Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 October 13

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October 13

What was the penalty for murder and manslaughter in Austria-Hungary and the German Empire?

What was the penalty for murder and manslaughter in Austria-Hungary and the German Empire?

Basically, I am curious about this because I want to speculate what would have happened had someone killed Adolf Hitler before World War I. Futurist110 (talk) 02:35, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

See Capital punishment in Germany and Capital punishment in Austria, though the latter is very brief. Murder was definitely eligible for the death penalty, typically by guillotine in pre-WW2 Germany. Can't say regarding manslaughter, though in most societies only intentional murder is eligible for the death penalty. Dragons flight (talk) 06:54, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Homicide and the Death Penalty in Austria-Hungary (1907) makes interesting reading; apparently they were unusually lenient (actual methods are not discussed however). Alansplodge (talk) 08:19, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

See Hanged by the neck until dead! - “Pole hanging”.: "Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary used an unusual variant of short drop hanging. There was no gallows as such, but rather a stout vertical wooden pole (or post) of about 2-3 meters height with a metal hook or eye bolt at the top to which a rope noose was attached. There was either a ladder or steps up to a small platform at the back of the pole for the executioner to stand on. The pinioned prisoner was placed with their back to the pole and then lifted up either manually by the hangman’s assistants, on a simple board platform or by a cloth sling running under their armpits so that the executioner could put the noose round their neck. At the signal they were now jerked downwards by the assistants thus tightening the noose. This jerk combined with the thinness of the cord typically caused a carotid reflex and led to rapid unconsciousness". Alansplodge (talk) 09:46, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

There's a rather unpleasant YouTube video of the Austrian Nazi Hermann Frank being dispatched in this way, should you feel the need, Alansplodge (talk) 09:49, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I see from that article that Wikipedia has Hanging#Pole method. Alansplodge (talk) 09:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

You're asking what if Hitler had died before he could rise to power in Germany. He wouldn't have to die by murder. If he had been in the wrong place, he could have died in combat during World War I. Although it's sobering to think that it's possible there was a guy who actually did die in combat, who if he had survived might have become even worse than Hitler. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:15, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

See great man theory, according to which "history can be largely explained by the impact of highly influential individuals". Others go with the history from below theory, which says that events are dictated by social movements which throw up appropriate leaders if the circumstances are right. My guess is that the truth lies somewhere between the two. Alansplodge (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Don't forget the effects of just plain randomness and path dependence. E.g. the Year Without a Summer (1816) resulted from a volcanic eruption and I think there is a new book about how it influenced history. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 21:00, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Are there records like clay tablets, papyrus, or parchment or stuff from historians like Herodotus or Josephus etc, that suggest or say that Atenists fled Egypt due to persecution after the death of Akhenaton and tried to keep their religion elsewhere?

Like maybe they fled south to Sudan, or north to Caanan, or west to Carthage or east to Mesopotamia or Arabia etc? Also, before Akhenaton died, were there traditional religionists fleeing from Egypt because they were persecuted by the Atenists? Thanks. 144.35.45.38 (talk) 05:50, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Amarna letters might be a relevant source for research; they are from about the same period — The poorly-sourced Atenism article is regretfully not very helpful for your specific needs. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:9480:46FD:8725:3114 (talk) 08:47, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article on Akhenaten seems to be slightly more helpful; Akhenaten#Akhenaten and monotheism in Abrahamic religions does not directly address the issue of migration of Atenists, but does discuss some (often highly speculative) theories about Atenism and its influence on later monotheistic religions; that may lead the OP to some research on the subject. --Jayron32 10:58, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

144.35.45.38 -- I strongly doubt whether anyone in classical antiquity who wasn't literate in Egyptian writing knew about Akhenaten or Atenism at all (and even Egyptian scribes and priests with access to surviving dusty old documents might not have been able to get any clear idea about them, other than that the priests in the reigns of subsequent pharoahs didn't like them). Herodotus barely even knew that Jews existed. Josephus thought that the Israelites' stay in Egypt coincided with the Hyksos dynasty, but he was just guessing. By Roman times, Egyptians were much more likely to be repeating derogatory tales of "Osarseph" than any genuine history about Atenism... AnonMoos (talk) 12:15, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

By classical times, no, nobody seems to have remembered Akhenaten in any accurate way, although, as AnonMoos hinted, Manetho's story of Osarseph may have been partly based on distorted memories of Akhenaten's reign.

I also do not know any earlier sources to indicate that polytheists fled Akhenaten's rule or that Atenists fled after Tutankhamun restored polytheistic worship. In fact, many scholars of religion would tell you that religious persecution is an anachronistic concept for the second millennium BC. (From a scholarly paper that I have on hand: "The history of religious persecution could be said to have begun in 167 B.C.E. when the Seleucid king Antiochus IV issued a series of decrees outlawing Jewish religious practice.") Polytheistic religions could freely incorporate new deities or even equate different deities with each other. Kings and priests had to perform rites for the gods because it was in their job description, but ordinary people could worship whichever gods they wanted. Religious belief and religious identity were much less important in ancient times than now, and still less in the Bronze Age than during, say, the Roman Empire.

Akhenaten's reign may have been an exception, because it was intolerant of other gods to some degree, but there is a great deal about it that we don't understand. We don't actually know if Atenism was thoroughly, exclusively monotheistic, because its tolerance for deities other than the Aten varied a lot (see this article section for a little more detail). Akhenaten's agents chiseled out a lot of references to deities in inscriptions, though their efforts were kind of haphazard and focused more on Amun than on other deities. And we really don't know to what extent Akhenaten tried to impose his beliefs on the populace. People living at Akhenaten's capital at Amarna chiseled out the name of Amun, Akhenaten's least favorite god, when it was inscribed on their own belongings. Members of Akhenaten's court who were named Amenhotep, meaning "Amun is content", seem to have exclusively used their nickname, Huy, to avoid mentioning Amun when writing about themselves. On the other hand, as Erik Hornung writes in Akhenaten and the Religion of Light (p. 86): "We… see no indication that the existing temples of the gods were converted into sanctuaries of the Aten; the worship of the god had its unequivocal center in the new capital. At the same time, only fifteen miles away in Neferusi, Khnum, Thoth, and Osiris were still being worshipped! It would certainly be interesting and instructive to know what was happening during Akhenaten's later years in, for example, the sanctuaries at Elephantine, whether a cult was being celebrated there and for whom; but our sources allow no answers to such questions. We must imagine that the suppression of the old cults was not altogether consistent in the distant provinces, and that Thebes surely was a special case."

Finally, if I can venture away from hard facts a little, I find it very unlikely that anybody fled Egypt to maintain Atenism. Atenism was, as far as we can tell, Akhenaten's creation, and the exclusive worship of the Aten did not long outlive him. Tutankhamun declared the restoration of Amun's worship in Year 1 of his reign, a few years after Akhenaten's death. Tutankhamun was too young then to be giving the orders by himself and must have been doing what his courtiers told him—people like Ay, who had been a high official in Akhenaten's court. Worship of the Aten coexisted with worship of the traditional gods during Tutankhamun's reign, at least for a while, but it doesn't seem like Akhenaten's belief system inspired much passionate support, even among the people who sucked up to him while he was alive.

Sources and further reading: Akhenaten and the Religion of Light by Hornung, Akhenaten: Egypt's False Prophet by Nicholas Reeves, and Akhenaten: The Heretic King by Donald B. Redford. The relationship between Manetho's story and Akhenaten's reality is very complicated; the second chapter of Moses the Egyptian by Jan Assmann may be the most accessible discussion of the subject, though it's a bit vague. "Plotting Antiochus's Persecution" by Steven Weitzman in Journal of Biblical Literature (2004) is the source of the quote about Antiochus. A. Parrot (talk) 07:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

For a somewhat parallel innovative royal-court religion (i.e. basically dependent on one monarch) in much more recent times, see Din-i Ilahi... AnonMoos (talk) 09:00, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

First Lord of the Treasury

The British prime minister has the title first lord of the treasury, in addition to prime minister. My question is why? This title seems to imply that the prime minister is also a lord, when they’re just a member of parliament. Seems a bit muddled to me —Andrew 23:04, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

First Lord of the Admiralty was not necessarily a lord either. A lot of early holders of both these offices were actually lords, so perhaps there was an expectation that the job would automatically go to a peer? More research needed. Alansplodge (talk) 23:51, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

There's also the "Lord Mayor of London" and judges addressed as "my lord", none of whom were generally aristocrats holding a peerage title. To dilute things even further, during the 18th and 19th centuries, continental innkeepers and others dealing with tourists often addressed any male English-speaker who looked upper class as "milord" (in Italy, "milordo"). And the Kings of Arms at the College of Arms were not actually kings... -- AnonMoos (talk) 02:17, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Also, the average lord of the manor was not a lord. Alansplodge (talk) 10:43, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

The French title Monsieur is a contraction of mon sieur, itself a contraction of monseigneur. The title monseigneur was accorded to royalty, nobility, other important people, the Chancellor, the Constable, the Grand Admiral, marshals, government ministers, and other high office - holders. It is also accorded to important people in the Church. 46.208.167.127 (talk) 16:16, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Since it doesn't happen very often that I get to nitpick French etymology, "sieur" (and "sire") come from the Latin nominative "senior", which had stress on the first syllable (or technically the antepenult, I suppose). It's not really properly a nominative case in Old French, but sometimes it is called the subject case. As in "mon sieur" it also absorbed the Latin vocative case. "Seigneur" comes from the Latin accusative "seniorem", which is stressed on the long O vowel. Likewise, there isn't really an accusative in Old French, but it is often called the object case or oblique case (as it absorbed the dative/genitive/ablative as well). Another famous example is the pair "moins/moindre", from "minus/minorem" in Latin; historically there were more, like "cuens/conte" from "comes/comitem". Typically the object case came to be used as the subject and the subject case disappeared, but not always. And just for fun, sometimes Old French ignores what passes for the rules, so there was a parallel "mon seigneur" in the subject case, and now French has both "monsieur" and "monseigneur". Anyway! My point is, "sieur" is not a contraction of "seigneur". Adam Bishop (talk) 00:15, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Lord mayors exist in many cities throughout Britain and the Commonwealth. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:03, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

A more complete answer is that the Lord High Treasurer was historically one of the Great Offices of State. Since about the 17th century, the post was not held by a single individual but by a committee or board, referred to as the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. The First Lord was the most senior of these, and came over time to be the chief of the King or Queen's ministers, and was informally referred to as the Prime Minister - it only became the official title much later. Sometimes the Prime Minister has held been the head of another department, rather than First Lord of the Treasury. A parallel case is the Board of Admiralty, which took over from the historic role of the Lord High Admiral - the First Lord of the Admiralty was the political head of the Royal Navy. In 1964 the Board was superseded by the Ministry of Defence, and the nominal office of Lord High Admiral had to be resurrected - it's now held by the Duke of Edinburgh. And of course as another contributor has mentioned, the word "Lord" is used for a lot of positions that are not members of the House of Lords. For example the title Lord <Forename> <Surname> is properly used for the younger son of a peer. --rossb (talk) 22:07, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

…younger son of a marquess/duke/prince, that is. —Tamfang (talk) 05:25, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

KENSINGTON PALACE

October 4th

The Duke of Cambridge this afternoon visited Inspire, Lombard House, 10-20 Lombard Street, Belfast, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of the County Borough of Belfast (Mrs Fionnuala Jay-O'Boyle).

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

October 9th

The Princess Royal this morning opened the Great Western Railway Car Park at Kemble Station, Windmill Hill, Kemble, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire (Dame Janet Trotter).

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

October 11th

... Her Royal Highness, President, Riding for the Disabled Association, subsequently visited the Berwickshire Group to mark the Fifteenth Anniversary of their Headquarters, Sunnyside, Reston, Eyemouth, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Berwickshire (Mrs Jeanna Swan).

So the "Lord-Lieutenant" is quite likely to be a lady. 82.14.24.95 (talk) 12:15, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

It depends on how recent the creation of the title is, and on what conventions have developed for its use. For a famous example, a female duke is often a duchess, i.e. Henrietta Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough was titled "Duchess" as the substantive title holder. HOWEVER, Queen Elizabeth II is Duke of Normandy in her role as Head of State of the Channel Islands, where she is referred to as "The Queen our Duke" or La Reine, notre Duc. I believe also that Henry VIII once created a female earl and not countess, but I'll have to look that up. --Jayron32 14:26, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Ah, here it is. Anne Boleyn was created Marquess of Pembroke, and NOT "Marchioness". --Jayron32 14:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)