on short and medium distances in Germany. Unlike its long-distance counterpart, DB Fernverkehr, it does not operate trains on its own account. Traffic is ordered and paid for by the Bundesländer (states) or their respective regional train operation supervisors.

Some states have awarded long-term contracts to DB Regio (usually 10 to 15 years), in others, DB Regio's operations are decreasing, in North Rhine-Westphalia, their market share is expected to be lower than 50%. DB Regio rail services are divided into several regional companies:

 * DB Regio Nord for Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Bremen
 * DB Regio Nordost for Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
 * DB Regio NRW for North Rhine-Westphalia
 * DB Regio Südost for Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia
 * DB Regio Mitte for Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Hesse and parts of Baden-Württemberg
 * DB Regio Baden-Württemberg for the rest of Baden-Württemberg
 * DB Regio Bayern for Bavaria
 * S-Bahn Hamburg
 * S-Bahn Berlin
 * RegioNetz (small, independent networks, like Erzgebirgsbahn, Gäubodenbahn, Kurhessenbahn, Oberweißbacher Bergbahn, Südostbayernbahn, Westfrankenbahn for easier organisation)

The bus services consist of 25 bus companies, which have subsidiary companies themselves.

Logistics
The Transport and Logistics division acted in the market with the business units DB Schenker and DB Cargo, which were combined under the umbrella of DB Schenker, and the Intermodal division, which operates in combined transport. In 2016, rail freight transport was separated from logistics and DB Schenker Rail was renamed DB Cargo.

In cooperation with the logistics provider time:matters, DB also offers the transport of shipments weighing up to 20 kg on its EC/IC/ICE trains.

DB InfraGO
The infrastructure division was divided into the DB Netz (rail infrastructure), DB Station&Service (stations and services) and DB Energie (Energy) business units. At the end of December 2023, DB Netz merged with DB Station&Service to create DB InfraGO AG. The new company is intended to reduce poor communication between the two previously separate infrastructure firms and to be more 'oriented towards the common good.' In fact, that is what the GO in InfraGO stands for in German: 'Gemeinwohlorientierte.'

DB Engineering & Consulting
DB Engineering & Consulting, which is responsible for construction supervision, construction planning and maintenance, is also assigned to this department without being part of a business area. Via its subsidiary DB Engineering & Consulting, DB signed a memorandum of understanding with Iranian rail operator Bonyad Eastern Railways (BonRail) in May 2017 and shortly after a consulting contract with Islamic Republic of Iran Railways; both projects were abandoned after the United States imposed new sanctions against Iran and said firms doing business with Iran would be barred from doing business with the United States.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority's (CHSRA) board approved on 15 November 2017 an early train operator contract with DB Engineering & Consulting USA. The firm is the U.S. arm of Deutsche Bahn AG. As early train operator, DB Engineering & Consulting will assist CHSRA with planning, designing and implementing the state's high-speed rail program.

Arriva
Deutsche Bahn purchased Arriva in August 2010 off the London Stock Exchange. To satisfy the European Commission, Arriva's German operations were rebranded Netinera and sold. As of July 2022, Arriva operated 15,700 buses and 800 railway vehicles in 14 European countries, mainly in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 2019, Deutsche Bahn unsuccessfully tried to sell the business. In October 2023, Deutsche Bahn agreed on terms to sell Arriva to I Squared Capital, with the transaction scheduled to be completed in 2024. The sale was completed on 4 June 2024 at a reported price of £1.4bn.

DB Cargo UK
DB also has interests abroad, owning the United Kingdom's largest rail freight operator, DB Cargo UK, which also operates the British Royal Train and also has interests in Eastern Europe. It is possible to obtain train times for any journey in Europe from Deutsche Bahn's website.

Trans-Eurasia Logistics
Trans-Eurasia Logistics is a joint venture with Russian Railways (RŽD) that operates container freight trains between Germany and China via Russia.

Background: the Deutsche Reichsbahn
The railway network in Germany dates back to 1835 when the first tracks were laid on a 6 km route between Nuremberg and Fürth. The Deutsche Reichsbahn operated from 1920 through the Weimar and Nazi eras until 1949, when it was split between East and West Germany into two successor entities, Deutsche Reichsbahn and Deutsche Bundesbahn, respectively. They remained separate throughout the Cold War era division of Germany, and joined after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, and German reunification in 1990. On 1 January 1994 Deutsche Reichsbahn and Deutsche Bundesbahn were merged to form one company, Deutsche Bahn, the successor organisation to the Reichsbahn. At the same time, Deutsche Bahn adopted its current logo and DB abbreviation. Kurt Weidemann modernised the logo and typographer Erik Spiekermann designed a new corporate font known as DB Type. When Deutsche Bahn was formed in January 1994, it became a joint stock-company, and was designed to operate the railways of both the former East and West Germany after unification in October 1990 as a single, uniform, and private company. There are three main periods of development in this unified German railway: its formation, its early years (1994–1999), and the period from 1999 to the present.

Originally, DBAG had its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main but moved to Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin in 1996, where it occupies a 26-storey office tower designed by Helmut Jahn at the eastern end of the Sony Centre and named Bahntower. As the lease was to expire in 2010, DB had announced plans to relocate to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, and in 2007 a proposal for a new headquarters by 3XN Architects won an architectural competition which also included Foster + Partners, Dominique Perrault and Auer + Weber. However, these plans were put on hold due to the financial crisis of 2008, and the Bahntower lease was extended. Construction of the new headquarters building was started in 2017 under the title "Cube Berlin" according to the designs by 3XN. Finished in February 2020, the Cube will house the legal offices of Deutsche Bahn, but not become the main headquarters.

1999 to present
The second step of the Bahnreform (railway reform) was carried out in 1999. All rolling stock, track, personnel, and real assets were divided between the subsidiaries of DBAG: DB Reise & Touristik AG (long-distance passenger service, later renamed DB Station & Service AG (operating the stations)). This new organisational scheme was introduced not least to implement European Community directive 91/440/EEC that requires open access operations on railway lines by companies other than those that own the rail infrastructure.

In December 2007, DB reorganised again, bringing all passenger services into its DB Bahn arm, logistics under DB Schenker and infrastructure and operations under DB Netze.

The DB is owned by the Federal Republic. By the Constitution, the Federal Republic is required to retain (directly or indirectly) a majority of the infrastructure (the present DB Netze) stocks.

In 2008, it was agreed to "float" a portion of the business, meaning an end to the 100% share the German Federal Republic had in it, with a plan that 25% of the overall share would be sold to the private sector. However the onset of the financial crisis of 2007–08 saw this cancelled.

In 2014, the Jewish community of Thessaloniki demanded that the Deutsche Bahn, which is the successor of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, should reimburse the heirs of Greek Holocaust victims of Thessaloniki for train fares that they were forced to pay for their deportation from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Treblinka between March and August 1943.

In June 2018 controversy grew in the United Kingdom over widespread cancellations of railway services and numerous delayed services operated by Deutsche Bahn in Britain, under its Northern brand. This resulted in Britain's Minister of Transport, Chris Grayling, setting up an enquiry into whether the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary had breached its contractual agreement to provide railway services in the north of England. He warned that if the company was found to be in breach of its contractual agreements it could be banned from running railway services in the United Kingdom.

Train categories
Trains in Germany are classified by their stopping pattern, average speed and level of comfort provided:

Long-distance trains

 * ICE (Intercity-Express) for high-speed long-distance train services between major cities and regions. Certain routes also cross European borders into the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Austria.
 * EC (EuroCity) for intercity trains that cross borders, and connect Germany with other countries. Can also be operated by foreign State Railways.
 * IC (InterCity) for long-distance semi-high-speed services that connect regions and cities. IC services are slightly lower in class than ICE services, with trains reaching lower speeds (average around 160 – 220 km/h), with more frequent stops. On some IC routes the trains use legacy railway lines instead of the high speed lines the ICE takes. International IC services are usually operated as EuroCity.

Just as ICE, EC and (few) IC cross European borders, train categories of other operators cross into Germany and are operated in cooperation with Deutsche Bahn:
 * ECE for international high-speed rail services in cooperation with SBB. Currently two routes (Frankfurt-Milan and Munich-Zurich).
 * TGV in cooperation with SNCF from France to Frankfurt and Munich via Stuttgart.
 * Railjet from Austria to Munich and Frankfurt in cooperation with ÖBB and from Prague to Berlin in cooperation with ČD.

Regional trains

 * IRE (Interregio-Express) are longer distance RE trains that connect regions and cities. On most routes they serve as slower IC trains. IRE trains only exist in Baden-Württemberg and formerly on the Hamburg–Berlin route.
 * RE (Regional-Express) serve regions and connects cities, and do not stop at every station on the route.
 * RB (Regionalbahn) stop at all stations on the route (except where S-Bahn is available) and are often the most basic train service available.
 * S (S-Bahn) is a type of rapid transit for larger cities and stop at all stations. S-Bahn operate high-frequency services and are usually characterised by crossing through the city centre with dense station spacing.

There are several other operators in Germany which sometimes offer other categories, also, a local transport authority or tariff associations might brand the trains in a different way than DB does. For example, in the Nuremberg region, RE and RB trains are not differentiated, but called R instead. In some regions, such as Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Brandenburg, private operators do use the RE and RB labels, in others, such as Saxony, they do not. In online and print information systems of DB, private trains officially labelled RB and RE by their operators, might get a different label, for example "ABR" for trains operated by Abellio, though on platforms, trains and maps or timetables issued by the local transport authority overseeing regional train services, these abbreviations usually do not appear.

Former categories

 * D (D-Zug or Schnellzug, abbreviated from Durchgangszug) was the express train category and used to be the highest train category. It was replaced by IC and the even faster ICE. The trains of the SyltShuttle plus car shuttle service connecting the island of Sylt with the mainland are still officially referred to as D trains
 * E (Eilzug) was the semi-fast service offering faster journeys than normal passenger trains but not at such long distances and speed as D trains, though there were some quite long running E trains. No direct successor, would be located between RE and IC.
 * IR (InterRegio), set between RE and IC was meant to connect cities and regions at a lower price, but also be used for local traffic. Replaced partly by IC, RE and IRE.
 * MET (Metropolitan) was a luxury train service between Hamburg and Cologne. The two special MET train sets are now used for IC and ICE services, and does still have a comfort level above the regular IC and ICE coaches.
 * N (Nahverkehrszug), the most basic form of train service stopping at all stations. When all local train services were vertaktet, i.e. operating at a fixed interval (mostly one train per hour), they were rebranded as RB.
 * SE (Stadt-Express) operated as a mixture of RE and RB: trains skipped many stations in urban areas but made all stops in the countryside. Rebranded as RE and RB. In some regions, such as Rhine-Main (Frankfurt, Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund), the local transit authority advertised trains as SE. Internally, DB classified them as either RE or RB, but even DB trains display "SE" on their destination boards. This ceased in December 2016.

Tickets
DB offers two different pricing models for single or return tickets for routes that include long-distance trains:
 * The Flexpreis (originally Normalpreis): gives full flexibility, i.e., all trains on the given date can be used on the chosen route. This price is independent of the time of purchase for a given route and tickets are reimbursable prior to the day of departure.
 * The Sparpreis and Super-Sparpreis are generally cheaper tickets that must be purchased in advance and are only valid for a specific connection. Supersparpreis prices for long-distance journeys start at €17.90 and Sparpreis at €21.90, but may climb close to the Flexpreis prices closer to departure and at busier dates and routes. Stopovers during travel are possible within a day and if the travel ends until 10:00 a.m. the next day, but then the long-distance trains to be used after the stopover must also be fixed in advance. Planned stopovers may sometimes help to circumvent times of day with higher occupancy and higher prices. Sparpreis tickets are partially reimbursible, but only against vouchers for the next travel.

Ticket prices generally rise degressively over distance, particularly for Sparpreise and Supersparpreise. Therefore, putting connecting local trains or excursions planned for the next morning on the same ticket is usually of advantage. Seat reservations are included only for first class tickets and seating capacity is not always assured, even for tickets valid on one particular connection only. Local trains (S, RB, RE, IRE) also accept tickets issued by local transport associations, which can also be used on buses, trams, and U-Bahn trains.

DB offers concessionary fares with the BahnCard discount cards, which are available as BahnCard 25 (25% discount on Flexpreis and Sparpreis), BahnCard 50 (50% discount on Flexpreis and 25% discount on Sparpreis), and BahnCard 100 (unlimited travel on all Deutsche Bahn trains, a few private train companies and also in many local transport associations).

Other special tickets, such as the Länder-Tickets ("state tickets"), which give unlimited journeys on local trains and in many transport associations within a state, and Interrail are also available. These Länder-Tickets offer group tickets, where up to five people can travel on a single ticket.

Regular travellers usually use weekly, monthly or annual passes for their connection or region; day or sometimes weekend passes exist in local transport primarily.

The price system applies to some international destinations from Germany similarly, when bought at Deutsche Bahn, but it is often advisable to compare prices of the respective train operators involved.

Incidents

 * Bad Aibling rail accident
 * Brühl train derailment
 * Eschede train disaster
 * Garmisch-Partenkirchen train derailment
 * Hordorf train collision
 * 2012 Stuttgart derailments

title: Deutsche Bahn


text:
Léopold Sédar Senghor

Léopold Sédar Senghor (9 October 1906 – 20 December 2001) was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who was the first president of Senegal (1960–1980).

Ideologically an African socialist, Senghor was one of the major theoreticians of Négritude. He was a proponent of African culture, black identity, and African empowerment within the framework of French-African ties. He advocated for the extension of full civil and political rights for France's African territories while arguing that French Africans would be better off within a federal French structure than as independent nation-states.

Senghor became the first president of independent Senegal. He fell out with his long-standing associate Mamadou Dia, who was the prime minister of Senegal, arresting him on suspicion of fomenting a coup and imprisoning him for 12 years. Senghor established an authoritarian one-party state in Senegal where all rival political parties were prohibited.

Senghor was the founder of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc party in 1948. He was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française and won the 1985 International Nonino Prize in Italy. Senghor is regarded by many as one of the most important African intellectuals of the 20th century.

Early years: 1906–28
Léopold Sédar Senghor was born on 9 October 1906 in the city of Joal, some 110 kilometres south of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. His father, Basile Diogoye Senghor (pronounced: Basile Jogoy Senghor), was a wealthy peanut merchant belonging to the bourgeois Serer people. Basile Senghor was said to be a man of great means and owned thousands of cattle and vast lands, some of which were given to him by his cousin the king of Sine. Gnilane Ndiémé Bakhoum (1861–1948), Senghor's mother, the third wife of his father, a Muslim with Fula origin who belonged to the Tabor tribe, was born near Djilor to a Christian family. She gave birth to six children, including two sons. Senghor's birth certificate states that he was born on 9 October 1906; however, there is a discrepancy with his certificate of baptism, which states it occurred on 9 August 1906. His Serer middle name Sédar comes from the Serer language, meaning "one that shall not be humiliated" or "the one you cannot humiliate". His surname Senghor is a combination of the Serer words Sène (a Serer surname and the name of the Supreme Deity in Serer religion called Rog Sene) and gor or ghor, the etymology of which is kor in the Serer language, meaning male or man. Tukura Badiar Senghor, the prince of Sine and a figure from whom Léopold Sédar Senghor has been reported to trace descent, was a c. 13th-century Serer noble.

At the age of eight, Senghor began his studies in Senegal in the Ngasobil boarding school of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. In 1922, he entered a seminary in Dakar. After being told that religious life was not for him, he attended a secular institution. By then, he was already passionate about French literature. He won distinctions in French, Latin, Greek and Algebra. With his Baccalaureate completed, he was awarded a scholarship to continue his studies in France.

"Sixteen years of wandering": 1928–1944
In 1928, Senghor sailed from Senegal for France, beginning, in his words, "sixteen years of wandering." Starting his post-secondary studies at the Sorbonne, he quit and went on to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand to finish his preparatory course for entrance to the École Normale Supérieure, a grande école. Henri Queffélec, Robert Verdier and Georges Pompidou were also studying at this elite institution. After failing the entrance exam, Senghor prepared for his grammar Agrégation. He was granted his agrégation in 1935 at his second attempt.

Academic career
Senghor graduated from the University of Paris, where he received the Agrégation in French Grammar. Subsequently, he was designated professor at the universities of Tours and Paris, where he taught during the period 1935–45.

Senghor started his teaching years at the lycée René-Descartes in Tours; he also taught at the lycée Marcelin-Berthelot in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses near Paris. He also studied linguistics taught by Lilias Homburger at the École pratique des hautes études. He studied with prominent social scientists such as Marcel Cohen, Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet (director of the Institut d'ethnologie de Paris). Senghor, along with other intellectuals of the African diaspora who had come to study in the colonial capital, coined the term and conceived the notion of "négritude", which was a response to the racism still prevalent in France. It turned the racial slur nègre into a positively connoted celebration of African culture and character. The idea of négritude informed not only Senghor's cultural criticism and literary work, but also became a guiding principle for his political thought in his career as a statesman.

Military service
In 1939, Senghor was enlisted in the 3rd Colonial Infantry Regiment of the French army with the rank of private (2e Classe) despite his higher education. A year later in June 1940, the invading Germans took him prisoner in la Charité-sur-Loire or Villabon. He was interned in a succession of camps, and finally at Front Stalag 230, in Poitiers. Front Stalag 230 was reserved for colonial troops captured during the war. According to Senghor, German soldiers wanted to execute him and the others on the day they were captured, but they escaped this fate by yelling Vive la France, vive l'Afrique noire! ("Long live France, long live Black Africa!"). A French officer told the soldiers that executing the African prisoners would dishonour the Aryan race and the German Army. In total, Senghor spent two years in different prison camps, where he spent most of his time writing poems and learning enough German to read Goethe's poetry in the original. In 1942, he was released for medical reasons.

He resumed his teaching career while remaining involved in the resistance during the Nazi occupation.

Colonial France
Senghor advocated for African integration within the French Empire, arguing that independence for small, weak territories would lead to the perpetuation of oppression, whereas African empowerment within a federal French Empire could transform it for the better.

Once the war was over, Senghor was selected as Dean of the Linguistics Department with the École nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer, a position he would hold until Senegal's independence in 1960. While travelling on a research trip for his poetry, he met the local socialist leader, Lamine Guèye, who suggested that Senghor run for election as a member of the Assemblée nationale française. Senghor accepted and became député for the riding of Sénégal-Mauritanie, when colonies were granted the right to be represented by elected individuals. They took different positions when the train conductors on the Dakar-Niger line went on strike. Guèye voted against the strike, arguing the movement would paralyse the colony, while Senghor supported the workers, which gained him great support among Senegalese.

During the negotiations to write the French Constitution of 1946, Senghor pushed for the extension of French citizenship to all French territories. Four Senegalese communes had citizenship since 1916 – Senghor argued that this should be extended to the rest of France's territory. Senghor argued for a federal model whereby each African territory would govern its own internal affairs, and this federation would be part of a larger French confederation that ran foreign affairs, defence and development policies. Senghor opposed indigenous nationalism, arguing that African territories would develop more successfully within a federal model where each territory had its "negro-African personality" along with French experience and resources.

Political changes
In 1947, Senghor left the African Division of the French Section of the Workers International (SFIO), which had given enormous financial support to the social movement. With Mamadou Dia, he founded the Bloc démocratique sénégalais (1948). They won the legislative elections of 1951, and Guèye lost his seat. Senghor was involved in the negotiations and drafting of the Fourth Republic's constitution.

Re-elected deputy in 1951 as an independent overseas member, Senghor was appointed state secretary to the council's president in Edgar Faure's government from 1 March 1955 to 1 February 1956. He became mayor of the city of Thiès, Senegal in November 1956 and then advisory minister in the Michel Debré's government from 23 July 1959 to 19 May 1961. He was also a member of the commission responsible for drafting the Fifth Republic's constitution, general councillor for Senegal, member of the Grand Conseil de l'Afrique Occidentale Francaise and member of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe.

In 1964, Senghor published the first volume of a series of five, titled Liberté. The book contains a variety of speeches, essays and prefaces.

Senegal
Senghor supported federalism for newly independent African states, a type of "French Commonwealth", while retaining a degree of French involvement: "In Africa, when children have grown up, they leave their parents' hut, and build a hut of their own by its side. Believe me, we don't want to leave the French compound. We have grown up in it, and it is good to be alive in it. We simply want to build our own huts."

Since federalism was not favoured by the African countries, he decided to form, along with Modibo Keita, the Mali Federation with former French Sudan (present-day Mali). Senghor was president of the Federal Assembly until it failed in 1960.

Afterwards, Senghor became the first President of the Republic of Senegal, elected on 5 September 1960. He is the author of the Senegalese national anthem. The prime minister, Mamadou Dia, was in charge of executing Senegal's long-term development plan, while Senghor was in charge of foreign relations. The two men quickly disagreed. In December 1962, Mamadou Dia was arrested under suspicion of fomenting a coup d'état. He was held in prison for 12 years. Following this, Senghor established an authoritarian presidential regime where all rival political parties were suppressed. Senghor tightly circumscribed press freedom in Senegal and founded the state-run newspaper Le Soleil in 1970.

On 22 March 1967, Senghor survived an assassination attempt. The suspect, Moustapha Lô, pointed his pistol towards the President after he had participated in the sermon of Tabaski, but the gun did not fire. Lô was sentenced to death for treason and executed on 15 June 1967, even though it remained unclear if he had actually wanted to kill Senghor.

Following an announcement at the beginning of December 1980, Senghor resigned his position at the end of the year, before the end of his fifth term. Abdou Diouf replaced him as the head of the country. Under Senghor's presidency, Senegal adopted a multi-party system (limited to three: socialist, communist and liberal). He created a performing education system. Despite the end of official colonialism, the value of Senegalese currency continued to be fixed by France, the language of learning remained French, and Senghor ruled the country with French political advisors.

Francophonie
He supported the creation of la Francophonie and was elected vice-president of the High Council of the Francophonie. In 1982, he was one of the founders of the Association France and developing countries whose objectives were to bring attention to the problems of developing countries, in the wake of the changes affecting the latter.

Global policy
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

Académie française: 1983–2001
Senghor was elected a member of the Académie française on 2 June 1983, at the 16th seat where he succeeded Antoine de Lévis Mirepoix. He was the first African to sit at the Académie. The entrance ceremony in his honour took place on 29 March 1984, in presence of French President François Mitterrand. This was considered a further step towards greater openness in the Académie, after the previous election of a woman, Marguerite Yourcenar. In 1993, the last and fifth book of the Liberté series was published: Liberté 5: le dialogue des cultures.

Personal life and death
Senghor's first marriage was to Ginette Éboué (1 March 1923 – 1992), daughter of Félix Éboué. They married on 9 September 1946 and divorced in 1955. They had two sons, Francis in 1947 and Guy in 1948. His second wife, Colette Hubert [fr] (20 November 1925 – 18 November 2019), who was from France, became Senegal's first First Lady upon independence in 1960. Senghor had three sons between his two marriages.

Senghor spent the last years of his life with his wife in Verson, near the city of Caen in Normandy, where he died on 20 December 2001. His funeral was held on 29 December 2001 in Dakar. Officials attending the ceremony included Raymond Forni, president of the Assemblée nationale and Charles Josselin, state secretary for the minister of foreign affairs, in charge of the Francophonie. Jacques Chirac (who said, upon hearing of Senghor's death: "Poetry has lost one of its masters, Senegal a statesman, Africa a visionary and France a friend") and Lionel Jospin, respectively president of the French Republic and the prime minister, did not attend. Their failure to attend Senghor's funeral made waves as it was deemed a lack of acknowledgement for what the politician had been in his life. The analogy was made with the Senegalese Tirailleurs who, after having contributed to the liberation of France, had to wait more than forty years to receive an equal pension (in terms of buying power) to their French counterparts. The scholar Érik Orsenna wrote in the newspaper Le Monde an editorial entitled "J'ai honte" (I am ashamed).

Legacy
Although a socialist, Senghor avoided the Marxist and anti-Western ideology that had become popular in post-colonial Africa, favouring the maintenance of close ties with France and the Western world. Senghor's tenure as president was characterised by the development of African socialism, which was created as an indigenous alternative to Marxism, drawing heavily from the négritude philosophy. In developing this, he was assisted by Ousmane Tanor Dieng. On 31 December 1980, he retired in favour of his prime minister, Abdou Diouf. Politically, Senghor's stamp can also be identified today. With regards to Senegal in particular, his willful abdication of power to his successor, Abdou Diouf, led to Diouf's peaceful leave from office as well. Senegal's special relationship with France and economic legacy are more highly contested, but Senghor's impact on democracy remains nonetheless. Senghor managed to retain his identity as both a poet and a politician even throughout his busy careers as both, living by his philosophy of achieving equilibrium between competing forces. Whether it was France and Africa, poetics and politics, or other disparate parts of his identity, Senghor balanced the two.

Literarily, Senghor's influence on political thought and poetic form are wide-reaching even through to our modern day. Senghor's poetry endures as the "record of an individual sensibility at a particular moment in history," capturing the spirit of the Négritude movement at its peak, but also marks a definitive place in literary history. Senghor's thoughts were exceedingly radical for this time, arguing that Africans could only progress if they developed a culture distinct and separate from the colonial powers that oppressed them, pushing against popular thought at the time. Senghor was deeply influenced by poets from the US such as Langston Hughes. Seat number 16 of the Académie was vacant after the Senegalese poet's death. He was ultimately replaced by another former president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

Honours and awards
Senghor received several honours in the course of his life. He was made Grand-Croix of the Légion d'honneur, Grand-Croix of the l'Ordre national du Mérite, commander of arts and letters. He also received academic palms and the Grand Cross of the National Order of the Lion. His war exploits earned him the Reconnaissance Franco-alliée Medal of 1939–1945 and the Combattant Cross of 1939–1945. He received honorary doctorates from thirty-seven universities.

Senghor received the Commemorative Medal of the 2500th Anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire on 14 October 1971.

On 13 November 1978, he was created a Knight of the Collar of the Order of Isabella the Catholic of Spain. Members of the order at the rank of Knight and above enjoy personal nobility and have the privilege of adding a golden heraldic mantle to their coats of arms. Those at the rank of the Collar also receive the official style "His or Her Most Excellent Lord".

That same year, Senghor received an honoris causa from the University of Salamanca.

In 1983, he was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize by the University of Tübingen.

The Senghor French Language International University, named after him was officially opened in Alexandria in 1990.

In 1994, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the African Studies Association; however, there was controversy about whether he met the standard of contributing "a lifetime record of outstanding scholarship in African studies and service to the Africanist community." Michael Mbabuike, president of the New York African Studies Association (NYASA), said that the award also honours those who have worked "to make the world a better place for mankind."

The airport of Dakar was renamed Aéroport International Léopold Sédar Senghor in 1996, on his 90th birthday.

The Passerelle Solférino in Paris was renamed after him in 2006, on the centenary of his birth.

Acknowledgement

 * Member of the Académie française
 * Member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques
 * Member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste
 * Member of the Royal Academy of Morocco
 * Honorary Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi

Honorary degrees

 * Mzuzu University
 * Paris-Sorbonne University
 * Harvard University
 * Yale University
 * University of Oxford
 * Université catholique de Louvain
 * Université de Montréal
 * Université Laval
 * Goethe University Frankfurt
 * University of Vienna
 * University of Salzburg
 * Paris Descartes University
 * University of Bordeaux
 * University of Strasbourg
 * Nancy 2 University
 * University of Padua
 * University of Salamanca
 * University of Évora
 * Federal University of Bahia

Poetry
His poetry was widely acclaimed, and in 1978 he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. His poem "A l'appel de la race de Saba", published in 1936, was inspired by the entry of Italian troops in Addis Ababa. In 1948, Senghor compiled and edited a volume of Francophone poetry called Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache for which Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an introduction, entitled "Orphée Noir" (Black Orpheus).

For his epitaph was a poem he had written, namely:

 * Quand je serai mort, mes amis, couchez-moi sous Joal-l'Ombreuse.
 * Sur la colline au bord du Mamanguedy, près l'oreille du sanctuaire des Serpents.
 * Mais entre le Lion couchez-moi et l'aïeule Tening-Ndyae.
 * Quand je serai mort mes amis, couchez-moi sous Joal-la-Portugaise.
 * Des pierres du Fort vous ferez ma tombe, et les canons garderont le silence.
 * Deux lauriers roses-blanc et rose-embaumeront la Signare.

 * When I'm dead, my friends, place me below Shadowy Joal,
 * On the hill, by the bank of the Mamanguedy, near the ear of Serpents' Sanctuary.
 * But place me between the Lion and ancestral Tening-Ndyae.
 * When I'm dead, my friends, place me beneath Portuguese Joal.
 * Of stones from the Fort build my tomb, and cannons will keep quiet.
 * Two oleanders – white and pink – will perfume the Signare.

Négritude

With Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas, Senghor created the concept of Négritude, an important intellectual movement that sought to assert and valorise what they believed to be distinctive African characteristics, values, and aesthetics. One of these African characteristics that Senghor theorised was asserted when he wrote "the Negro has reactions that are more lived, in the sense that they are more direct and concrete expressions of the sensation and of the stimulus, and so of the object itself with all its original qualities and power." This was a reaction against the too-strong dominance of French culture in the colonies, and against the perception that Africa did not have a culture developed enough to stand alongside that of Europe. In that respect négritude owes significantly to the pioneering work of Leo Frobenius.

Building upon historical research identifying ancient Egypt with black Africa, Senghor argued that sub-Saharan Africa and Europe are in fact part of the same cultural continuum, reaching from Egypt to classical Greece, through Rome to the European colonial powers of the modern age. Négritude was by no means—as it has in many quarters been perceived—an anti-white racism, but rather emphasised the importance of dialogue and exchange among different cultures (e.g., European, African, Arab, etc.).

A related concept later developed in Mobutu's Zaire is that of authenticité or Authenticity.

Décalage
In colloquial French, the term décalage is used to describe jetlag, lag or a general discrepancy between two things. However, Senghor uses the term to describe the unevenness in the African Diaspora. The complete phrase he uses is "Il s'agit, en réalité, d'un simple décalage—dans le temps et dans l'espace", meaning that between Black Africans and African Americans there exists an inconsistency, both temporally and spatially. The time element points to the advancing or delaying of a schedule or agenda, while the space aspect designates the displacing and shifting of an object. The term points to "a bias that refuses to pass over when one crosses the water". He asks, how can we expect any sort of solidarity or intimacy from two populations that diverged over 500 years ago?

Works of Senghor

 * Prière aux masques (c. 1935 – published in collected works during the 1940s).
 * Chants d'ombre (1945)
 * Hosties noires (1948)
 * Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (1948)
 * La Belle Histoire de Leuk-le-Lièvre (1953)
 * Éthiopiques (1956)
 * Nocturnes (1961). (English tr. by Clive Wake and John O. Reed, Nocturnes, London: Heinemann Educational, 1969. African Writers Series 71)
 * Nation et voie africaine du socialisme (1961)
 * Pierre Teilhard de Chardin et la politique africaine (1962)
 * Poèmes (1964).
 * Lettres de d'hivernage (1973)
 * Élégies majeures (1979)
 * La Poésie de l'action: conversation avec Mohamed Aziza (1980)
 * Ce que je crois (1988)

title: Léopold Sédar Senghor


text:
Logit

In statistics, the logit function is the quantile function associated with the standard logistic distribution. It has many uses in data analysis and machine learning, especially in data transformations.

Mathematically, the logit is the inverse of the standard logistic function $$\sigma(x) = 1/(1+e^{-x})$$, so the logit is defined as

 * $$\operatorname{logit} p = \sigma^{-1}(p) = \ln \frac{p}{1-p} \quad \text{for} \quad p \in (0,1).$$

Because of this, the logit is also called the log-odds since it is equal to the logarithm of the odds $$\frac{p}{1-p}$$ where $p$ is a probability. Thus, the logit is a type of function that maps probability values from $$(0, 1)$$ to real numbers in $$(-\infty, +\infty)$$, akin to the probit function.

Definition
If $p$ is a probability, then $p/(1 − p)$ is the corresponding odds; the $logit$ of the probability is the logarithm of the odds, i.e.:

 * $$\operatorname{logit}(p)=\ln\left( \frac{p}{1-p} \right) =\ln(p)-\ln(1-p)=-\ln\left( \frac{1}{p}-1\right)=2\operatorname{atanh}(2p-1). $$

The base of the logarithm function used is of little importance in the present article, as long as it is greater than 1, but the natural logarithm with base $e$ is the one most often used. The choice of base corresponds to the choice of logarithmic unit for the value: base 2 corresponds to a shannon, base $e$ to a “nat”, and base 10 to a hartley; these units are particularly used in information-theoretic interpretations. For each choice of base, the logit function takes values between negative and positive infinity.

The “logistic” function of any number $$\alpha$$ is given by the inverse-$logit$:

 * $$\operatorname{logit}^{-1}(\alpha) = \operatorname{logistic}(\alpha) = \frac{1}{1 + \exp(-\alpha)} = \frac{\exp(\alpha)}{ \exp(\alpha) + 1} = \frac{\tanh(\frac{\alpha}{2})+1}{2}$$

The difference between the $logit$s of two probabilities is the logarithm of the odds ratio ($R$), thus providing a shorthand for writing the correct combination of odds ratios only by adding and subtracting:

 * $$\ln(R)=\ln\left( \frac{p_1/(1-p_1)}{p_2/(1-p_2)} \right) =\ln\left( \frac{p_1}{1-p_1} \right) - \ln\left(\frac{p_2}{1-p_2}\right) = \operatorname{logit}(p_1)-\operatorname{logit}(p_2)\,.$$

History
Several approaches have been explored to adapt linear regression methods to a domain where the output is a probability value $$(0, 1)$$, instead of any real number $$(-\infty, +\infty)$$. In many cases, such efforts have focused on modeling this problem by mapping the range $$(0, 1)$$ to $$(-\infty, +\infty)$$ and then running the linear regression on these transformed values.

In 1934, Chester Ittner Bliss used the cumulative normal distribution function to perform this mapping and called his model probit, an abbreviation for "probability unit". This is, however, computationally more expensive.

In 1944, Joseph Berkson used log of odds and called this function logit, an abbreviation for "logistic unit", following the analogy for probit: ""I use this term [logit] for $\ln p/q$ following Bliss, who called the analogous function which is linear on $x$ for the normal curve 'probit'.""

- Joseph Berkson (1944)

Log odds was used extensively by Charles Sanders Peirce (late 19th century). G. A. Barnard in 1949 coined the commonly used term log-odds; the log-odds of an event is the logit of the probability of the event. Barnard also coined the term lods as an abstract form of "log-odds", but suggested that "in practice the term 'odds' should normally be used, since this is more familiar in everyday life".

Uses and properties

 * The logit in logistic regression is a special case of a link function in a generalized linear model: it is the canonical link function for the Bernoulli distribution.
 * More abstractly, the logit is the natural parameter for the binomial distribution; see.
 * The logit function is the negative of the derivative of the binary entropy function.
 * The logit is also central to the probabilistic Rasch model for measurement, which has applications in psychological and educational assessment, among other areas.
 * The inverse-logit function (i.e., the logistic function) is also sometimes referred to as the expit function.
 * In plant disease epidemiology, the logistic, Gompertz, and monomolecular models are collectively known as the Richards family models.
 * The log-odds function of probabilities is often used in state estimation algorithms because of its numerical advantages in the case of small probabilities. Instead of multiplying very small floating point numbers, log-odds probabilities can just be summed up to calculate the (log-odds) joint probability.

Comparison with probit

Closely related to the $logit$ function (and logit model) are the probit function and probit model. The $logit$ and $probit$ are both sigmoid functions with a domain between 0 and 1, which makes them both quantile functions – i.e., inverses of the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a probability distribution. In fact, the $logit$ is the quantile function of the logistic distribution, while the $probit$ is the quantile function of the normal distribution. The $probit$ function is denoted $$\Phi^{-1}(x)$$, where $$\Phi(x)$$ is the CDF of the standard normal distribution, as just mentioned:

 * $$\Phi(x) = \frac 1 {\sqrt{2\pi}}\int_{-\infty}^x e^{-y^2/2} dy.$$

As shown in the graph on the right, the $logit$ and $probit$ functions are extremely similar when the $probit$ function is scaled, so that its slope at $y = 0$ matches the slope of the $logit$. As a result, probit models are sometimes used in place of logit models because for certain applications (e.g., in item response theory) the implementation is easier.

title: Logit