Latvian shoot-up London 1910-1

Few places in the world were as infamous for murders as the East End of London. Jack the Ripper, The Krays and 1811 Ratcliffe Highway murders were all frightening. But the Latvians threatening London’s East End were UNexpected. They arrived from the Russian Empire against an intense debate about the large numbers of struggling immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Matching the earlier horrors were 2 events in Dec 1910-Jan 1911. Houndsditch is a mainroad running from Bishopsgate to Aldgate High St. Located at 120 Houndsditch was an import business run by Max Weil. In mid Dec 1910 Weil arrived at #120 to find his sister and house-maid in a state of agitation. They heard noises coming from the jeweller’s shop next door, as if someone was breaking at the rear.

Latvian revolutionaries aka Leesma weren't revolutionaries; later research found the c13 members carried out robberies to fund Lenin and his Bolsheviks.

Home Secretary Churchill, watching the Siege close up

Wiki

#119 backed onto a flat at 11 Exchange Buildings. Weil alerted the police of a likely break-in to the Exchange Buildings jewellers. He returned with Constable Piper who knocked on #11’s door. Piper had a brief talk with the man who answered the door and then left to summon help. Fritz Svaars & Josef Sokoloff were from Latvia in the Russian Empire. They’d fled the country after a failed attempt to overthrow the Tsar in 1905. Robbing jewellers was to raise funds for their cause.

Cons. Piper returned with 3 sergeants and 5 constables. Sgt Bentley hit on the door which was answered by the same man who had spoken to Piper. After another brief talk, the man tried to shut the door in Bentley’s face. However the sergeant pushed his way into #11 and chaos erupted. Bentley received two gunshots in the neck. He staggered back through the doorway and died. Standing behind him, Sgt Bryant now saw the gun being turned on him, hitting him in the chest. Constable Woodhams ran to his assistance only to fall to a bullet in the thigh. Both Bryant and Woodhams survived their wounds but were invalided out of the police force. Sgt Tucker was shot in the heart by a man in doorway #11 and died. The killer ran from the building, followed by other men and a woman. As they fled, Cons. Walter Choat jumped out of the darkness at them, grabbing an escapee who fired bullets into his leg. A gang-member came behind Choat and shot 2 bullets in his back. Choat fell.

Murdered police officers, 

London Museum

The gangster who’d been shot by his own cohorts was found dead in his room a day later. George Gardstein had been the de facto leader of the gang of Latvian revolutionaries in Leesma! After Russia’s revolution, one Leesma member Jacob Peters was 2nd in command of Cheka, the feared Bolshevik secret police. Perhaps Latvian Peters had killed Englishmen Bentley, Tucker & Choat, and injured Bryant.

Metropolitan & City Police launched an operation to hunt down the surviving revolutionaries and by that year Peters & others were caught. In Jan 1911 a figure slipped at night into London City’s police headquarters in Old Jewry. Although not officially identified he was perhaps Charles Perelman, former landlord to some Leesma members. Perelman had important information: Svaars & Sokoloff were hiding in a 2nd floor room in Sidney St, armed with Mauser pistols.

On 3rd Jan a file of police officers wound through the silent East End to Sidney St, from Commercial Rd to the northern junction of Whitechapel and Mile End Rds. The officers hadn’t been told about the mission, but they knew that it was dangerous; married policemen were excluded! Some were armed but their weapons were antique, as compared to the powerful hand-guns the Latvians carried. On getting to Sidney St, the police evacuated the first two floors of #100 and by daybreak the stage was set.

Svaara & Sokoloff were soon alerted to their danger. The front door was banged and stones were hurled at the revolutionaries’ window. They answ-ered with some shots. Det Sarg Leeson fell gravely wounded but like Bry-ant & Woodhams, he survived. Battle commenced, and despite being so heavily outnumbered, it was Svaars and Sokoloff who won the firefight. Equip-ped with rugged handguns, they easily beat the police’s inferior weapons.

Hours passed, so the police appealed to Scotland Yard for assistance and they in turn sought help. Home Secretary Winston Churchill permitted the army to respond and soon 20 Scots Guards arrived, changing the situation. And the fire brigade arrived, to prevent fire from spreading.

Firing line of Scots Guards. Sidney Street Siege

gravelroots

Now the soldiers elevated their efforts, shooting into #100’s windows. Sokoloff peered at the maelstrom but the burning house collapsed. The ceiling killed him, ending Sidney St’s siege. And one more death. On entering #100 District Fire Officer Charles Pearson was hit by falling mas-onry, severing his spine and dying 6 months later. A honour plaque to the dead first responders was unveiled there much later.

Detectives inspect the 100 Sidney St house, post-siege

Gravelroots

Other Latvian anarchists, Jacob Peters, Yourka Dubof, John Rosen & Nina Vassileve were tried for the Houndsditch murders in the East End but 3 of them were acquitted. Only Vassileve was found guilty of a minor offence, later quashed. Gardstein, Svaars and Sokoloff were “probably guilty”.

The police soon tracked other revolutionaries, offering rewards for the capture of named suspects. Well covered by the press and captured on newsreels, the Siege also had lasting impacts for the scared communities living in the East End’s early C20th: political refugees, socialists & ex-Eastern European Jews, including my Russian Jewish grandmother.

Read Devilish Kind of Courage: Anarchists, Aliens and the Siege of Sidney St, 2024, by Andrew Whitehead 

Denmark's Golden Age 1800-50: Hansen

The Golden Age (c1800-50) was an era of impressive creat­ivity in Denmark. Although Copenhagen had suffered from fires, bomb­ard­ment and bank­ruptcy, the centre of Denmark's intell­ectual life, first experienced huge fir­es in 1794 and 1795 which dest­royed both Chr­is­tiansborg Palace­ and much of the inner city. The arts took on a new era of cr­eat­ivity, imbued by German Romanticism. Danes from the arts and scienc­es became in­volved in a new era of Roman­tic nation­al­ism. Change became apparent, esp­ in painting. 

Wilhelm Bendz, another student of Eckersberg
Artist in the Evening at Finck's Coffee House 

in MunichThorvaldsen Museum, 1832

The early C19th was a tough time for Denmark-Norway. The crucial fig­ure was Christoffer Eckers­berg who taught at the Acad­emy­ from 1818-53, had an imp­or­t­ant in­fluence on the next gen­erat­ion, including Wilh­elm Bendz and Const­antin Hansen. While art had prev­iously served the monarchy and the Establish­ment, Henrik Steffens (1773–1845) and his st­udents real­ised that the moneyed classes were increas­ingly gaining pow­er and influence, now industr­ial­isa­tion was starting. Grand historical art gave way to more appealing and less grand art; genre painting em­er­ged, with int­eriors and portraits depicting the middle and upper class­es. Students liked to stud­y in Paris with Jacques-Louis David.

Copenhagen on Fire by CW Eck­er­s­berg (1807) showed how Copenhagen exp­erienced the fir­es. In the Golden Age, Copen­hagen in particular acqu­ired a new look as ar­chitects inspired by neo-classicism repaired much of the damage caused by fire in 1795 and by British bombardment of the city. In 1800 Hansen was charged with rebuilding the Pa­l­ace!

In 1801, because of the coun­try's invo­l­vement in the League of Armed Neutrality, the Royal Navy success­fully att­acked a Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen. In 1807, on rum­ours that the French might force Denmark-Norway to close the Bal­tic to their shipping, the British bom­barded and burned large port­ions of Copenhagen. Then in 1813, because the country couldn’t support the war costs, the Danish-Norwegian gov­ernment declared bankruptcy. Wor­se, Norway ceased to be part of the Oldenburg realms when it was ceded to Sweden in Treaty of Kiel (1814).

Yet these crises provided new prospects for Copenhagen. Ar­chitects and planners wid­ened the streets where beautifully desig­ned Neoclass­ical buildings became smarter. With 100,000 people, the smallish city had been built within the confines of the old ramp­arts.

So the lead­ing figures met sharing ideas, unit­ing arts & scien­ces. The main proponent of Classicism in the Golden age was Constantin Han­sen who de­v­eloped a severe style, with large surfaces, in­sp­ired by ancient Greek & Roman architecture. From 1800 he was in charge of all major building projects in Copenhagen where he designed Copen­hagen’s Townhall and Court­house (1805–15), and rebuilt the Church of Our Lady and the square (1811–29). Interior scenes and small portrait gr­oups were also common, with dom­estic objects and furniture, often the art­ist's circle of friends. Danish-trained leader of Ger­man Rom­antic painting Cas­p­ar David Fried­rich was import­ant in spread­ing infl­uence in Germany.

The Golden Age launched a distinct national style for the first time since the Middle Ages. Its style drew on Dutch Gol­d­en Age painting, es­pecially land­scape painting, depicting northern light that was soft, with strong colour contrasts. An idealised version of real­ity.

Const­antin Hansen (1804–80) was born in Rome, son of portrait paint­er Hans Han­sen. The family soon moved to Vienna where Wolfgang Am­ad­eus Mozart’s wid­­ow was his godmother, and with­­in a year, they moved to Co­p­­enhagen. Constantin studied Archit­ect­ure at the Building Sch­ool of the Royal Danish Ac­ademy of Art at 12, but later changed to paint­ing, begin­ning his tr­aining under Christoffer Eckersberg.

Constantin was very in­t­er­­est­ed in literature and mythol­ogy, in­spired by Niels Høyen who want­ed to recr­eate a national hist­or­ical art based on Norse myth­ol­ogy. Høyen, who taught at the Academy, enc­ouraged his st­udents to do landscape painting, especially Danish coun­try scenes.

Paintings by Eckersberg, Ch­risten Købke and Constantin Hansen, using their Italian views, showed the imp­ortant as­p­ects which revealed the Danish Gol­d­­en Age creative process. In 1835 Hansen received a 3-year salary to travel abroad, taking him via Ber­l­in, Dresden, Prague, Nur­emberg and Munich en route to Italy, where he stayed longer in Ro­me, Nap­les and Pomp­eii, and travelled with fellow-Danes. 

Constantin Hansen
A Group of Danish Artists in Rome, 1837
National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen

Copenhagen Art Union commissioned a Hansen painting, A Group of Danish Artists in Rome 1837. This ser­ious work stood out among the pictures of carefree Italian-living that Danish audien­ces enjoyed. The Danish paint­ers and archit­ec­ts in the Rom­an hotel room were Hansen him­­self, Mic­h­­ael Bin­­­d­es­bøll, Mart­inus Rør­b­ye, Wilhelm Marstrand, Küch­ler, Ditlev Blun­ck, Jørg­en Son­ne were gathered to soc­ialise together; but the purpose of the assem­b­ly was to dis­cuss art! Arch­itect Michael Bindes­bøll (1800-56) was re­l­ating the exper­ien­ces of his Greek tra­v­els while the other artists list­en­ed with vary­ing deg­rees of attent­ion. Han­s­en was very ambitious, being insp­ired by Renaissance dep­ictions of artists, suit­ing them to cont­em­porary ideals. He also painted many al­­t­ar­pieces and portr­aits eg Fathers of the  Dan­ish Constituent Assem­bly of 1848. 

 

Fathers of the Dan­ish Constituent Assem­bly 1848

painted by Hansen in 1861

Frederiksborg Museum, Copenhagen

The Golden Age had also seen the develop­ment of Neoclassical Danish arch­itecture, mus­ic, ballet, lit­er­at­ure (eg Hans Ch­ristian And­er­sen), philosophy (eg Søren Kierk­eg­aard) and scien­ce. The Golden Age thus had a profound effect across life in Denmark and even outside.

End of the Golden Age
Danish culture suffered from the First Schleswig War (1848-51). Add­it­ionally, polit­ical reforms involved the end of the ab­solute monarchy in 1848 and the adoption of the Danish constitution in 1849. Finally note that the extension of Copenhagen beyond the old ramparts, during the 1850s, enabled urban exp­an­sion. 

rebuilding Goethehaus Frankfurt post-WW2

Model of the Goethe House before the renovation in 1775

Frankfurt was hit by a very large air raids of WW2 in March 1944. Av­oid­ing German anti-aircraft defences, 816 British planes dr­op­ped thousands of heavy bombs and 1.2 million incendiary dev­ices. Al­tst­adt-Old Town particularly suffered when the entire quarter was dest­roy­ed down to rubble.

bombed out Al­tst­adt Frankfurt, 1944

Creating the most pain was an elegant 5-storey building that had been the cradle of German culture, home of Jo­hann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Goethe had recalled it was to Goethehaus that he owed his lit­er­ary passion, where he’d learn­ed to love Italy, antiq­uity and nat­ure; where he wrote some of his most famous works including Faust.

This house had been bombed in 1943 by the British but the blaze was contained. Luckily prisoners of war ensured a temporary roof protecting the house. The next British bomb in 1944 was much wor­­se when nothing was left ex­cept the cellar, foundations and one fra­g­ile wall. The German press expl­od­ed with anger, describing the bomb­ing as terr­orism. Rhein-Mainishe Zei­t­ung claimed that in dest­roy­ing this part of the civilised world, the Allies comm­itted an outrag­eous assault on the German soul that demanded revenge.
                                       

Ernst Beutler and colleague

sitting in the rubble of Goethehaus

Ernst Beutler (1885-1960), historian, Goe­t­he resear­ch­er and Goethehaus Direc­t­or, had already fore­seen the danger, and began safe­guarding the house in 1939 by moving paintings to safety. By 1943 the entire lib­rary had been crated & shipped. Beutler was as careful with the building, having detailed architectural draw­ings prep­ared and photo­graphs taken.

Once the Free German Foundation, which ran Goethe­haus, had given its approval in Apr 1944, Beutler launched an awareness campaign: leaflets, newsletters and vol­un­teer lists. Hav­ing devoted much of his career to Goet­he’s memory, re­con­str­uct­ion seemed mandatory.

Alas others thought diff­erently. Post-war Germany, now occupied and divided, was no longer the nation it had been. As people strugg­led to come to terms with the Third Reich, guilt began to grow. Though most were anxious to put the Nazi years behind them, it was a rare person who didn’t value Germany’s cul­tural past.

Post-war, Eugen Blanck & Werner Hebebrand were app­oint­ed Frank­furt City Planning Office’s new chiefs. Committed mod­ern­ists, they focused on affordable housing, deter­mined to rebuild Frankfurt al­ong functional, egal­itarian lines. Anticipating a bitter struggle with­in the City Council and with Beutler, they created a survey of lead­ing architects who opposed reconstruction, and started a new press campaign

Even Germany’s most prominent writers and artists, who shared a deep admiration for Goethe’s works and referred to his Frank­furt years with pride, were concerned about what rebuilding Goethehaus would mean post-war. Poet Reinhold Schneider saw hero-worship. A leading anti-war figure, Schneider’s works were banned by the Third Reich and he became the Conscience of the Nation. He det­ected in Beu­t­ler’s plan a cultish hint, like the adulation piled on Hitler. If West Ger­m­any was to rise from the ashes, Schneider thought it vital to rescue the German spirit from itself.

Modernist architect Otto Bartning said Beutler’s promise of a faithful rec­onst­ru­c­tion was a dev­ious commitment. Since Goethe’s father remodelled it, building methods had changed, new materials were introd­uced and regulations were tightened. Even with a large budget, Beut­ler could only produce an imitation. Lack of authenticity made Beut­l­er’s plan a giant lie, dec­eiving the public with a false im­age of the past. Giv­en all that Germ­any had exper­ienced since 1933, this was the opposite of what was needed.

Many worried about costs. Philosopher Dolf Sternberger strug­g­led to justify sp­ending money  so many were home­less. Since history was less valuable than the lives of ord­inary cit­iz­­ens, they should have erected a simple Goethe memorial on the rubble. What might I have said, had the Melbourne Shrine or Sydney Harbour Bridge been bombed?

Beutler thought it easiest to go be­hind the Planning Off­ice! But when he heard Blanck and Hebebrand, it was clear that a sneaky app­roach was inappropriate. So he began writ­ing to polit­ic­ians, writ­ers and scholars for supp­ort. His appeals were elegant and charm­ing, diff­erent from his oppon­ents’ rants. They suc­­c­­eed­ed! With­in weeks Beut­ler received help from industrialist Richard Mert­on, Soc­ial Democratic polit­ician Kurt Schumacher and nov­elist Ernst Wiechert.

The most important backing came from Hermann Hesse. With his friend Thomas Mann, 1929 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, Hesse domin­ated German liter­at­ure. Hesse’s novels won him the Nobel Prize for Lit­erat­ure in 1946. Though he remained in Swiss exile, Hesse had devoted his career to explor­ing the individual’s quest for auth­en­ticity. But he was not an uncrit­ical Goethe fan. Goethe was the blight of Hesse’s intell­ectual life, boring, pompous and drunk, even though he regarded Goethe as an important writ­er for the post-war era. Hesse was ac­utely aware that there were other more pressing needs in Germany but he was still convinced that Beutler’s plan was a vital enterprise. It wasn’t just that Goethehaus had represented the loss of some­thing beautiful. Rather it was so import­ant in its potential to force present/future people to think  critically.

Goethehaus today

Hesse’s intervention was decisive. In Apr 1947 Beutler won City Council approval to re-build Old Goe­t­hehaus. Blan­ck and Hebebrand were hor­r­ified. 3 months later André Gide (French Nobel Prize winner in Lit­er­at­ure 1947) pres­id­ed over laying the found­ations. Mayor Walt­er Kolb saw the house as a place of peace and sp­ir­it­ual underst­and­ing between nations. 2 years later, Goethehaus triumph­antly reop­en­ed. 

Goethe's library rebuilt

Beut­ler received the 1960 Goethe Prize for rebuilding of Goethehaus. He died in Frankfurt that year.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo Prague court

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–93) was c36 when he left Italy to be­come a court portraitist to Hapsburg emperors Ferdinand I, Max­imil­ian II in Vien­na & Rudolf II in Prague.

Examine the enigmatic, Late Renaissance world of Arcimboldo and his most famous piece The Librarian c1566. He was one of the Italian artists who changed art during the Renaissance. Born into an artistic family in Milan, he started his career by designing stained glass windows for the Milan Cathedral. But Arcimboldo was attracted to the peculiar. In Prague Court, one of the great centres of the later Renaissance, Archimboldo became a very desirable painter for Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolf II. Rudolf II gathered creative around him: scientists, astronomers, authors and artists of every kind. This strengthened the possibility that portrait was of Wolfgang Lazius, a humanist and historian who served those Holy Roman Emperors in Prague.

Arcimboldo belonged to the Mannerist movement, famous for most of the C16th. His most well-known portraits were composite heads made out of fruits, vegetables and plants. So he wasn’t just an artist; he was a creative maverick. Arcimboldo wasn’t content with painting regular portraits - he wanted something new! Arc-imboldo’s creations turned the art scene upside down. Imagine a face crafted from foods. He played this style like a virtuoso. Of course The Librarian was just one piece of Arcimboldo’s wild collection of composite heads. He started a trend that caused artists to think outside the canvas. It took genius to mix fruits, vegetables and books to create a face.

The Librarian, 

c1566, height 67cm, width 50cm 

Skokloster Castle, Sweden

Arcimboldo created something unusual. He invented a librarian, not made of flesh & bone but from books. The librarian’s face is a stack of books, arranged to form a face that was strangely calm and surprisingly wise. Arcimboldo might have been saying Knowledge is my play ground, and I’m building it with books. He wasn’t just painting a librarian; he was crafting a symbol of intellect. Those books weren’t just random; they were a nod to the intellectual feelings of the Renaissance. He meant Look at all this knowledge, neatly stacked on my librarian’s face.

Another perspective was Roland Barthes’ essay on Arcimboldo, on the visual articulation of the intersection of man and nature. The fascination with Arcimboldo’s paintings was greater, because the Italian better challenged the viewer’s own ideas about the work’s exact purpose.

 Even though Arcimboldo was doing this long before the C20th Surrealists, his work has a dreamy, surreal feel, playing with reality in the coolest way possible. The Librarian wasn’t just a portrait; it was a portal into a whimsical realm of artistic eccentricity. The C16th Hapsburgs were thrilled with this artist, but cool heads reigned in the next centuries and his fame faded. We can see why modern Surrealists were attracted to Arcimboldo: his daring ascribing of human attributes to non-humans, his morphing of the natural with the extreme and grotesque, and transformation of the everyday and the dreamlike.

Under the layers of The Librarian, Arcimboldo didn’t throw books together randomly. In the face of wisdom, the face was a meticulous set of book spines as facial features. The eyes, nose, mouth were well crafted using the varied shapes and sizes of books. Arcimboldo was guiding a symphony of literature; the librarian’s face was a masterpiece.

And appreciate the diversity of the books used. They were either thick or thin; they were either bound in dark leather or in lighter hues. Each book seemed to have a personality of its own, contributing to the librarian’s overall character, a visual feast for book and art lovers alike.

Despite the quirky construction, the librarian’s expression was composed. It was not just a stack of literature; the face exuded tranquillity and wisdom coming from the composed arrangement of books. The composition was balanced, with books carefully arranged to create a harmonious whole, a testament to Arcimboldo’s talent that he could turn books into a surreal yet strangely natural face. 

An intimate friendship developed between Arcimboldo and Emperor Rudolf's son. In this work, the painter depicted the Emperor as the ancient god Vertumnus, the god of seasons, of inexhaustible change and agriculture. To realise this, he composed the face of the ruler from all kinds of plants, flowers and fruits. These were from different seasons and thus symbolised the eternal cycle of life. But the painting was not meant to hang alone but to be flanked by many other allegory paintings that Rudolf commissioned.

Arcimboldo, Rudolf II of Habsburg as Vertumnus, 1590 

Skokloster Castle, Sweden

Skokloster Castle, Sweden invites visitors to stroll through the halls and stumble upon a librarian made entirely of books, a historical and artistic jackpot! A Renaissance aristocrat’s worth was determined by the number of books he had read, OR by the quantity of books in his library. Arcimboldo was ridiculing the widespread theory then, by arguing that knowledge was not solely derived from book ownership but that real knowledge was more important. And in this exploration, unravel the layers of Arcimboldo’s genius, break down the eccentricities of The Librarian, and serve an important section of art history unexpectedly.

Conclusion In the grand stream of art history, Arcimboldo’s Librarian stood out as a bold stroke of creative genius. It was a journey into the surreal, a celebration of intellect and a testament to the endless possibilit-ies of artistic expression. Gaze upon the librarian’s face crafted from books, knowing it was not just witnessing a portrait; it was stepping into the great realm of a Renaissance rebel who dared to re-imagine the boundaries of art. Next time the reader is inside a good book, think of Arcimboldo i.e a reminder that knowledge was/is a masterpiece waiting to be unveiled.

In Rudolfine Prague, life was surrounded by the 30 Years’ War. Many of Arcimboldo’s paintings were lost, destroyed or stolen by the invading Swedish Army. Thus Archimboldo’s work is NOT in the great gallery in Prague’s Hradcany Castle

Credit to Philip Harvey and to Roland Barthes.