Biographies
St Francis of Assisi
Sanford B. Dole
Governor William Goebels
John Milton Hay
William Averell Harriman
Emperor Franz Joseph
Nelson Mandela
President Willliam McKinley
Alfred Lord Milner
John Peirpont (JP) Morgan
Czar Nicholas
Friedrich (Wilhelm) Nietzche
Cecil John Rhodes
British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury
Rudolf Steiner
Edward VII
Tz'u Hsi, née Yehonala ,Dowager Empress
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Karl Konig


 
 

Dole, Sanford Ballard
(1844-1926), American statesman
 and lawyer, born in Honolulu, and educated at Oahu College,
 Hawaii, and Williams College, Mass. He was a member of the
 Hawaii legislature from 1884 to 1887 and was active in securing
 the constitution of 1887 and in the overthrow of Queen
 Liliuokalani (1838-1917) in 1893. In 1894 he was elected first
 and only president of the republic of Hawaii, a position he held
 until 1900. In 1898 Dole went to Washington, D.C., to use his
 influence in favor of Hawaii's annexation by the U.S. When
 Hawaii was established as a U.S. territory in 1900, President
 William McKinley appointed Dole its first territorial governor.
 From 1903 until his retirement in 1915 he was U.S. district court
 judge in Hawaii.

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  Governor William Goebels
 

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Emperor Franz Joseph
Born in Germany, Franz Josef (1830-1916),
 emperor of Austria (1848-1916) and king of Hungary
 (1867-1916), the last important ruler of the Habsburg dynasty;
 his policies played a major role in the events that led to World
 War I.

 Francis Joseph was born in Vienna on Aug. 18, 1830, the eldest
 son of Archduke Francis Charles (1802-78), brother and heir of
 Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I. Francis Charles having
 renounced his right to the throne, Francis Joseph became
 emperor when Ferdinand abdicated during the revolution of
 1848. With Russian help, he and his prime minister, Felix, prince
 zu Schwarzenberg (1800-52), restored order in the empire and
 reestablished Austrian dominance in the German confederation
 (1849-50). In 1854 he married Elizabeth (1837-98), daughter of
 Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, with whom he had one son and
 three daughters. Francis Joseph's failure to support Russia in
 the Crimean War (1854-56) permanently damaged
 Austro-Russian relations, and in the decade that followed,
 Austria lost most of its Italian possessions, as well as its position
 of leadership in Germany. Weakened by these reverses, Francis
 Joseph was forced to agree to Hungarian demands for
 autonomy in 1867, when he and Elizabeth were formally
 crowned in Budapest as king and queen of Hungary. He also
 planned to grant some form of self-government to the Austrian
 Slavs but backed down because of opposition from the German
 and Hungarian elite that controlled the new monarchy of
 Austria-Hungary. The resulting dissatisfaction among Francis
 Joseph's Czechoslovakian and Serbian subjects further
 weakened the Habsburg realms and caused increased friction
 with Russia, which championed the cause of Europe's Slavic
 peoples. Beginning in the 1870s, Austria-Hungary gradually
 became subservient to its powerful neighbor and ally, the
 Prussian-dominated German Empire.

 Francis Joseph's later years were marked by a series of
 tragedies in his family. In 1889 his only son and heir to the
 throne, Archduke Rudolf, committed suicide; in 1898 his wife,
 the empress Elizabeth, was assassinated by an Italian anarchist;
 and in 1914 his nephew, Francis Ferdinand, who had replaced
 Rudolf as heir to the throne, was assassinated by a Serbian
 nationalist. The murder of Francis Ferdinand precipitated the
 crisis between Austria-Hungary and Germany on the one hand,
 and Serbia and Russia on the other, that led to World War I.
 Francis Joseph did not live to see Austria's defeat in the war
 and the extinction of the Habsburg monarchy. He died on Nov.
 21, 1916.

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President Willliam McKinley
(1843-1901), 25th president of the U.S. (1897-1901); his
administration  inaugurated a period of Republican
 party dominance, aided business, and made the U.S. a world
power through  its victory in the Spanish-American War.
 

 Early Life

 Born on Jan. 29, 1843, to a devout  Methodist family in the
small town of Niles, Ohio, McKinley was the seventh
 of nine children of a storekeeper and iron founder. He showed
himself early as a mature, serious  student and attended Allegheny
College for a year. At the outbreak of the American Civil War in
1861, McKinley enlisted and served for the duration, first as an
enlisted man in the commissary department and later as an officer,
after receiving a battlefield commission for bravery. For the rest
of his life he was known as "Major" McKinley.

 McKinley began practicing law in Canton, Ohio, in 1867 and,
 entering politics, won his first office as county attorney in 1869.
 Thereafter, his political rise was steady, with election to the U.S.
 House of Representatives (1877), growing influence among
 Republicans in his state and in Congress, and a term as
 governor of Ohio (1892-96). By 1896 he had become the most
 likely Republican presidential nominee because of his
 leadership in the critical state of Ohio, his long services and
 wide connections within the party, and his championship of
 economic issues, particularly the protective tariff. In addition, he
 had gained an able, devoted political and financial manager in
 Mark Hanna. In 1871 McKinley married Ida Saxton (1847-1907)
 of Canton, who became an invalid after the deaths of their two
 young daughters and took almost no part in political or social
 life.
 

 Domestic Policy

 The 1896 election formed a major turning point in American
 politics. McKinley advocated the tariff as a way of protecting
 business and labor from foreign imports and defended the gold
 standard against his Democratic opponent William Jennings
 Bryan, who espoused the free coinage of silver, which would
 have inflated currency and aided debtors. The Republicans ran
 an efficient, lavishly financed campaign, and McKinley won the
 election by the largest popular margin since the Civil War. His
 administration enacted a higher tariff in 1897, committed the
 country to the gold standard in 1900, and generally promoted
 business confidence. Probably in part because of these
 policies, the economy recovered from a severe depression, and
 the Republicans became identified with economic prosperity,
 which made them the dominant party until the 1930s. McKinley
 received public vindication when he defeated Bryan again and
 was reelected by a still larger vote in 1900.
 

 Foreign Policy

 Foreign affairs initially presented a troublesome distraction, as
 the Cuban revolution for independence from Spain created
 pressures on the U.S. to help free the island. After resisting such
 sentiment for a time, McKinley decided in 1898 to intervene. The
 U.S. defeated Spain easily in three months and acquired Puerto
 Rico and the Philippines. Although the war was popular, these
 new possessions aroused controversy, along with the
 recognition that the nation had become involved in world politics
 as a great power. Disquiet also arose from the unprecedented
 growth of big businesses, called trusts, including the first
 billion-dollar corporation. McKinley showed an awareness of
 these concerns as his second term began, but whatever
 changes might have come were cut short when Leon Czolgosz
 (1873-1901), an anarchist, shot him in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 6,
 1901. He died eight days later, the third president of the U.S. to
 be assassinated.
 

 Evaluation

 McKinley was an astute manager who relied on subtle
 persuasion rather than flamboyant advocacy. Although not a
 visionary or an activist, he built a lasting political coalition and
 presided over some of the most momentous developments in
 American history.

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Czar Nicholas II
(1868-1918), emperor of Russia (1894-1917);
 one of the major European leaders of the pre-World War I era,
 the last czar of the Russian Empire.

 The eldest son of Emperor Alexander III, Nicholas was born at
 Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin) on May 18, 1868. Educated
 privately, he was married in 1894 to Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt
 (1872-1918), a German princess who took the name Alexandra
 when she converted to Russian Orthodoxy. In the same year his
 father died, and he succeeded to the throne. Believing firmly in
 his duty to preserve absolute power in the Russian monarchy, he
 opposed any concessions to those favoring more democracy in
 government, but had little talent for leadership himself. He
 tended to rely for advice on his wife, to whom he was devoted
 and who bore him four daughters and a son, and was influenced
 by her mystical beliefs. Nicholas's interest in Russian expansion
 in the Far East was one of the contributory causes of the
 disastrous Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), which in turn helped
 touch off the Russian Revolution of 1905. Forced by the
 revolution to assent to constitutional monarchy, he nevertheless
 continued to believe he was responsible only to God.

 An advocate of peace and international cooperation, Nicholas
 sponsored the Hague Conferences, which created the
 Permanent Court of Arbitration and formulated rules for the
 humane conduct of war, but failed to check Europe's growing
 arms race. Despite his personally friendly relations with his
 cousin, William II of Germany, their two countries were on
 opposite sides when World War I broke out in 1914.

 Russia's defeats and the suffering caused by the war among the
 people were blamed on Nicholas, especially after he assumed
 personal command of the army in 1915. Forced to abdicate in
 March 1917, Nicholas was held captive by the Bolsheviks until
 executed, along with his family, at Yekaterinburg on the night of
 July 16-17, 1918. Eighty years later, the remains of Nicholas, the
 Empress Alexandra, three of their daughters, and four members
 of their household staff were buried in a state ceremony in the
 Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Saint Petersburg.

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British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, III  Marquess of (1830-1903),
British statesman, noted for his achievements in foreign affairs,
especially for the expansion of British  power in Africa.

 Born at Hatfield, his family estate in Hertfordshire, on Feb. 3, 1830,
 Salisbury was educated at the University of Oxford. He entered the
 House of Commons as a Conservative in 1853 and soon became noted
 as a foreign policy expert. He was secretary of state for India in 1866-67
 and became marquess of Salisbury when his father died in 1868. He was
 Indian secretary again from 1874 to 1878. As foreign secretary
 (1878-80) under Benjamin Disraeli, he prevented Russia from achieving
 hegemony over Ottoman Turkey and acquired Cyprus for Great Britain.
 Salisbury became prime minister in 1885 and-except for a brief period in
 1886-held that post until 1892, becoming his own foreign secretary in
 1887. In domestic affairs his ministry was responsible for the Local
 Government Act of 1888 and for the establishment of free public
 education (1891). In 1889 he secured British possession of what later
 became the colony of Rhodesia, and the following year he negotiated an
 agreement with Germany that divided East Africa into British and German
 spheres of influence. Returning to office as prime minister and foreign
 secretary in 1895, he won French agreement to Anglo-Egyptian control
 of the Sudan in 1899 and in the same year involved his country in the
 Boer War, which led to British control over all of South Africa. Just
 before leaving office in 1902 he concluded the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,
 which remained in effect until after World War I. Salisbury died at
 Hatfield on Aug. 22, 1903.

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Alfred Lord Milner
1st Viscount Milner (1854- 1925), British
 statesman, born in Giessen, Hesse (now in Germany), and
 educated at the universities of London and Oxford. A former
 journalist with the Pall Mall Gazette, Milner was undersecretary
 for finance in Egypt from 1889 to 1892; in the latter year he
 published England in Egypt, an argument for British involvement
 in that country. In 1897 he was appointed high commissioner for
 British southern Africa and governor of the Cape Colony (now
 Cape Province), in which post his outstanding achievement was
 to negotiate the peace ending the Boer War . He returned to
 Great Britain in 1905 and retired from politics. In 1915 he
 became a member of the war cabinet, without portfolio, and he
 later served as emissary to Russia (1917), secretary of war
 (1918), and colonial secretary (1919-21). His recommendations
 that Egypt be given limited self-government were adopted in
 1922.
 

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Edward VII
(1841-1910), king of Great Britain and Ireland and
 emperor of India (1901-10), who gave his name to the
 Edwardian period.

 Edward was born on Nov. 9, 1841, in Buckingham Palace,
 London, the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and
 was christened Albert Edward. He studied at the universities of
 Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge. In 1860 he visited Canada,
 inaugurating the custom of goodwill visits by members of the
 British royal family, particularly the prince of Wales, to British
 dominions and foreign countries.

 In 1863 Edward married Alexandra (1844-1925), eldest
 daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark. The prince and
 princess then assumed much of the burden of court ceremonials
 and public functions, which Queen Victoria had laid aside on
 going into virtual retirement after the death of the prince consort
 in 1861. Edward traveled extensively. In Russia and France,
 particularly, he made valuable personal contacts in political and
 social circles. At home, his popularity was increased both as
 prince of Wales and as king by his interest in sports, notably
 yachting and horse racing; his horses won the Derby in 1896,
 1900, and 1909 and the Grand National at Liverpool in 1900.

 Edward succeeded to the throne in 1901. From the beginning of
 his reign he adopted a policy of promoting international amity in
 Europe, where political tension had been mounting. His visits to
 various European capitals from 1901 to 1904 and return visits to
 him by European rulers helped promote the signing of arbitration
 treaties in 1903-4 between Great Britain and France, Spain,
 Italy, Germany, and Portugal. He was also an important force
 behind two agreements that strengthened the position of Great
 Britain on the Continent, the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between
 France and Great Britain, and a pact between Russia and Great
 Britain in 1907. In 1909 the king and queen paid a diplomatic
 visit to Emperor William II of Germany (Edward's nephew) that
 temporarily dispelled German suspicion that the increasingly
 friendly relations between Great Britain and France and Russia
 were aimed at weakening Germany. Because of his efforts to
 increase international amity the king became known as Edward
 the Peacemaker.

 Edward died at Buckingham Palace on May 6, 1910, having
 reigned for only nine years. Three daughters and two sons were
 born of the marriage between Edward and Alexandra. The sons
 were Prince Albert Victor, duke of Clarence (1864-92), and
 George, duke of York, who succeeded Edward as George V. In
 1896 Edward's youngest daughter, Princess Maude Charlotte
 Mary Victoria (1869-1938), married her cousin, Prince Charles
 of Denmark, who later became King Håkon VII of Norway.
 

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Tz'u Hsi, née Yehonala ,Dowager Empress
(1835-1908), Chinese empress
 dowager, born in Beijing. A consort of Emperor Hsien Feng
 (1831-61), she gave birth in 1856 to a son, later the Emperor
 T'ung Chih (r. 1861-75). On the death of Hsien Feng, Tz'u Hsi
 became the virtual ruler of China, acting as regent from 1861 to
 1873, and continuing to control state affairs after that. When
 T'ung Chih died, Tz'u Hsi placed her nephew, Kuang Hsü
 (1871-1908), on the throne and ruled as his regent until 1889
 and again from 1898 until her death.

 A conservative, she interfered with Kuang Hsü's modernizing
 efforts in 1898-the so-called Hundred Days' Reform-and
 subsequently supported the unsuccessful Boxer Rebellion as a
 way of resisting foreign territorial encroachment. Between 1902
 and 1908, relinquishing her former conservatism, Tz'u Hsi
 encouraged the modernization of China, promising to grant
 constitutional government by 1916.
 

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William Averell Harriman
(1891-1986), American
 financier, government official, and diplomat, son of Edward
 Henry Harriman, born in New York City, and educated at Yale
 University. After heading various railroad, shipping, and banking
 enterprises, he entered government service in 1934 and was
 thereafter closely associated with the New Deal and the
 Democratic party. He served in many key government and
 diplomatic posts. During World War II he was lend-lease
 administrator from 1941 to 1943, when he became ambassador
 to the Soviet Union (1943-46). He then served as ambassador
 to Great Britain (1946), U.S. secretary of commerce (1946-48),
 and director of the Mutual Security Agency (1951-53). Harriman
 was governor of New York State (1955-58) and an unsuccessful
 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1956.
 Defeated for reelection in 1958 by Nelson A. Rockefeller, he
 was appointed assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern
 affairs (1961-63), and undersecretary of state for political affairs
 (1963-64). In 1968-69 he led the U.S. delegation conducting
 preliminary peace talks in Paris with North Vietnam, with the aim
 of negotiating a settlement of the Vietnam War. Harriman wrote
 America and Russia in a Changing World: A Half Century of
 Personal Observation (1971).

 His third wife, the English-born Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward
 Harriman (1920-97), also became a leading figure in the
 Democratic party and served as U.S. ambassador to France
 (1993-97).

HARRIMAN, Edward Henry (1848-1909), American railroad
 magnate, born in Hempstead, N.Y. At the age of 14 he became
 an office boy in a Wall Street firm and seven years later bought a
 seat on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1883 he became a
 director of the Illinois Central Railroad, and in 1897 he formed a
 syndicate that acquired the bankrupt Union Pacific. He
 eliminated competition by gaining control of many other lines,
 including the Central and Southern Pacific railroads. His
 unsuccessful attempt to wrest control of the Chicago, Burlington
 & Quincy Railroad and, later, the Northern Pacific from James
 Jerome Hill resulted in a panic on the New York Stock Exchange
 in 1901. In an effort to settle the dispute, Harriman joined forces
 with Hill and John Pierpont Morgan to form a holding company,
 the Northern Securities Co.; a 1904 decision by the U.S.
 Supreme Court held the company in violation of antitrust laws,
 and it was dissolved. An investigation of Harriman's holdings by
 the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1906-7 exposed
 nothing illegal.
 

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John Peirpont (JP) Morgan
 (1837-1913), American financier, art collector, and philanthropist.

 Morgan was born in Hartford, Conn. He learned banking in the
brokerage house of Duncan, Sherman & Co., New York City.
In 1860 Morgan became U.S. agent for his father's banking firm
in London, and in 1871 he entered the firm of Drexel, Morgan
 & Co., which he reorganized in 1895 as J. P. Morgan & Co.,
with branches in Paris and London.

 Because of his dominant position in
 the fields of both domestic and international finance, Morgan's
 control of private enterprise and government financing was
 unequaled by any American of his time. For many years his
 company was engaged in railroad negotiations with Edward
 Henry Harriman and James Jerome Hill. By 1900 Morgan
 controlled one of the six major railroad lines in the U.S. In 1895
 he organized a syndicate to float the bond issue negotiated by
 President Grover Cleveland for increase of the U.S. gold
 reserve, thereby helping to stabilize the American economy,
 which had been shaken by the so-called panic of 1893. In 1901
 Morgan organized the U.S. Steel Corp., which was then the
 largest corporation in the world. He also gained control of
 numerous other American businesses, including the Equitable
 Life Assurance Society. In 1912, during a period of economic
 discontent, Morgan was investigated by a committee of the U.S.
 House of Representatives. He testified on his own behalf,
 denying the existence of a money trust or of any far-reaching
 financial control.

 Morgan was also famous as an art collector and philanthropist.
 He contributed to art museums, cathedrals, churches, and
 hospitals. After his death the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
 York City received a large part of Morgan's collection, which is
 housed in the Pierpont Morgan wing. In 1924 his private
 Pierpont Morgan Library was made into a public institution.
 

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John Milton Hay
(1838-1905), American statesman and writer, secretary of state
during the expansion of U.S. international activity under Presidents
William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and an important
biographer of President Abraham Lincoln.

 Born Oct. 8, 1838, in Salem, Ind., and educated at Brown
 University, Providence, R.I., Hay joined his uncle's law office in
 Springfield, Ill., in 1858. In 1861-65, during the American Civil
 War, he was assistant to his friend John Nicolay (1831-1901),
 private secretary to Lincoln. During this period he and Nicolay
 collected the material for the two monumental works on which
 they later collaborated: Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 vol.,
 1890), a critical biography still highly regarded today; and
 Abraham Lincoln: Collected Works (2 vol., 1894).

 Hay held minor diplomatic posts in Europe in 1865-70 and then,
 except for serving as assistant secretary of state in 1879-80,
 devoted himself to writing until 1897. Besides serving on the
 editorial board of the New York Tribune he published sketches
 of his experiences in Spain, Castilian Days (1871), a collection
 of poems in Illinois frontier dialect, Pike County Ballads (1871),
 and the two Lincoln works.

 Hay was ambassador to Great Britain in 1897-98 and then
 served until his death as secretary of state to McKinley and
 Roosevelt. As secretary he directed peace negotiations after the
 Spanish-American War (1898), secured U.S. influence in the
 Pacific by annexing the Philippines, and in China initiated
 (1899) the Open Door Policy , which guaranteed equal trade
 opportunities for all countries. In 1900, following the outbreak of
 the Boxer Rebellion, Hay defined U.S. policy even more
 emphatically, declaring that the U.S. would uphold both the
 territorial and administrative integrity of China and the policy of
 free trade. In 1901 he negotiated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty ,
 which opened the way for U.S. construction of the Panama
 Canal. Hay died on July 1, 1905, in Newbury, N.H.
 

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Friedrich (Wilhelm) Nietzche
(1844-1900), German
 philosopher, poet, and classical philologist, who became one of
 the most provocative and influential thinkers of the 19th century.
 

 Life and Works.

 Nietzche was born on Oct. 15, 1844, in Röcken, Prussia. His
 father, a Lutheran minister, died when Nietzsche was five, and
 Nietzsche was raised by his mother in a home that included his
 grandmother, two aunts, and a sister. He studied classical
 philology at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig and was
 appointed professor of classical philology at the University of
 Basel at the age of 24. Ill health (he was plagued throughout his
 life by poor eyesight and migraine headaches) forced his
 retirement in 1879. Ten years later he suffered a mental
 breakdown from which he never recovered. He died in Weimar
 on Aug. 25, 1900.

 In addition to the influence of Greek culture, particularly the
 philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, Nietzsche was influenced by
 the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, by the theory of
 evolution, and by his friendship with the German composer
 Richard Wagner.

 A prolific writer, he wrote several major works, among them The
 Birth of Tragedy (1872; trans. 1966), Thus Spoke Zarathustra
 (1883-85; trans. 1954), Beyond Good and Evil (1886; trans.
 1966), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887; trans. 1966), The
 Antichrist (1888; trans. 1954), Ecce Homo (1889; trans. 1966),
 and The Will to Power (1901; trans. 1910).

 One of Nietzche's fundamental contentions was that traditional
 values (represented primarily by Christianity) had lost their
 power in the lives of individuals. He expressed this in his
 proclamation "God is dead." He was convinced that traditional
 values represented a "slave morality," a morality created by
 weak and resentful individuals who encouraged such behavior
 as gentleness and kindness because the behavior served their
 interests. Nietzsche claimed that new values could be created to
 replace the traditional ones, and his discussion of the possibility
 led to his concept of the overman or superman.

 According to Nietzsche, the masses, whom he termed the herd
 or mob, conform to tradition, whereas his ideal overman is
 secure, independent, and highly individualistic. The overman
 feels deeply, but his passions are rationally controlled.
 Concentrating on the real world, rather than on the rewards of the
 next world promised by religion, the overman affirms life,
 including the suffering and pain that accompany human
 existence. His overman is a creator of values, a creator of a
 "master morality" that reflects the strength and independence of
 one who is liberated from all values, except those that he deems
 valid.

 Nietzsche maintained that all human behavior is motivated by
 the will to power. In its positive sense, the will to power is not
 simply power over others, but the power over oneself that is
 necessary for creativity. Such power is manifested in the
 overman's independence, creativity, and originality. Although
 Nietzsche explicitly denied that any overmen had yet arisen, he
 mentions several individuals who could serve as models. Among
 these models he lists Socrates, Jesus, Leonardo da Vinci,
 Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Julius Caesar, and
 Napoleon.

 The concept of the overman has often been interpreted as one
 that postulates a master-slave society and has been identified
 with totalitarian philosophies. Many scholars deny the connection
 and attribute it to misinterpretation of Nietzsche's work.
 

 Influence.

 An acclaimed poet, Nietzsche exerted much influence on
 German literature , as well as on French literature and theology.
 His concepts have been discussed and elaborated upon by
 such individuals as the German philosophers Karl Jaspers and
 Martin Heidegger, and the German Jewish philosopher Martin
 Buber, the German-American theologian Paul Tillich, and the
 French writers Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. Nietzsche's
 proclamation "God is dead" was seized upon by the post-World
 War II radical theologians, the Americans Thomas J. J. Altizer
 (1927-    ) and Paul Van Buren (1924-    ), in their attempt to
 make Christianity relevant to its believers in the 1960s and '70s.
 

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Cecil John Rhodes
(1853-1902), British colonial statesman and  financier, one
of the main promoters of British rule in southern Africa.

 Rhodes was born July 5, 1853, in Bishop's Stortford, England.
In 1870 he was sent to live with his brother Herbert (fl. about 1845-73)
in Africa, in the area now known as the Republic of South Africa.
Diamond fields were discovered at Kimberley in Cape Colony
(now in Northern Cape Province; see CAPE PROVINCE) in the
following year, and Rhodes became a diamond prospector; by the
time he was 19 years old he had accumulated a large fortune. In 1873
he returned to England to study at the University of Oxford; until
 1881, when he received his degree, he divided his time
 between the university and the diamond fields. His most
 important achievement during this period was the amalgamation
 of a large number of diamond-mining claims to form De Beers
 Mining Co., which he controlled. In 1881 he entered the Cape
 Colony Parliament and held the seat for the rest of his life.
 Rhodes was largely responsible for the annexation to the British
 Empire of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) in 1885. In 1888, with
 the founding of De Beers Consolidated Mines, Rhodes
 monopolized the diamond production of Kimberley. In the same
 year he received exclusive diamond mining rights from
 Lobengula, who was the ruler of Matabeleland (now in
 Zimbabwe). The following year Rhodes was granted a charter to
 incorporate the British South Africa Co. Until 1923 the company
 controlled what are present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia; the
 region was named Rhodesia in 1894 in honor of Rhodes.

 In 1890 Rhodes was made prime minister of the Cape. Five
 years later he supported a conspiracy by British settlers in the
 Transvaal Republic (now Transvaal Province) to overthrow their
 government, which was dominated by the Boers. The revolt was
 to be backed by a British South Africa Co. force led by Sir
 Leander Starr Jameson, British administrator of the lands
 constituting present-day Zimbabwe. On Dec. 29, 1895,
 Jameson invaded Transvaal prematurely and unsuccessfully.
 Rhodes was acquitted of responsibility for the invasion, known
 as Jameson's Raid, but he was censured for his role in the plot
 against the Transvaal government and was forced to resign his
 premiership the following month. He then devoted himself to the
 development of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). During the Boer
 War he was prominent in the defense of Kimberley. He died at
 Cape Town on March 26, 1902, before the war was over. In his
 will Rhodes left most of his fortune to the establishment of the
 Rhodes scholarships.
 

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St. Francis of Assisi
Saint (1182-1226), Italian mystic and preacher, who founded the
Franciscans. Born in Assisi, Italy and originally named Giovanni Francesco Bernardone,
he appears to have received little formal education, even though his father was a wealthy
 merchant. As a young man, Francis led a worldly, carefree life.

 Following a battle between Assisi and Perugia, he was  held captive in Perugia for over
a year. While imprisoned, he suffered a severe illness during which he resolved to
alter his way of life. Back in Assisi in 1205, he performed charities among the lepers
and began working on the restoration of dilapidated churches. Francis's change of
character and his expenditures for charity angered his father, who legally disinherited
him. Francis then discarded his rich garments for a bishop's cloak and devoted the
next three years to the care of outcasts and lepers in the woods of Mount Subasio.

 For his devotions on Mount Subasio, Francis restored the ruined chapel of Santa
 Maria degli Angeli. In 1208, one day during Mass, he heard a call telling him to go out
 into the world and, according to the text of Matt. 10:5-14, to possess nothing, but to do
 good everywhere.

 Upon returning to Assisi that same year, Francis began preaching. He gathered round
 him the 12 disciples who became the original brothers of his order, later called the
 First Order; they elected Francis superior. In 1212 he received a young, well-born nun
 of Assisi, Clare, into Franciscan fellowship; through her was established the Order of
 the Poor Ladies (the Poor Clares), later the Second Order of Franciscans. It was
 probably later in 1212 that Francis set out for the Holy Land, but a shipwreck forced
 him to return. Other difficulties prevented him from accomplishing much missionary
 work when he went to Spain to preach to the Moors. In 1219 he was in Egypt, where
 he succeeded in preaching to, but not in converting, the sultan. Francis then went on
 to the Holy Land, staying there until 1220. He wished to be martyred and rejoiced
 upon hearing that five Franciscan friars had been killed in Morocco while carrying out
 their duties. On his return home he found dissension in the ranks of the friars and
 resigned as superior, spending the next few years in planning what became the Third
 Order of Franciscans, the tertiaries.

 In September 1224, after 40 days of fasting, Francis was praying upon Monte Alverno
 when he felt pain mingled with joy, and the marks of the crucifixion of Christ, the
 stigmata, appeared on his body. Accounts of the appearance of these marks differ,
 but it seems probable that they were knobby protuberances of the flesh, resembling
 the heads of nails. Francis was carried back to Assisi, where his remaining years
 were marked by physical pain and almost total blindness. He was canonized in 1228.
 In 1980, Pope John Paul II proclaimed him the patron saint of ecologists. In art, the
 emblems of St. Francis are the wolf, the lamb, the fish, birds, and the stigmata. His
 feast day is October 4.
 

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KARL KÖNIG 
Born on September 27, 1902 in Vienna, Austrian-Hungarian Empire, into a Jewish family.

Studied medicine, fascinated by embryology

He first took notice of Rudolf Steiner in 1921, but missed the opportunity to meet him at the West-East Conference in Vienna in 1922, a fact that he regretted all his life. He decided to become a member of the AS on March 30, 1925, the day Rudolf Steiner died.

Friendship with Ita Wegman, pioneering work in the field of Curative Pedagogics in Silesia

In 1938, he had to take refuge from Nationalsocialism in Scotland

Together with a small group of close friends from Vienna, he started in Camphill the first Village Community for children with down syndrom which was to become the worldwide Camphill Movement.

Died on March 27, 1966 in Überlingen, Lake of Constance, FRG
 

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