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15 Times Tiny Countries Shocked the World by Resisting Invasions - History Collection 7. East Timor’s Struggle Against Indonesia (1975-1999) Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. From 1975 to 1999, East Timor endured a prolonged struggle against Indonesian occupation. The Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (Falintil), led by Xanana Gusmão,...

Few composers in history have had as widespread and controversial an influence as Richard Wagner. Eventually celebrated as the genius behind the music and libretti of works whose impact spread beyond the opera world to inspire poets and painters, Wagner struggled for many years to find an audience. He spent many formative years in exile following his revolutionary action, developing theories about art and society that were as seismic in their impact as his music.Richard Wagners Early YearsLeipzig Gewandhaus in 1870. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Stadtgeschichtliches Museum LeipzigRichard Wagner hailed from Leipzig, Germany. In the 18th century, it had been the home of J.S. Bach, who wrote many of his most celebrated works while employed at St. Thomas Church. Leipzig would also be the source of the Bach revival in the 19th century, when another native of the city (and a composer Wagner came to see as a great rival), Felix Mendelssohn, conducted Bachs St. Matthew Passion oratorio.Born in 1813, Wagners early life was dominated by passions for the theater and the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. His immersion in theatrical life came through his stepfather, Ludwig Geyer, an actor and playwright, who married Johanna Wagner when her son, Richard, was just a few months old. Wagner grew up believing, erroneously, that Geyer was his real father and that he was Jewish.Despite an early education in music and theater, Wagners first attempts at composing operas were fairly fruitless. Die Feen (1833) and Das Liebesverbot (1836) were in the Romantic vein popular at the time, but Wagner quickly discovered the unpredictability of the opera world, where employment posts were fleeting and debts racked up all too easily.Das Liebesverbot is notable because Wagner wrote it while working in Magdeburg, where he fell for and married the actress Minna Planer. This marriage, however, was also to be an education in unpredictability and tempestuousness.Beethoven with the Manuscript of Missa Solemnis, by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820. Source: Beethoven-Haus Museum, BonnNow living a peripatetic life, traveling between appointments in various centers of music, Wagner built up experiences that shaped his later ideas. In Paris, struggling to make a name for himself amidst the glitzy productions of successful French composers, Wagner formed strong opinions about the irreconcilability of commerce and art, and about French people.He wrote articles and short fiction to get by. The story A Pilgrimage to Beethoven distills his ideas about the French capital as a place of greed and philistinism, where even Beethovens greatness is ignored.At this time, Wagner also began to conceive anti-Semitic notions about the supposed dominance of Jewish people in Pariss operatic circles. For Wagner, this was part of the reason that contemporary opera was all commerce and no artand, of course, this must be why he struggled to get his operas staged.Actually, Wagner was being disingenuous. The Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most successful opera composers of the 19th century, lent strong support to Wagner, enabling him to stage his third opera, Rienzi, in Dresden in 1842.1848-49: A Turning PointSaxon and Prussian troops at Dresdens Neumarkt, artist unknown, 1848. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Saxon State Library, DresdenWagner was still in Dresden in 1848, a pivotal year across Europe. After moving there in 1842, he had composed The Flying Dutchman and Tannhuser, works which showed the beginnings of a departure from his early style. His art was evolving. However, for Wagner, art and revolution went hand in hand, and in 1848/1849, he got the chance to put his principles into action.Throughout Europe, a wave of revolutions broke out whose causes could be traced to the French Revolution of 1789, with its demonstration of the ability of ordinary people (what Marx would, in 1848, call the proletariat) to rise up against institutions such as the monarchy and aristocracy and claim democratic freedoms.Following the French Revolution, aspirations to create freer and more just societies were brewing all over the continent. In Germany, these aspirations were focused on the unification of the states then known as the German Confederation into one nation.Portrait of Mikhail Bakunin by Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, 1860, via Sothebys.Wagner, a fervent German nationalist, also passionately believed in the revolutionary call for democracy, feeling that he had been treated unjustly in the hierarchic world of opera, where aristocratic patronage seemed to be essential to success.He wrote articles in Dresdens left-wing newspaper and mixed with figures such as the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. When violence broke out in May 1849, Wagner was a prominent instigator, and a warrant for his arrest was issued. He consequently spent the next 12 years in exile, heading to Zurich in Switzerland.This was a turning point for Wagner because, in exile, he gained two things. Firstly, the notoriety that made him a popular cause for fellow composers such as Franz Liszt to take up (Liszt defiantly staged Wagners next opera, Lohengrin, in Weimar in 1850), and, secondly, the space to undertake profuse writings about his theories on art.The Art-Work of the FutureApollo and the Muses, by John Singer Sargent, 1921, via the Museum of Fine Arts BostonIn 1849 and 1850, Wagner wrote essays such as Art and Revolution, The Art-Work of the Future, and Opera and Drama. Contemporary opera was, as he had complained before, too commercialized, and this prioritization of money, above all, damaged opera as an art.Looking back to Ancient Greek theater, Wagner dreamed of a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all the artsmusic, poetry, dance, paintingwould come together. Operas would no longer be structured around one or two show-stopping arias, when the audience would leave off their private chatter to listen in awe to the diva of the hour. They would be sung through; every element of the music meticulously considered to complement the libretto, and vice versa.The music, too, would be like nothing anyone had heard before. Zukunftsmusik, or music of the future, was a term Wagners detractors were already using against him by the 1850s. The meaning of the term varied depending on who was using it. Zukunftsmusik could refer to Wagners innovation of techniques such as the leitmotif (a musical phrase which corresponds with a character or idea, woven throughout the drama) and endless melody, in which musical phrases do not reach a cadence, or resolution, but continuously overlap, unsettling the harmonic progressions on which music was traditionally constructed.Camilla Nylund and Klaus Florian Voigt in Tristan und Isolde at the Semperoper Dresden, 2024. Source: The Kennedy CenterEndless melody was one of the reasons Wagners detractors found his music unpalatable, even offensive. To his supporters, it was a necessary step beyond the popular insistence on catchy melodies, which had led to operas in which second-rate libretti were paired with scores containing a handful of tunes which audiences could hum to themselves afterwards.In the 1850s, Wagner sketched out worksinitially called music dramas, to emphasize the union of art forms he hoped to achievewhich put these theories into practice, and would become his best-loved works: Tristan and Isolde and the Ring cycle.He also wrote the essay Jewishness in Music, a diatribe giving full rein to his anti-Semitic beliefs. In the essay, he not only suggested that Jewish composers pandered to commercialism, but that German-Jewish composers, such as Mendelssohn and Wagners former supporter Meyerbeer, could never write truly German music.Published under a pseudonym, the essay was supposed to be considered objectively, not associated with Wagner personally, but its motivations could hardly have been more personal. Wagners views were a combination of the casual, unchallenged prejudice of his time and a bitter hatred amounting to persecution mania, stemming from artistic frustration and rejection, which found an all too easy target.Richard Wagner and King Ludwig II of BavariaLudwig IIs coronation portrait, by Ferdinand von Piloty, 1865. Source: Wikimedia Commons / King Ludwig II Museum, ChiemseeGiven Wagners antipathy for the practice of aristocratic patronage and commitment to meritocracy (an artistic hierarchy based solely on artistic genius), it is ironic that his return to Germany and triumphant staging of his mature works came about thanks to a monarch.King Ludwig II ascended to the throne of Bavaria aged 18, and was already what was coming to be known as a Wagnerite: a devotee of Wagners music dramas and writings. His offer to patronize Wagner, in 1864, came at an ideal time.The 1850s had seen the composers music and theories surge in popularity. He went to England in 1855 and conducted concerts in front of Queen Victoria. This period was also intellectually stimulating, as he elaborated his libretto for Tristan and Isolde by combining the original Arthurian legend with the pessimist philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.Photo of Richard Wagner by Franz Hanfstaengl, 1871. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Bavarian State Library, MunichAt the same time, the decade had also been full of personal drama. Wagners marriage to Minna was buckling under the pressure of their exile and dire finances, as well as his infidelity. His infatuation with Mathilde Wesendonck, whose husband helped to financially support Wagner, inspired much of Tristan and Isolde, which has a love triangle at its center. Minna left Wagner in the early 1860s, though not before the affair with Mathilde had come to a tortuous end.These personal circumstances, along with the newly completed Tristan under his belt, Wagner welcomed King Ludwigs overtures. Ludwigs interest in Wagner was intensely romantic, not merely philanthropic, and it seems that Wagner recognized the ulterior motive and let it pass.After all, here was a young king, blessed with more money than he could ever reasonably spend, offering to bankroll all of Wagners music dramas and encouraging him to write the story of his life. Titled Mein Leben, the work would take 20 years to write, spanning four volumes and more than a thousand pages. Ludwig would also soon start building Neuschwanstein Castle, which had rooms decorated with murals depicting scenes from Wagners works.Although in his letters to Ludwig, Wagner reciprocated the kings words of ardent longing, his heart was elsewhere. He had fallen for a woman named Cosima, daughter of Franz Liszt and wife of Hans von Blow, a prominent conductor who promoted Wagners work. In April 1865, just two months before von Blow conducted the premiere of Tristan and Isolde, Cosima gave birth to Wagners child: a daughter called Isolde.The Ring Cycle and BayreuthFor the Third Tableau of Das Rheingold, by Aubrey Beardsley, 1896. Source: The Yellow Nineties 2.0By 1876, Wagner had completed a cycle of four operas which, since the beginning over 20 years previously, he had envisioned as his masterwork. The tetralogy was called Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) and was based on old Germanic and Norse epics. In line with Wagners fervent nationalism and wish for the German states to be unified as one country (and, he hoped, one race), the cycle was meant as a foundational work for the German people.The first drama, The Rhinegold, sets up the events of the tetralogy: the theft of the mythical gold from the River Rhine, the enslavement of the Nibelung people, and the all-powerful god Wotan, who fashions a ring from the gold.In the sequel, The Valkyrie, we are introduced to the incestuous siblings Sieglinde and Siegmund, whose child, Siegfried, is destined to be a hero, and Brnnhilde, a warrior goddess who will help save him. The third and fourth dramas, Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods, show Siegfrieds quest for the ring, Wotans vengeance, and Brnnhildes self-sacrifice.Along with these dramas, conceived as total works of art in which music, words, and visual art were perfectly blended, Wagner had the idea of building a theater solely for performances of the Ring. Financed by Ludwig II, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, or festival theater, was purposely built in an out-of-the-way village, rather than in one of the major centers of German music.Bayreuth Festspielhaus before 1882. Source: Bayreuther Festpiele / RWA National Archives BayreuthEvery aspect was designed to enhance the performances of Wagners work, from the way the sound reverberated in the auditorium to the hidden orchestra pit and wedge-shaped seating arrangement, which gave every audience member an equal view of the stage.Work on the theater at Bayreuth began in 1872, with the intention of opening in time for the premiere of all four works in the Ring cycle. Wagner did not quite get his waythe first two parts of the cycle were premiered individually a few years earlierbut when Bayreuth opened in 1876, its first performance was the premiere of the Ring in full.In 1882, an annual festival having been established at Bayreuth, it hosted the premiere of Wagners final music drama, Parsifal. At last, he had found a way to avoid the jostling and negotiations with the music industry that had so infuriated him. With Bayreuth, he could stage his works exactly as he liked, keeping all the revenue for the continuation of the theater, and bringing audiences to him rather than condescending to try and attract them.The Case of NietzschePhotograph of Friedrich Nietzsche by Gustav Schultze, 1882. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe Ring and Wagners other works were steeped in philosophy, from Schopenhauer to mysticism and Christian theology. In 1868, he met a young, up-and-coming philosopher, who would influence Wagner and be influenced by him in turn: Friedrich Nietzsche.1872s The Birth of Tragedy chimed with Wagners interest in Ancient Greece as the ideal civilization, with Nietzsche meditating particularly on music in envisioning his influential dichotomy between the Apollonian (order and form) and Dionysiac (chaos and disorder). Nietzsche wrote the book at the instigation of Wagner (and Cosima, now married to the composer), and it specifically name-checked the composers works as modern embodiments of the Greek ideal.Nietzsches relationship with the Wagners was close and personal. It is a matter of speculation whether Nietzsche was more enamored with Richard or Cosima. He certainly wrote about having fallen in love with the latter, but was this an effect of her closeness to the composer? Commentators from Sigmund Freud onwards have read a certain amount of repression into the philosophers relationships with men. Nietzsche appears to have idolized Wagner, who, as with Ludwig, encouraged and probably quite enjoyed the admiration.Cartoon of Richard Wagner from Les Moeurs et la Caricature en Allemand by J. Grand-Carteret, undated. Source: Meister DruckeBy 1888, though, Nietzsche had repudiated Wagnernot privately, since the composer had died back in 1883 and their relationship had cooled before thenbut publicly. In the essays The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche Contra Wagner, the philosopher took a radical new stance against his former idol, albeit one which many readers shared.By the fin de sicle, many saw Wagner and his music as dangerous, its endless melody and lack of rhythm exerting a hypnotic effect on listeners, leaving them open to pernicious suggestions by this dictator-like figure pulling all the strings.Nietzsche continued to admire some things about Wagner, but no longer saw him as the redeemer of German music. Instead, he was a sign of decadence and moral decline. For Wagners supporters, Nietzsches diatribes would be invalidated by the fact that the philosopher succumbed to a mental breakdown just a year later, but the posthumous battle over the significance of Wagner in German culture had begun.Wagnerism: From Decadent France to Nazi GermanyPortrait of Richard Wagner by Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1882. Source: MeisterdruckeThe cult of Wagner, after his death in 1883, went far beyond what he could have imaginedor, maybe, it was exactly the scope he had always dreamed of. Wagnerism spread across Europe, like a virus, some said, infecting just about every art form, from poetry to painting to architecture. His terminology around music of the future infiltrated beyond the arts, as people at the end of the 19th century envisioned a politics of the future, inventions of the future, men and women of the future, and so on.In late-19th-century France, his name was nearly inescapable in artistic circles. Painters such as Van Gogh and Czanne, poets such as Mallarm, and novelists such as Proust all aimed for Wagnerian effects in their work. Championing the German Romantic in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War was an act of counter-cultural protest for many of these artists. But three decades into the 20th century, Wagner ceased to be an anti-establishment figure.What had been latent and not widely recognized in Wagner and his works soon rose to the surface and became indelibly associated with him. Writings such as Jewishness in Music and his private anti-Semitic comments had been known only in a few circles during his lifetime, and the idea that his dramas contained anti-Semitic caricatures was not yet a common interpretation.Photograph of Richard Wagner, by Pierre-Louis Pierson, 1867. Source: Wikimedia CommonsWhen the Nazis came to power, however, they celebrated Wagner as the pinnacle of German culture, thanks to his portrayal in the Ring of what they saw as the pure essence of the ancient German spirit. Music by Jewish composers was suppressed, and the Bayreuth Festival flourished. Winifred Wagner, who was married to Richards son Siegfried, was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler and often welcomed him to the Wagner residence at Bayreuth.This is why Wagner has remained a controversial figure. The question of performing his music in Israel is still highly contested. Meanwhile, the Bayreuth Festival continues to be a mecca for devotees, with an intimidatingly long waiting list for tickets.His ambition to transform music and drama completely was fulfilled, with his work still striking audiences as avant-garde and challenging. His Ring cycle was a clear influence on later epics such as Lord of the Rings, and the interest in mythology, which he helped revive, is thriving today.Some argue, therefore, that Wagners influence has been so broad and varied (he has even been reclaimed by Jewish artists, for instance) that he need not be solely associated with the darker side of his legacy. For others, he remains an eternally contentious figure.

The Mayan Codices are four prehispanic books written before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. The volumes were created by professional scribes using paper made of the inner bark of a fig tree. With no formal titles, three of the four codices have been named after the cities where they were stored: Dresden, Madrid, and Paris. Together with inscriptions found in temples and monuments, the Mayan codices are a tangible record of their culture, science, society, and politics.The Written Records of Prehispanic CivilizationMap: Maya Empire provided by TheCollector.comSince the 19th century, different rediscovered Maya monuments, temples, and drawings have been important in developing knowledge about this civilization. The Mayas settled in the Yucatn Peninsula, now Mexico and Guatemala, but expanded to areas of Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. The earliest evidence of this culture dates back to 2000 BCE; it lasted until the conquest of Hernn Corts in the early 16th century.Similar to the Egyptian civilization, knowledge about the Maya comes mostly from drawings and inscriptions left on rocks and ancient papers. The Maya writing method was the most developed in pre-Hispanic America, often compared to those found in Egypt or Mesopotamia. The Maya used inner bark surfaces to inscribe glyphs and different color inks made of carbon soot (black), hematite, lead and insects (red), and plants. Among all these pigments, Maya blue has been studied extensively by researchers because of its long-lasting brightness and unaltered properties. It was known to have been created using an indigo plant and palygorskite, a type of clay.Diego de Landas Destruction of Mayan HistoryImage of Madrid Codex showing the Maya blue by the Kislak Collection. Source: Library of CongressThe Maya Codices are the only manuscripts that survived the intense destruction undertaken by Spanish colonizers, as they believed that demons influenced the local knowledge and that it was a threat to the recently introduced Christian faith. For instance, in 1562, Friar Diego de Landa, a Franciscan bishop of the Archdiocese of Yucatan, sent by the Spanish crown to evangelize Indigenous people and one of the first Franciscans to arrive in the Yucatan Peninsula, ordered hundreds of Mayan objects and books be burned because he considered them to be evidence of demonic adoration.The region was part of Nueva Espaa, under the governance of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. During this time, Spanish conquistadors were granted the right to the land by the Treaty of Tordesillas, which permitted them to settle in the conquered Indigenous lands of Mesoamerica in exchange for converting Indigenous people to Catholicism and making them subjects of the Spanish Empire.In 1562, after discovering an Indigenous site of adoration in Mani, the capital of the Tutul-Xiu Maya dynasty, De Landa ordered its destruction and the burning of many codices. This event led to numerous deaths, with some people burnt in their houses, hung on trees, or lost to suicide. De Landa himself recounted in his Relacin de las Cosas de Yucatn (Yucatan at the Time of the Spanish Encounter) that the burning of the codices caused them [the people] much affliction.Photo of Maya engravings on rock by Eirka Porras, 2009. Source: Wikimedia CommonsAlthough the primary mission of the Franciscan order was to protect Indigenous people from the encomenderos (colonists), De Landa pursued the forced imposition of Christian beliefs, often involving physical abuse and torture. De Landa took on inquisitor functions to eradicate any traces of paganism and adoration of idols, often forcefully baptizing people before their conversion. He had not, however, received official authorization from Spain to exercise such actions, which led him to be put on trial in Spain.Moreover, when the Spanish arrived in the region, the production of the local paper used to produce the codices was banned, and it was replaced by European paper. This was used, for instance, to create the Aztec Codex Mendoza (circa 1541).The Dresden CodexImage of one page of the Dresden Codex, 1200-1250. Source: Library of CongressThe Dresden Codex is the oldest of the Maya codices (11th-12th centuries) and the oldest surviving book written before the arrival of the Spanish. It arrived in Spain after being sent to King Charles V by Hernn Corts. Later, the Royal Library of Dresden obtained it in 1793 from a private owner in Vienna. During World War II, the Codex suffered in the flooding resulting from the bombings of Dresden in 1945.It is believed that the Dresden Codex was written and drawn by the peoples of the Yucatn Peninsula because different symbols in the codex are also present in monuments of the region. The codex contains information related to local history and calendrical and astronomical knowledge related to the movements of the moon and Venus. It has also been important in deciphering Maya hieroglyphs.The codex has been reproduced several times by figures such as German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt in 1810, Italian painter Agostino Aglio for Irish antiquarian Lord Kingsborough in 1826, German historian Ernst Frstemann in 1880, Mesoamerican archaeologist J. Eric Thompson in 1972, British Mayanist Ian Graham in 1959, and the Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt in Graz, Austria, in 1975. The codex is available for download from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies FAMSI website and is currently exhibited in the Saxon State Library in Dresden, Germany.The Madrid CodexImage of the Madrid Codex aka Tro-Cortesianus exhibited at the Museo de Amrica in Madrid, Spain, 1250-1450. Source: Wikimedia CommonsAlso known as the Codex Tro-Cortesianus, it was split in two when transported to Europe. The first part was rediscovered in 1866 by French Catholic priest and ethnologist Brasseur de Bourbourg in the archive of Spanish lawyer Juan de Tro y Ortolano. De Bourbourg also discovered Diego de Landas book Relacin de las Cosas de Yucatn. The first part of the codex is also known as the Codex Tro because of its former owner.The second part of the codex was owned by a Spanish collectionist named Juan Ignacio Mir, who, after being unable to convince the British Museum and the Imperial Library of Paris to buy the piece, sold it to the Archaeological Museum of Madrid in 1875. The second part of the codex is known as the Codex Cortesianus because it is believed that it was also Corts who brought it to Europe.In 1888, the French ethnologist Lon de Rosny discovered they were part of the same piece, which was ultimately dubbed the Codex Tro-Cortesianus. The piece is exhibited at the Museo de Amrica in Madrid, Spain. The codex was created between 1250 and 1450, and its origins are debated between the regions of Campeche and Tulum. Similar to the Dresden Codex, this piece holds information about calendric events, horoscopes, and astronomical tables. Representations of agriculture, hunting, apiculture, and disease are also present.The Paris CodexFinal pages of the Paris Codex, 13th century. Source: Bibliothque Nationale de FranceAlso known as Codex Peresianus, this manuscript originated in the Yucatan Peninsula around 1250-1450. The National Library of Paris acquired it in 1832. However, French ethnologist and orientalist Lon de Rosny, who found it in the aforementioned library in a pile of abandoned documents next to a chimney, formally exhibited it to the world in 1859. The document is made of 22 accordion-folded pages, which when unfolded reach 1.45 meters (4 ft. 9 in.) in length. The manuscript is believed to be a copy of an original 3rd-9th century codex made during the 13th century.The codex contains information about the Mayas religious rituals, prophecies, and cosmogony. It also contains a calendar of 364 days, similar to the one used today. An online version of the codex can be found in the online library of the Bibliothque Nationale de France. The physical copy is stored in a fragile state in the institutions installation in Paris.The Grolier CodicesPicture of some fragments of the Grolier Codex by Enrico Ferorelli, 13th century. Source: TheConversationAlso known as the Codex Maya of Mexico, this collection illustrates the figures of different deities and is believed to have been used as a calendar to calculate Venuss movements, a theme also present in the Codex Dresden. It dates from the 13th century and was discovered in the late 1960s when a collector named Josu Senz traveled to the region of Palenque. There, he found eleven manuscript fragments. In 1971, he took them to the Grolier Club of New York, a private society of bibliophiles, where they were exhibited.Some researchers, however, have not been wholly convinced of its authenticity because of its pictographic style, which differs from the other three codices, and because of the absence of Maya blue ink. Despite some hesitation, it is widely considered authentic today.The Maya TodayImage of the Dresden Codex by NGS LABS. Source: National GeographicThe Maya codices remain historical pieces that reveal the ancient history of a civilization that, although diminished during colonial times, still survives in Mexico. Despite the process of mixing different ethnicities after the arrival of Europeans and African slaves during the 16th century, there are still 10 million Maya people living in the areas of Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras today. Many live in conditions of poverty and are subjected to difficult social conditions in their countries.In contemporary Mexico, Mayans live in Yucatn, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, and Tabasco. These communities often dedicate their lives to agriculture, fishing, and handicrafts. Their religious practices present syncretisms with the Catholic religion, expressed, for instance, in their Easter celebrations.Scientists are still deciphering the Maya codices, reconciling the inscriptions with archaeological research about Mayan architecture and found objects. While these artifacts provide valuable insight into Mayan history, its important to remember that the Mayan culture is still alive in the traditions, language, and beliefs of the surviving communities in the region.