Princess Alice Maud Mary was the second daughter of Queen Victoria, Duchess of Saxony, and Grand-duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt. She was born in 1843 and died in 1878. In 1862 she married FrederickWilliamLouis of Hesse, nephew of the grand-duke, whom he succeeded in 1877. She showed exemplary devotion to her father Prince Albert during his fatal illness and to the Prince of Wales during his attack of fever in 1871. During the Franco-German war she did noble nursing service to both French and Germans. She died from diphtheria caught while nursing her husband and children. Research Alice
Friedrich Karl Buchner was a German philosopher and physician. He was born in 1824 at Darmstadt and died in 1899. He put forward a controversial theory maintaining the indestructibility of matter and denying the existence of either deity or plan in nature. Research Friedrich Buchner
George Joseph Vogler was a German organist, composer and teacher. He was born in 1749 and died in 1814. He established music schools at Mannheim, Stockholm and Darmstadt. Research George Vogler
Georg Gottfried Gervinus was a German critic and historian. He was born in 1805 at Darmstadt and died in 1871. He quit commerce in 1825 to study at Heidelberg, was for some time a teacher, and qualified as a privat-docent. After a visit to Italy he published his Geschichte der Poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen (History of the Poetic National Literature of the Germans, 1835-42). In 1835 he was appointed extraordinary professor at Heidelberg, and the following year ordinary professor of history and literature at Gottingen; but in 1837, being one of the seven professors who protested against King Ernst August's breach of the constitution, he was banished from Hanover.
After another visit to Italy he returned to Heidelberg, where in 1844 he was appointed an honorary professor. He now began to take an active part in politics on the liberal side; became editor of the newly-founded Deutsche Zeitung, and was returned to the federal diet by the Hanse towns. Discontented with the tendency of affairs after 1848, he gave up politics and resumed his old studies. In 1849 he published the first part of his great work on. William Shakespeare, in 1853 his History of German Poetry, and in 1855 the first volume of his History of the Nineteenth Century, which, however, was never carried farther than the French revolution of 1830. Amongst his last writings was a critical essay on Handel and William Shakespeare. Research Georg Gervinus
Hans Holbein was a German portrait and religious painter. He was born in 1497 at Augsburg and died in 1543 of the plague. He studied under his father, Hans Holbein the elder, a painter of considerable merit who lived between 1450 and 1526, and at an early age settled at Basel, where he exercised his art until about 1526. He then came to England, where letters from his friend Erasmus, whose Panegyric on Folly he had illustrated by a series of drawings, procured him the patronage of the chancellor Sir Thomas More.
He was appointed court painter by Henry VIII and in the Windsor collection has left portraits of all the eminent Englishmen of the time. The most celebrated of his pictures are the Madonna at Darmstadt, representing the BurgomasterMeyer and his wives kneeling to the Virgin; and the SolothurnMadonna. His famous Dance of Death has only been preserved in the engravings of Liltzelburger. There are a considerable number of engravings on wood and copper from Holbein's designs. Research Hans Holbein
Gibraltar is a town and strongly-fortified rocky peninsula near the southern extremity of Spain, belonging to Great Britain. It was connected with the mainland by a low sandy isthmus, 1.5 mile long and 0.75 miles broad, known as the 'neutral ground,' which was later replaced with a tarmac causeway, and has Gibraltar Bay on the west, the open sea on the east and south. The highest point of the rock is about 1400 feet above sea-level; its north face is almost perpendicular, while its east side exhibits tremendous precipices. On its south side it is almost inaccessible, making approach from seaward supposedly impossible; the west side, again, although very rugged and precipitous, slopes towards the sea; and here the rock was secured by extensive and powerful batteries, historically rendering it apparently impregnable. Vast sums of money and an immense amount of labour were spent in fortifying this celebrated stronghold, which, as a former coaling station, depot for war material, and a port of refuge in case of war, forms one of the most important points of support for British naval operations and British commerce eastwards.
During the 19th century numerous caverns and galleries, extending 2 to 3 miles in length, and of sufficient width for carriages, were cut in the solid rock, with port-holes at intervals of every 12 yards bearing upon the neutral ground and the bay, and mounted with more than 1000 guns, some of them of the largest size of the time.
Gibraltar, known to the Greeks as Calpe, was first fortified as a strategic point by the Saracen leader Tarik Ibn Zeiad in 711-712, from whom it was thenceforward called Gebel-al-Tarik, the rock of Tarik. It was ultimately taken by the Spaniards from the Moors in 1462, fortified in the European style, and so much strengthened that the engineers of the 17th century considered it impregnable. It was taken, however, after a vigorous bombardment in 1704 by a combined English and Dutch force under Sir George Rooke and Prince George of Darmstadt, and was secured to Britain by the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. Since then it has remained in British hands, notwithstanding some desperate efforts on the part of Spain and France to retake it, and a continual diplomatic argument between Spain and Britain throughout the 20th century. In 1704-1705 it was closely besieged; in 1727 it was hard pressed by a Spanish force when Admiral Wager, with eleven ships of the line, relieved it. In 1779, Britain being then engaged in a war with its revolted colonies and with France, a last grand effort was made by Spain to recover Gibraltar. The siege lasted for nearly four years, the fire being for the great part of that time very harassing, and rising on several occasions into a fierce and prolonged bombardment. It was heroically and successfully defended, however, by General Elliot (afterwards LordHeathfield) and the garrison. Since that time, in the various British and Spanish, and also French wars, Gibraltar has only been blockaded on the land side.
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