Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Vienna Philharmonic, symphony orchestra in Vienna, Austria, founded 1842 and based at the Weiner Musikverein. The orchestra is a self-governing institution whose members are selected exclusively from ...

(Encyclopedia) Scharnhorst, Gerhard Johann David von gĕrˈhärt yōˈhän däˈvēt fən shärnˈhôrst [key], 1755–1813, Prussian general. A Hanoverian army officer, military writer, and director of the war coll...

(Encyclopedia) Spartacus party or Spartacists, radical group of German Socialists, formed c.Mar., 1916, and led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The name was derived from the pseudonym Spartacus used by Liebkn...

(Encyclopedia) Conrad, Joseph, 1857–1924, English novelist, b. Berdichev, Russia (now Berdychiv, Ukraine), originally named Jósef Teodor Konrad Walecz Korzeniowski. Born of Polish parents, he is considered one of...

(Encyclopedia) flagellants flăjˈələnts, fləjĕlˈənts [key], term applied to the groups of Christians who practiced public flagellation as a penance. The practice supposedly grew out of the floggings administe...

(Encyclopedia) International, any of a succession of international socialist and Communist organizations of the 19th and 20th cent. After World War I, the Second International was revived (1919) by moderate social...

(Encyclopedia) sociology, scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities—economic, social, political, and religious. ...

(Encyclopedia) Luxemburg, Rosa rōˈzä lo͝okˈsəmbo͝ork [key], 1871–1919, German revolutionary, b. Russian Poland. Her revolutionary activities forced her to flee to Switzerland in 1889, where she became a Mar...

(Encyclopedia) philosophy of science, branch of philosophy that emerged as an autonomous discipline in the 19th cent., especially through the work of Auguste Comte, J. S. Mill, and William Whewell. Several of the is...

(Encyclopedia) Biedermeier bēˈdərmīər [key], name applied, at first in a joking spirit, to a period of European culture and a style of furniture, decoration, and art originating in Germany early in the 19th cen...