Edited by Gerald Boerner
Introductory Comments:
On this day we have seen some major events that have affected the history not only of our own country, but of the family of nations as well. Some of these events were happy ones, like the first Mardi Gras celebrated in New Orleans in 1827. Others dealt with war and preparations for war. Domestically, in 1776 the Continental Congress established the Continental Navy which has grown into the most powerful on earth. On this day in 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced the end of hostilities during the First Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm. But in Germany, in 1933, we witnessed the burning of the seat of the German Parliament, the Reichstag, in Berlin; Chancellor Adolf Hitler blamed it on communists and took the opportunity to declare marshal law. World War II was the consequence of the Nazi leadership’s power grab.
We have seen some important civil rights events occur as well. In 1860, in New York City, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Cooper union speech condemning slavery. This speech brought him to national prominence and led to his election as President of the United States later that year. Also on this day, in 1872, a young African American woman, Charlotte E. Ray, graduated from Howard University and becoming the first African American woman to become a lawyer in this country. She would later become the first woman admitted to practice law in Washington.
We now will proceed to examine some of the events that are associated with day in history... GLB
These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2012 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved[ 860 Words ]
Quotations Related to Reichstag:
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“In 1930 I became a member of the Reichstag.”
— Hans Frank
“I was lucky because on the morning after the burning of the Reichstag I left my home very early to catch a train to Berlin for the conference of our student organization and that is the only reason why I escaped arrest.”
— Klaus Fuchs
“If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country.”
— Daniel Ellsberg
“It was also my idea that the advisory committees of the Academy should replace the legal committees of the German Reichstag, which was gradually fading into the background in the Reich.”
— Hans Frank
“Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to ’95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it’s not written by an art historian.”
— Christo