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1723_13 | Indian officials rejected the NPT in the 1960s on the grounds that it created a world of nuclear "haves" and "have-nots", arguing that it unnecessarily restricted "peaceful activity" (including "peaceful nuclear explosives"), and that India would not accede to international control of their nuclear facilities unless all other countries engaged in unilateral disarmament of their own nuclear weapons. The Indian position has also asserted that the NPT is in many ways a neo-colonial regime designed to deny security to post-colonial powers. Even after its 1974 test, India maintained that its nuclear capability was primarily "peaceful", but between 1988 and 1990 it apparently weaponized two dozen nuclear weapons for delivery by air. In 1998 India tested weaponized nuclear warheads ("Operation Shakti"), including a thermonuclear device. |
1723_14 | In July 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced plans to conclude an Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement. This came to fruition through a series of steps that included India's announced plan to separate its civil and military nuclear programs in March 2006, the passage of the India–United States Civil Nuclear Agreement by the U.S. Congress in December 2006, the conclusion of a U.S.–India nuclear cooperation agreement in July 2007, approval by the IAEA of an India-specific safeguards agreement, agreement by the Nuclear Suppliers Group to a waiver of export restrictions for India, approval by the U.S. Congress and culminating in the signature of U.S.–India agreement for civil nuclear cooperation in October 2008. The U.S. State Department said it made it "very clear that we will not recognize India as a nuclear-weapon state". The United States is bound by the Hyde Act with India and may cease all cooperation with India if India detonates a |
1723_15 | nuclear explosive device. The US had further said it is not its intention to assist India in the design, construction or operation of sensitive nuclear technologies through the transfer of dual-use items. In establishing an exemption for India, the Nuclear Suppliers Group reserved the right to consult on any future issues which might trouble it. As of May 2021, India was estimated to have a stockpile of around 160 warheads. |
1723_16 | Pakistan
Pakistan also is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pakistan covertly developed nuclear weapons over decades, beginning in the late 1970s. Pakistan first delved into nuclear power after the establishment of its first nuclear power plant near Karachi with equipment and materials supplied mainly by western nations in the early 1970s. Pakistani President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto promised in 1971 that if India could build nuclear weapons then Pakistan would too, according to him: "We will develop Nuclear stockpiles, even if we have to eat grass." |
1723_17 | It is believed that Pakistan has possessed nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s. The United States continued to certify that Pakistan did not possess such weapons until 1990, when sanctions were imposed under the Pressler Amendment, requiring a cutoff of U.S. economic and military assistance to Pakistan. In 1998, Pakistan conducted its first six nuclear tests at the Ras Koh Hills in response to the five tests conducted by India a few weeks before.
In 2004, the Pakistani metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, a key figure in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, confessed to heading an international black market ring involved in selling nuclear weapons technology. In particular, Khan had been selling gas centrifuge technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Khan denied complicity by the Pakistani government or Army, but this has been called into question by journalists and IAEA officials, and was later contradicted by statements from Khan himself. |
1723_18 | As of early 2013, Pakistan was estimated to have had a stockpile of around 140 warheads, and in November 2014 it was projected that by 2020 Pakistan would have enough fissile material for 200 warheads.
North Korea |
1723_19 | North Korea was a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but announced a withdrawal on 10 January 2003, after the United States accused it of having a secret uranium enrichment program and cut off energy assistance under the 1994 Agreed Framework. In February 2005, North Korea claimed to possess functional nuclear weapons, though their lack of a test at the time led many experts to doubt the claim. In October 2006, North Korea stated that, in response to growing intimidation by the United States, it would conduct a nuclear test to confirm its nuclear status. North Korea reported a successful nuclear test on 9 October 2006 (see 2006 North Korean nuclear test). Most U.S. intelligence officials believed that the test was probably only partially successful with a yield of less than a kiloton. North Korea conducted a second, higher-yield test on 25 May 2009 (see 2009 North Korean nuclear test) and a third test with still-higher yield on 12 February 2013 (see 2013 North Korean |
1723_20 | nuclear test). |
1723_21 | North Korea claimed to have conducted its first hydrogen-bomb test on 5 January 2016, though measurements of seismic disturbances indicate that the detonation was not consistent with a hydrogen bomb. On 3 September 2017, North Korea detonated a device, which caused a magnitude 6.1 tremor, consistent with a low-powered thermonuclear detonation; NORSAR estimates the yield at 250 kilotons of TNT. In 2018, North Korea announced a halt in nuclear weapons tests and made a conditional commitment to denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula; however, in December 2019, it indicated it no longer considered itself bound by the moratorium.
States indicated to possess nuclear weapons
Israel |
1723_22 | Israel is widely believed to have been the sixth country in the world to develop nuclear weapons, but it has not acknowledged its nuclear forces. It had "rudimentary, but deliverable," nuclear weapons available as early as 1966. Israel is not a party to the NPT. Israel engages in strategic ambiguity, saying it would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons into the region, but refusing to otherwise confirm or deny a nuclear weapons program or arsenal. This policy of "nuclear opacity" has been interpreted as an attempt to get the benefits of deterrence with a minimal political cost. |
1723_23 | According to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Federation of American Scientists, Israel likely possesses around 75–200 nuclear weapons. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that Israel has approximately 80 intact nuclear weapons, of which 50 are for delivery by Jericho II medium-range ballistic missiles and 30 are gravity bombs for delivery by aircraft. SIPRI also reports that there was renewed speculation in 2012 that Israel may also have developed nuclear-capable submarine-launched cruise missiles.
Launch authority |
1723_24 | The decision to use nuclear weapons is always restricted to a single person or small group of people. The United States and France require their respective presidents to approve the use of nuclear weapons. In the US, the Presidential Emergency Satchel is always handled by a nearby aide unless the President is near a command center. The decision rests with the monarch and the prime minister in the United Kingdom. Information from China is unclear, but "the launch of nuclear weapons is commonly believed to rest with the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee." Russia grants such power to the President but may also require approval from the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff; weapons can also be launched using the automated Dead Hand system. The Supreme Leader has authority in North Korea. India, Pakistan and Israel have committees for such a decision.
Nuclear weapons sharing |
1723_25 | Under NATO nuclear weapons sharing, the United States has provided nuclear weapons for Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey to deploy and store. This involves pilots and other staff of the "non-nuclear" NATO states practicing, handling, and delivering the U.S. nuclear bombs, and adapting non-U.S. warplanes to deliver U.S. nuclear bombs. However, since all U.S. nuclear weapons are protected with Permissive Action Links, the host states cannot easily arm the bombs without authorization codes from the U.S. Department of Defense. Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga acknowledged the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Italy. U.S. nuclear weapons were also deployed in Canada as well as Greece from 1963 to 1984. However, Canada withdrew three of the four nuclear-capable weapons systems by 1972. The single system retained, the AIR-2 Genie, had a yield of 1.5 kilotons, was designed to strike enemy aircraft as opposed to ground targets, and might not have qualified as a |
1723_26 | weapon of mass destruction given its limited yield. |
1723_27 | Members of the Non-Aligned Movement have called on all countries to "refrain from nuclear sharing for military purposes under any kind of security arrangements." The Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) has criticized the arrangement for allegedly violating Articles I and II of the NPT, arguing that "these Articles do not permit the NWS to delegate the control of their nuclear weapons directly or indirectly to others." NATO has argued that the weapons' sharing is compliant with the NPT because "the U.S. nuclear weapons based in Europe are in the sole possession and under constant and complete custody and control of the United States."
As of April 2019, the United States maintained around 150 nuclear weapons in Europe, as reflected in the accompanying table. |
1723_28 | States formerly possessing nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons have been present in many nations, often as staging grounds under control of other powers. However, in only one instance has a nation given up nuclear weapons after being in full control of them. The fall of the Soviet Union left several former Soviet republics in physical possession of nuclear weapons, though not operational control which was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system.
South Africa
South Africa produced six nuclear weapons in the 1980s, but dismantled them in the early 1990s. |
1723_29 | In 1979, there was a detection of a putative covert nuclear test in the Indian Ocean, called the Vela incident. It has long been speculated that it was a test by Israel, in collaboration with and with the support of South Africa, though this has never been confirmed. South Africa could not have constructed such a nuclear bomb until November 1979, two months after the "double flash" incident.
South Africa acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991.
Former Soviet Republics |
1723_30 | Belarus had 81 single warhead missiles stationed on its territory after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. They were all transferred to Russia by 1996. In May 1992, Belarus acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. On 28 February 2022, Belarus held a referendum, in which it dropped it's "Non-nuclear" status, in light of 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Kazakhstan inherited 1,400 nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, and transferred them all to Russia by 1995. Kazakhstan has since acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. |
1723_31 | Ukraine has acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ukraine inherited "as many as 3,000" nuclear weapons when it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, making its nuclear arsenal the third-largest in the world. By 1994, Ukraine had agreed to dispose of all nuclear weapons within its territory, with the condition that its borders were respected, as part of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. The warheads were removed from Ukraine by 1996 and disassembled in Russia. Despite Russia's subsequent and internationally disputed annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine reaffirmed its 1994 decision to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state. |
1723_32 | See also
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Doomsday Clock
Historical nuclear weapons stockpiles and nuclear tests by country
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
No first use
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear latency
Nuclear power
Nuclear proliferation
Nuclear terrorism
Nuclear war
Nuclear-weapon-free zone
Notes
References
Bibliography
.
Philipp C. Bleek, “When Did (and Didn’t) States Proliferate? Chronicling the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” Discussion Paper (Cambridge, MA: Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, June 2017). |
1723_33 | External links
Globalsecurity.orgWorld Special Weapons Guide
The Nuclear Weapon Archive
Nuclear Notebook from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe: A review of post-Cold War policy, force levels, and war planning NRDC, February 2005
Tracking Nuclear Proliferation Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's data on world nuclear forces
Nuclear Proliferation International History Project For more on the history of nuclear proliferation see the Woodrow Wilson Center's Nuclear Proliferation International History Project website.
Proliferation Watch: US Intelligence Assessments of Potential Nuclear Powers, 1977–2001
Cold War
Nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons policy
Nuclear proliferation
Nuclear technology-related lists |
1724_0 | The Pianist is a 2002 biographical war drama film produced and directed by Roman Polanski, with a script by Ronald Harwood, and starring Adrien Brody. It is based on the autobiographical book The Pianist (1946), a Holocaust memoir by the Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman, a Holocaust survivor. The film was a co-production of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland. |
1724_1 | The Pianist premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival on 24 May 2002, where it won the Palme d'Or, and went into wide release that September; the film received widespread critical acclaim, with critics lauding Polanski's direction, Brody's performance and Harwood's screenplay. At the 75th Academy Awards, the film won for Best Director (Polanski), Best Adapted Screenplay (Harwood), and Best Actor (Brody), and was nominated for four others, including Best Picture (it would lose out to Chicago). It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film and BAFTA Award for Best Direction in 2003, and seven French Césars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Brody. It was included in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century in 2016. |
1724_2 | Plot
In September 1939, Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist, is playing live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is bombed during the Nazi German invasion of Poland. Hoping for a quick victory, Szpilman rejoices with his family at home when he learns that Britain and France have declared war on Germany, but the promised aid does not come. The fighting lasts for just over a month, with both the German and Soviet armies invading Poland at the same time on different fronts. Warsaw becomes part of the Nazi-controlled General Government. Jews are soon prevented from working or owning businesses and are also made to wear blue Star of David armbands. |
1724_3 | By November 1940, Szpilman and his family are forced from their home into the isolated and overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto, where conditions only get worse. People starve, the SS guards are brutal, starving children are abandoned, and dead bodies are everywhere. On one occasion, the Szpilmans witness the SS kill an entire family in an apartment across the street during a round-up, including dumping an elderly man in a wheelchair out a window four stories up. |
1724_4 | On 16 August 1942, Szpilman and his family are about to be transported to Treblinka extermination camp as part of Operation Reinhard. However, a friend in the Jewish Ghetto Police recognizes Władysław at the Umschlagplatz and separates him from his family. He becomes a slave labourer and learns of a coming Jewish revolt. He helps the resistance by smuggling weapons into the ghetto, on one occasion narrowly avoiding a suspicious guard. Szpilman eventually manages to escape and goes into hiding with help from a non-Jewish friend, Andrzej Bogucki, and his wife, Janina. |
1724_5 | In April 1943, Szpilman watches from his window as the first of two uprisings, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which he aided, unfolds and ultimately fails. Soon therefter, when a neighbor discovers Szpilman hiding in the flat, he is forced to flee to a second hiding place. His new hiding location is another vacant apartment, and it has a piano in it which he feels drawn to play; but he does not as he must keep quiet to avoid discovery. While in hiding at this location, malnutrition due to very limited food supplies takes effect; he loses weight and begins to suffer from jaundice. |
1724_6 | In August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the Home Army attacks a German building across the street from Szpilman's hideout. Tank shells hit the apartment, forcing him to flee. Over the course of the following months, Warsaw is destroyed. Szpilman is left alone to search desperately for shelter and supplies among the ruins. He eventually makes his way to a house where he finds a can of pickles. While trying to open it, he is noticed by Wehrmacht officer Wilm Hosenfeld, who learns that Szpilman is a pianist. He asks Szpilman to play on a grand piano in the house. The decrepit Szpilman manages to play Chopin's Ballade in G minor. Hosenfeld lets Szpilman hide in the attic of the empty house. Whilst there, he is regularly supplied with food by the German officer. |
1724_7 | In January 1945, the Germans are retreating from the Red Army. Hosenfeld meets Szpilman for the last time, promising he will listen to him on Polish Radio after the war. He gives Szpilman his greatcoat to keep warm and leaves. In Spring 1945, former inmates of a Nazi concentration camp pass by a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp holding captured German soldiers and verbally abuse them. Hosenfeld, being one of the prisoners, overhears a released inmate lamenting over his former career as a violinist. He asks him whether he knows Szpilman, which he confirms, and Hosenfeld says he helped Szpilman and begs him to tell Szpilman he is in the camp. Later, the violinist and Szpilman reach the camp but find it abandoned. |
1724_8 | After the war, Szpilman is back at the Polish Radio, where he performs Chopin's "Grand Polonaise brillante" to a large prestigious audience. A textual epilogue states that Szpilman died on July 6, 2000, at the age of 88, and all that is known of Hosenfeld is that he died in 1952 while still in Soviet captivity.
Cast
Adrien Brody as Władysław Szpilman
Thomas Kretschmann as Captain Wilm Hosenfeld
Frank Finlay as Samuel Szpilman
Maureen Lipman as Edwarda Szpilman
Emilia Fox as Dorota
Ed Stoppard as Henryk Szpilman
Julia Rayner as Regina Szpilman
Jessica Kate Meyer as Halina Szpilman
Ronan Vibert as Andrzej Bogucki
Ruth Platt as Janina Bogucki
Andrew Tiernan as Szalas
Michał Żebrowski as Jurek
Roy Smiles as Itzhak Heller
Richard Ridings as Mr. Lipa
Daniel Caltagirone as Majorek
Valentine Pelka as Dorota's Husband
Zbigniew Zamachowski as Customer with Coins
Ireneusz Machnicki as SS Officer
Cezary Krajewski as SS Officer
Production |
1724_9 | The story had deep connections with director Roman Polanski because he escaped from the Kraków Ghetto as a child after the death of his mother. He ended up living in a Polish farmer's barn until the war's end. His father almost died in the camps, but they reunited after the end of World War II.
Joseph Fiennes was Polanski's first choice for the lead role, but he turned it down due to a previous commitment to a theatrical role. Over 1,400 actors auditioned for the role of Szpilman at a casting call in London. Unsatisfied with all who tried, Polanski sought to cast Adrien Brody, whom he saw as ideal for the role during their first meeting in Paris. |
1724_10 | Principal photography on The Pianist began on 9 February 2001 in Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam, Germany. The Warsaw Ghetto and the surrounding city were recreated on the backlot of Babelsberg Studio as they would have looked during the war. Old Soviet Army barracks were used to create the ruined city, as they were going to be destroyed anyway.
The first scenes of the film were shot at the old army barracks. Soon after, the film crew moved to a villa in Potsdam, which served as the house where Szpilman meets Hosenfeld. On 2 March 2001, filming then moved to an abandoned Soviet military hospital in Beelitz, Germany. The scenes that featured German soldiers destroying a Warsaw hospital with flamethrowers were filmed there. On 15 March, filming finally moved to Babelsberg Studios. The first scene shot at the studio was the complex and technically demanding scene in which Szpilman witnesses the ghetto uprising. |
1724_11 | Filming at the studios ended on 26 March, and moved to Warsaw on 29 March. The rundown district of Praga was chosen for filming because of its abundance of original buildings. The art department built onto these original buildings, re-creating World War II-era Poland with signs and posters from the period. Additional filming also took place around Warsaw. The Umschlagplatz scene where Szpilman, his family, and hundreds of other Jews wait to be taken to the extermination camps was filmed at the National Defence University of Warsaw.
Principal photography ended in July 2001, and was followed by months of post-production in Paris. |
1724_12 | Reception
The Pianist was widely acclaimed by critics, with Brody's performance, Harwood's screenplay, and Polanski's direction receiving special praise. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 182 reviews, with an average rating of 8.22/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Well-acted and dramatically moving, The Pianist is Polanski's best work in years." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 85 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". |
1724_13 | Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four, noting that, "perhaps that impassive quality reflects what [director Roman] Polanski wants to say. ... By showing Szpilman as a survivor, but not a fighter or a hero—as a man who does all he can to save himself, but would have died without enormous good luck and the kindness of a few non-Jews—Polanski is reflecting ... his own deepest feelings: that he survived, but need not have, and that his mother died and left a wound that had never healed." Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune said that the film "is the best dramatic feature I've seen on the Holocaust experience, so powerful a statement on war, inhumanity, and art's redemption that it may signal Polanski's artistic redemption". He would later go on to say that the film "illustrates that theme and proves that Polanski's own art has survived the chaos of his life—and the hell that war and bigotry once made of it". Richard Schickel of Time |
1724_14 | magazine called it a "raw, unblinkable film", and said that, "We admire this film for its harsh objectivity and refusal to seek our tears, our sympathies." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the film "contains moments of irony, of ambiguity, and of strange beauty, as when we finally get a look at Warsaw and see a panorama of destruction, a world of color bombed into black-and-white devastation". He also said that, "In the course of showing us a struggle for survival, in all its animal simplicity, Polanski also gives us humanity, in all its complexity." A.O. Scott of The New York Times said that Szpilman "comes to resemble one of Samuel Beckett's gaunt existential clowns, shambling through a barren, bombed-out landscape clutching a jar of pickles. He is like the walking punchline to a cosmic jest of unfathomable cruelty." He also felt that "Szpilman's encounter, in the war's last days, with a music-loving German officer, "courted sentimentality by associating the |
1724_15 | love of art with moral decency, an equation the Nazis themselves, steeped in Beethoven and Wagner, definitively refuted". |
1724_16 | Home media
The Pianist was released digitally on 27 May 2003 in a double-sided disc Special Edition DVD, with the film on one side and special features on the other. Some Bonus Material included a making-of, interviews with Brody, Polanski, and Harwood, and clips of Szpilman playing the piano. The Polish DVD edition included an audio commentary track by production designer Starski and director of photography Edelman.
Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the film on HD-DVD on 8 January 2008 with extras comprising the featurette "A Story of Survival" and rare footage of the real Władysław Szpilman playing his piano, as well as additional interviews with Adrien Brody and other crew. |
1724_17 | Optimum Home Entertainment released The Pianist to the European market on Blu-ray as part of their StudioCanal Collection on 13 September 2010, the film's second release on Blu-ray. The first was troublesome due to issues with subtitles; the initial BD lacked subtitles for spoken German dialogue. Optimum later rectified this, but the initial release also lacked notable special features. The StudioCanal Collection version includes an extensive Behind the Scenes look, as well as several interviews with the makers of the film and Szpilman's relatives.
Music |
1724_18 | The piano piece heard at the beginning of the film is Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor Lento con gran espressione, Op. posth.
The piano piece that is heard being played by a next door neighbour while Szpilman was in hiding at an apartment is also an arrangement of Umówiłem się z nią na dziewiątą.
The piano music heard in the abandoned house when Szpilman had just discovered a hiding place in the attic is the Piano Sonata No. 14 (Moonlight Sonata) by Beethoven. It would later be revealed that German officer Hosenfeld was the pianist. The German composition juxtaposed with the mainly Polish/Chopin selection of Szpilman.
The piano piece played when Szpilman is confronted by Hosenfeld is Chopin's Ballade in G minor, Op. 23, but the version played in the movie was shortened (the entire piece lasts about 10 minutes).
The cello piece heard at the middle of the film, played by Dorota, is the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1. |
1724_19 | The piano piece heard at the end of the film, played with an orchestra, is Chopin's Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22.
Shots of Szpilman's hands playing the piano in close-up were performed by Polish classical pianist Janusz Olejniczak (b. 1952), who also performed on the soundtrack.
Since Polanski wanted the film to be as realistic as possible, any scene showing Brody playing was actually his playing overdubbed by recordings performed by Olejniczak. In order for Brody's playing to look like it was at the level of Szpilman's, he spent many months prior to and during the filming practising so that his keystrokes on the piano would convince viewers that Brody himself was playing. |
1724_20 | Accolades
See also
Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw – Szpilman was one of the most notable persons to remain in Warsaw after its destruction by the Nazis and before its liberation by the Red Army in January 1945.
List of Holocaust films
References
External links
Wladyslaw Szpilman's personal Website: The Pianist - The book
Szpilman's Warsaw: The History behind The Pianist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Pianist at culture.pl |
1724_21 | Władysław Szpilman
2002 films
2002 biographical drama films
2000s war drama films
French films
French biographical drama films
French war drama films
German films
German biographical drama films
German war drama films
Polish films
Polish biographical drama films
Polish war drama films
British films
British biographical drama films
British war drama films
2000s English-language films
Polish-language films
2000s German-language films
2000s Russian-language films
Best Film César Award winners
Films scored by Wojciech Kilar
Films about pianos and pianists
Films about classical music and musicians
Films about Jews and Judaism
Films based on biographies
Films directed by Roman Polanski
Films featuring a Best Actor Academy Award-winning performance
Films featuring a Best Actor César Award-winning performance
Films set in Poland
Films set in Warsaw
Films set in 1939
Films set in 1940
Films set in 1942
Films set in 1943
Films set in 1944
Films set in 1945
Films shot in Poland |
1724_22 | Films whose director won the Best Directing Academy Award
Films whose writer won the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award
Holocaust films
Jewish Polish history
Musical films based on actual events
Films about Nazism
Palme d'Or winners
Films with screenplays by Roman Polanski
World War II films based on actual events
Babelsberg Studio films
StudioCanal films
BAFTA winners (films)
Best Film BAFTA Award winners
Films whose director won the Best Direction BAFTA Award
Films whose director won the Best Director César Award
Films produced by Alain Sarde
Czech Lion Awards winners (films)
English-language French films
English-language German films
English-language Polish films
Films with screenplays by Ronald Harwood
2002 drama films
German prison films
Golden Eagle Award (Russia) for Best Foreign Language Film winners
British World War II films
French World War II films
German World War II films
Polish World War II films |
1725_0 | Thomas McMahon (born 17 June 1936, Dorking, Surrey) is British Roman Catholic bishop. From 1980 to 2014, he was the Bishop of Brentwood; he is currently Bishop Emeritus.
Life
McMahon grew up in Harlow and attended St. Bede's Grammar School, Manchester, before training for the priesthood at St. Sulpice, Paris. He was ordained on 28 November 1959 at the seminary in Wonersh.
He was appointed an assistant priest in Colchester, where he served for five years. From 1964 to 1969 he was appointed to Westcliff-on-Sea, and then became parish priest of Stock (where he continues to live as parish priest). From 1972 to 1980 he served as Chaplain to Essex University. He was a member of the National Ecumenical Commission. |
1725_1 | On 17 July 1980 Cardinal Basil Hume consecrated him Bishop of Brentwood. He has been a member of I.C.E.L. (representing the Bishops of England and Wales on the Episcopal Board) since 1983. He was Chairman of the Bishops' Pastoral Liturgy Committee from 1983 to 1997, and has been Chairman of the Bishops' Church Music Committee since 1985.
Work in the diocese
McMahon was Chairman of the Brentwood Diocesan Ecumenical Commission in 1979. Brentwood is the only diocese in the country with boundaries that are co-terminous to the Anglican Diocese and there is very close co-operation on both a personal and pastoral level between the two bishops. They meet every month in the early morning for an hour's prayer, followed by a working breakfast. They undertake many joint engagements in their dioceses. |
1725_2 | Brentwood has five ecumenical parishes where there is shared ownership of the church between the denominations; two shared primary schools and there is also a joint pilgrimage each year to the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, Bradwell. McMahon was Chairman of the Essex Church Leaders Consultative Council from 1984 to 1993, and he is a member of the Barking Church Leaders Group and the London Church Leaders Group.
McMahon is patron of a number of groups and organisations, notably Vice-President of Pax Christi since 1987. He was a founder member of the Movement for Christian Democracy and together with Lord Alton visited refugee camps and homes in Albania in September 1999. |
1725_3 | McMahon takes special interest in all areas of pastoral work. He has been involved with various developments in the diocese, including the establishment of the Justice and Peace Commission; Social Welfare Commission; Youth Commission and the Diocesan Pastoral Centre at New Hall and the Diocesan House of Prayer at Brentwood.
There have also been various programmes in the diocese, such as the Diocesan Renewal Programme, the Movement for a Better World (1982); the Ministry to Priests Programme (1984); and a ten-year pastoral plan for the diocese leading up to the year 2000.
He was responsible for the building of the diocesan offices 'Cathedral House' in Brentwood (1982), followed by the building of a new Cathedral in 1989 by the classical architect, Quinlan Terry. It is the first cathedral to be built in the classical style since St. Paul's. McMahon has also founded a Cathedral and Choral Trust and extended the Choir School (2000). |
1725_4 | Since his consecration as Bishop of Brentwood in 1980, the Catholic population of the diocese has increased steadily, while the number of priests has remained approximately stable, leading to a decline in the ratio of priests to people comparable with that occurring elsewhere in the Western world over the same period. As of December 2018, there are nine students in training for the priesthood. |
1725_5 | In March 2015 it was heard at Southwark Crown Court that McMahon was one of two bishops responsible for allowing Anthony McSweeney to be appointed as a priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia following an incident in 1998 in which "a housekeeper found what she said were pornographic images at [McSweeney's] home." The matter was heard by McMahon, and explained to Bishop Peter Smith, and was decided upon as an incident for clergy discipline and not investigated by the Police. McSweeney was allowed to continue practising as a priest and governor at a local High School. Anthony McSweeney was later jailed for abusing boys at the Grafton House children's home between 1978 and 1981.
Recognition |
1725_6 | McMahon's wide involvement in the life of the county of Essex was recognised when in 1991 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the University of Essex and in 1992 elected President of the Essex Show. He is a member of the Court of both the University of Essex and the North East London University.
His personal hobbies and interests include music, reading, art, architecture, tennis and walking. Mayhew McCrimmon have published two of his books: The Mass Explained and Altar Servers' Handbook.
Retirement
McMahon tendered his resignation as Bishop of Brentwood on reaching the age of 75 in June 2011 and celebrated a farewell Mass in December 2012, and remained in the post until 2014, when Alan Williams was announced as the new Bishop of Brentwood.
Bibliography
References
External links
Diocese of Brentwood web site: Biography of Bishop Thomas |
1725_7 | 1936 births
People associated with the University of Essex
People from Dorking
Roman Catholic bishops of Brentwood
People educated at St Bede's College, Manchester
Living people
People from Stock, Essex |
1726_0 | A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial counter-espionage to protect secret projects and the like from business rivals, or to give names to projects whose marketing name has not yet been determined. Another reason for the use of names and phrases in the military is that they transmit with a lower level of cumulative errors over a walkie-talkie or radio link than actual names. |
1726_1 | Military origins |
1726_2 | During World War I, names common to the Allies referring to nations, cities, geographical features, military units, military operations, diplomatic meetings, places, and individual persons were agreed upon, adapting pre-war naming procedures in use by the governments concerned. In the British case names were administered and controlled by the Inter Services Security Board (ISSB) staffed by the War Office. This procedure was coordinated with the United States when America entered the war. Random lists of names were issued to users in alphabetical blocks of ten words and were selected as required. Words became available for re-use after six months and unused allocations could be reassigned at discretion and according to need. Judicious selection from the available allocation could result in clever meanings and result in an aptronym or backronym, although policy was to select words that had no obviously deducible connection with what they were supposed to be concealing. Those for the |
1726_3 | major conference meetings had a partial naming sequence referring to devices or instruments which had an ordinal number as part of their meaning, e.g., the third meeting was "TRIDENT". Joseph Stalin, whose last name means "man of steel", was given the name "GLYPTIC", meaning "an image carved out of stone". |
1726_4 | Reference: Glossary of Names from U.S. Army in World War II – Washington Command Post: The Operations Division
World War II Allied Operations
Abbreviations, Acronyms, Codewords, Terms Appearing in WW II Histories and Documents
Information from original files held at The National Archives (formerly The Public Record Office) which hold the publicly available records of central government for the UK
German code names
Ewen Montagu, a British Naval intelligence officer, discloses in Beyond Top Secret Ultra that during World War II, Nazi Germany habitually used ad hoc code names as nicknames which often openly revealed or strongly hinted at their content or function.
Some German code names: |
1726_5 | Golfplatz (German for "golf course") – Britain, employed by the Abwehr
Samland – The United States (from Uncle Sam), employed by the Abwehr
Heimdall (a god whose power was "to see for a hundred miles") – long-range radar
Wotan – an aerial bombing navigation system. Knowing that the god Wotan had only one eye, R. V. Jones, a British scientist working for Air Intelligence of the British Air Ministry and SIS inferred that the device used a single beam and from that determined, correctly, how it must work. A counter-system was quickly created which made Wotan useless.
Operation Seelöwe (Sea-lion) – plans to invade Britain (lions being prominent in the coat of arms of the United Kingdom)
Operation Barbarossa (Frederick Barbarossa) – plans to go east and invade the Soviet Union |
1726_6 | Conversely, Operation Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine) was deliberately named to suggest the opposite of its purpose a defensive "watch" as opposed to a massive blitzkrieg operation, just as was Operation Weserübung (Weser-exercise), which signified the plans to invade Norway and Denmark in April 1940.
Code names of other powers
Britain and the United States developed the security policy of assigning code names intended to give no such clues to the uninitiated. For example, the British counter measures against the V-2 was called Operation Crossbow. The atomic bomb project centered in New Mexico was called the Manhattan Project, derived from the Manhattan Engineer District which managed the program. The code name for the American A-12 / SR-71 spy plane project, producing the fastest, highest-flying aircraft in the world, was Oxcart. The American group that planned that country's first ICBM was called the Teapot Committee. |
1726_7 | Although the word could stand for a menace to shipping (in this case, that of Japan), the American code name for the attack on the subtropical island of Okinawa in World War II was Operation Iceberg. The Soviet Union's project to base missiles in Cuba was named Operation Anadyr after their closest bomber base to the US (just across the Bering Strait from Nome, Alaska). The names of colors are generally avoided in American practice to avoid confusion with meteorological reporting practices. Britain, in contrast, made deliberately non-meaningful use of them, through the system of rainbow codes.
Aircraft recognition reporting names |
1726_8 | Although German and Italian aircraft were not given code names by their Allied opponents, in 1942, Captain Frank T. McCoy, an intelligence officer of the USAAF, invented a system for the identification of Japanese military aircraft. Initially using short, "hillbilly" boys' names such as "Pete", "Jake", and "Rufe", the system was later extended to include girls' names and names of trees and birds, and became widely used by the Allies throughout the Pacific theater of war. This type of naming scheme differs from the other use of code names in that it does not have to be kept secret, but is a means of identification where the official nomenclature is unknown or uncertain. |
1726_9 | The policy of recognition reporting names was continued into the Cold War for Soviet, other Warsaw Pact, and Communist Chinese aircraft. Although this was started by the Air Standards Co-ordinating Committee (ASCC) formed by the United States, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it was extended throughout NATO as the NATO reporting name for aircraft, rockets and missiles. These names were considered by the Soviets as being like a nickname given to one's unit by the opponents in a battle. The Soviets did not like the Sukhoi Su-25 getting the code name "Frogfoot". However, some names were appropriate, such as "Condor" for the Antonov An-124, or, most famously, "Fulcrum" for the Mikoyan MiG-29, which had a "pivotal" role in Soviet air-strategy. |
1726_10 | Code names were adopted by the following process. Aerial or space reconnaissance would note a new aircraft at a Warsaw Pact airbase. The intelligence units would then assign it a code name consisting of the official abbreviation of the base, then a letter, for example, "Ram-A", signifying an aircraft sighted at Ramenskoye Airport. Missiles were given designations like "TT-5", for the fifth rocket seen at Tyura-Tam. When more information resulted in knowing a bit about what a missile was used for, it would be given a designation like "SS-6", for the sixth surface-to-surface missile design reported. Finally, when either an aircraft or a missile was able to be photographed with a hand-held camera, instead of a reconnaissance aircraft, it was given a name like "Flanker" or "Scud" always an English word, as international pilots worldwide are required to learn English. The Soviet manufacturer or designation – which may be mistakenly inferred by NATO – has nothing to do with it. |
1726_11 | Jet-powered aircraft received two-syllable names like Foxbat, while propeller aircraft were designated with short names like Bull. Fighter names began with an "F", bombers with a "B", cargo aircraft with a "C". Training aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft were grouped under the word "miscellaneous", and received "M". The same convention applies to missiles, with air-launched ground attack missiles beginning with the letter "K" and surface-to-surface missiles (ranging from intercontinental ballistic missiles to antitank rockets) with the letter "S", air-to-air missiles "A", and surface-to-air missiles "G".
Military operations since Churchill
Throughout the Second World War, the British allocation practice favored one-word code names (Jubilee, Frankton). That of the Americans favored longer compound words, although the name Overlord was personally chosen by Winston Churchill himself. Many examples of both types can be cited, as can exceptions. |
1726_12 | Winston Churchill was particular about the quality of code names. He insisted that code words, especially for dangerous operations, would be not overly grand nor petty nor common. One emotional goal he mentions is to never have to report to anyone that their son "was killed in an operation called 'Bunnyhug' or 'Ballyhoo'." |
1726_13 | Presently, British forces tend to use one-word names, presumably in keeping with their post-World War II policy of reserving single words for operations and two-word names for exercises. British operation code names are usually randomly generated by a computer and rarely reveal its components or any political implications unlike the American names (e.g., the 2003 invasion of Iraq was called "Operation Telic" compared to Americans' "Operation Iraqi Freedom", obviously chosen for propaganda rather than secrecy). Americans prefer two-word names, whereas the Canadians and Australians use either. The French military currently prefer names drawn from nature (such as colors or the names of animals), for instance Opération Daguet ("brocket deer") or Opération Baliste ("Triggerfish"). The CIA uses alphabetical prefixes to designate the part of the agency supporting an operation. |
1726_14 | In many cases with the United States, the first word of the name has to do with the intent of the program. Programs with "have" as the first word, such as Have Blue for the stealth fighter development, are developmental programs, not meant to produce a production aircraft. Programs that start with Senior, such as Senior Trend for the F-117, are for aircraft in testing meant to enter production.
In the United States code names are commonly set entirely in upper case. This is not done in other countries, though for the UK in British documents the code name is in upper case while operation is shortened to OP e.g., "Op. TELIC".
This presents an opportunity for a bit of public-relations (Operation Just Cause), or for controversy over the naming choice (Operation Infinite Justice, renamed Operation Enduring Freedom). Computers are now used to aid in the selection. And further, there is a distinction between the secret names during former wars and the published names of recent ones. |
1726_15 | Project code name
A project code name is a code name (usually a single word, short phrase or acronym) which is given to a project being developed by industry, academia, government, and other concerns.
Project code names are typically used for several reasons: |
1726_16 | To uniquely identify the project within the organization. Code names are frequently chosen to be outside the normal business/domain jargon that the organization uses, in order to not conflict with established terminology.
To assist with maintaining secrecy of the project against rival concerns. Some corporations routinely change project names in order to further confuse competitors.
When the goal of the project is to develop one or more commercial products, use of a code name allows the eventual choice of product nomenclature (the name the product(s) are marketed and sold under) to be decoupled from the development effort. This is especially important when one project generates multiple products, or multiple projects are needed to produce a single product. This allows for subprojects to be given a separate identity from the main project. |
1726_17 | To decouple an early phase of a development effort (which may have failed) from a subsequent phase (which may be given a "fresh start") as a political tool.
To prevent casual observers from concluding that a pre-release version is a new release of the product, thus helping reduce confusion. |
1726_18 | Different organizations have different policies regarding the use and publication of project code names. Some companies take great pains to never discuss or disclose project code names outside of the company (other than with outside entities who have a need to know, and typically are bound with a non-disclosure agreement). Other companies never use them in official or formal communications, but widely disseminate project code names through informal channels (often in an attempt to create a marketing buzz for the project). Still others (such as Microsoft) discuss code names publicly, and routinely use project code names on beta releases and such, but remove them from final product(s). In the case of Windows 95, the code name "CHICAGO" was left embedded in the INF File structure and remained required through Windows Me. At the other end of the spectrum, Apple Computer includes the project code names for Mac OS X as part of the official name of the final product, a practice that was |
1726_19 | started in 2002 with Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar". Google and the AOSP also used this for their Android operating system until 2013, where the codename was different from the release name. |
1726_20 | Famous code names |
1726_21 | Military
Operation Anthropoid – assassination of top Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in Prague
Operation Arc Light – United States Air Force B-52 bombing campaign during the Vietnam War
Operation Barbarossa – German invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Black Tornado – began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November when India's National Security Guards (NSG) conducted Operation Black Tornado to flush out the attackers from the Hotel Taj Mahal, Mumbai
Operation Blue Star – was an Indian military operation which took place 3–8 June 1984, in order to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab, India.
Operation Market Garden – failed invasion of Germany (1944)
Operation Morero - South African Special Forces sent to the Central African Republic to protect president François Bozizé. |
1726_22 | Operation Neptune Spear – The operation, was carried out in a Central Intelligence Agency-led operation in which Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, by Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
"Geronimo", the codename for Osama bin Laden during Operation Neptune's Spear
Operation Desert Storm – The US code name of the airland conflict from 17 January 1991, through 11 April 1991 in Kuwait during the First Gulf War.
Operation Overlord – Allied invasion of Normandy
Operation Rolling Thunder – the sustained bombing campaign conducted against North Vietnam by the United States and South Vietnam
Operation Sea Lion – the planned invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany which was never carried out |
1726_23 | Operation Shakti – (Pokhran-II) refers to the series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India at the Indian Army's Pokhran Test Range in May 1998. It was initiated with the detonation of one fusion and three fission bombs.
Operation Torch – British-American invasion of North Africa in 1942
Manhattan Project (with Trinity, Little Boy, and Fat Man) – U.S. nuclear weapons program during World War II
MKULTRA – CIA project (an attempt at mind control technology & technique)
Smiling Buddha – (Pokhran-I), was an assigned codename of India's first nuclear weapon explosion, which took place on 18 May 1974. The device was detonated by the Indian Army in the long-constructed army base, Pokhran Test Range. It was also the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Project-706 (with Chagai-I and Chagai-II) – an early Pakistani secret code name for its nuclear weapons programme during the Cold War |
1726_24 | Tank – originally a code name adopted in 1915 by the British government for the first tracked armoured vehicles, which were then under development
Tube Alloys – British nuclear program |
1726_25 | Commercial |
1726_26 | AMD have also been naming their CPUs since 90 nm generations under the K8 micro-architecture after the name of cities around the world. For the CPUs under the Phenom brand, the names of stars were used as code names. For Opteron server CPUs and platforms, cities related to the Ferrari Formula One team were used. Mobile platforms are named after birds (except for Puma). For example:
Single-core Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX : Newcastle, Venice, San Diego and Lima
Dual-core Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64 FX: Manchester, Toledo, Windsor and Brisbane
Phenom CPUs: Agena (Beta Centauri), Toliman (Alpha Centauri), Kuma (Nu Draconis), Deneb (Alpha Cygni), Propus (Eta Geminorum), Heka (Lambda Orionis), Rana (Delta Eridani), Regor (Gamma Velorum)
Opteron CPUs: Barcelona, Shanghai, São Paulo, Istanbul
Server platforms: Catalunya, Fiorano, Maranello
Mobile CPUs: Griffin, Lion, Swift
Mobile platforms: Kite, Puma, Shrike, Eagle |
1726_27 | Apple currently names the major releases of macOS (previously known as Mac OS X) after major California landmarks, such as Mavericks (10.9), Yosemite (10.10), El Capitan (10.11), Sierra (10.12 ), High Sierra (10.13) Mojave (10.14), Catalina (10.15), Big Sur (11.0) and Monterey (12.0). Previous releases were named after big cats: Cheetah (10.0), Puma (10.1), Jaguar (10.2), Panther (10.3), Tiger (10.4), Leopard (10.5), Snow Leopard (10.6), Lion (10.7), and Mountain Lion (10.8). Other former codenames include:
Composers, such as Copland, after composer Aaron Copland; and Gershwin, after George Gershwin.
Women's names, e.g. Jennifer (rumored for the Macintosh IIx), and Lisa.
Varieties of apples, including Cortland for the Apple IIgs, and Macintosh (from McIntosh). |
1726_28 | Carl Sagan, which was used for the Power Macintosh 7100 while it was under development. In 1994 astronomer Carl Sagan filed two lawsuits against Apple related to that usage, and lost both, reaching an out-of-court settlement with the company.
Intel often names CPU projects after rivers in the American West, particularly in the state of Oregon (where most of Intel's CPU projects are designed). Examples include Willamette, Deschutes, Yamhill, Tualatin, and Clackamas. See List of Intel codenames.
Microsoft often names projects (in particular, versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems) after place names. Examples include Chicago (Windows 95), Daytona (Windows NT 3.5), Memphis (Windows 98), Whistler (Windows XP) and Longhorn (Windows Vista).
For a period of time, Mozilla used code names which are mostly named after national parks to reference different versions of the Mozilla Firefox browser:
Firefox 2.0: Bon Echo
Firefox 3.0: Gran Paradiso
Firefox 3.5: Shiretoko |
1726_29 | Firefox 3.6: Namoroka
Firefox 4.0: Tumucumaque
Firefox pre-beta: Aurora
Firefox trunk builds: Nightly
Nintendo often uses code names for new consoles. The best-known is that of Wii, which was code-named Revolution for over a year. Others include the GameCube's code name of Dolphin, the Game Boy Advance's code name of Atlantis, the Nintendo 64 as Project Reality, the DS code name Project Nitro, the Game Boy Micro code name Oxygen, the Wii U code name Project Cafe, and Nintendo's latest console Nintendo Switch as NX.
Return of the Jedi was code-named "Blue Harvest" while in production and principal photography. This was reportedly to prevent disruption by fans and the media as well as to avoid price gouging by local merchants and vendors.
The Chamber of Secrets sequel of the Harry Potter film series was code-named "Incident of 57th Street" to disguise the production from its increasingly rabid fanbase, who would seek out filming locations and disrupt production. |
1726_30 | See also
Code word (figure of speech)
CIA cryptonyms
Military Operations listed by Codename
NATO reporting name
Pseudonym, the term for a code name when applied to a single person
Rainbow Codes
Secret Service codename
Sensitive Compartmented Information
List of Microsoft codenames
Working title
References
External links
Code Names: A Look Behind Secret U.S. Military Plans in the Middle East, Africa and at Home – Broadcast on Democracy Now! January 27, 2005.
Project management
Names |
1727_0 | Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even though she was not considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. |
1727_1 | Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. Her most enduring contribution to literature is her memoirs, notably the first volume, "Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée" (1958), which have a warmth and descriptive power. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature. She was also known for her open, lifelong relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. |
1727_2 | Early years
Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908 into a bourgeois Parisian family in the 6th arrondissement. Her parents were Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a lawyer, who once aspired to be an actor, and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devout Catholic. Simone's sister, Hélène, was born two years later. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I, and Françoise insisted the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school.
Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!" Because of her family's straitened circumstances, she could no longer rely on her dowry, and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. She took this opportunity to take steps towards earning a living for herself. |
1727_3 | She first worked with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss, when all three completed their practice teaching requirements at the same secondary school. Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the École Normale Supérieure in preparation for the agrégation in philosophy, a highly competitive postgraduate examination which serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for it that she met École Normale students Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or "beaver"). The jury for the agrégation narrowly awarded Sartre first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed second and, at age 21, was the youngest person ever to pass the exam. |
1727_4 | Writing of her youth in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter she said:
"...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual." |
1727_5 | Secondary and post-secondary education
Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education after completing her high school years at Lycée Fenelon. After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at the . She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and after completing her degree in 1928, wrote her (roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis) on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]). Her studies of political philosophy through university influenced her to start thinking of societal concerns rather than her own individual issues. |
1727_6 | Religious upbringing
Beauvoir was raised in a strict Catholic household. She had been sent to convent schools as a youth. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir questioned her faith as she saw many changes in the world after witnessing tragedies throughout her life. She abandoned her faith in her early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of her life. Beauvoir quotes "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself."
Middle years
From 1929 until 1943, Beauvoir taught at the lycée level until she could support herself solely on the earnings of her writings. She taught at the (Marseille), the , and the (1936–39). |
1727_7 | Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met during her college years. Intrigued by her determination as an educator, he sought out to make their relationship romantic. However, she had no interest in doing so. During October 1929, Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became a couple and, after they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis: One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease". Though Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described in The Second Sex and elsewhere bore little resemblances to the marriage standards of the day. Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together. |
1727_8 | Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir's She Came to Stay and "Phenomenology and Intent". However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz. The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness.
Personal life |
1727_9 | Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar lecturing with her chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life." Beginning in 1929, Beauvoir and Sartre were partners and remained so for 51 years, until his death in 1980. She chose never to marry and never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, write and teach, and take lovers. She lived with Claude Lanzmann from 1952 to 1959. |
1727_10 | Perhaps her most famous lover was American author Nelson Algren, whom she met in Chicago in 1947, and to whom she wrote across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband." Algren won the National Book Award for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France's most prestigious literary prize for The Mandarins, in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring. |
1727_11 | Beauvoir was bisexual, and her relationships with young women were controversial. French author Bianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book Mémoires d'une Jeune Fille Dérangée (published in English under the title A Disgraceful Affair) that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s. Lamblin had affairs with both Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir. In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her 17-year-old lycée pupil Natalie Sorokine in 1939. Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the age of consent in France at the time was 15), and Beauvoir's license to teach in France was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated.
In 1977, Beauvoir, Sartre, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and much of the era's intelligentsia signed a petition seeking to completely remove the age of consent in France. |
1727_12 | Notable works
She Came to Stay
Beauvoir published her first novel She Came to Stay in 1943. It has been assumed that it is inspired by her and Sartre's sexual relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where Beauvoir taught during the early 1930s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began a relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his death, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also supported Olga for years, until she met and married Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Beauvoir. However, the main thrust of the novel is philosophical, a scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding philosophical pre-occupation - the relationship between the self and the other. |
1727_13 | In the novel, set just before the outbreak of World War II, Beauvoir creates one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda. The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have a ménage à trois with the young woman. The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.
She Came to Stay was followed by many others, including The Blood of Others, which explores the nature of individual responsibility, telling a love story between two young French students participating in the Resistance in World War II.
Existentialist ethics |
1727_14 | In 1944, Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, a discussion on existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essay The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947); it is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism. In the essay, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such as Being and Nothingness. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance.
Les Temps modernes
At the end of World War II, Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps modernes, a political journal which Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. Beauvoir used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death. |
1727_15 | Sexuality, existentialist feminism and The Second Sex
The Second Sex, first published in 1949 in French as Le Deuxième Sexe, turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into a feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient"). With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes. Beauvoir argues that "the fundamental source of women's oppression is its [femininity's] historical and social construction as the quintessential". |
1727_16 | Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined in relation to men. She pointed out that Aristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities", while Thomas Aquinas referred to woman as "imperfect man" and the "incidental" being. She quotes "In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."
Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom. |
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