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The Fascinating Genealogy of Founders of the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) behind the Strong Cities Network (SCN) the USDOJ Attorney General in September 2015 recommended We All Join Too

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I have posted on Strong Cities Network before.

(logo from Strongcitiesnetwork.org)

It came up again on noticing the Center for Cities and Schools (founded 2004 at UC Berkeley) who is currently featuring a “Strong Cities. Successful Young People” banner (one among six) on its home page.  In fact UCB is even fund-raising for this project. (See two colorful images below left).

#1 of 4 images

I took another look at the USDOJ announcement of the launch of Strong Cities, decided to look up the CEO referenced (the founder of the Institute was noticeably NOT mentioned), and the genealogy of at least the Institute’s founder or co-founder AND its current CEO, particularly interesting to a classical musician or anyone interested in arts, classical music, sculpture, etc.  So now you have this post:

The Fascinating Genealogy of Founders of the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) behind the Strong Cities Network (SCN) the USDOJ Attorney General in September 2015 recommended We All Join Too (case-sensitive shortlink ends “-“-6Pj” post started 5-16-2017).

Runner-up title to this post:  Sept. 2015 the USDOJ launched a Strong Cities Network Initiative, run by ISD (London), launched at the UN.  Its current CEO is a descendant of Gustav Mahler, its first founder, Baron George Weidenfield, Publisher.

This topic also overlaps with what I wrote about yesterday on the purpose of gradually increasing the “competence and mandate” of administrative agencies relative to national governments with the eventual goal of a “working peace” run administratively and functionally rather than by “blueprint” (such as legally?).  Quote from yesterday’s first post:

 “The tensions continue between [functionalism and citizen’s rights to know] –and they didn’t start yesterday!”  A second source and quote is there also (a brief bio of Mitrany, 1988-1977, and how and through whom he entered the American university conference circuit (Harvard, Yale) as well as working for the Institute for Advanced Science* (“IAS”) at “1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ,” in his truly internationally oriented lifespan) — and for the last part, working as a consultant to Unilever and Lever Brothers, Ltd.!!)


click image to read better (annotat’n is only filename)

Checking back in at the StrongCitiesNetwork.org website, I see that the Global Summit will be held May 17-19, 2017 in Denmark (I say “will” idealistically hoping to publish this by the end of today, May 16, 2017!).

 

 

“Strong Cities, Community Resilience, Anti-Terrorism (Sept. 29, 2015, USDOJ announcement):”

Click image for link (and full page from USDOJ).  Notice the phrase “Against Violent Extremism” (acronym would be “AVE.”  This article doesn’t mention any acronym, but is introducing the phrase. The CEO of the ISD running the SCN (!) (referenced here) in does, in bio blurbs.

…..”no systematic efforts are in place to share experiences, pool resources, and build a community of cities to inspire local action on a global scale” (see image, Para. 1).

[If you deleted the reference to purposes, you can hear a complaint that there isn’t a “community of cities” in place, period.]

The Strong Cities Network (SCN)  – which launches September 29th at the United Nations – will empower municipal bodies to fill this gap while working with civil society and safeguarding the rights of local citizens and communities.

The SCN will strengthen strategic planning and practices to address violent extremism in all its forms by fostering collaboration among cities, municipalities and other sub-national authorities. ….

The SCN will connect cities, city-level practitioners and the communities they represent through a series of workshops, trainings and sustained city partnerships.  Network participants** will also contribute to and benefit from an online repository of municipal-level good practices and web-based training modules and will be eligible for grants supporting innovative, local initiatives and strategies that will contribute to building social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism.

It’s a like a club with memberships; only network participants get the resources.

Sasha Alexandra Zdraska Havlicek (1975) (image is not from the USDOJ announcement); click image to access the page.

The SCN will include an International Steering Committee of approximately 25 cities and other sub-national entities from different regions that will provide the SCN with its strategic direction.  The SCN will also convene an International Advisory Board, which includes representatives from relevant city-focused networks, to help ensure SCN builds upon their work.**  It will be run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a leading international “think-and-do” tank with a long-standing track record of working to prevent violent extremism:

“The SCN provides a unique new opportunity to apply our collective lessons in preventing violent extremism in support of local communities and authorities around the world”, said CEO Sasha Havlicek of ISD.  {{her LinkedIn}} “We look forward to developing this international platform for joint innovation to impact this pressing challenge.”

**Networks interacting with networks building practices….

Here’s a photo of the current “International Steering Committee members.”

Click images to read commentary, including that the gender balance is still 6 (or perhaps 7 counting the CEO) women to 16 men, and that there is no photo caption, and no identification of people’s names in the list of 25 cities on the International Steering Committee.

(1) Notice there is an intention NOT to deal (in the USA at least) with “states” but only with cities.  So, it’s not Denver, Colorado, USA — or New York City, NY, USA — but only “Denver, USA; New York, USA, or Minneapolis, USA.  They want to get rid of the “states” relationship — but in the USA, many of our taxes, protections, and legal rights such as exist, occur under State law.  What’s more, many city or municipality budgets are also heavily interdependent on state and federal, as well as influenced by regional funding.  The concept of “Strong CITIES” wishes to equalize this across borders, in discord with our form of government.

Apparently the former head of the United States Justice Department, i.e., the Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in 2015 at time of this announcement — as well as the various mayors — had no problem with this discord or conflict of jurisdiction.  Also, membership in this network is “free” but again, limited to what kind of decision-makers in authority can join.   Also, (2), Notice the gender balance — looks like 6 women to 16 men, or just over ⅓ representation by women.  Anyhow:


Before I post more about Ms. Havlicek, isn’t it interesting that the USDOJ announcement, in referencing a major charity, referenced its CEO, and not its President and (co-) founder? Although another source says “co-founder” there might possibly be some protests at the level of communications influence already wielded by the other co-founder or, if Wiki has it right, “founder,” Baron George Weidenfield,” major publisher:

(Wikipedia on) The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a London-based ‘think and do tank’ that has pioneered policy and operational responses to the rising challenges of violent extremism and inter-communal conflict. Combining research and analysis with government advisory work and delivery programmes, ISD has been at the forefront of forging real-world, evidence-based responses to the challenges of integration, extremism and terrorism. ISD’s founder and president was George Weidenfeld, Baron Weidenfeld.[1] Its Director/CEO is Sasha Havlicek.[2]

The footnote 2, in a journal, shows Havlicek’s academic background:  London School of Economics (Bachelors’ and Masters’) and a graduate diploma  from an Institut Detudes Politique (IEP)in Paris:

References[edit]


What mostly inspired this post was learning about Sasha Havlicek’s background, but for now, the George Weidenfield background, showing where the wealth came from — publishing, and writing.  He was also of course a philanthropist.  I have a section also on Axel Springer Ag (and Axel Springer — more publishing empires) and on Gordon Getty (son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty) because it comes up, and make occasional notes on just how many times some of these men married and divorced — and whom.

The Getty fortunes are influential in California (especially San Francisco) politics, in that former SF Supervisor/Mayor and most recently Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, was the son of a retired Judge Hon. William A. Newsom, III, who both before and after his judgeship (during, but declared?  I DNK) was primarily working to manage the Getty Trust Fund (currently showing about $12 Billion Assets).  According to the Wiki on Gavin Newsom (which I also take with a grain of salt, but still quote!), the Judge divorced his mother (“Tessa”) in 1972 (but they’d separated by 1967) and somehow wasn’t providing enough for them to live on — she worked three jobs raising two children, and he worked through high school to support himself also.

He’s doing fine now, though, thanks to Gordon Getty help in sponsoring plenty of Newsom investments “around town” and outside of it.

SPEAKING OF WHICH (this just out in Sacramento Bee, yesterday…) Is Gavin Newsom’s Ex Headed for the Trump White House? BY CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO

The “Getty” information came up when the founder of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (sponsor of “Strong Cities Network”) involved partnering in 1985 (shortly after Gordon Getty inherited his father J. Paul’s $2B trust) with Getty’s wife Ann to buy Grove Press, putting him (if I have that timeline right) in the U.S. market as a publisher.

Meanwhile, it develops (and came out in the press ca. 1998/1999) that SF “high society” was helping Gordon Getty conceal his second complete family, with three daughters — until they (aged 8, 10 and 14) filed to change their last names to match his.  All of which brings up, with the philanthropies and lavish lifestyles in this “Small Town” (which for a metro area, San Francisco certainly is), if the social elite were guarding nuclear secrets, we’d be in good shape — because they certainly didn’t tell about Family #2.  (When Ann Getty found out, she didn’t divorce him, either).

The other factoid I found interesting was in Gavin Newsom, SF Supervisor, as (per Wiki) representing the sole Caucasian heterosexual male on the Board of Supervisors at the time, which, given this area, and what also seems to apply to several of its (SF City and County’s) Family Court Judges and Commissioners, sounds about par for the course.

I also added (about ½ day before publishing this page) some information on the Oxford University’s new Blavatnik School of Government (“it came up..”), a recent phenomenon, which has me thinking again about whether the world really can afford all this philanthropy — when both music, arts, and government (and universities all to ready to take it in)  — how independent, really, is any sphere of life?

Leonard Blavatnik offered Oxford University 25M (pounds) if it it would kick in 75M (pounds, not $$) for the School of Government, after which, rules had to be changed to allow it to be taller than surrounding buildings — but really, really “Green.”  On well!


Which also applies to some of the Havlicek forebears, of course no reflection on her.   Looking for any reference to when she might have married (though looks like not with a name change), here’s a 2010 article in which her exact position (substantial as we can see here) is not referenced:

Keeping Romance Alive in the Era of Female Empowerment (NYTimes, 11/30/2010, Katrina Bennhold, Paris).

Is female empowerment killing romance?

Sexual attraction in the 21st century, it seems, still feeds on 20th-century stereotypes. Now, as more women match or overtake men in education and the labor market, they are also turning traditional gender roles on their head, with some profound consequences for relationship dynamics.

There is a growing army of successful women in their 30s who have trouble finding a mate and have been immortalized in S.A.T.C. and the Bridget Jones novels. There are the alpha-women who end up with alpha-men but then decide to put career second when the babies come. But there is also a third group: a small but growing number of women who out-earn their partners, giving rise to an assortment of behavioral contortions aimed at keeping the appearance of traditional gender roles intact

….[[Several paragraphs further down…]] It is amazing how even many liberal-minded men end up having sexual and emotional difficulties being with more obviously successful women,” said Sasha Havlicek, the 35-year-old chief executive of a London research group. A high-flying friend of hers resorted to ritually feigning helplessness with her partner to promote his sense of masculinity. “The male ego can be a more fragile thing than the female ego, which is used to a regular battering and has hence developed a sense of humor!”

Personally, I never got used to battering, either physical or the other kinds, from my husband, or anyone else, and feel that when success at some social levels (not the one referenced here..) because physically dangerous for women, we need a “re-boot” in the system. Towards the end of the article, it recommends things that are simply too late for women of my generation (who did college and at least SOME career first, then married and had children).  Ms. Havlicek was born around the time I was graduating from college…

Ms. Domscheit-Berg, who is also active in the European Women’s Management Development International Network, has three bits of advice for well-paid women: Leave the snazzy company car at home on the first date; find your life partner in your 20s, rather than your 30s, before you’ve become too successful. And go after men who draw their confidence from sources other than money, like academics and artists.

“The more different their activity from your own, the better,” said Ms. Domscheit-Berg, “because that makes an immediate comparison harder.”

That’s a fluff piece, obviously, but this next one (year: 2014) is not.  Ms. Havlicek, referring also to the ISD, is quoted several paragraphs down in the article:

British women married to jihad (Sept. 6, 2014 in The Guardian, by Homa Khaleeli)

[Subtitle, white letters over hot pink background]Young men are not the only British recruits to Isis. News this week that Scottish student Aqsa Mahmood had joined the militants sparked outrage. But what made her, and others, decide to go? 

…Melanie Smith from King’s College International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation has been tracking through their social media accounts 21 British women who have joined Isis. They include 16-year-old Manchester twins Zahra and Salma Halane, and 20-year-old former radiography student, Aqsa Mahmood, from Glasgow, who exhorted Muslims to carry out terrorist attacks in the west.  …

Clusters of women from mainland Europe have travelled to Syria after attending Islamic classes in mosques – from France a group of Chechen women emigrated together – but British women have tended to go alone. “The profile is very mixed across Europe. In the UK, many come from second-generation families from south Asia, because that’s the biggest Muslim community here. They are school leavers and a couple of university students, says Smith.”

The quote referring to ISD and Ms. Havlicek is right below this large, colorful photo (I shrank it for post ):

“Aqsa Mahmood, 20, from Glasgow, who has travelled to Syria to join Isis fighters. Photograph: Enterprise News” as found at The Guardian, under “World” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/06/british-women-married-to-jihad-isis-syria

#####”Sasha Havlicek, from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, says UK women play an important role in Isis’s “brilliant” online communications strategy – bolstering the group’s claim to be fighting a “decadent and morally corrupt” western society, which has no respect for women. For this “video game generation” of young women, Havlicek says, the juxtaposition of hardcore brutality with “cuddly and fuzzy” propaganda (such as pictures of kittens playing on Kalashnikovs) is crucial.” ….To date, British government policy has focused on women exclusively as tools to prevent men become radicalised. Sara Khan, from the human rights and counter-terrorism organisation Inspire, says women should receive more attention, particularly as many feel the UK is increasingly hostile to Muslims. With Muslim women more likely to be the victims of Islamophobic attacks than men, and facing barriers such as lower levels of employment and qualifications than the population as a whole, this can add to existing feelings of disenfranchisement.

 

And I think this “VIP” (Very Important Princess) on-line club for girls in the UK, as fluffy as it may look, is also serious in intentions.  Photo of two of the five trustees and link to the “about” page:

(Sasha to left, Rachelle (who babysat her during her youth, it sounds like) to the right).

VIP means Very Important Princess

“Sasha Havlicek and Rachel Collingwood met in 1985 when Sasha was 10 and Rachel 20.  Rachel looked after Sasha when her parents were out, up until Sasha was a teenager.

Now Sasha is grown up and has a son, while Rachel has a global selection of godchildren.

As founding CEO and Director of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Sasha Havlicek is responsible for the development of programmes: research and policy work in the fields of social cohesion and counter-extremism, European neighbourhood and Russia policy, cultural and media dialogue with Muslim communities and the Arab world. She is the brain behind VIP.

Rachel Collingwood is the director of Nice Images, a photography and video studio in Dalston, London. Over the years she has been working with various charities including Mona Chimpanzee Sanctuary, SURF of Rwanda, WDC and has set up her own charity called The Girls Home for a home for social orphans in Nicaragua. She is the organiser for VIP.

Their combined concerns about girls growing up in our appearance-obsessed society, and perhaps not fulfilling their potential, spurred them on to create VIP. Boys are most welcome in all activities that VIP will provide. Their plan is to develop VIP to reach older girls as well and for the film to circulate far and wide!  A clothing and stationery range will follow, using the VIP logo and the characters.

 

So, BELOW all that I have the section (more interesting to me personally as a lifelong musician) on Sasha’s family line. There is also a common theme of fleeing the Nazis and ending up in England, and making (very) good from there on.  When I say “below all that,” I mean, of the 10,900 word post (approximately), probably the last ¼.  All of it I found interesting, and as usual, the part now at the bottom was written (or more, compiled) first.

The theme of buying and selling publishing houses, and the move from actual journalism/publishing into “consolidated global multi-media” market, which I’ve commented on before (see “Freedom of the Press on the Auction Block”) also comes up in these accounts, mostly drawn from Wiki and/or articles referenced in the Wiki footnotes.

Baron Weidenfield (d. 2016):

Wiki bio of founder of Institute for Strategic Dialogue, showing four different wives (3 in fast succession, 1 with a 16-yr gap) and one child.

George Weidenfeld, Baron WeidenfeldGBE (13 September 1919 – 20 January 2016) was a British publisher, philanthropist, and newspaper columnist. He was also a lifelong Zionist[1] and renowned as a master networker. He was on good terms with popes, prime ministers and presidents and put his connections to good use for diplomatic and philanthropic ends.[2] 

[Sounds a little less than the detached style one might want from Wikipedia, even understanding it’s a kind of communally produced reference…]

George Weidenfeld was born in Vienna, Austria in 1919,[3] He was the only son of Max and Rosa Weidenfeld.[1] Weidenfeld attended the University of Vienna and the city’s Diplomatic College. Following the Anschluss (Germany’s annexation of Austria) in 1938, he emigrated to London and began work with the monitoring service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).[3]

Career[edit]  By 1942 he was a political commentator for the BBC and also wrote a weekly newspaper column, coming into contact with General de Gaulleand Tito as a result.[4] Not long afterwards, from 1949, he was away for a year as the political adviser and Chief of Cabinet to Chaim Weizmann,[4] the first President of Israel.

Publishing career[edit]  In 1948, Weidenfeld co-founded the publishing firm Weidenfeld & Nicolson with Nigel Nicolson.  …Over the years, the firm published many outstanding titles, including the British edition of Vladimir Nabokov‘s Lolita in 1959 and [Nigel] Nicolson’s biography of his [bisexual] parents, Portrait of a Marriage (1973).

In 1985, Weidenfeld’s publishing interests expanded to the United States, when he acquired the Grove Press in partnership with Ann Getty (wife of Gordon Getty).** Grove later merged with the New York division of Weidenfeld & Nicolson to form Grove Nicolson. In 1991 Weidenfeld & Nicolson’s UK branch was sold to the Orion Publishing Group[3] [also British] and became Orion’s main non-fiction imprint, with Weidenfeld as non-executive chairman.

**Reminder on Gordon Getty (4th son of J. Paul Getty, Oil Tycoon — Gordon had plenty of Oil wealth, but was a musician.  Graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music), here’s Wikipedia:

Gordon Peter Getty (born December 20, 1933) is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist and classical music composer, the fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. His mother, Ann Rork, was his father’s fourth wife.[1] When his father died in 1976, Gordon assumed control of Getty’s US$2 billion trust. According to the Forbes 400, as of September 2011 his net worth is $2 billion, making him number 212 on the list of the richest Americans.[2] ….. 

Getty was raised in San Francisco, California, attended St. Ignatius College PreparatoryUniversity of San Francisco and earned a B.A. in music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He married Ann Gilbert in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Christmas Day, 1964. He has seven children: four sons with his wife, Ann Gilbert Getty, and three daughters with a woman from Los Angeles, Cynthia Beck, with whom he had an affair throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.[3][4]

He joined the oil business to please his father; however, he eventually sold the family’s Getty Oil to Texaco in 1986 for US $10 billion. In 1983, Forbes magazine ranked him the richest person in America with a net worth a little over $2 billion.[5] His current net worth is cited as $2 billion, making him the 212th richest person in the United States.

Getty is one of the nation’s leading venture capitalists and philanthropists. In 2002, he donated US$3 million to the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, a charitable trust. He is a major fundraiser for local and national Democratic Party candidates, and has contributed to the campaigns of Nancy PelosiWillie BrownGavin Newsom, and John Kerry.

Among a number of professions, Getty is a classical music composer,  (etc.)

I took a quick look at the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation (possibly started up in 1998, granting almost everything each year to pre-selected music (mostly) and non-music (esp. environmental causes) groups. The Wiki isn’t quite right — he granted $3+M in 2001, and $15M in 2002.  The money is coming direct from his person, and parts at times from the Getty Foundation.  May post these details (just for misc. interest) at the bottom of this post.  It’s so simple to fact-check sometimes….I also saw (2001) they were getting rid of Wells Fargo stock and had almost no liabilities.  It is a “lean, mean” (little overhead) “grantmaking machine.” filing Form 990PFs:J. Paul Getty Trust, EIN# 95-1790021 Total Gross Assets  (top row) $12 billion.  I was surprised (towards the end of the return FY2015) how many pages of “Schedule B Contributors” are shown, both cash and stocks.  Definitely a major operation.  The schedule of investments are listed, legibly, as well as pages of grantees (fine print, but still legible).  Address, 1200 Getty Center Drive in Los Angeles.

Its revenues (FYE2015, top row) were $503M:  $358M net gain (on $1.5B gross) from sale of assets; $90M “Other Income,”  $30.4M Contributions, $15M Dividends and interest from securities; $8M net profit from sales of goods (See Program Service Investments for what types of goods), and $395K net rents. I listed those in size order, not as shown in line number order; the figures are from p.1.  Moral of the story — who holds (controls) the assets gets to sell them.  Unlike the Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation, operating something this size shows a lot more costs (see any return for an example).

Total results: 3Search Again.

ORGANIZATION NAME ST YR FORM PP TOTAL ASSETS EIN
J. Paul Getty Museum CA 2015 990PF 153 $12,040,410,030 95-1790021
J. Paul Getty Museum CA 2014 990PF 143 $11,982,862,131 95-1790021
J. Paul Getty Trust CA 2013 990PF 155 $11,110,918,337 95-1790021

Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, EIN# 95-4078340,

Total gross assets, a fraction of that, (less than $1M) because it’s distributing almost everything it gets (mostly from Gordon Getty), although the amounts may be high each year.  It also has NO liabilities the year I looked.  Address, One Embarcadero Center, SF.

Total results: 3Search Again.

ORGANIZATION NAME ST YR FORM PP TOTAL ASSETS EIN
The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation CA 2015 990PF 47 $429,132 95-4078340
The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation CA 2014 990PF 17 $620,840 95-4078340
The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation CA 2013 990PF 38 $159,498 95-4078340

I had noticed a familiar last name (perhaps full name) to many Californians on the Trustees, Officers, and Directors page of this foundation (which remained the same year after year).  This article (ETonline.com, on the many misfortunes, as well as fortunes, of this famous family line) confirms the relationship with well-known politician Gavin Newsom — it was his father, (formerly) a judge.  This article is dated April 1, 2015, and the occasion for the (gruesome) summary of family problems was the death of Gordon’s son Andrew:

7 Things you may not know about the troubled Getty family.“by Daniela Capistrano 6:20 PM PDT, April 01, 2015

2. Gavin Newsom, current lieutenant governor of California and former San Francisco mayor, received ample support from the Getty family by way of his father, retired state appeals court Judge William A. Newsom III. The former judge has directly managed the personal wealth of Gordon Getty for years and Getty invested in several of the governor’s business ventures, including five restaurants, a Napa winery and a Squaw Valley hotel. The Newsoms also each have owned stock in Getty Images, the Getty family’s multi-billion conglomerate that licenses an archive of millions of photographs, illustrations videos and more.

William Newsom From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Alfred Newsom III (born February 15, 1934) is a retired state appeals court judge, administrator of the Getty family trust, and the father of former San Francisco Mayor and current Lieutenant Governor of California Gavin Newsom.[1]    …. A lifelong San Franciscan, Newsom has longstanding political and financial ties. His father was a close friend of Pat Brown, who rose from San Francisco district attorney to governor of California.[2]

Newsom’s late sister Barbara was once married to Ron Pelosi, brother-in-law of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is also a close friend of Gordon Getty, son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, whom he met in the late 1940s while attending St. Ignatius Catholic prep school in San Francisco.[1] … 

Newsom currently serves as a financial advisor for the Getty family businesses. He directly manages the Gordon P. Getty Family Trust, which is estimated at more than $2 billion.[1] The trust earns about 2 percent a year resulting in approximately $40 million in annual income.[2] ** He screens potential investments and makes recommendations on real estate, stocks, bonds, and other ventures. “I make my living working for Gordon Getty”, Newsom said in 2003.[1]

**Take a look at the Form 990PF for the trust for the various sources of revenue, including sale of assets and/or inventory, etc.    Again, Newsom is not on salary under the trust (well, he had a judge’s salary and now has no doubt a judge’s pension — plus, per the ETonline.com buzz above, Getty has invested in things with Newsom over the years)…

NEVERTHELESS (per Wiki on his famous son), it looks like after Wm. A. Newsom divorced his wife “Tessa” in 1972, Tessa ended up having to work 3 jobs to support only two children, in part because of “his father’s tendency to give money away..”  — I doubt that would be a good description (Note:  Family Support Act regarding Child Support was only passed in 1975…) (No-fault divorce in California, 1970).   Sounds like the judge wasn’t that nice a guy.  It also sounds like Getty helped Gavin Newsom by way of investments.  Read the Wiki.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Newsom

Newsom’s parents separated when he was 2 (ca. 1969) and divorced in 1972. At age 10, Newsom moved with his mother and sister to nearby Marin County.[10][11][12]….Tessa Newsom worked three jobs to support Gavin and his sister Hilary Newsom Callan, who is the president of the PlumpJack Group, named after the opera Plump Jack composed by family friend Gordon Getty. In an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, his sister recalled Christmas holidays when their mother told them there wouldn’t be any gifts.[10] Tessa opened their home to foster children, instilling in Newsom the importance of public service.[10][13] His father’s finances were strapped in part because of his tendency to give away his earnings.[13] Newsom worked several jobs in high school to help support his family.[5]

Newsom attended Santa Clara University on a partial baseball scholarship and student loans, where he graduated in 1989 with a B.S. in political science. Newsom was a left-handed pitcher for Santa Clara, but he threw his arm out after two years and hasn’t thrown a baseball since.[14] He lived in the Alameda Apartments, which he later compared to living in a hotel. He later reflected on his education fondly, crediting the Jesuit approach of Santa Clara that he said has helped him become an independent thinker who questions orthodoxy. Newsom spent a semester studying abroad in Rome.[15] ….

On May 14, 1991, Newsom and his investors created the company PlumpJack Associates L.P.In 1992, the group started the PlumpJack Winery with the financial help[16] of his family friend Gordon Getty. PlumpJack was the name of an opera written by Getty, who invested in 10 of Newsom’s 11 businesses.[11]Getty told the San Francisco Chronicle that he treated Newsom like a son and invested in his first business venture because of that relationship. According to Getty, later business investments were because of “the success of the first.”[11]

It’s a long Wiki; the next section is political career, starting in 1996, and 1997 appointed to SF Board of Supervisors, apparently as the only (token?) heterosexual Caucasian male (!), like the guy he replaced.  In 1999, the elections went to by district (from “at-large”) and he was in wealthy districts; got elected.   Later, he showed his Republican tendencies:

In 1999, San Francisco’s voters chose to exchange at-large elections to the board for the previous district system and Newsom was reelected in 2000 and in 2002 to represent District 2, which includes the Pacific HeightsMarinaCow HollowSea Cliff, and Laurel Heights. He faced no opposition in his 2002 reelection. His district had the highest income level and the highest Republican registration in San Francisco.[22] In 2000, Newsom paid $500 to the San Francisco Republican Party to be on the party’s endorsement slate.[23] 

As supervisor, Newsom had as his centerpiece a voter initiative called Care Not Cash (Measure N), which offered care, supportive housing, drug treatment, and help from behavioral health specialists for the homeless in lieu of direct cash aid from the state’s general assistance program.[27] Many homeless rights advocates protested against the initiative.[28]**[29] The successfully passed ballot measure raised the political profile of Gavin Newsom and provided the volunteers, donors, and campaign staff that helped make him a leading contender for the mayorship in 2003.[11][27][30][31]

**Check out Footnote 28, which points out that homeless receiving GA already are required to work (and at $10/hr) and they don’t al have substance abuse or behavioral health issues… (etc.) (image and link below).

More on the Getty and Newsom “next gen” which also references some mutual investments, and how Gavin Newsom had to get out of a home they were remodeling to make wed for the Gordon Getty offspring “Billy” and his new bride, with some discussion of whose girlfriend  got the deputy district attorney position in San Francisco..   Society Pals’ Falling Out Affects Newsom, Getty Families Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross, August 11, 2000 in SFGate.com.  Good grief!!

Click image to read. Visit Wiki FN28 to read the rest.

Excerpt from the Forms 990PF (famed in orange, part of a tax return listing people with no salaries):

Regarding San Francisco’s socialites and elites protecting the famous family as to the second family: a 1999 article describes some of this, as well as a horrible kidnapping for ransom of one of the Getty sons.  This article is featuring a legal action the second family’s children took to change their last names to match their father’s:

Gordon Getty’s Second Family was an Open Secret by Maria L. La Ganga, Jocelyn Stewart. August 30, 1999, in the Los Angeles Times.

…And while the Getty revelations have provided fuel for the Bay Area talk show circuit–with called-in commentary hotly debating the honor of his actions–not everyone here in America’s most tolerant city was surprised at the news that Gordon Getty is helping to raise daughters some 300 miles away.

Ann Getty has known about her husband’s secret life for two years. The local society elite–the upper crust, the A Team–is believed to have known for upward of a decade and kept quiet, a fact that led one local columnist to crack: “If only San Francisco’s high society had been hired to guard the United States’ nuclear weapons secrets, the ones that have steadily leaked out to the Chinese.”

“I don’t think the B Team knew, but I think an awful lot of the A Team knew. It was a well-known fact,” said one source familiar with the family. “Without a doubt, Ann and Gordon are the No. 1 social people in San Francisco. . . . The Gettys are so high profile in San Francisco that people do not want to get in their bad ways and be cut off from their very interesting parties.”

Very interesting indeed. When the billionaire music lover–son of oilman J. Paul Getty, one of the world’s wealthiest men when he died in 1976–decided he needed more room to compose on his grand piano, he bought the house next door to his Pacific Heights mansion and had the two abodes merged. The christening: a black-tie affair for 80 with entertainment by opera diva Jessye Norman.  [Next names dropped:  Placido Domingo, Don Johnson, “President Clinton”] (see 1999 article date).

Ann Getty had no plans to divorce, but was living (obviously) a different life (next screenprint mentions Grove investment):

L.A. Times 8/30/1999 article on Gordon Getty’s Second Family an Open Secret, referencing Ann Getty’s interest and investment in Grove Press.

 

So, Weidenfield partnered with Ann Getty in 1985 to buy Grove Press, at the time Gordon Getty was quite wealthy, and after selling Getty Oil, even moreso no doubt.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Weidenfeld, _Baron_Weidenfeld, continued.]

In 1993, the American company, Grove Nicolson, merged with the Atlantic Monthly Press to form Grove/Atlantic Inc. In 2005 he arranged the publication of Memory and Identity  by John Paul II.

{{I.e., he got the Pope to write memoirs! a 2015 article I quote below (which shows him with his fourth wife, the former Annabelle Whitestone) talks about it.}}

Weidenfeld was also Joint Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford; Adviser to the Board of Axel Springer AG Berlin and a columnist for the Berlin newspapers Die WeltWelt am Sonntagand Bild Zeitung.

In January 2006 the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, founded as The Club of Three[5][6] in the 1990s, was established with Weidenfeld as its Leadership Programme in Oxford and, in 2010, founded the Humanitas Programme of Visiting Chairs at Oxford and Cambridge.

About “Blavatnik School of Government” (“do the clicks” to see) — its recent (opened 2012 only) and is, naturally, named after a benefactor, and after that, about Axel Springer AG (publishing)
Alumni include the youngest mayor in Germany, Marian Schreier;[13] Rafat Al-Akhali, a former minister of youth and sports in Yemen;[14] and Shamma Al Mazrui, the youngest Minister of Youth Affairs in the United Arab Emirates.[15]

 From a footnote on the School of Government page, and about its building (shown upper right corner in the Wiki screenprint below):  Here’s the bsg.(Oxford University).ac.uk  spread on it, with plenty of photographs and a video of Prince William attending its opening. And “Pioneering green technology set for new £75m uni building, Oct. 28, 2015, Matthew Oliver, Oxford Mail:

“Taking shape: The Blavatnik building yesterday.” (Oxford Mail, Oct. 28, 2015, Pioneering green tech’gy)

A NEW £75m university building will use ground-heat pumps, ‘solar blinds’ and a ‘green roof’ in a bid to become one of Oxford’s most environmentally-friendly buildings.Testing is underway at the Blavatnik School of Government, in Walton Street, with the aim of it winning an “excellent” rating through the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM).

The building could consume half as much energy as average UK buildings its size. Its carbon dioxide emissions could be 42 per cent less. … Students on the top floors will get impressive views of Oxford …because, at 22.5 metres, the Blavatnik is higher than the 18.2-metre limit usually imposed on buildings in 1,200 metres of Carfax Tower

Which caused some controversy.  Interesting that all three footnotes to the protests, in the Oxford Times, are given dates, but the links not active, unlike most links on other footnotes on the Wiki.  This is from the BSG (Blavatnik School of Gov’t) Wiki, again:

The building is taller than Carfax Tower in the centre of Oxford, thus dominating the site[21] and causing opposition to the scheme by local residents in the Jericho district of the city and elsewhere.[19][22] The site is immediately to the south of the café/bar Freud, in the historic 1836 Greek revival St Paul’s Church on Walton Street.[23] The scheme was opposed by the cafe’s owner, David Freud, due to its size compared to the church building. The site is also opposite the classical Oxford University Press building. In spring 2013, a public meeting was held in St Barnabas Church and the building was described as “a concrete marshmallow.[24] A historic wall on Walton Street would be demolished as part of the plans.[23]

Later in 2015, the building was described as “the latest striking building nearing completion in Oxford”.[25]

In June 2016, the building received a RIBA National Award.[26] The building was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture (July 2016)[27] and was awarded the Oxford Preservation Trust plaque in the ‘new buildings’ category (November 2016).[28]

Blavatnik School of Gov’t at Oxford U from Wiki. Click image for annotations, which encourage you also to explore its links Leonard Blavatnik, and footnotes re: the building shown. I think I may have posted on Blavatnik years ago, possibly in the context of the Bentley 500 list and Russian Oil (i.e., Gazpro) or for other reason. (Searchable on this blog)

(See caption to the Wiki image on this school of government — “now it’s coming back to me” after reading about Leonard Blavatnik’s career (business & investments) history, better read in Wik form than summarized by me.  It spans the fall of the Soviet Union, investment in auctioned assets, growing large through acquisitions, then going Chapter 11 bankruptcy, then suing JP Morgan Chase for bad advice on what to invest in, getting a $50M settlement, with the bankruptcy proceeding (in USA) dramatically improving its standing, purchasing into media; The Warner Group is mentioned, etc.  For a scope, just skim this!.  TIMEFRAME:  The Berlin Wall came down in 1989.  For further, related, topics, see also Alex Browder (et al.), not necessarily related to this investor, but as to investing in Russia right after privatization of previously nationalized industries

Career[edit]

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Blavatnik

In 1986, Blavatnik founded Access Industries, an international conglomerate company located in New York, of which he is chairman and president. Access has long-term holdings in Europe and North and South America. Initially, he moved into Russian investments, just after the fall of communism. He and a friend from university, Viktor Vekselberg, [photo from that link, to left] formed the Renova investment vehicle, and then the two joined with Mikhail Fridman‘s Alfa Group to form the AAR venture.[7] Access has since diversified its portfolio to include investments in industries such as oil, entertainment, coal, aluminum, petrochemicals and plastics, telecommunications, media, and real estate.[citation needed]

In August 2005, Access Industries bought petrochemicals and plastics manufacturer Basell Polyolefins from Royal Dutch Shell and BASF for $5.7 billion. On December 20, 2007, Basell completed its acquisition of the Lyondell Chemical Company for an enterprise value of approximately $19 billion. The resulting company, LyondellBasell Industries then became the world’s eighth largest chemical company based on net sales.[8] On January 6, 2009, the U.S. operations of LyondellBasell Industries filed for bankruptcy.[9] On April 30, 2010, LyondellBasell emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a significantly improved financial position. As part of its exit financing, LyondellBasell raised $3.25 billion of first priority debt as well as $2.8 billion through the rights offering jointly underwritten by Access Industries, Apollo Management, and Ares Management.[10] LyondellBasell stock has increased 103% in value since April 2010. Access currently owns approximately 14% of LyondellBasell. In early 2010, Access Industries was reported as one of the handful of bidders for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[11]

In 2010, Blavatnik sued JPMorgan Chase after losing $100 million after following Morgan’s advice three years earlier to buy mortgage securities with AAA credit ratings.[12] JPMorgan Chase was ordered to pay $50 million to Blavatnik on August 27, 2013.[13] AAR gained a controlling stake in Russian oil company TNK through privatization auctions, then in 2003 sold a 50% stake to British Petroleum to form TNK-BP, one of Russia’s largest oil companies, where Blavatnik served on the board of directors. On March 21, 2013, Rosneft completed its $55 billion acquisition of TNK-BP. Blavatnik also has interests in UC Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum producer, where he sits on the board. On May 6, 2011, Warner Music Group announced its sale to Access for US$3.3 billion.[14] On July 20, 2011, an Access affiliate acquired Warner Music Group for $3.3 billion.[citation needed][15] Blavatnik also owns AI Film, the independent film and production company that’s behind acclaimed film Lee Daniels’ The Butler and the summer 2015 release Mr. Holmes.[16] He was an early investor in Rocket Internet and Beats Music, helped finance fashion designer Tory Burch, and in 2013 paid $115 million for wireless spectrum in Norway.[17]

Blavatnik is a member of the Global Advisory Board of the Centre for International Business and Management at Cambridge University, a member of the board of Dean’s Advisors at the Harvard Business School and a member of the academic board at Tel Aviv University.[citation needed]

From the same page on the donor Blavatnik, regarding this School of Government at Oxford and other philanthropy:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Blavatnik, showing as the world’s 16th richest person (per Forbes) in 2015:

(Click image to see annotated Philanthropy/ Wealth portion of Wiki on Blavatnik)

(Click to read annotations, which mostly just amplify the “About” summary on AccessIndustries.com)


About publishing house Axel Springer AG:


Axel Springer SE is one of the largest digital publishing houses in Europe, with numerous multimedia news brands, such as BILD, WELT, and FAKT and more than 15,000 employees. It generated total revenues of about €3.3 billion and an EBITDA of €559 million in the financial year 2015. The digital media activities contribute more than 60% to its revenues and nearly 70% to its EBITDA. Axel Springer’s business is divided into three segments: paid models, marketing models, and classified ad models.

Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, the company is active in more than 40 countries with subsidiaries, joint ventures, and licenses.

Front entrance to the Axel Springer headquarters building in West Berlin, 1977, with the Fritz Klimsch owl sculpture.

 It was started in 1946/1947 by journalist Axel Springer.[2] Its current CEO is Mathias Döpfner. The Axel Springer company is the largest publishing house in Europe and controls the largest share of the German market for daily newspapers; 23.6%, largely because its flagship tabloid Bild is the highest-circulation newspaper in Europe with a daily readership in excess of 12 million.[3]
Wow.  And Weidenberg was Adviser to the Board.
Axel Springer (see image with bust, to the right) per that Wiki link above)

Axel Cäsar Springer (May 2, 1912 – September 22, 1985) was a German journalist and the founder and owner of the Axel Springer SE publishing company.

Springer was born in Altona near Hamburg, where his father worked as publisher. As a young man, from July 1941, Springer acted as projectionist at the Waterloo cinema, near the Dammtor railway station, which presented American films for the well-to-do youth of Hamburg until Germany’s declaration of war against the United States in December 1941.[1]

Journalist career[edit]

Springer’s career started as an apprentice compositor and publisher at the publishers Hammerich & Lesser-Verlag, his father’s company. After that, he received practical training in the news agency “Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau” and worked as a local reporter for the newspaper Bergedorfer Zeitung.

Starting in 1934, he worked as a journalist with Altonaer Nachrichten until the compulsory closure of the newspaper in 1941. From 1941 to 1945, he published literary works in Hammerich & Lesser Verlag. …

Publisher[edit]

He founded his own publishing company Axel Springer GmbH in Hamburg in 1946. He published the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper, preceded by some magazines, including the popular radio and TV programm magazine Hörzu. In 1952, Springer started the publication of the tabloid Bild, becoming the daily newspaper for millions in Germany and an important influence on public opinion.

He went on to launch and acquire a string of papers and magazines characterised by entertainment and conservative politicsDie Welt among others. The Axel Springer AG today is one of the major magazine, newspaper and online media companies in Europe with over 230 newspapers and magazines as well as more than 80 online offerings.


From the references on the wiki, a “Der Spiegel” description of “Bild” tabloid, best-seller mirrored after British and American smut and tabloids, complete with “Page One Girl” (“T&A” titillation for all) and “We form your opinion so you don’t have to…”  (especially when distracted by Page One Girls daily?)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/sex-smut-and-shock-bild-zeitung-rules-germany-a-412021.html

{click image to access article in Der Spiegel)
“…Axel Springer founded Bild in 1952, took lessons from the British Daily Mirror, and watched his readership grow fat on a diet of celebrity-bashing, populism and scandal. And, of course, well-endowed, poorly clothed babes. Whereas the Mirror relegates the flesh to page three, Bild slaps them on the front page just below the fold accompanied by a short story. Tuesday’s nugget: “Natasha Prepares for Spring.”

 

Axel Springer Corp Principles (as of 2009)

 

  • 2012 Axel Springer forms a joint venture (Axel Springer Digital Classified) with global growth equity firm General Atlantic.[16] The company buys TotalJobs in the UK from Reed Elsevier.[17]
  • 2013: Springer sells its regional newspapers, woman’s magazines, and television magazines to Funke Mediengruppe for €920 million[18]
  • 2013: Publications Grand Public, a French magazine publisher owned by Springer, is sold to Reworld Media.[19] 

Interesting.

A 1998 article in Independent.co.UK on Axel Springer making a play for the Mirror (see caption in image from Der Spiegel):

…  If it does go ahead, the purchase of the Mirror Group by Springer for something in excess of pounds 1bn is going to happen slowly. Watching Springer buy the Mirror Group is probably going to be like watching two extremely tired, run-down old elephants perform a mating dance.

There is a commercial logic to the deal. Springer and the Mirror Group combined would constitute Europe’s seventh largest media company, according to rankings produced by CIT Publications – making it much the same size as Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times. That would give Springer more leverage in the consolidating global media market. A deal would make a lot of people a lot of money.

IN RECENT months the Mirror Group seems to have lost its way now that the policy of deep cost- cutting forced through by the company’s chief executive David Montgomery has exhausted itself on the skeletal remains of his papers. ….Sceptics forget that after the previous Mirror Group boss Robert Maxwell drowned off the Canaries in 1991, the company’s shares were changing hands at 50p. On Friday they were trading at 245p. A buy-out by Springer would command an additional premium. Most of the Mirror Group’s shareholders will reap substantial profits.

Some specialist analysts believe that Springer, plus the Mirror Group, would give Europe’s biggest media companies – Bertelsmann, Havas, Lagardere – a run for their money. The cross-pollination of Bild and the Mirror, so the argument goes, would rejuvenate all titles. “It would be rather interesting,” says Martin Clarke, a professional investor at PDFM, the City fund manager which owns 23 per cent of the Mirror Group.** “An Anglo- German group would all be part of the new Europe.” || Another investor adds: “Some- body someday is going to crack the problem of running tabloid newspapers across borders.”

The article also has a few paragraphs about his fifth wife (formerly “au pair.”) When Wife #4 complained about the affair, Springer obliged by divorcing Wife #4 and marrying the au pair, 30 years younger.  He died 7 years later.  ** Interesting that the City (of London) fund manager owns 23% of a major newspaper tabloid, as it says here (as of 1998).

I didn’t reference, but the Wiki notices protests against the publisher for its anti-Left position; it has come under some heat for this over time.Back to Baron Weidenfield (from the Wiki):  International Honors, and a sequence of wives:

(Click image to see annotations better, but for its internal links, see the Wiki)  Weidenfield’s last wife (photo, right) was concert agent for (and long-time mistress, then wife, until he died) of famous pianist Arthur Rubenstein, making her now obviously a Lady. I have some annotations…


Lord Weidenfield and wife Annabelle in Berlin 2010, Credit: Rex Features (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/george-weidenfeld-the-grand-old-man-of-publishing/ (Jan 20, 2016, referring to a 2015 interview)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now (finally), Institute for Strategic Dialogues CEO, SASH HAVLICEK current and background references; she is the great-granddaughter of composer Gustav Mahler!

In case that name isn’t familiar:

Click to access originating url.

In 1897, Gustav Mahler, then thirty-seven, was offered the directorship of the Vienna Opera, the most prestigious musical position in the Austrian Empire. This was an ‘Imperial’ post, and under Austro-Hungarian law, no such posts could be occupied by Jews. Mahler, who was never a devout or practising Jew, had, in preparation, converted to Roman Catholicism.  … In ten years at the Vienna Opera, Gustav Mahler transformed the institution’s repertoire and raised its artistic standards, bending both performers and listeners to his will.

In Mahler’s time, Vienna was one of the world’s biggest cities and the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was home to a lively artistic and intellectual scene. It was home to famous painters such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Mahler knew many of these intellectuals and artists. …

In June 1901, he moved into a new villa on the lake in Maiernigg, Carinthia. On March 9, 1902, Mahler married Alma Schindler (1879-1964), twenty years his junior and the stepdaughter of the noted Viennese painter Carl Moll. Alma was a musician and composer, but Mahler forbade her to engage in creative work, although she did make clean manuscript copies of his hand-written scores. Mahler did interact creatively with some women, such as viola-player Natalie Bauer-Lechner, two years his senior, whom he had met while studying in Vienna. But he told Alma that her role should only be to tend to his needs. Alma and Gustav had two daughters, Maria Anna (‘Putzi’; 1902-1907), who died of diphtheria at the age of only four, and Anna Justine (‘Gucki’; 1904-1988), who later became a sculptor.

(This is more of a musician’s biography and longer….)..He was stretching the genre of the symphony and crossing some genres too; there was resistance during his lifetime.  Look at the list of compositions:

Works

Symphonies:

Symphony No. 1 in D major (?1884-1888; rev. 1893-1896; 2nd rev. 1906).
Symphony No. 2 in C minor (1888-1894; rev. 1903)
Symphony No. 3 in D minor (1893-1896; rev. 1906)
Symphony No. 4 in G major (1892, 1899-1900; rev. 1901-1910)
Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor/D major (1901-1902; scoring repeatedly rev.)
Symphony No. 6 in A minor (1903-1904; rev. 1906; scoring repeatedly rev.)
Symphony No. 7 in E minor (1904-1905; scoring repeatedly rev.)
Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major (1906-1907)
Das Lied von der Erde (subtitled A Symphony for One Tenor and One Alto (or Baritone) Voice and Orchestra, After Hans Bethge’s “The Chinese Flute”) (1908-1909)
Symphony No. 9 in D major (1908–1909)
Symphony No. 10 (1910–1911) (unfinished; a continuous “beginning-to-end” draft of 1,945 bars exists, but much of it is not fully elaborated and most of it not orchestrated.)

Vocal works:
Das klagende Lied, cantata (1880; rev. 1893, 1898)
Drei Lieder, three songs for tenor and piano (1880)
Lieder und Gesänge, fourteen songs with piano accompaniment (1880-1890)
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, for voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment (1883–1885)
Lieder aus “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (The Youth’s Magic Horn), for voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment (1888-1896; two others 1899 and 1901)
Rückert Lieder, for voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment (1901–1902)
Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), for voice and orchestra (1901–1904)
Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) for alto (or baritone) and tenor soloists and orchestra (1908-1909)

Other works
Piano Quartet in A minor (1876)

.Yes, and regarding Alma Mahler, this is from The Guardian.com (Dec. 2, 2010, under “Classical Music” and  by Sarah Connolly, who I see from the article was about to perform some of Alma’s songs with the London Symphony Orchestra:

The Alma problem The Guardian.com, Dec. 2, 2010, by Sarah Connolly,

[subtitle] Married to Gustav Mahler at 22, Alma Schindler’s composing career was cut short at her husband’s insistence. But this extraordinary woman was far from a tragic victim of misogyny


(Para.1 of the article literally calls her a monster…Para 2:) Pathological cruelty, antisemitism, vanity and a sense that the world owed Alma Maria Schindler something in token for her brilliance and beauty were some of the traits her admirers and enemies alike recognised in Alma, traits also shared by her hero, Richard Wagner. Like him, she was a passionate follower of Nietzsche. Her marriages – to Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel – and her many relationships, including those with Gustav Klimt (who gave her her first kiss, at 17), her composition teacher Alexander Zemlinsky (her first lover) and painter Oskar Kokoshka (perhaps the only man she really loved), have made her one of the 20th century’s most famous muses and femmes fatales.

Click Image for Alma Mahler Wiki (some of its sections marked “without citations” but her marriages and children in sidebar here are known). This may help with many names (i.e. spouse names) in the genealogy from Gustav-Mahler.eu shown below.

Born in 1878, Alma had a privileged yet troubled upbringing in hedonistic Vienna. Her father, Emil Schindler, read her Goethe. An older admirer sent her crates filled with classics including Stendhal and Ibsen.  … She was a woman who needed to be surrounded by creative genius, and the young Alma Schindler married Gustav Mahler in 1902 when she was 22, already pregnant with their first child. He, 19 years her senior, idolised her. She greatly admired him, the eminent conductor of the Hofoper (Court Opera), but she was never really a fan of his music, the sixth and seventh symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde excepted. She was attracted to his enormous energy, dynamism and childlike innocence, but it doesn’t seem that she was ever “in love” with him.Speaking near the end of her life to writer Elias Canetti (who met her when he was involved with her daughter, Anna), she described Gropius, her second husband as “the true Aryan type. The only man who was racially suited to me. All the others who fell in love with me were little Jews. Like Mahler. I go for both kinds.”

(!!! … !!!), and eventually Mahler visited Freud about his wife — and the advice was…..

Her complicity in suppressing her composing career does seem to us today truly dreadful. But remember this was a time when there simply was no other woman in Vienna (or almost anywhere else) doing anything comparable. Feminism, or anything like it, was non-existent in Europe circa 1900. In 1903, Otto Weininger, a young Viennese philosopher much admired by the likes of Freud, published Sex and Character, which posited the belief, current at the time, that “lustful woman” diverted man from intellectual preoccupations. “It is enough,” he wrote, “to make the general statement that there is not a single woman in the history of thought, not even the most manlike, who can be truthfully compared with men of fifth or sixth-rate genius.”

At the crisis point in the Mahler’s marriage, the three hammer blows as he called them – Alma’s affair with the young architect Walter Gropius, the death of their five-year-old daughter and the discovery of his heart defect – Mahler was advised by none other than Sigmund Freud to encourage his wife to return to composing.  …..

From the Wikipedia, although “no citations,” it seems that she was active musically from at least age 9 (born 1879) and was being taught in it, UNTIL she got pregnant and married Mahler.  She eventually (1946) became a naturalized U.S. Citizen, and Leonard Bernstein, who considered her an important link to others, noticed she attended rehearsals…. The Wiki also references “The Alma Problem,” i.e., unreliability of her accounts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_Mahler 

Cultural Icon in the U.S.:  In 1946 Mahler-Werfel became a U.S. citizen. Several years later she moved to New York City, where she remained a cultural figure. Leonard Bernstein, who was a champion of Gustav Mahler’s music, stated in his Charles Eliot Norton lectures of 1973 that Alma had attended some of his rehearsals.[1] Bernstein considered her to be a “living” link to both Mahler and Alban Berg.

Composer: Alma played the piano from childhood and in her memoirs reports that she first attempted composing at age nine. She studied composition with Josef Labor beginning in 1895. {{about age 16…}} She met Alexander von Zemlinsky in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement with Gustav Mahler (December 1901), after which she ceased composing. Up until that time, she had composed or sketched Lieder {{“lieder,” it’s not a proper noun although in German would be capitalized}}, and worked on instrumental pieces and a segment of an opera. She may have resumed composing after 1910, at least sporadically, but the chronology of her songs is difficult to establish because she did not date her manuscripts.

Only a total of 17 songs by her survive. Fourteen were published during her lifetime, in three publications dated 1910, 1915, and 1924; it is unclear whether she continued composing at all after her last publication. The first two volumes appeared under the name Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler, and the last volume was published as “Fünf Gesänge” by Alma Maria Mahler; the cover of the 1915 set was illustrated by Oskar Kokoschka. …(her works have been performed regularly since 1980…)

 



Sasha Havlicek from “TrustConference.com (an Initiative of Thomson-Reuters Foundation) (TrustConference.com main site tells more — not a LOT more unless you are willing to listen to the videos).  There is an American Forum, held this past April at Georgetown University, and a sliding-fee (how much money does your charity have?) for attendance.  The key focus is human trafficking and women’s rights, but they’re of course willing to expand the focus.

A policy and social entrepreneur Sasha has spearheaded: the first pan-European Muslim mentoring network (CEDAR); a partnership with Google Ideas to counter radicalisation and extremism on and off-line and the first global network of former extremists and their victims (AVE); a major tech sector partnership with Google, Facebook and Twitter designed to counter terrorist and extremist use of the internet and social media; a high level transatlantic task force with Turkey on joint counter-terrorism and conflict resolution work; and a major scholarship and leadership scheme for young people from Europe’s wider neighbourhood from Afghanistan to Bosnia, run with Oxford University

Sasha previously served as Senior Director at the US think-tank, the EastWest Institute (EWI), where she headed the organisation’s conflict resolution and transition work, rolling-out unique cross-border field operations across the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Russia. She was nominated to served on a Task Force of the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Balkan wars.

Sasha currently, serves on the board of the Women Without Borders SAVE Initiative and is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. She is a regular commentator on the BBC News, the BBC WorldService, Channel 4 News, Radio 4 and other networks.

The EastWest Institute: Some screenprints (I went looking to confirm whether the Form 990 I’d found was the same one, and I am wanting some reference to Sasha Havlicek’s involvement (in which years — she was born in 1975, and it was started around 1980, so my question is, was this before or after she turned 25 (as most tax returns I can easily look at don’t pre-date 2000 or 2001).  The website is well-constructed (classic design) — do they post their financials? (Yes — under the “Donate” button.  For “U.S. Tax Disclosures,” they simply refer readers to their EIN#133091844 at CitizenAudit.org; for Audited Financials, one year’s worth only.  An EWI U.K. (without many assets) was formed in 2014.).  The EWI is a “dba” for Institute for EastWest Studies, and the url has an unusual ending:  “eastwest.ngo.”

The image above leads to the 2015-2016 full statements, the excerpt is just a Note to them.

See Founder John Edwin Mroz (died in 2014 at age 66, his widow is on the board, as are a FEW other powerful women incl. wife? of the Chairman, Ross Perot Jr. and two or three others.

Background of the CEO and President Cameron Munter. The current Chairman is Ross Perot, Jr.

This is not a short study, I’ve made a reference here, but am not pursuing its details on this post. 



MOVING ON:

Another source (same photo of Sasha Havlicek on both and similar description), uploaded to “house.gov/meetings” and possibly dated 7.29.2015, but I say that based only on the URL — it’s just a one-page pdf:

(Click for annotated image as needed)

Another internet search on Havlicek shows that she is a great-granddaughter of the well-known classical composer Gustav Mahler (and her son is his first male descendant; she was born in 1975 (from GustavMahler.eu).  

We are clearly here dealing with “the patrician class” but also with significant pain, having to flee the Nazis, and a six-decade long legal struggle to get famous, and family-owned art stolen by the Nazis from the country of Austria.  Along the way, famous names in music and art fill the landscape of the generations between Gustav Mahler and Sasha

Havlicek, whether as husbands or parents.

Her mother (b. 1943)

2017. Marina Mahler. Marina Havlicek-Fistoulari (1943) in London at Performance London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski, 2017. See page for interesting background (her first husband was Paul Glass).

 

Marina Havlicek-Fistoulari (1943) with a sculpture made by her mother Anna Justine Mahler (Gucki) (1904-1988).

(Paul Glass, first husband of Sasha’s Mother):

  • Profession: Composer.
  • Residences:  Los Angeles, Rome, Warsaw, Carona.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Glass is the son of silent film actor and film executive Gaston Glass. He was educated at the University of Southern California (Bachelor of Music, BM), and was taught by Ingolf Dahl, and Goffredo Petrassi in Rome (on a Fulbright Scholarship). Glass also attended Princeton University under a fellowship, and attended the Institute of International Education in Warsaw with Witold Lutoslawski on a grant. He joined the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, ASCAP) in 1961.

He has been married twice, the first time being to Marina Fistoulari Mahler, on April 3, 1965, and the second time being to Penelope Margaret Mackworth-Praed, on July 12, 1977. Glass and Mackworth-Praed currently live in Carona, Switzerland. Both are currently professors at Franklin College Switzerland. Glass is sometimes credited as Paul E. Glass. Since his retirement from the film world, he has dedicated himself to serious composition….

Marina Fistoulari Mahler (later “Havilicek”) from the GustavMahler.eu page:

  • She devoted her life to the preservation of Gustav Mahlers memory.

More

09-05-2007 Austria returned a painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944) called “Summer Night on the Beach”, to the granddaughter of the composer Gustav Mahler (Marina Havlicek-Fistoulari (1943)), ending a 60-year legal battle. The painting, which has hung in Vienna’s Belvedere museum since 1940 (Belvedere), was handed to Marina Fistoulari-Mahler in Vienna today, the Belvedere said in a statement. Culture Minister Claudia Schmied and Belvedere Director Agnes Husslein-Arco attended. Fistoulari-Mahler, who lives in Italy, has not yet said what she plans to do with the painting,”Lena Maurer, press spokeswoman for the Belvedere, said by telephone from Vienna. “It is being collected. The transport company was commissioned by Ms. Fistoulari-Mahler, so we don’t know where it is going.”

The Munch seascape was given to Alma Mahler (1879-1964) by her second husband, the architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969), to mark the birth of their daughter (Manon Gropius (1916-1935)). Alma Mahler (1879-1964), who was married to Mahler before she became Gropius’s wife, lent the Munch and four other works to the Belvedere, then called the Oesterreichische Galerie, in 1937.She escaped Austria the day after Hitler annexed the country, together with her third husband, the poet Franz Werfel (1890-1945). After she fled, Mahler-Werfel’s stepfather Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945), one of the founders of the Oesterreichische Galerie, took ownership of the painting and sold it to the museum without her permission.

Carl Julius Rudolph Moll (stepfather of Alma Mahler, who married composer Gustav).

The stepfather (C.J.R. Moll) also apparently anti-Semite family line, despite this picture (from that link) showing several of these men together:

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he was a pupil of Christian Griepenkerl and Jacob Emil Schindler (1842-1892) (the father of his later step daughter Alma Mahler (1879-1964).

Year 1892: After the death of his teacher Jakob Emil Schindler (1842-1892) he married his widow Anna Sofie Moll-Schindler-Bergen (1857-1938) in 1892.

In other words, Alma (later) Mahler was his step-daughter because he eventually married his teacher’s widow. … It turns out that later, the younger daughter of this teacher had married a Nazi; this was the daughter (20 yrs younger than Alma) he’d had after marrying his teacher’s widow:

[Entry for Year 1945] Carl Moll had a daughter (Alma Mahler (1879-1964)‘s much younger half-sister): Maria Eberstaller-Moll (1899-1945). She was married to a Nazi (Richard Eberstaller (1887-1945) who was the vice president of the Nazi Court in Vienna from 1938 to 1945. He made Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945) support the Nazis after Hitler seized power in Germany. In a letter to Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945)Alma Mahler (1879-1964) praised Hitler as the “great organizer”. Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945) was never a party member, nor his daughter or his son in law. Their Nazi faith was the reason for suicide when the Russian troops invaded Vienna. When the Red Army won the Battle of Vienna in April 1945, Carl Moll wrote a farewell letter dated 10-04-1945 saying “I fall asleep unrepentant, I have had all beautiful things, life had to offer”. Three days later invaded Soviet soldiers his house, raped his daughter and injured Moll. Thereupon Carl Moll, his daughter and his son in law ended there (sic) lives.

(Scroll far enough down on the Carl Julius Rudolph Moll page and there are images of several beautiful paintings, as well as descriptions of their relationship to the Nazis, and having committed suicide when the Russians entered in.  I’m no art critic, but to me, the pictures look beautiful. There seems to be some translation trouble with that section of the page).

Self-portrait in his study (Carll Moll)

1905. Vienna. Garden Villa Carl Moll. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) (his back to the camera), Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945) and Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949). (for active links to each, see photo caption @ https://www.gustav-mahler.eu/index.php/familie/ 115-generation-5b/338-carl-julius-rudolf-moll-1861-1945)

 

[Continued from the page on Sasha Havcilek’s Mother’s page, Marina Fistoulari Mahler (later “Havilicek”) on the NYT Article section].

 

Alma Mahler (1879-1964) first tried in 1947 to get back the painting, which she described as her favorite picture, the Belvedere statement said. She kept up the fight until her death in New York in 1964. Her granddaughter Marina Havlicek-Fistoulari (1943), the sole surviving heir, then took over. The painting, showing a coin-like moon reflected as a blurred golden streak in a softly rippling, indigo sea, has a mystic, Nordic quality. Ghostly pale shells and banks of dark-green weed adorn the shore.

New York Times article (Published 09-11-2006)

After 60 Years, Austria Will Return a Munch Work to a Mahler Heir:

PARIS, Nov. 8 — After an on-and-off restitution battle lasting six decades, the Austrian Culture Ministry agreed on Wednesday to return a painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944), “Summer Night on the Beach,” to Marina Mahler. She is the granddaughter of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife, Alma, who originally owned the oil. …..

A movie with Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds was made on restoration of other art stolen by the Nazis, a Gustav Klimt picture — it’s mentioned in this NYT article.  The movie was “The Woman in Gold.”

Pre-viewed in Architectural Digest, Feb. 28, 2015, by Hannah Martin:

Helen Mirren Stars In Film About Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer Portrait

Gustav Klimt’s mesmerizing 1907 gold-leafed portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, an arts patron from a prominent Viennese Jewish family, makes a dazzling star turn in the new film Woman in Gold, out in April.

“Gustav Klimt’s 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Photo courtesy of Neue Galerie New York” Klimt’s “The Woman in Gold” as shown in Architectural Digest (2/28/2015) previewing the upcoming film (Dir. Curtis) about getting it back.

“…“The story we’re telling is the story of the 20th century,” says Curtis. “It begins in Vienna, at the time the hotbed of artistic thought, and ends in the U.S., where intellectual life migrated.” Concurrently, New York’s Neue Galerie, which now owns the work, will explore the enigmatic relationship between Klimt and his famed subject in an exhibition opening April 2.”

There are plenty of other references to this, however, here is one from Biography.com, “Who was Maria Altmann?  The Real Woman Story behind ‘Woman in Gold‘ April 1, 2015, by Catherine McHugh. <===<===

Wednesday’s ruling followed a recommendation earlier that day by the country’s Art Restitution Commission, which followed the spirit of a new law adopted in 2001 aimed at easing the way for the return of art unjustly acquired under Nazi rule.

Earlier this year Austria also restored five valuable paintings by Gustav Klimt to Maria Altmann of Los Angeles, the surviving heir and niece of Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who fled Austria after the Nazi takeover there in 1938. One of those oils has been acquired by the cosmetics executive Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million; the others were being offered at auction by Christie’s in New York on Wednesday evening.

 

Anatole Fistoulari. His granddaughter Sasha Havlicek eventually became director of the ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) in London.

Marina Fistoulari’s father Anatole (1907-1995) was a professional conductor — of London Philharmonic — who’d married Gustav Mahler’s daughter, Alnna:

  • Profession: Conductor.
  • Residences: Kiev, London.

Anatole Fistoulari was a noted 20th century conductor. He was born in Kiev Ukraine into a musical family (his father, Gregor Fistoulari, studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and Anton Rubinstein and was a well-known conductor). Anatole conducted for the first time at the age of seven, on the program Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the ‘Pathetique’. In 1931, he conducted several seasons in Paris for the great Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin. In 1933, he began his collaboration with Léonide Massine’s Ballets Russes in Paris, touring in London and all over the United States in 1937. In 1939 he joined the French army and after their defeat by Hitler escaped to England and found himself in London during World War II.

In 1942 Fistoulari married Anna Mahler, daughter of the famed composer Gustav Mahler (by whom he had a daughter, Marina, in 1943). In 1943, he was appointed principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. During this period, he had a contract for 120 concerts, which was a nearly unbelievable responsibility for the youthful conductor. He needed to widen his repertoire to include items like his father-in-law’s Fourth Symphony to accommodate his busy concert schedule. In 1948, he became a British citizen. He conducted opera and concert schedules especially with either the London Philharmonic or London Symphony Orchestras.

2011. Marina Havlicek-Fistoulari (1943) with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (1944), San Francisco, USA

Sasha Havlicek’s grandmother Anna Justine Mahler married at only 16, divorced and remarried frequently, sometimes to well-known men.  She was also a sculptress and taught at both USC and UCLA. She looks beautiful:

Anna Mahler was the second child of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma Schindler. They nicknamed her ‘Gucki’ on account of her big blue eyes (Gucken is German for ‘peek’ or ‘peep’). Her childhood was spent in the shadow of her mother’s love affairs and famous salon.

Anna also suffered the loss of her older sister Maria Mahler (1902-1907) who died of scarlet fever when Anna was two, and her father, who died when she was six. The aftermath of both tragedies resulted in her mother’s love affair with the German architect Walter Gropius and her stormy relationship with the Austrian Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. Alma Mahler’s second marriage to Gropius, however, provided some semblance of family life during Anna’s adolescence, as well as a half-sister, Manon Gropius (1916-1935).

Anna was educated by tutors and also enjoyed the attention of her mother’s friends, which included many of the important artistic figures in music, the visual arts, and literature. As the daughter of the legendary Gustav Mahler, Anna was expected to have a musical career. However, rather than being a professional musician, Anna fell in love with one, a rising young conductor, Rupert Koller.

The marriage, which took place on 2 November 1920, when Anna was only sixteen, ended within months. Soon after, Anna moved to Berlin to study art. While there, she fell in love with Ernst Krenek the composer, who later was asked by Alma to produce a neat copy of two movements from the draft of Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony. Anna married him on 15 January 1924, but that marriage too failed, and she left Krenek for good in November 1924.

…She married the publisher Paul Zsolnay on 2 December 1929, and they had a daughter, Alma. The couple divorced in 1934April 1939 found her living in Hampstead in London and advertising in the newspaper for pupils, having fled Nazi Austria.On 3 March 1943 she married the conductor Anatole Fistoulari with whom she had another daughter, Marina (born 1 August 1943). After the War, she travelled to California and lived there for some years. While married to Fistoulari, but separated, she appeared on the 2 January 1952 radio quiz show (and the 3 January 1952 TV edition) “You Bet Your Life.” The marriage was dissolved around 1956. Around 1970 she married her fifth husband, Albrecht Joseph (1901–1991), a Hollywood film editor and writer of screenplays. After her mother died in 1964, Anna, now financially independent, returned to London for a while before finally deciding to live in Spoleto in Italy in 1969.

Mahler once said that she had found true love with her last husband but had left him at the age of seventy-five in order that they might both progress, since they spent too much time looking after each other. In 1988 she died in Hampstead, while visiting her daughter Marina there. She is buried at Highgate Cemetery, London.

Anna Mahler in front of her sculpture “Tower of Masks” which (as of date of this website) is in Murphy Sculpture Garden in UCLA.

Artistic career

Anna Mahler’s exposure to the visual arts began early when she would visit Oskar
Kokoschka’s studio. She was also a model for her mother-in-law, the painter Broncia Koller-Pinell. After her divorce, Anna studied art and painting on and off in Berlin, Rome, and Paris throughout the 1920s. At the age of twenty-six, she discovered that sculpture was the medium in which she could best express her creativity. Having taken lessons in sculpting in Vienna in 1930 from Fritz Wotruba, she became an established sculptor there, and was awarded the Grand Prix in Paris in 1937. As well as sculpting successfully in stone, Anna Mahler produced bronze heads of many of the musical giants of the 20th century including Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, Artur Schnabel, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Rudolf Serkin and Eileen Joyce.


 

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

May 17, 2017 at 8:58 pm

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