Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 August 15

= August 15 =

Who really originated 2 quotes
Hi all, long time reader here and very appreciative of all the hard work you guys do. So I seem to remember (maybe Hegel) some German or Prussian philosopher originating "Politics is downstream from Culture" a century or more before Brietbart and now Bannon are credited with it, or was it a slightly different saying? Also "It is not the crime but the coverup" was a hot quote during Watergate but was it originally said centuries before, if not who originated it? Thanks for any and all opinions in advance!2600:1702:690:F7A0:28C1:7D56:5FB2:9C14 (talk) 04:13, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Brainy Quote has several rather contemporaneous sources for the "Politics is downstream from Culture" quote. Ben Domenech being the only one that exactly matches the quote.  It doesn't sound particularly Hegelian, for what it is worth.  It sounds very much in the 21st century far-right philosophy, though given Ben Domenech's penchant for plagiarism, he may have cribbed it from somewhere.  The importance of culture to the far right is readily evident; they like to imagine themselves as part of a culture war, and the importance of winning that war towards influencing politics is their central strategy.  I would not be surprised if the recent origins of the quote are actually fairly accurate.  In terms of quote origin websites, I can't find any that track the origin of the aphorism "It's not the crime, it's the coverup", but it is ubiquitous, however I don't personally recall any uses older than Watergate. -- Jayron 32 14:31, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Ben Domenech is a good find, yes I am coming up on the same 1972ish wall for the 2nd quote, the hunt continues, if anything else is found please share! 2600:1702:690:F7A0:5468:82FC:99B3:40B0 (talk) 20:15, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Can't access source from Oxford Reference
Hey, anyone know why I can't access this source through the Wikipedia library? https://www-oxfordreference-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/acref/9780227679319.001.0001/acref-9780227679319-e-117 (Vauchez, André, ed. "Alfonso Buenhombre". Oxford Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Oxford Reference) 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 06:04, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I've had trouble with having stuff on an OUP sub-site like Oxford Reference be inaccessible through the OUP portal directly, but that doesn't seem to be the problem here. I searched for a while, and I think the only way out is to wait for OUP to fix the link, or better yet email them to report the broken link. SamuelRiv (talk) 06:52, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * You could try posting this query at one or other of the Wikipedia Library talk pages, of which there seem to be two: Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library and . --Viennese Waltz 08:10, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I received an email from OUP dated 18 August that they are redoing their access control system which "affects how you log in and manage your subscriptions and alerts. Now you can conveniently login in with your e-mail address instead of having to remember multiple usernames and passwords" and goes on from there. Perhaps you got caught up in this. Response email is online at oup dot com. Mathglot (talk) 05:39, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Bund's program
Did the German American Bund ever produce an official written program about its aims? Thank you! 95.245.16.252 (talk) 12:27, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes. Program of the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, published in 1941, four pages long. --Soman (talk) 13:00, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Is there a place where I could read it online? --95.245.16.252 (talk) 13:11, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Not the same document but perhaps of interest: "Awake and Act!: The purposes and aims of the German American Bund", 1937 --Rpresser 14:01, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * No luck with the full text, but I did find the October 1941 FBI report on the organisation. Alansplodge (talk) 18:08, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Was Levi Strauss (jeans manufacturer) related to Claude Lévi-Strauss (anthropologist/philosopher)?
I realize that Levi is a personal (first) name in the former case and a surname component in the latter case, but it still seems like there might be a bare possibility that they had a known relationship. Did they? --Rpresser 13:57, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * As far as I can find, there is no evidence to say that they are related. With the very slight caveat that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I can't find any close familial relationship between them.  The surname "Lévi-Strauss" came from his father, painter Raymond Lévi-Strauss, who was born in France; Claude was born in Belgium.  Levi Strauss was born in Germany, and moved to the U.S some 40 years before Raymond was born.  Given how common the name "Strauss" is, it seems no more likely for them to be related than two people named Smith.  -- Jayron 32 14:16, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Well it's more likely by some amount, if there are fewer Strauss (Sträusse?) than Smiths. —Tamfang (talk) 02:20, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Among Central European Jews, the surnames "Levi" and "Strauss" are as common as Smiths in the Anglosphere. Ghirla-трёп- 21:38, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Notably, during the Napoleonic Empire, many Jews which didn't have last names were automatically assigned the last name Straus(s). It is not particularly Hebraic, Strauss is Germanic, but many Ashkenazi Jews in German speaking areas adopted German names at various times.  Levi is a Hebraic name, being one of the sons of Jacob and founder of the priestly Tribe of Levi.  -- Jayron 32 12:46, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * "Levi" wasn't even his given name; until he emigrated to the US at age 18 and changed his first name, he was known as Löb Strauß. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 14:52, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yup. Löb is an alternate spelling of Loeb or Leib, which is cognate with the English word "Lion" and name Leon.  Levi is an entirely different name, of different etymology, though the similar sounding nature of the two names may have influence him to make the change. -- Jayron 32 14:05, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

'Contemporary Biographies' by William Thomas Pike
On Wikisource I have created a partial list of a series of works of British and Irish biography, edited by William Thomas Pike. Their titles use one of two patterns:


 * Birmingham at the Opening of the Twentieth Century
 * East Anglia in the Twentieth Century

and some (at least) are subtitled "Contemporary Biographies. Pike's New Century Series." or simply "Contemporary Biographies".

Does anyone have a complete list? Or a biography of Pike?

I have been unable to find any digitised works from the series - have I missed any? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:54, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Pike's Worldcat page if that helps. Alansplodge (talk) 18:26, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * 33 "Contemporary Biographies" published between 1888 and 1912 as Pike's New Century Series. Reprinted by a Peter Bell in the 1980's. as A Dictionary of Edwardian Biography
 * East Anglia in the Twentieth Century
 * Lancashire at the Opening of the Twentieth Centruy
 * wikisource has a partial list linking to Durham
 * Cheshire, Dublin, London, British Engineers (not part of Pike's New Century Series) at Hathitrust


 * , i should have pinged you instead of Billinghurst, any help? fiveby(zero) 19:17, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

with list of 27 numbered plus 8 unnumbered. fiveby(zero) 19:37, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, all. I've updated the two Wikisource lists, accordingly. Does anyone in the United States have access to the Hathi Trust files, and if so, please could you upload them to Commons? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:30, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

1920s female hairstyle
During the 1920s, did all women and girls have short medium-length hairstyles, or were they just wigs for formal ocassions like parties? 86.140.120.168 (talk) 18:15, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * See Women's 1920s Hairstyles: An Overview. Alansplodge (talk) 18:28, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * So, their hairs were like that in that decade because...? And most of them were wigs? 86.140.120.168 (talk) 21:44, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Wigs would be preferred (as mentioned) because it's a quick way to put on a perfect hairstyle that won't get mussed in the meantime. I can't imagine most of them were wigs because natural hair wigs, especially finely styled, would likely have been more expensive then than they are now. From what I've seen advertised, it seems like a bob is one of the easier dos for a hairstylist to learn (or maybe it's one of the intro "advanced" dos? Either way there's seemingly lots of demand for barber school models specifically for single-length bobs), so it might have been cheaper and easier to maintain than some hairstyles (that has zero bearing on why a do would be popular, but maybe somewhat on why middle-income women would keep it for longer, go out partying in it, and forego wigs, say), but I have zero idea, and it would be nice if a stylist/barber or hair/fashion history buff could stop by in here.
 * I do know there are definitely socio-economic-political phenomena in women's history (of all classes except the poorest of the poor), especially in relation to men, that go along with the degree of rigor, time, and expense required to keep up with fashion of the time. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:58, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Women cutting their hair short was kind of a rebellion against the old school mentality of keeping hair long and put up in a bun. <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 22:17, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * But what was the reason thier hairs were like that in that part of the 20th century, exactly? And did all females had those hairstyles, worldwide, including in Ireland, Britain and the US? 86.140.120.168 (talk) 20:48, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * You may get some answers from the article Flapper. <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 06:01, 18 August 2022 (UTC)


 * The most commented-on hairstyle of the decade was "the bob", often worn under a cloche hat. I never read that wig-wearing was particularly common... AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Of course it was believed that Roman vestal virgins wore wigs or had sewn hair until Janet Stephens proved it was possible with natural hair. Kids and adults in the 60s often thought (some jokingly, some not) that the Beatles wore wigs and an industry arose around the concept. People, everywhere, throughout history, rich and poor, just really like their own hair and really like to look nice. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:56, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * A fun take on the style is Bernice Bobs Her Hair and its 1976 TV adaptation. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 22:31, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

So according to Women's 1920s Hairstyles: An Overview, it was because...?
 * Due to a reaction of the aftermath of World War I which took many lives and women taking the place of men in many workplaces, including factories and fields.
 * A desire to live embrace lives.
 * A symbol of women's newfound freedom, rights, and opportunities. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.140.120.168 (talk) 20:44, 18 August 2022 (UTC)


 * The article seems to attribute it more to shock fashion icons made international by film, complementary fashion like the cloche hat, and relative ease of maintenance. I'd personally add the importance of the hairstyle in the evolving ideal silhouette, and the notion of the silhouette being raised in importance through the growing dominance of photography and film, and rise in fashion (this is part of the origin story of the skinniness ideal). I am also generally extremely skeptical of hypotheses that social movements in the abstract significantly drive pop culture -- I think you're more likely to find pop culture driving the behavior of social movements. (Examples: bra burning was a protest against fashion based on an abstract social theory, but the number of women actively shunning bras in daily wear never exceeded a handful. With an oddly analogous ideology, the codpiece-inlaid virility pants of the 1970s to free men's masculinity never went beyond a few trivia pages in history. And my decades-long campaign against neckties has so far seen few adopters, though I feel like next year's the year!) SamuelRiv (talk) 21:22, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes the reaction argument makes sense, moreover the automobile was getting unavoidable, ubiquituous hardtops adding volume constraints and much narrower doors contrasting with the conditions from the horse-drawn-cab era, and the cloche hat is obviously an all-weather design adequate even if the return back home required hiring a convertible (compare with fisherman). Askedonty (talk) 14:09, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

And did they all have those hairstyles in real life and in film/tv? Did they have to have those hairs? And some of them did wear wigs? And did most women and men disapprove of those styles? I disapprove. 86.140.120.168 (talk) 20:28, 19 August 2022 (UTC)


 * 86.140.120.168 -- The 1920s were a reaction against the rigidities of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in a number of ways (to some degree due to the effects of the social discontinuities caused by WW1), but the "bob" haircut was a fairly minor manifestation of this, and I'm not sure what you can learn by focusing on the haircut alone, in isolation from all the other cultural trends of the decade. And I really don't know what your apparent obsession with wigs is about... AnonMoos (talk) 22:09, 19 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Also,, there were no broadcast TV services in the 1920s. Your apparent assumption that there were suggests that you haven't yet developed a good grasp of historical developments. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.121.96 (talk) 16:23, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a little bit of a rude presumption. Broadcast radio and the onset of cheap film has the same basic idea and created a saturated media landscape that is in some ways comparable to the TV era (though it's probably better just to say "mass media" or "mass AV media"). Also AnonMoos, saying "the 1920s were a reaction" against "rigidities" so matter-of-factly without a good review source is kind of useless. To what rigidities were people of what classes where reacting to? Why did these Victorian-cum-Edwardian "rigidities" only see their downfall in the 1920s, when there were other notable free-wheeling risque eras interspersed (the Gay Nineties?) It's basically taking two continents and nearly a century of social history into MS Paint and hitting the "flood-fill" button. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:17, 20 August 2022 (UTC)


 * SamuelRiv -- Just compare a typical mid-1890s dress with cumbersome "Leg of Mutton" sleeves, fitted tightly to the corseted torso above the waist, and with long (at least ankle-length) thick heavy full skirts below the waist, to a typical mid-1920s dress which often didn't have sleeves at all, which was loosely fitting and not heavily-skirted, and with a hemline tending upwards toward the knees, and you'll know that a major discontinuity has occurred. It's hard to see the "drop-waist" or no-waist dress prevalent during most of the 1920s as anything but a reaction to the corseted narrow-waisted hourglass silhouette which prevailed druring most of the 19th century and the early 20th century.  There was a similar reaction in the 1920s to rigid narrow Victorian/Edwardian morality (the 1920s was when the concept of the single-couple "date" arose, and a young unmarried woman was no longer automatically "ruined" if it was known that she had had sex) -- see Bright Young Things etc. -- and the fashion changes fit in with this.  It's very hard to say for sure why such major social changes take place or don't take place at any one specific time, but it's been speculated by various people that the aftereffects of WW1 had something to do with it (as I said)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:21, 20 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't know why you're comparing bohemian and night-life culture of the 1920s to general notions of Victorian/Edwardian morality (assuming this is definable) or some standard fashion elements of sleeves and corsets that would be common at all levels. Your better comparison with the kind of 1920s cultures your looking at is, for example, what you'd find at the early Moulin Rouge (and the Belle Époque in Europe is probably decent to compare on social and cultural levels to the 20s and 50s in the U.S.). People dressed and acted risque in the urban night life then as in previous decades. If you're looking at loose sleeves and tight corsets, you probably should use a more thorough dataset of the years and cities. I think there's clearly a widespread urban pop-cultural revival revival in the 1890s, 1920s, and 1950s, and in similar spacing earlier in the 19th century, but it's fuzzy as it's separated by continent and precise decade. I don't know how you'd effectively say that the 1920s was more of a "major discontinuity" than any of the other periods overall when looking at culture alone, and it's a difficult question to set up because the data and precision gets worse further back, and you really have to be fair about where and when specifically you want to look. SamuelRiv (talk) 01:44, 21 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the idea that only "bohemian night-life" women wore sleeveless loose-fitting drop-waist dresses with high hemlines in the 1920s is simply 100% factually false. Look at the classic "Half an inch shorter" postcard.  Are those "bohemian night-life" women??  (The dresses have sleeves, since they're for going outdoors during the daytime, but in other circumstances women of a similar social status might wear sleeveless dresses.)  There's a major discontinuity in the 1920s, since for many decades before WW1, women wore very long dresses which were tightly-fitted above the waist, but that started to change during the war, with a rapid acceleration of the change in the 1920s.  Just look at the Friedrich Seidenstuecker photo of a woman jumping over a puddle  to see the radical discontinuity with the Victorian era (a Victorian woman might feel the vapors coming on and need to be revived with smelling salts if she saw the 1925 or 1930(?) woman jumping over a puddle). AnonMoos (talk) 02:28, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

What about the films and tv shows set in the 20s (e.g. Singin' in the Rain, Chicago, The Aviator, Cheaper by the Dozen (1950 film), Christopher Robin (film), Cinderella Man, The Danish Girl (film), Peaky Blinders (TV series) and Downton Abbey, the film and it's sequel)? Did all the female characters had those hairstyles or were they just wigs for occassions? And did all the actresses had those hairs or were just wearing wigs? 86.140.120.168 (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Did you read the articles? Some people wore wigs, some didn't. In film and TV, some actors and actresses have to wear wigs, some don't. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:21, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

In the Doctor Who episode Mummy on the Orient Express, did Clara Oswald cut her hair or was it a wig? 86.130.4.135 (talk) 19:32, 23 August 2022 (UTC)