chunk_id
stringlengths 5
8
| chunk
stringlengths 1
1k
|
|---|---|
525_1 | Similar to previous installments, the goal for the player is to develop a civilization from an early settlement through many in-game millennia to become a world power and achieve one of several victory conditions, such as through military domination, technological superiority, or cultural influence, over the other human and computer-controlled opponents. Players do this by exploring the world, founding new cities, building city improvements, deploying military troops to attack and defend from others, researching new technologies and civics advancements, developing an influential culture, and engaging in trade and negotiations with other world leaders. |
525_2 | The game features several civilizations not featured in previous incarnations of Civilization, while many returning civilizations have new capitals or new leaders. A critical design focus was to avoid having the player follow a pre-set path of improvements towards their civilization which they had observed from earlier games. New to Civilization VI is the use of districts outside the city center to house most of the buildings. For example, a campus district must be built in order to house science-based buildings. Other new features include research on the game's technology tree based on nearby terrain, a similar technology tree for cultural improvements and a better government civics structure for those playing on a cultural victory path. There is also new artificial intelligence mechanics for computer-controlled opponents, which includes secret goals and randomized engagements to disrupt an otherwise stable game. |
525_3 | The game received generally positive reviews upon release, and it was awarded Best Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2016. The game's first major expansion, Civilization VI: Rise and Fall, was released in February 2018. A second expansion, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, followed in February 2019, and a season pass, The New Frontier Pass, in May 2020. |
525_4 | Gameplay
Civilization VI is a turn-based strategy video game in which one or more players compete alongside computer-controlled AI opponents to grow their individual civilization from a small tribe to control of the entire planet across several periods of development. This can be accomplished by achieving one of several victory conditions, all based on the 4X gameplay elements, "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate". Players manage a civilization of their choice and develop their technology, culture and government structure between ancient times and the near future. They found cities and grew them through the creation of mines, farms and other improvements, while simultaneously exploring the randomly-generated world and encountering other civilizations and barbarians. Players have the ability to trade and manage peaceful diplomatic relations with other civilizations or alternatively go to war through the use of military force. |
525_5 | Civilization VI builds upon the general gameplay of Civilization V, including continuing the use of the hex-based grid introduced in Civilization V. New to Civilization VI is the idea of "city unstacking": some improvements to cities must be placed in the hexes in the bounds of the city but not within the city's space itself, whereas in previous games, all improvements were considered stacked on the same map hex or square that the city was located in. The player must assign specific hexes as "districts" in the city, which have certain limitations but grant bonuses for improvements placed in that district. |
525_6 | For example, the encampment district specializes a city for training military units, and allows for the construction of further buildings that grant production and experience bonuses to said units. Such encampments may not be placed next to the main city center. Other improvements gain bonuses for being placed in appropriate terrain - campuses benefit greatly from being placed adjacent to forest or jungle hexes, reflecting scientific advancements from studying the diversity of species within such biomes. Players can opt to attack specific districts of a city instead of the city center, which can affect the city's operation. These districts may also add new strategies to the city's defense. For example, with a military encampment in place, attacking forces approaching a city are not only subject to ranged attacks from the city center, but also from the encampment. The attacking forces may need to take the encampment first before they can successfully strike the city center. |
525_7 | In order to reduce congestion on the map, players are able to perform a limited amount of unit stacking (a change from Civilization V), but are only able to stack similar unit types or symbiotic units. For example, a warrior unit can be assigned to a builder unit to protect that unit from barbarians in the early game, and a battering ram can stack with a spearman to take over cities.
The game's technology tree, now known as the active research system, has also been modified to help boost technology research if the player has access to appropriate improvements or resources (e.g. building a quarry helps boost the research into masonry). Technologies based on access to water, such as sailing, would be limited if the player started in the middle of a continent. A new feature called Eureka Moments is able to increase the player's progress toward certain technologies after completing specific tasks; for example, laying a mine field contributes to the military tradition technology. |
525_8 | Past iterations of the game were considered difficult to win if the player decided to pursue a Cultural victory. To balance the game toward Cultural victories, a new Civics tree is introduced. The Civics tree has transferred cultural improvements that were previously part of the Technology tree in earlier Civilization games into a separate mechanic. Culture gained from cities is used to build on the Civics tree in the same manner Science from cities builds up the Technology tree. Completing certain Civics will then unlock policies, or policy cards, for the player's government. In Civilization VI, the government is defined by placing appropriate and available policies into a number of slots divided among Military, Economic, Diplomatic, and Wildcard categories. The policies define boosts or limitations for the civilization (e.g. improved attack bonuses for military units against certain types of enemies such as Barbarians). Policies can be changed for free upon completing a single |
525_9 | Civic, or for a small cost at any other time, allowing the player to adapt to a new situation as needed, according to lead producer Dennis Shirk. |
525_10 | More advanced cards, only obtainable through significant advancement in the Civics tree, can unlock improvements that give the player pursuing a Cultural victory advantages over other players, such as reducing the time or cost of producing new units. Various choices made by the player may cause unhappiness in their population as with previous games, but in Civilization VI, many of these were localized to the city affected by the choice rather than the entire population, further aiding towards Cultural victory-style players. The Religion system introduced in Civilization Vs Gods & Kings expansion is built further upon in VI, featuring more units and improvements that can lead to interreligious conflicts. |
525_11 | AI opponents have new agendas that influence player interactions. Some of these agendas are unique to each leader, emulating notable historical events, respective personalities and policies. Each AI character also has a second hidden agenda, which can only be revealed through espionage. |
525_12 | Development
The game was developed by the same Firaxis Games team that developed the expansions on Civilization V, and most of the new mechanics introduced in these were present in Civilization VI at its launch. This follows from Sid Meier's "33/33/33" rule of sequel design: 33% of the game should retain established systems, 33% should feature improved systems over the previous version, and the remaining 33% should feature new material. Firaxis used "Frankenstein", a small group of dedicated Firaxis fans, to bounce ideas for gameplay improvements. Because of the larger number of systems in place, the studio expected to ship the game with a large-scale tutorial, separate but supplementing the guidance given by the player's various in-game advisors. |
525_13 | A major foundation of the development of Civilization VI was to prevent players from following routines in playing through a game, according to lead designer Ed Beach. The developers placed much more emphasis on the significance of the procedurally-generated map in how it would influence the player's strategy as the game progressed, so that no game of Civilization VI would be the same. For example, the redesigned technology tree was aimed to pull players away from automatically following a rote path through the tree, and instead adapt a path through it based on their placement on the map. |
525_14 | Modifications to the game such as the unstacking of cities and city districts lead directly to support this approach, since some districts and city improvements depend specifically on what available terrain is nearby. Such changes were also the result of design choices made by Civilization Vs lead designer Jon Schafer during its development, such as the unstacking of player units. These changes in Civilization V exposed other weak areas of the core gameplay of the series, specifically how cities were simply seen as places to dump improvements and Wonders with little effect on the map, according to producer Dennis Shirk. |
525_15 | Beach, as lead designer for Civilization VI, wanted to improve upon these weaknesses, desiring to make the game map "just as important as anything else in the game", and took the step to unstack the cities to accomplish this, following in how Schafer took to unstack unit tiles in Civilization V. According to Beach, these features add city management elements similar to those found in city-building games, and force players to make decisions based on the geographical location of the city, instead of sticking to a specific city improvement route. |
525_16 | Because of the importance of the surrounding terrain to the growth of a city, Firaxis had to review their procedural generation for game maps to meet this new approach. Beach noted that early testing with the unstacked cities on archipelagos generated by their older system made gameplay nearly impossible, and that with mountains becoming a valuable resource towards city expansion, test players would restart maps built on the old map generation system to get the right placement of mountains to exploit them successfully. The new map generation system attempts to spread out terrain more, and in areas where one type of important terrain may be absent, makes up for this by including other valuable terrain spaces, such as a river-rich region where there is a lack of mountains. |
525_17 | Senior gameplay designer Anton Strenger compared their approach towards the development of the computer opponents, with main and hidden agendas, similar to concepts they had used in Rising Tide expansion for Civilization: Beyond Earth. They selected historical leaders to span a diverse range of faction and play style dynamics, while also looking for figures that had "really interesting personalities" that they could fit these agendas into. Beach previously designed a system in the Civilization V: Brave New World expansion that gave a "Mayhem level" in the computer opponents. Internally, the game tracked how much action was going on for the players, and if it determined that the player was progressing without little change, the computer would cause one or more of its controlled opponents to make erratic moves, creating a new situation for the player to deal with. The Mayhem level was used in Civilization VI, as according to Shirk, it is a "really interesting way of making sure that |
525_18 | there's always something that's going to pull the player away from what they're doing or what they're focused on all the time". Whereas the process of tuning this for Brave New World required manual playthroughs of the game, Firaxis had set up several computers in their offices to run Civilization VI, using only computer-controlled opponents; the results and behaviors of these games were reviewed by the part of the team dedicated to the artificial intelligence systems and used to balance the Mayhem level. |
525_19 | The game was developed with a new engine that is expected to be more friendly to modification. The game's visuals were inspired by the Age of Exploration. User-interface elements feature elements like compasses and astrolabes. The fog of war is rendered using a cross-hatch drawing style to replicate old maps from the Age of Exploration. The developers planned to bring back the movies they had shown players upon completion of a Wonder from Civilization IV, but are now rendered in game, and as to make the final shot of the Wonder more impressive, they developed a day-night cycle that continues on in the game. While this cycle does not affect the core gameplay, art director Brian Busatti anticipates that this feature could be used by modders to create new tactical considerations. |
525_20 | The game uses a more cartoonish look than those of Civilization V, as according to Firaxis, with much deeper gameplay, they wanted to keep the visuals simple to avoid interfering with the complexity of gameplay. The graphics of individual units and buildings are being developed to be both readily-detailed when viewed in a tight zoom, while still being recognizable from other similar units when viewed from a distance. This necessitated the simpler art style to allow players to quickly recognize units and buildings while looking over a city without having to resort to user interface tooltips or similar distractions, according to Shirk. Individual units were designed to include flair associated with the given civilization, such as applying different helmet styles to the same class of footsoldier units. |
525_21 | Composer Christopher Tin, who wrote "Baba Yetu", the Grammy-winning theme song for Civilization IV, returned to write Civilization VIs main theme, "Sogno di Volare" (translated as "The Dream of Flight"). The theme was written to capture the spirit of exploration not only in "seeking new lands, but also the mental exploration of expanding the frontiers of science and philosophy". Tin premiered the song at a London concert in July 2016. The game's original score was written and orchestrated primarily by Geoff Knorr, who was assisted by Roland Rizzo, Griffin Cohen, and Phill Boucher. Each civilization features a musical theme or "core melody" with four variations that follow the era that the civilization is currently in.
Sean Bean, who narrated the early trailers of the game, also provided his voicework for quotes read to the player as they progress along the technology and civics tree. |
525_22 | In January 2017, the Firaxis team affirmed that they were still working on updates to include multiplayer support, user-created modifications, and support for Steam Workshop.
Expansions
Rise and Fall |
525_23 | The first expansion, Rise and Fall, was released on February 8, 2018, and brought the concepts of the rising and falling of civilizations. The cities have loyalty; if the loyalty level falls too low, the city becomes a free city and may join other civilizations. A civilization has the potential to enter into a Golden Age by completing certain milestones, and can choose a special bonus in that age, but if the player does not maintain certain milestones afterwards, the civilization could fall into a Dark Age, affecting loyalty. In a Dark Age, the player can choose to implement powerful Dark Age policies, but they have a cost. If the player gets a Dark Age followed by a golden age, instead of getting a golden age, it gets a Heroic Age, with the right to choose three bonuses. The expansion also adds governors, who increase the loyalty of cities and award a special bonus to that city. By promoting governors, players add another bonus.
Gathering Storm |
525_24 | The game's second major expansion, Gathering Storm, was announced in November 2018 and was released on February 14, 2019. The expansion added, among other features, impacts from natural disasters like floods, volcanoes, and droughts that affect gameplay. Additionally, a new climate system was added to track climate change throughout the player's game, with potential for additional environmental effects to result from this. Existing civilizations and leaders were rebalanced to reflect these new gameplay additions respective to each civilization's historical past, such as Egypt being able to take advantage of river flooding for improved food production. |
525_25 | Red Death
A free update to the game released in September 2019 added a new multiplayer game mode called "Red Death". This mode is comparable to battle royale games for up to twelve players. Taking place on a post-apocalyptic world, each player controls one civilian unit and multiple offensive units that must protect the civilian unit from the other players, while at the same time, keeping the civilian unit out of range of an expanding "red death" zone that eventually covers the world map. Meanwhile, these units can also scout the wasteland for resources that help to improve the supporting units. The mode was the result of an April Fools' joke by Bradley Olson, the lead multiplayer gameplay designer, who secretly added the basics of the mode on April 1. Once the mode was discovered, the project team found the mode to be fun and expanded the idea. |
525_26 | New Frontier
Firaxis announced in May 2020 a "New Frontier" season pass for the game, consisting of six downloadable content packs, each to be released every two months from May until March 2021. A total of nine new leaders and eight new civilizations were added through the six packs, as well as new gameplay modes and additional features such as new wonders and buildings. There will also be additional free updates to the game for all players along with these content packs.
The first pack featured the Maya and Gran Colombian civilizations, led by Lady Six Sky and Simón Bolívar respectively. The expansion also introduced a new game mode titled "Apocalypse". In the Apocalypse game mode, natural disasters happen much more frequently. Once the world's climate change level reaches maximum, the world enters an apocalypse state, causing an even further increase to severe natural disasters and meteor strikes. |
525_27 | The second pack featured the Ethiopian civilization, led by Menelik II, along with alternative costumes for Catherine de Medici and Teddy Roosevelt with different abilities; a new district called the Diplomatic Quarter, which gives improvements on diplomacy and espionage; and the "Secret Societies" mode, which allows players to join one of four available secret societies, each with a different hidden agenda, including exclusive traits. |
525_28 | The third pack introduced the Byzantine and Gaulish civilizations, led by Basil II and Ambiorix, respectively; a new map called "Highlands"; and two new world wonders—the Biosphere and Statue of Zeus. The new "Dramatic Ages" mode abolishes the Normal and Heroic Ages and ensures that players can only enter in Golden or Dark Ages each era, with increased bonuses for the Golden Ages and harsher penalties for Dark Ages, including the possibility of some cities seceding from the empire. In addition, Dedications are also removed from this mode, and instead are replaced by Golden and Dark Age policies that can be slotted in the current government. As compensation for these changes, Era Score can now be earned when discovering new technologies or civics, or through promoting military units (after the unit's first promotion), in addition to the usual Historic Moments, and any extra Era Score acquired beyond what is necessary to earn a Golden Age is converted to extra loyalty pressure during |
525_29 | the next era. |
525_30 | The fourth pack introduced the Babylonian civilization, led by Hammurabi; six new city-states with unique bonuses; 24 new great personalities; and the "Heroes and Legends" mode, which introduces the heroes, special units with exclusive and powerful perks based on legendary characters from myth and history that can be recruited after being discovered by completing a special project.
The fifth pack introduced the Vietnamese civilization, led by Lady Triệu; Kublai Khan, who is an alternative leader for both Mongolian and Chinese civilizations; the Preserve district, which has no yield at all but gives bonuses to nearby tiles; and the "Monopolies and Corporations" mode, which allows players to make use of excess luxury resources to improve cities and provides other bonuses should they manage to monopolize them. |
525_31 | The sixth and final pack introduced the Portuguese civilization, led by João III; two new wonders—the Belém Tower and the Etemenanki; a new map called "Wetlands"; and the "Zombie Defense" mode, which includes Zombies, units that occasionally spawn on the map and attack other units, turning them into other Zombies after killing them. The mode also includes unique elements that can allow a player to better defend against Zombies or use them against other players.
Ports
Civilization VI was released for Microsoft Windows on October 21, 2016. The OS X version, developed by Aspyr Media, was released on October 24, 2016. At that time, Aspyr had been evaluating the feasibility of porting the title to Linux operating systems due to a large number of requests from players, and announced in January 2017 that they planned to go ahead and complete the Linux port, which was eventually released in February 2017. |
525_32 | A version for iPad was released in December 2017, while a general iOS version (supporting iPhones) was released on October 4, 2018. The Rise & Fall expansion was released for iOS on July 24, 2019, while Gathering Storm was released on November 22, 2019.
A port for the Nintendo Switch was announced in September 2018 and was released on November 16, 2018. Cloud saves were added in April 2019 for both Windows and Switch versions through linking of a player's Steam and 2K accounts, though only supported saved games from the base game at that point due to the lack of the expansions on the Switch. Both Rise & Fall and Gathering Storm expansions were available as an expansion bundle for the Switch version on November 22, 2019.
PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ports were announced in September 2019. Both were released on November 22, 2019, alongside the Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm expansions as separate and bundled downloadable content. |
525_33 | A version for Android was released on August 13, 2020.
Reception
Civilization VI received "generally favorable reviews" according to review aggregator Metacritic. Critics like Scott Butterworth from GameSpot praised the game's nuanced additions and the unstacking of cities, which "adds a new strategic layer that fills a gap and creates greater variety in the types of thinking Civ demands." IGN's Dan Stapleton echoed the same love for its "overwhelming number of systems" and for feeling "like a Civ game that’s already had two expansions."
Peter Glagowski from Destructoid was slightly more critical, dubbing the religious victory condition in the game a "nuisance" and recommending "turning it off". He also lamented the lack of scenarios, the scrapping of the diplomatic victory condition (which would eventually be reintroduced in Gathering Storm), and the absence of Steam Workshop support at launch. |
525_34 | The game shipped more than one million units in its first two weeks of release, making it the fastest-selling game in the Civilization series to date. By May 2017, the game had sold more than two million copies, contributing significantly to publisher Take Two's 2017 financial year, in which they reported revenues of $576.1 million. Take Two stated that Civilization VI was on track to surpass Civilization Vs lifetime sales of eight million copies.
The game won the Best PC Game and Best Strategy Game awards at the 2016 Game Critics Awards, as well as the Best Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2016 and the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers.
Controversy
The game originally shipped with the ad tracking software Red Shell, but this was removed after complaints by players, some of whom characterized the software as spyware. |
525_35 | Other media
In August 2017, Fantasy Flight Games announced that they would be publishing Civilization: A New Dawn, a board game building upon their 2010 release Civilization: The Board Game, incorporating new mechanics and features based on Civilization VI. It was published in 2017. An expansion pack to the game, called Terra Incognita, was released in October 2020. The expansion introduces additional features from the video game, including more civilizations and districts.
References
External links |
525_36 | 2016 video games
4X video games
Aspyr games
6
Cooperative video games
Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great
Cultural depictions of Catherine de' Medici
Cultural depictions of Cleopatra
Cultural depictions of Cyrus the Great
Cultural depictions of Dido
Cultural depictions of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Cultural depictions of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor
Cultural depictions of Genghis Khan
Cultural depictions of Gilgamesh
Cultural depictions of Mahatma Gandhi
Cultural depictions of Pericles
Cultural depictions of Peter the Great
Cultural depictions of Qin Shi Huang
Cultural depictions of Queen Victoria
Cultural depictions of Saladin
Cultural depictions of Shaka
Cultural depictions of Theodore Roosevelt
Firaxis Games games
Historical simulation games
IOS games
Linux games
Lua (programming language)-scripted video games
MacOS games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Nintendo Switch games
PlayStation 4 games
Sid Meier games
Take-Two Interactive games
Top-down video games |
525_37 | Turn-based strategy video games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games scored by Geoff Knorr
Video games using Havok
Video games using procedural generation
Windows games
Xbox One games
Multiplayer online games
Play-by-email video games
Multiplayer hotseat games |
526_0 | How to Survive is a survival horror action role-playing video game developed by French studio Eko Software and published by 505 Games. It was released on October 23, 2013 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 and it was released in June 2014 for the Nintendo eShop.
Gameplay
How to Survive is played from a top-down perspective. There are two game modes, story and challenge, and both can be played with up to two players. Challenge mode puts the player(s) on one side of the island, and they must get to the other side, where their getaway vehicle awaits. The player's mission is to gather materials, craft weapons, and make it off the island without dying. Neither challenge or story are timed, and therefore, the player can take as long as they want. |
526_1 | Plot
Players play as one of three survivors - the all rounded Kenji, the fast, arczar Abbie or the brawling Jack - shipwrecked on one of four zombie-infested islands that form an archipelago. After finding food for another wounded survivor, Andrew (who has already suffered a zombie bite), the survivor meets a one-legged old man named Ramon who owns a boat that can be used to travel between the islands. Together, they hatch a plan to escape the archipelago using a beached seaplane, with Andrew as the pilot. Ramon sends the survivor to fetch materials to repair the plane.
The survivor soon meets Kovac, a mysterious man in full armor who has made the islands his personal hunting ground. A self-proclaimed master survivor, Kovac is using his extensive field experience to write a zombie survival guide ('Kovac's Rules'), and gladly assumes a mentor role, helping the survivor with valuable advice and tools throughout the course of the game. |
526_2 | On the search, the survivor meets a woman named Carol whose young daughter, Emily, got separated from her. The survivor locates Emily, stranded on a cliffside, but is unable to save her from falling into the sea and getting swept away; Carol is devastated by the news. The plane is repaired, but Ramon realizes Andrew is (obviously) in no condition to pilot it and sends the survivor in search of someone who can.
The survivor meets a senile old woman, Martha, who is missing her companion Enzo (who turns out to be a cat). After retrieving Enzo, the survivor learns from her of a drunken former airplane pilot named Sanchez who lives nearby. Sanchez turns out to be a drug smuggler who lost all his cargo when his plane crashed, and the survivor is forced to comb the entire archipelago for his scattered packages to secure his cooperation. |
526_3 | Along the way, the survivor finds Emily alive, but imprisoned, and frees her, reuniting her with Carol. The girl claims she was taken prisoner by a strange man whose face she never saw; her testimony, added to Carol's accusation of the same man being responsible for guiding the ship she was on onto the reefs, makes it evident that Kovac is not all he seems after all. |
526_4 | The survivor eventually gathers Sanchez, Carol, and Emily by the repaired seaplane. Sanchez wants to leave at once, but the survivor insists they fetch Ramon as well. However, not far from the plane the survivor is instead confronted by Kovac, who shows his true colors, claiming he does not want the survivor to leave as they have 'not finished their training'. He then sets the survivor a 'final exam' by attracting a massive zombie horde, which will have to be fought off while the plane starts up. Finally, after a grueling battle, the survivor manages to escape back to the plane, and it takes off with Kovac calling through a loudspeaker for the survivor to 'come back'. |
526_5 | The game ends with Kovac causing another shipwreck by misguiding a ship over the radio, just as he did with the player's in the beginning. He then calls an accomplice, stating that a "new shipment of recruits" has arrived, and the accomplice answers with "Copy, amigo. I'm in position. Ready to play another round?". It is then seen that the accomplice is none other than the old cripple, Ramon.
Reception
How to Survive received mixed reviews upon release.
Sequel
How To Survive - Third Person Standalone was announced on June 4, 2015. It is an expansion pack in which players play the game in a third-person perspective, as opposed to the top-down perspective of the original How to Survive. A sequel, How to Survive 2 was announced on August 28, 2015. It features enhanced graphics and an expanded home base camp and crafting system. It was set in New Orleans and it was released on Steam's early access in October 2015.
References
External links
Official website |
526_6 | 2013 video games
Action role-playing video games
Black comedy video games
Horror video games
PlayStation 3 games
PlayStation 4 games
PlayStation Network games
Survival video games
Video games developed in France
Video games featuring female protagonists
Video games set on islands
Video games with isometric graphics
Xbox 360 Live Arcade games
Xbox One games
Wii U eShop games
Windows games
Video games about zombies |
527_0 | Protein O-GlcNAc transferase also known as OGT or O-linked N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase is an enzyme () that in humans is encoded by the OGT gene. OGT catalyzes the addition of the O-GlcNAc post-translational modification to proteins.
Nomenclature
Other names include:
O-GlcNAc transferase
OGTase
O-linked N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase
Uridine diphospho-N-acetylglucosamine:polypeptide β-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase
Systematic name: UDP-N-α-acetyl--glucosamine:[protein]-3-O-N-acetyl-β--glucosaminyl transferase
Function |
527_1 | Glycosyltransferase
OGT catalyzes the addition of a single N-acetylglucosamine through an O-glycosidic linkage to serine or threonine and an S-glycosidic linkage to cysteine residues of nucleocytoplasmic proteins. Since both phosphorylation and O-GlcNAcylation compete for similar serine or threonine residues, the two processes may compete for sites, or they may alter the substrate specificity of nearby sites by steric or electrostatic effects. Two transcript variants encoding cytoplasmic and mitochondrial isoforms have been found for this gene. OGT glycosylates many proteins including: Histone H2B, AKT1, PFKL, KMT2E/MLL5, MAPT/TAU, Host cell factor C1, and SIN3A. |
527_2 | O-GlcNAc transferase is a part of a host of biological functions within the human body. OGT is involved in the resistance of insulin in muscle cells and adipocytes by inhibiting the Threonine 308 phosphorylation of AKT1, increasing the rate of IRS1 phosphorylation (at serine 307 and serine 632/635), reducing insulin signaling, and glycosylating components of insulin signals. Additionally, O-GlcNAc transferase catalyzes intracellular glycosylation of serine and threonine residues with the addition of N-acetylglucosamine. Studies show that OGT alleles are vital for embryogenesis, and that OGT is necessary for intracellular glycosylation and embryonic stem cell vitality. O-GlcNAc transferase also catalyzes the posttranslational modification that modifies transcription factors and RNA polymerase II, however the specific function of this modification is mostly unknown. |
527_3 | Protease
OGT cleaves Host Cell Factor C1, at one or more of 6 repeating 26 amino acid sequences. The TPR domain of OGT binds to the carboxyl terminal portion of an HCF1 proteolytic repeat so that the cleavage region is in the glycosyltransferase active site above uridine-diphosphate-GlcNAc The large proportion of OGT complexed with HCF1 is necessary for HCF1 cleavage, and HCFC1 is required for OGT stabilization in the nucleus. HCF1 regulates OGT stability using a post-transcriptional mechanism, however the mechanism of the interaction with HCFC1 is still unknown.
Structure |
527_4 | The human OGT gene has 1046 amino acid residues, and is a heterotrimer consisting of two 110 kDa subunits and one 78 kDa subunit. The 110 kDa subunit contains 13 tetratricopeptide repeats (TPRs); the 13th repeat is truncated. These subunits are dimerized by TPR repeats 6 and 7. OGT is highly expressed in the pancreas and also expressed in the heart, brain, skeletal muscle, and the placenta. There have been trace amounts found in the lung and the liver. The binding sites have been determined for the 110 kDa subunit. It has 3 binding sites at amino acid residues 849, 852, and 935. The probable active site is at residue 508. |
527_5 | The crystal structure of O-GlcNAc transferase has not been well studied, but the structure of a binary complex with UDP and a ternary complex with UDP and a peptide substrate has been researched. The OGT-UDP complex contains three domains in its catalytic region: the amino (N)-terminal domain, the carboxy (C)-terminal domain, and the intervening domain (Int-D). The catalytic region is linked to TPR repeats by a translational helix (H3), which loops from the C-cat domain to the N-cat domain along the upper surface of the catalytic region. The OGT-UDP-peptide complex has a larger space between the TPR domain and the catalytic region than the OGT-UDP complex. The CKII peptide, which contains three serine residues and a threonine residue, binds in this space. In 2021 a 5Å CryoEM analysis revealed the relationship between the catalytic domains and the intact TPR regions confirming the dimer arrangement first seen in the TPR alone X ray structure. This structure supports an ordered |
527_6 | sequential bi-bi mechanism that matches the fact that “at saturating peptide concentrations, a competitive inhibition pattern was obtained for UDP with respect to UDP-GlcNAc.” |
527_7 | Mechanism of catalysis
The molecular mechanism of O-linked N-acetylglucosamine transferase has not been extensively studied either, since there is not a confirmed crystal structure of the enzyme. A proposed mechanism by Lazarus et al. is supported by product inhibition patterns of UDP at saturating peptide conditions. This mechanism proceeds with starting materials Uridine diphosphate N-acetylglucosamine, and a peptide chain with a reactive serine or threonine hydroxyl group. The proposed reaction is an ordered sequential bi-bi mechanism.
The chemical reaction can be written as:
UDP-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine + [protein]-L-serine → UDP + [protein]-3-O-(N-acetyl-D-glucosaminyl)-L-serine
UDP-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine + [protein]-L-threonine → UDP + [protein]-3-O-(N-acetyl-D-glucosaminyl)-L-threonine |
527_8 | First, the hydroxyl group of serine is deprotonated by histidine 498, a catalytic base in this proposed reaction. Lysine 842 is also present to stabilize the UDP moiety. The oxygen ion then attacks the sugar-phosphate bond between the glucosamine and UDP. This results in the splitting of UDP-N-acetylglucosamine into N-acetylglucosamine – peptide and UDP. Proton transfers take place at the phosphate and histidine 498. This mechanism is spurred by OGT gene containing O-linked N-acetylglucosamine transferase. Aside from proton transfers the reaction proceeds in one step, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2 uses a lone serine residue as a representative of the peptide with a reactive hydroxyl group. Threonine could have also been used in the mechanism.
Inhibitors
Many inhibitors of OGT enzymatic activity have been reported. OGT inhibition results in global downregulation of O-GlcNAc. Cells appear to upregulate OGT and downregulate OGA in response to OGT inhibition. |
527_9 | 5S-GlcNAc
Ac45S-GlcNAc is converted intracellularly into UDP-5S-GlcNAc, a substrate analogue inhibitor of OGT. UDP-5S-GlcNAc is not efficiently utilized as a donor sugar by OGT, possibly due to distortion of the pyranose ring by replacement of oxygen with sulfur. As other glycosyltransferases utilize UDP-GlcNAc as a donor sugar, UDP-5S-GlcNAc has some non-specific effects on cell-surface glycosylation.
OSMI
OSMI-1 was first identified from high-throughput screening using fluorescence polarization. Further optimization led to the development of OSMI-2, OSMI-3, and OSMI-4, which bind OGT with low-nanomolar affinity. X-ray crystallography showed that the quinolinone-6-sulfonamide scaffold of OSMI compounds act as a uridine mimetic. OSMI-2, OSMI-3, and OSMI-4 have negatively charged carboxylate groups; esterification renders these inhibitors cell-permeable.
Regulation |
527_10 | O-GlcNAc transferase is part of a dynamic competition for a serine or threonine hydroxyl functional group in a peptide unit. Figure 3 shows an example of both reciprocal same-site occupancy and adjacent-site occupancy. For the same-site occupancy, OGT competes with kinase to catalyze the glycosylation of the protein instead of phosphorylation. The adjacent-site occupancy example shows the naked protein catalyzed by OGT converted to a glycoprotein, which can increase the turnover of proteins such as the tumor repressor p53.
The post-translational modification of proteins by O-GlcNAc is spurred by glucose flux through the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway. OGT catalyzes attachment of the O-GlcNAc group to serine and threonine, while O-GlcNAcase spurs sugar removal. |
527_11 | This regulation is important for multiple cellular processes including transcription, signal transduction, and proteasomal degradation. Also, there is competitive regulation between OGT and kinase for the protein to attach to a phosphate group or O-GlcNAc, which can alter the function of proteins in the body through downstream effects.
OGT inhibits the activity of 6-phosophofructosekinase PFKL by mediating the glycosylation process. This then acts as a part of glycolysis regulation. O-GlcNAc has been defined as a negative transcription regulator in response to steroid hormone signaling. |
527_12 | Studies show that O-GlcNAc transferase interacts directly with the Ten eleven translocation 2 (TET2) enzyme, which converts 5-methylcytosine to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine and regulates gene transcription. Additionally, increasing levels of OGT for O-GlcNAcylation may have therapeutic effects for Alzheimer's disease patients. Brain glucose metabolism is impaired in Alzheimer's disease, and a study suggests that this leads to hyperphosphorylation of tau and degerenation of tau O-GlcNCAcylation. Replenishing tau O-GlcNacylation in the brain along with protein phosphatase could deter this process and improve brain glucose metabolism.
See also
O-GlcNAc
O-GlcNAcase (OGA)
O-linked glycosylation
References
External links
The O-GlcNAc Database - A curated database for protein O-GlcNAcylation and referencing more than 14 000 protein entries and 10 000 O-GlcNAc sites.
EC 2.4.1
Enzymes
Genes on human chromosome X |
528_0 | Capernaum Church () is one of the two places of worship of the Lutheran Capernaum Congregation, a member of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia, an umbrella comprising Lutheran, Calvinist (Reformed) and united Protestant congregations. The church is located on Seestraße No. 34 in the locality of Wedding, in Berlin's borough of Mitte. The church was named after Capernaum, today Kfar Nachum כפר נחום (literally "Nachum's village"; transliteration in and in ) in today's Israel.
Christians revere the town of Capernaum, since on Sabbaths Jesus of Nazareth used to teach in the local synagogue (cf. Gospel of Luke ). The synagogue where Jesus possibly taught is a handsome, standing ruin open to visitors. Therefore, it is likely that the town has been the home of Jesus (cf. Gospel of Matthew 4:13), at least for some time. In Capernaum also, Jesus allegedly healed a man, and a fever in Simon Peter's mother-in-law. |
528_1 | Congregation and church
The area belonged previously to the Nazareth Congregation, the oldest in Wedding. Due to the high number of new parishioners moving in at the end of the 19th century the Nazareth Church grew too small. Count Eduard Karl von Oppersdorf, who purchased many grounds along Seestraße in order to develop them as building land, offered to donate a site for a new church and a considerable sum of money to build it. He considered a prestigious site on a square to be developed in Antwerpener Straße, but Berlin's planning and zoning board refused to approve that. Thus he offered the site on the crossroads of Seestraße #34/35 with Antwerpener Straße No. 50 on the condition of starting the constructions until a certain date, otherwise the tendered money would be forfeited. Oppersdorf speculated for a rise of land prices by the establishment of a church in the area. |
528_2 | Thus in 1896 the presbytery () of Nazareth Congregation, presided by Pastor Ludwig Diestelkamp, commissioned the architect Baurat. Carl Siebold from Bethel (a part of today's Bielefeld), then leading the construction department of the Bethel Institution, to build an additional church in the undeveloped area. Diestelkamp knew Siebold through his friend Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. On 30 September 1897 the cornerstone was hastily laid. Effective constructions were only started in 1900. |
528_3 | Siebold, who built almost 80 churches, many of them in Westphalia, recycled his design for Christ Church in Hagen-Eilpe, which he adapted to the site on Seestraße. On 22 July 1902 the church was finished. The Evangelical Association for the Construction of Churches (), a charitable organisation then headed by the Prussian Queen Augusta Victoria, co-financed the constructions. On 26 August the same year she, her son Crown Prince Frederick William and her husband King William II attended the inauguration of Capernaum Church, the latter in his then function as summus episcopus (Supreme Governor of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces). |
528_4 | In the following year the Capernaum Congregation was constituted as independent legal entity, within the then Protestant umbrella Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces. The new congregation took over the northwestern part of the parish of the Nazareth Congregation, which is the northwestern part of the locality of Wedding, including the African Quarter () north of the church building and the Schillerhöhe northeast of the church building.
Building
Due to the location of the site the church is not oriented, but directed to the southeast. The building consists of three longish naves on an asymmetric ground plan. While the northeastern nave is large and harbours a loft, in order to place more seats, the southwestern nave to Antwerpener Straße is narrow, rather resembling an aisle. |
528_5 | The outside structure of Romanesque Revivalism, built from red brick, with its Lombard bands and the entrance hall to Antwerpener Straße rather resembles a basilica. Siebold's design is inspired by Romanesque architecture of Rhenish churches such as St. Apostles, and Great St. Martin Church (both Cologne).
The quire is highlighted by two octagonal towers, which are connected by a columned gallery of arcades (). The room underneath the elevated quire was designed for the instruction of confirmands, thus being an early example of a structure combining church and community centre functions. |
528_6 | The tower at the crossroads of Seestraße with Antwerpener Straße, topped by a typical Rhenish steep rhombohedral spire, was built to form a landmark. Siebold designed it after the towers of St Mary's Assumption Church (for a picture see Andernach). The façade to Seestraße showed a great rose window. A second, considerably smaller tower connects the church building to the alignment of houses in Seestraße. In 1909 August Dinklage, Olaf Lilloe, and Ernst Paulus added a rectory in Rundbogenstil with round-arched windows in Seestraße #35, finished on 1 April 1911, thus inseriating the church with the alignment of houses. The rear wing of the rectory confines the backyard of church and rectory as a semi-closed court.
Destruction and Reconstruction
The Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II inflicted severe damages on Capernaum Church. In May 1944 the church completely burnt out to the outside walls, in February 1945 the main tower was also hit and burnt out. |
528_7 | Starting in 1952 the architect Fritz Berndt began the reconstructions, accomplished by architect Günter Behrmann until 1959. The structures were simplified, the rose window was replaced by three biforium windows, while the main tower now bears a steep gable roof. The gable towards Seestraße was simplified due to the new simple gable roof, covering the main nave, the side naves carry catslide roofs, thus the nave to Antwerpener Straße lost its spire lights. The church was re-inaugurated on the occasion of the feast of Evangelical New Year (so-called First Sunday of Advent) on 29 November 1959.
Furnishings
Originally the church was sparingly furnished. The main nave was not vaulted but covered by a wooden ceiling, repeating in the middle the gable-roof form of the outside roof. Both side naves had even ceilings, supported by columns with cubic capitals. The lofts opened through three wide arches into the main nave. |
528_8 | Mural paintings repeated Lombard bands and Romanesque ornaments. The quire was elaborately decorated with mural paintings typical for the Evangelical churches of the end of the 19th century. The apsis painting displayed an enthroned Jesus of Nazareth in a mandorla surrounded by angels alternating with palms. A painting on the tympanum on top of the apsis depicted the Roman Centurion asking Jesus to heal his servant (Gospel of Matthew, ). Stained glass windows of ornamental and figured design in the apsis continued the rich colourfulness of the quire. All this was destroyed in May 1944. |
528_9 | The new interior of 1959 under a wooden barrel vault is very plain. Behrmann created a new altar and a new pulpit. Eva Limberg (Bielefeld) designed the new christening bowl, the candlestick, carried by Apostle figures, and the lectern, depicting the scene of the Roman Centurion and Jesus. In 1958 August Wagner created new coloured windows above the altar, after the design of the Hermann Kirchberger. The windows depict the Benedictive Jesus, the Nativity of Jesus, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost). A surviving element of the original furnishing is a larger than life-sized copied statue of the benedictive Jesus after the famous statue by Bertel Thorvaldsen. |
528_10 | The Capernaum Congregation in the Nazi Era
After the premature re-election of presbyters and synodals on 23 July 1933, which the Nazi government had imposed onto all Protestant church bodies in Germany (see Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union), the Nazi partisan Protestant so-called Faith Movement of German Christians gained a majority in the presbytery of the Capernaum Congregation, like in most congregations within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. With the new majorities on all levels of church organisation the German Christians systematically tried to subject any unadulterated form of Protestantism by way of firing church employees of other opinion, blocking church property for non-Nazi Protestant groups, prohibiting collections for other purposes than the officially approved ones. |
528_11 | The majorities of German Christian synodals – first in the provincial synod of Brandenburg (24 August 1933), competent for the Berlin and Brandenburg subsection, and then in the General Synod of the overall Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (5/6 September 1933) – voted in the so-called Aryan paragraph (), meaning that employees of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union – being all baptised Protestant church members -, who had grandparents, who were enrolled as Jews, or who were married with such persons, were all to be fired. |
528_12 | On 11 September 1933 Gerhard Jacobi , pastor of the William I Memorial Church in Berlin, leading the opposing synodals, gathered opposing pastors, who clearly saw the breach of Christian and Protestant principles and founded the Emergency Covenant of Pastors (), presided by Pastor Martin Niemöller. Its members concluded that a schism was unavoidable, a new Protestant church was to be established, since the official organisation was anti-Christian, heretical and therefore illegitimate. |
528_13 | Three out of six pastors of the Capernaum Congregation joined the Covenant to wit Karl Berlich, Helmut Petzold, and Friedrich Lahde, the latter holding as senior pastor the office of chief executive of the presbytery, dominated by German Christians since the imposed re-election. In 1933 among the pastors of Berlin, 160 stuck to Gospel and Church (the official name of the list of Nazi-opposing candidates in the re-election, most joined the Covenant), 40 were German Christians while another 200 had taken neither side. The same was true for the average parishioners, the vast majority did not bother being non-observant, many did not even participate in the elections, those who did, often voted for the German Christians, but in the following Struggle of the Churches (), they never acted up as German Christian activists. The Kirchenkampf was an enactment performed by two minority groups within a rather indifferent majority. |
528_14 | As part of the re-election campaign the Nazi government and the Nazi party promoted that Nazi party members of Protestant descent, who were not members of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, would (re-)join that church body in order to secure a clear majority of votes for the Nazi group of the German Christians. In 1933 the Capernaum Congregation reached a number of about 70,000 parishioners through these tactical mass enlistments. Once the interest of the Nazi leadership, to convert official Protestantism into a Nazi movement, faded due to the ongoing problems with opponents from within the churches, the policy changed. Many Nazis, being anyway non-observing Protestants, seceded again from the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union and the number of parishioners of the Capernaum Congregation dropped to 41,000 by 1935. |
528_15 | The existing majorities in the bodies on the different levels of church organisation remained, since in the synods the majority of German Christian synodals had voted for an abolition of further church elections. Parishioners' democratic participation by elections only re-emerged after the end of the Nazi reign. The Nazi government preferred the Protestant church bodies to weaken their influence in Germany by letting them enter into a destructive self-deprecation, once in while orchestrated by Nazi government interference in favour of the German Christians, but mostly in favour of the Protestant church bodies' dropping into insignificance. |
528_16 | The pastors of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors advanced their project of a new Protestant church and organised their own synods with synodals representing the intra-church opposition. The movement declared Protestantism was based on the complete Holy Scripture, the Old Covenant of Jewish heritage, and the New Covenant. The participants declared this basis to be binding for any Protestant Church deserving that name and confessed their allegiance to this basis (see Barmen Theological Declaration). Henceforth the movement of all Protestant denominations, opposing Nazi intrusion into Protestant church affairs, was called the Confessing Church (, BK), their partisans Confessing Christians, as opposed to German Christians (, DC}. In any congregation, whose presbytery was dominated by German Christians, parallel structures were to be built up. The parallel entity for the presbytery was called the brethren council (). |
528_17 | Pastor Berlich gathered opposing activist parishioners to form a Confessing Christian congregation. The double role of the pastors, paid by the official church body and thus also obliged to fulfill the regular services for the Capernaum Congregation and their parallel activity as Confessing Christians turned out to be a precarious balancing act. Official services were attended by denunciators, who would report any critical utterance to the Gestapo, while German Christian parishioners and presbyters would inflict disciplinary procedures through the superior levels of the official church body. |
528_18 | Services and other meetings of Confessing Christians had to take place as private events, thus only true Confessing Christians would be admitted, who had to identify by red cards of membership, which were issued by confidents only. 380 parishioners of the Capernaum Congregation were card-carrying Confessing Christians. Compared with other congregations in the north of Berlin this was a great number of Confessing Christians. They elected their own brethren council consisting of the installer Mr Bolz, Mrs Brandt, Mr Grundt, the parochial vicar Ilse Kersten, the merchant Mr Komnow, inspector Mr Krummrei, Mrs Ranitz, and Mrs Rosendahl. However, even though the Confessing Christian congregation at Capernaum Church had a stable and considerable membership, the congregation did not hold regular rogation prayers for those persecuted by the Nazi regime and the three Confessing Christian pastors did not participate regularly in the meetings of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors on the regional, |
528_19 | let alone the Berlin-wide level. The three pastors, who had not taken sides, did not bother their three Confessing Christian colleagues. All the fighting was promoted by German Christian presbyters and other parishioners. |
528_20 | A particular problem was fund-raising. The Confessing Christians depended completely on offertories, since the official church bodies did not share their revenues from the contributions levied from the parishioners by way of a surcharge on the income tax (so-called Church tax), collected and then transferred by the state tax offices. To block any access to funds, in 1934 the Nazi government subjected any form of public money collection to state approval, which was regularly denied if Confessing Christians applied for it. So door-to-door collections became a dangerous, but necessary thing. In the parish of the Capernaum Congregation, never anybody denounced the collectors, while in other, particularly more rural parishes many a Confessing Christian cleric and layman or laywoman was denounced and subsequently taken to court. |
528_21 | At the beginning of November 1934 the official presbytery, dominated by German Christians, reached the dismissal of Lahde as executive chief of the Capernaum Congregation for his allegiance with the Confessing Christians by the fickle superior cleric in charge, Superintendent Dr. Johannes Rosenfeld. Lacking any substantial basis for this decision, Lahde reached his reappointment on 19 December. |
528_22 | In 1935 the Confessing Christian pastor Petzold left the Capernaum Congregation. Thus a dispute between the German Christian presbytery and its executive chief Lahde arose. While Lahde, fearing the appointment of a new German Christian pastor, argued the diminished number of parishioners would not allow the employment of another pastor, the presbytery under the merchant Ebeling demanded a new pastor. On 19 October 1935 the March of Brandenburg provincial consistory (the competent executive and clerical body) agreed to restaff the vacancy. On 18 November the presbytery thus chose the orthodox German Christian pastor Heyne from the Thuringian Evangelical Church, the church body being at the heart of the Faith Movement of German Christians. |
528_23 | The Confessing Christians in the Capernaum Congregation then started the collection of signatures among the parishioners against Heyne's appointment. They handed in 300 signatures, what made the consistory to change its mind. In order to pacify the situation, it refused any reappointment on 23 November. Only in 1942 the presbytery succeeded and the German Christian pastor Johannes Hoffmann was appointed, coming from Mount of Olives Church in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Among the signatories we find the names of Vicar Kersten, the bookkeeper Dora Mechur, and Pastor Hans Urner (1901–1986; chaplain at the diaconal senior home Paul Gerhardt Stift in the years 1935–1953). These three ran an underground circle to help persons, persecuted by the Nazi regime as Jews, to emigrate. |
528_24 | The institutionally independent foundation of Paul Gerhardt Stift, located in Müllerstraße 58 at the corner with Barfusstraße within the parochial boundaries, was run by deaconesses. The staff was divided in its allegiances to the German Christians and the Confessing Christians. While the institution's two chaplains, Pastor Urner and Pastor Hermann Wagner stuck with the Confessing Church, the matron deaconess sided with the German Christians. In the morning prayers led by her she included Adolf Hitler in her rogations, while the two pastors on their turn never did so. The deaconess leading the medical station of the Paul Gerhardt Stift, an active Confessing Christian in the neighbouring Nazareth Congregation, and other colleagues of her, continued to treat Jewish patients even after this was strictly forbidden in 1938 and therefore could not be invoiced to the health insurance anymore. |
528_25 | Kersten, Mechur, and Urner were also friends with Pastor Harald Poelchau, who with the Social Democrat Agnes Laukant (Brüsseler Str. 28a), ran another underground circle, hiding persecuted persons.
Lahde was denounced at the Gestapo for his refusal to hoist the swastika flag on Capernaum Church, as did many congregations on certain dates or events of Nazi interest. This earned him an entry in his Gestapo file, collecting material against Lahde. Even after Lahde – due to his weak health – went into early retirement by the end of 1937, the presbytery inflicted a disciplinary procedure on him because of his alleged attitude of treason against the German people and state () in 1938. |
528_26 | The knowledgeable Vicar Kersten (died 25 Oct. 1967), becoming after the war one of the first woman pastors in Berlin, was an important proponent of the Confessing Christians in the Capernaum Congregation. She led the Sunday school of the official Capernaum Congregation and regularly attracted 250 children and juveniles of parents of all allegiances. In the scope of the Confessing Church she held weekly Bible hours in her private apartment in Müllerstraße #97c, until she was bombed out in an allied air raid in February 1945. At the end of these meetings she traded the latest news about murders, arrests, and what was going on in concentration camps, which were concealed by the official Nazi media. Kersten informed about a senior police officer in the local Seestraße precinct, who issued official police documents confirming the Christianness of its bearer, as Mechur recalled in 1989. |
528_27 | Mechur's father was a Jew, but somewhat protected because he was married with a so-called Aryan Protestant, and his daughter was by religion not Jewish, this made the Nazi authorities classify his marriage as a then so-called 'privileged' mixed marriage. German Jews and German Gentiles of Jewish descent living in privileged mixed marriage were in fact spared from deportation. In November 1944 Mr. Mechur died in the Jewish Hospital of Berlin , after he had been badly injured by a falling burning beam during an allied air raid. Dora Mechur recalls that the Christian friends of her family and fellow parishioners attended her father's burial on the Jewish Weißensee Cemetery, which was then a rare sign of sympathy. Many Protestant congregations had ousted their co-parishioners, who were fully or partly of Jewish descent. |
528_28 | In the beginning of the Nazi reign the two groups around Kersten and Poelchau, helping persecuted persons, were mostly helping them to emigrate or to avoid arrest, until a flight abroad could be organised. From 18 October 1941 on, when the deportations of German Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent from Berlin started, the purpose of hiding persons became a permanent issue. Jews, hiding from deportation, 'dived' in the underground and thus used to call themselves submarines (). |
528_29 | Pastor Harald Poelchau , since the mid-1930s a parishioner of Capernaum Congregation, was a Christian Socialist. In April 1933 he was appointed prison chaplain in the Tegel prison (Zuchthaus Tegel ) of Berlin, and later also worked in the Plötzensee Prison (very close by to the parish of Capernaum Congregation), where many prominent opponents of the Nazi regime were executed, and in the prison of Brandenburg upon Havel (Zuchthaus Brandenburg ). He smuggled (last) letters and messages of many death candidates and other detainees to their relatives. Already in 1933 under the impression of the maltreatment and torture of many political inmates in Tegel he and Laukant founded a circle of opponents, helping persecuted persons to hide. |
528_30 | He later joined the group named Kreisauer Kreis, led by his Silesian fellow-countryman Helmuth James Graf von Moltke. After 1939 it became particular difficult to feed the hidden persons, because food was only available on official ration stamps, of course not issued to hiding persons. Moltke provided Poelchau with food from his Silesian manor estate in Kreisau, which he embezzled from the requisitions imposed by the authorities. Poelchau stored them in his basement in Afrikanische Straße # 140b and handed them out. Helping Poelchau's group Urner hid submarines in his official residence in the Paul Gerhardt Stift. In 1944 Poelchau joined a further group named Onkel Emil, promoting the fast capitulation of Germany by public graffiti on walls. |
528_31 | The cemetery of Capernaum Congregation in formerly East German Ahrensfelde
Capernaum Congregation, located in what used to be West Berlin, has its own graveyard section in the denominational Eastern Churchyard () in formerly East Berlin's eastern suburb of Ahrensfelde. Between 27 May 1952 and 3 October 1972 West Berliners were banned from free access to the East German German Democratic Republic proper – as distinguished from East Berlin. In this time all West Berliners, wishing to visit the grave of a late relative or friend in the cemeteries in East Germany, were excluded, as well as late widows and widowers, who wanted to be buried side by side with their earlier deceased spouses buried there. Between 1972 and 22 December 1989 West Berliners had restricted access, because they had to apply for East German visas and to pay for a compulsory exchange (officially in , i.e. minimum exchange). |
528_32 | Sources
Gerlinde Böpple, Kapernaum. Eine evangelische Kirchengemeinde "auf dem Wedding", Berlin: 1992.
Matthias Donath, 100 Jahre Kapernaumkirche 1902–2002, Gemeindekirchenrat der Evangelischen Kirchengemeinden Kapernaum und Kornelius (ed.), Berlin: 2002 [flyer].
Günther Kühne and Elisabeth Stephani, Evangelische Kirchen in Berlin (11978), Berlin: CZV-Verlag, 21986, p. 431. .
Hans-Rainer Sandvoß, Widerstand in einem Arbeiterbezirk (Wedding) (11983), altered and ext. ed., Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (ed.), Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, 21987, (Schriftenreihe über den Widerstand in Berlin von 1933 bis 1945; No. 1). ISSN 0175-3592
Hans-Rainer Sandvoß, Widerstand in Wedding und Gesundbrunnen, Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (ed.), Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, 2003, (Schriftenreihe über den Widerstand in Berlin von 1933 bis 1945; No. 14). ISSN 0175-3592
Notes
References
External links
Entry in Berlin's list of monuments with further sources |
528_33 | Lutheran churches in Berlin
Berlin Capernaum
Religious buildings and structures in Berlin
Heritage sites in Berlin
Buildings and structures in Mitte
Berlin Capernaum
Berlin Capernaum
Berlin Capernaum
Buildings and structures in Berlin destroyed during World War II
de:Seestraße (Berlin-Wedding)#Kapernaumkirche |
529_0 | Perle Fine (Poule Feine)(1905–1988) was an American Abstract expressionist painter. Fine was most known by her combination of fluid and brushy rendering of the materials and her use of biomorphic forms encased and intertwined with irregular geometric shapes. |
529_1 | Position as a female artist
"... [T]he very image of the Abstract Expressionist painter was a white, heterosexual male, and that this movement, which perceived itself as a glyph of individual freedom, constricted the entry of women, African Americans, and homosexuals, regardless of the nature and quality of their work." While Women have had a history of being left out of the arts, it was Samuel Kootz's, a New York Gallery owner that helped determine what art was mainstream, pronouncement that there would be no women artists in his gallery. To this which Fine promptly said, "I know I was as good as anybody else in there," However, Perle Fine was not the only female artist that was affected by this statement, artists such as Fannie Hillsmith and Lee Krasner were also deeply affected. |
529_2 | Despite Kootz's statement, Fine had been in many solo and group shows during the late 1940s. Because of her success with these exhibitions, there was every implication that Fine was on the verge of success in the art world. "As the 1950s dawned ... there was little competition among artists either male or female, it was only when the door began to crack open that the gender of the artist began to play a more prominent role." Deirdre Robson has said that "The arts were gradually thought of less in terms of being part of the 'female' realm and more as an interest suitable for a hardheaded and successful businessman." |
529_3 | Fines’ issues as a painter was not seen as cultural criticism that kept her on the brinks of Abstract Expressionism when it should’ve have had a place in the conversation but, it was the physical paintings themselves. She said it was always the painting rather than her being a woman and because of that, it pushed her into the artist she became. She battled with the canvas and solved problems in every piece. “Art Historian, Ann Eden Gibson says that by the early 1950s, Fine was right in the middle of Abstract Expressionism”. |
529_4 | With a career in abstract painting lasting over 50 years, Fine developed and adhered to high ideals and expectations of never adopting a method from another artist that could potentially compromise her work when her works of art developed into something that was not of the ordinary. She fought through barriers and limitation that any female artist would experience during the “macho milieu” of Abstract Expressionism. She kept the mindset that it was what was painted and not who painted it that mattered. With that being said, her pieces are just now being given the attention they deserved a long time ago such as an exhibition in 2016 in the Denver Art Museum, “Women of Abstract Expression” and Women of Abstract Expressionism from the 9th Street Show at the Katonah Museum of Art and Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection. At the time, Fine was seen to be close with another Artist by the name of Mark Rothko. Her work also was seen to be similar to his but, Fine found her |
529_5 | work not seeking his “sublime transcendence”. |
529_6 | In 1943 was able to receive a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and was able to be in exhibitions at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century Gallery and the Museum of Nonobjective Painting. This brought Fine a lot of attention from the press. Following these feats, in 1945 she was entered into the American Abstract Artists where she was able to really make a name for herself.
Later on in her life, she enjoyed the solitude that came along when her husband was in the city for work. She developed a close knit community of artists such as Kooning Krasner and Pollock and Unlike many artist during The Depression, Fine was able to still work in her own studio. |
529_7 | Biography |
529_8 | One of six children, Fine was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1905. Her parents had just recently immigrated from Russia. She became interest in Art at a young age.” Starting almost immediately in grammar school at the time of the First World War ... I did posters and started winning little prizes and getting encouragement that way So that by the time I graduated from high school I knew very well I wanted to be an artist." Fine briefly went to School of Practical Art in Boston, where she learned to design newspaper advertisement. She took classes in illustration and graphic design at the School of Practical Art in Boston. During this, she paid her way through school buy working in the Bursar's office on campus. Before going the New York City To briefly attend Grand Central School of Art. It was at the Grand Central School of Art where Fine met Maurice Berezov whom she married in 1930. While in New York, she also studied at the Art Students League with Kimon Nicolades. In the late |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.