Afraid of celebrating glorious past, a horrible future is created instead

Fresh from the glories of Dresden’s rebuilt Lutheran Frauenkirche, the city fathers of Berlin have decided to reconstruct the old Stadtschloß (“City Palace”) at the heart of the German capital, only not quite. Largely ignored by the anti-monarchist Nazis, the original Stadtschloß was damaged by Allied bombing and by shelling during the Battle of Berlin before the Communist government of East Germany demolished it entirely and built the horrendously ugly Palast der Republik (housing the Soviet satellite’s faux parliament) on the site. The Communist monstrosity has finally been demolished, but the authorities decided that, rather than restore the beautiful royal palace that once stood on the site, they will instead merely replicate three of the old structure’s façades, leaving one of the façades and most of the interior in a modern style.

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This past November His Most Eminent Highness Fra’ Matthew Festing, the Prince & Grand Master of the Order of Malta, led the order’s annual pilgrimage of Italian youth to the Marian shrine of Loreto, which last year had been led by his predecessor the late Fra’ Andrew Bertie.

The Rt Hon Ian Douglas Smith & Mrs Smith, at home in Salisbury, Rhodesia.

O’Connell Street, Dublin, United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland.

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A curiosity of the 2007 Polish parliamentary election

THIS MAP displaying the results of the 2007 general election for the Polish parliament is overlaid with an outline of the nineteenth-century border between the German and Russian empires.

The areas formerly ruled by the German Kaiser tend to back the right-wing liberal Platforma Obywatelska (“Civic Platform”) party, while those formerly ruled by the Tsar tend to support the conservative Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (“Law and Justice”) party.

The green represents the centrist-agrarian Polish People’s Party, while the dark red represents the already-defunct “Left and Democrats” coalition.

Source: Strange Maps

Anyone for bidding on a piece of history? This set of six rubber stamps from the old East 35th Street offices of the once-great National Review is up for grabs on eBay. Less than two days left for bidding.

One of my good friends, who is amongst the most loyal denizens of this little corner of the web, found our post on St. Nicholas Collegiate Church of great interest because his son attended the Collegiate School, the oldest school in North America (founded in 1628, and formally incorporated ten years later). The Collegiate School is part of the same complex as the West End Collegiate Church on the corner of West End Avenue & 77th Street on the Upper West Side. The church & school buildings were designed by McKim Mead & White in a Dutch Renaissance Revival style, and handsomely executed.

THE ARCHITECTS modelled the church after the seventeenth-century Vleeshal (meat market) of Haarlem in the Netherlands. The story goes that, during the Second World War, a handful of Collegiate grads serving together in the U.S. Army participated in the liberation of Haarlem, stumbled upon the Vleeshal and said “Hey, that’s our school!”

In August 2008, the British Library acquired ownership of the Dering Roll, the oldest-surviving English roll of arms. The illuminated parchment dates from c. 1270-1280 and is a vital documentary record for the study of knighthood in medieval England. It contains 324 coats of arms arranged in 54 rows, with six shields assigned to each line.

Maria Dering, a member of the G&B’s Committee on Heraldry, will present an illustrated talk about the Dering Roll, its history, and the public campaign to keep it in the United Kingdom after it was bought by a foreign collector.

Admission charge of $20 (cash or check) includes a wine and cheese reception.

To reserve, please email John Shannon at john.shannon@coaf.us.

The Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, Fifth Avenue

Dedicated a hundred-and-thirty-six years ago, the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Saint Nicholas on the corner of Forty-eight Street & Fifth Avenue (photographed above by Berenice Abbott) was for many years regarded as the most eminent Protestant church in New York. The Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church is the oldest corporate body in what is now the United States, having been founded at the bottom of Manhattan in 1628 and receiving its royal charter from William & Mary in 1696. Now part of the Reformed Church of America, the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church is actually a denomination within a denomination, and the remaining Collegiate Churches of New York tend to preach a sort of “Christianity Lite”. (The famous Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and one of the paragons of the “finding a religion that doesn’t interfere with your lifestyle” school of thought, was the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church at Twenty-ninth & Fifth, where Donald Trump is a member of the congregation).

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An Aside: I was taught Latin beside the beautiful carved marble fireplace in the artist’s dining room. Winter lived next door to the school, which purchased the house after his death and used it for class rooms. In our more neglectful hours which investigated the basement, in which were still secreted some of the artist’s sketches for larger murals and models for a bas-relief.

It is entirely appropriate that November 11 — Armistice Day — both falls during the month of the Holy Souls and on the feast of St. Martin of Tours. It’s not unlikely that the souls in Purgatory added their voices to plead for peace that November of 1918, and St. Martin, who had himself been a Roman soldier, was no doubt leading the cause from Heaven. (Indeed, his father having been in the Imperial Horse Guards, St. Martin was born into a military family).

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One of the most remarkable things about these photos from a 1956 Seventh Regiment ceremony are how traditional the buildings in the background are.

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