Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Wirth, Karl Joseph kärl yōˈzĕf vĭrt [key], 1879–1956, German statesman. A leader of the Catholic Center party, he succeeded (1920) Matthias Erzberger as minister of finance. In 1921, Wirth beca...

(Encyclopedia) Watts-Dunton, Theodore (Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton), 1832–1914, English poet, novelist, and critic. A member of the staff of the Examiner (1874–76), he became editor of the Athenaeum (1876–98)...

(Encyclopedia) epigram, a short, polished, pithy saying, usually in verse, often with a satiric or paradoxical twist at the end. The term was originally applied by the Greeks to the inscriptions on stones. The epigr...

(Encyclopedia) Gide, Charles zhēd [key], 1847–1932, French economist. A professor at the universities of Bordeaux, Montpellier, and Paris, Gide was an expert on international monetary problems. He also played an...

(Encyclopedia) functionalism, in art and architecture, an aesthetic doctrine developed in the early 20th cent. out of Louis Henry Sullivan's aphorism that form ever follows function. Functionalist architects and art...

(Encyclopedia) Monmouth, James Scott, duke of mŏnˈməth [key], 1649–85, pretender to the English throne; illegitimate son of Charles II of England by Lucy Walter. After his mother's death, he was cared for by Lo...

(Encyclopedia) classic revival, widely diffused phase of taste (known as neoclassic) which influenced architecture and the arts in Europe and the United States during the last years of the 18th and the first half of...

(Encyclopedia) Kenilworth kĕnˈəlwûrthˌ [key], town (1991 pop. 16,782), Warwickshire, central England. A market town and bedroom community, it is famous for the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, celebrated in Sir Walt...

(Encyclopedia) Boulanger, Nadia bo͞oläNzhāˈ [key], 1887–1979, French conductor and musician, b. Paris. Boulanger was considered an outstanding teacher of composition. She studied at the Paris Conservatory, wh...

(Encyclopedia) Woodcock, Leonard Freel, 1911–2000, American labor leader, b. Providence, R.I. In 1933 he went to work as a machine assembler at the Detroit Gear and Machine Co., where he joined a union that became...