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First World War (first + world_war)
Selected AbstractsMaking profits in wartime: corporate profits, inequality, and GDP in Germany during the First World War1ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2005JOERG BATEN Making profits in wartime: corporate profits, inequality, and GDP in Germany during the First World War. This article reconsiders, and rejects, Kocka's (1973) hypothesis that a strong income redistribution from workers to capital owners occurred in Germany during the First World War. A small number of firms profited from the war, but the majority experienced a decline in real income, similar to the decline in workers' real wages. This finding also has important implications for the political history of the Weimar Republic. The authors also use their figures to improve German GDP estimates for the war period, since their sample makes it possible to estimate private service sector development. Economic indicators were worse for the war year of 1917 than previously believed. [source] The Irish grain trade from the Famine to the First World WarECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2004Liam Brunt This article presents the first consistent and continuous data series for the Irish grain trade, 1840-1914, showing that imports of wheat and maize rose massively. The resulting three-fold increase in Irish per caput wheat consumption occurred mostly before 1875 and brought it close to British levels by 1914. A consumer price index is constructed for the period, and it reveals that prices declined until 1900 and rose thereafter. Using the two new series (per caput wheat consumption and the price index), the authors estimate a demand function for wheat and show that the per caput increase was due to the rise in the real wage. [source] RECONSTRUCTING DEWEYAN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION FOR A GLOBALIZING WORLDEDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 4 2009Jessica Ching-Sze Wang As democratic citizenship education gains importance worldwide, one wonders whether common civic education practices in the United States, such as mock elections, are adequate models for other countries, or whether they fall short of realizing the goal of promoting democracy in different regions and cultures. Despite various controversies, one fundamental question remains: How should we teach democracy? Should we teach it as a system of government or as a way of life? Jessica Ching-Sze Wang finds inspiration in Dewey's life and works. She draws on Dewey's experience during the First World War and his insights into the connection between democracy and education to reconstruct a culturally and morally robust form of democratic education, as opposed to the politically dominated one currently being practiced. Wang concludes that Deweyan democratic education thus reconstructed can help us better realize democracy as a way of life for our globalizing world. [source] Giorgio Agamben and the new biopolitical nomosGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2006Claudio Minca Abstract In this paper I reflect on the progressive normalization of a series of geographies of exception within Western democracies and, in particular, the relation of these to the new biopolitical power that is progressively affirming itself in our everyday lives , and that appears to be imposing itself as the new, secret, ontology of the political. I do so by engaging with the work of Giorgio Agamben and, specifically, interrogating the spatial architecture that underpins his theory of sovereign power. Starting from Agamben's spatial conceptualizations, I explore his attempt to trace the contours and the secret coordinates of the contemporary biopolitical nomos, a nomos rooted firmly in the crisis and progressive demolition of that which Carl Schmitt described as the ius publicum Europaeum. I note, moreover, how the definitive dissolution of the geographical nomos that had dominated the two centuries preceding the First World War, and the lack of a new, alternative, geographical nomos in the century which followed, can also be grasped by critically rereading some key episodes in the history of European geography; in particular, the contested legacy of the work of Friedrich Ratzel's grand geographical project and the Geopolitik experiment. What I suggest is that to understand the deep nature of the geographies of exception that arm the global war on terror, it is vital that we think in terms of a theory of space in order to try to unveil the Arcanum, the secret enigma of the empty centre around which turn the wheels of a new, macabre, geo-biopolitical machine. [source] Geostatistical Simulation for the Assessment of Regional Soil PollutionGEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS, Issue 2 2010Marc Van Meirvenne Regional scale inventories of heavy metal concentrations in soil increasingly are being done to evaluate their global patterns of variation. Sometimes these global pattern evaluations reveal information that is not identified by more detailed studies. Geostatistical methods, such as stochastic simulation, have not yet been used routinely for this purpose in spite of their potential. To investigate such a use of geostatistical methods, we analyzed a data set of 14,674 copper and 12,441 cadmium observations in the topsoil of Flanders, Belgium, covering 13,522 km2. Outliers were identified and removed, and the distributions were spatially declustered. Copper was analyzed using sequential Gaussian simulation, whereas for cadmium we used sequential indicator simulation because of the large proportion (43%) of censored data. We complemented maps of the estimated values with maps of the probability of exceeding a critical sanitation threshold for agricultural land use. These sets of maps allowed the identification of regional patterns of increased metal concentrations and provided insight into their potential causes. Mostly areas with known industrial activities (such as lead and zinc smelters) could be delineated, but the effects of shells fired during the First World War were also identified. En los estudios de contaminación de suelos as escala regional, es práctica común la implementación de inventarios de concentraciones de metales pesados en el suelo con el fin de evaluar sus patrones globales de variación espacial. A veces dichas evaluaciones de patrones globales proporcionan información que no son aparentes en estudios realizados a escalas más detalladas. En este contexto, a pesar del potencial analítico que poseen, los métodos geostadísticos como la simulación estocástica han recibido poca atención. Los autores del presente artículo proponen llenar este vacío aplicando métodos geostadísticos para el análisis de dos bases de datos: 14,674 observaciones de cobre (Cu) y 12,441 observaciones de cadmio (Cd). Los datos corresponden a la capa superior de suelo en un área de 13,522 km2 en Flandes, Belgica. Tras la remoción de los valores extremos (outliers) y la desaglomeración de las distribuciones, los autores analizan los datos vía dos procedimientos: a) una Simulación Secuencial Gausiana (SGS) para los datos de cobre, y b) una Simulación Secuencial Indicador (SIS). La diferencia en el tratamiento analítico para ambos metales obedece a la considerable proporción (43%) de datos censurados de cadmio. Los mapas resultantes de valores estimados fueron complementados con mapas que ilustran la probabilidad de exceder los umbrales críticos para uso agrícola de la tierra. Esta serie de mapas permitió la identificación de patrones regionales de concentraciones crecientes de metales y proporciono claves importantes acerca de sus posibles causas. Los patrones hallados coinciden con áreas donde se realizan actividades industriales (como fundiciones de plomo y zinc), pero también con la distribución espacial de casquillos de balas disparadas durante la Primera Guerra Mundial. [source] ,Aus Blut und Schmerz geboren': Maternal Grief and the Poetry of Frida BettingenGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 3 2008Catherine Smale ABSTRACT This article analyses the impact of maternal grief on the literary creativity of the Expressionist poet Frida Bettingen (1865,1924). Examining the depiction of maternal love which emerges in Bettingen's later poems and her ambivalent attitude towards writing as a form of therapy, it argues that her verse offers an alternative to the responses to loss outlined by Freud in his essay on mourning and melancholia. Finally, the article explores the ways in which Bettingen's ambivalence leads her to experiment with the poetic medium. She engages with and adapts contemporary discourses in order to situate her grief within the collective response to the losses of the First World War whilst still retaining a sense of the private significance of her son's death. [source] German Academics in British Universities During the First World War: The Case of Karl Wichmann1GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 4 2007Christopher T. Husbands ABSTRACT Despite the scholarly attention given to the treatment of Germans in Great Britain during the First World War, there are only sparse details in this historical literature about how those of German origin working specifically in higher education were treated. This article considers Professors of German of German origin in British higher education, focusing on the hitherto little-reported case of Karl Wichmann (better known as a minor German/English lexicographer), who was employed as Professor of German at the University of Birmingham from 1907 to 1917. It considers the circumstances leading to Wichmann's resignation in March 1917 and discusses the known details of what happened to him thereafter. [source] The Super-Hun and the Super-State: Allied Propaganda and German Philosophy during the First World WarGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 4 2001Gregory Moore When war broke out in August 1914, intellectuals on both sides sought to discover the underlying causes of the catastrophe not in mundane political events, but in the dominant ideologies and native intellectual traditions of the Great Powers. German scholars argued that Europe was witnessing a truly world-historical conflict rooted in the mutual antagonism that existed between two fundamentally different forms of life, a confrontation which the sociologist Werner Sombart summed up as the battle between the rapacious ,Händler' of utilitarian Britain and the idealistic ,Helden' defending a superior German Kultur. British academics conceived the war in no less apocalyptic terms: this was a struggle pitting the forces of democracy against a brutal predatory militarism, the basic impulse of which was to assert the supremacy of the state over the individual. Although initially Nietzsche and Treitschke were denounced as the figures most directly responsible for fostering this belligerent spirit, soon the entire German philosophical canon came under scrutiny. This essay examines some of the spurious genealogies of Prussian immorality which Allied writers concocted to elucidate the deeper meaning of the war. [source] The British Naval Staff in the First World War , By Nicholas BlackHISTORY, Issue 317 2010MATTHEW S. SELIGMANN No abstract is available for this article. [source] Pacifists, Patriots and the Vote: The Erosion of Democratic Suffragism in Britain during the First World War By Jo VellacottHISTORY, Issue 312 2008KEITH LAYBOURN No abstract is available for this article. [source] Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War By Matthew S. SeligmannHISTORY, Issue 304 2006JEREMY BLACK No abstract is available for this article. [source] The Empire's War Recalled: Recent Writing on the Western Front Experience of Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the West IndiesHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2009John Connor The ninetieth anniversary of the end of the First World War in 2008 was marked with the publication of a number of works in many parts of what was once the British Empire. We saw an increased output in publications on the Western Front. In Britain, the recent literature attempts to rehabilitate Douglas Haig and define the ,learning curve' that enabled the British army to defeat Germany in 1918. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the performance of their soldiers on the Western Front is seen as central to national identity and this now focuses on military success rather than sacrifice in a futile war. In India, South Africa and Jamaica, there is a renewed interest in linking the First World War to national identities based on the independence or liberation struggle. In Ireland, the Great War is seen as a shared experience that can link the Nationalist and Unionist traditions in Northern Ireland and the Republic. The article concludes that this interest in the Western Front will continue into the next decade in the lead-up to the centenary of the First World War. [source] Bauhaus Hausfraus: Gender Formation In Design EducationJOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 2 2001Katerina Rüedi Ray This essay examines the crisis of masculinity at the Bauhaus and links it to a broader crisis in patriarchy after the First World War. Bauhaus reminiscences and depictions of Bauhaus students and buildings in the catalog of the 1938 MoMA Bauhaus exhibition show a re-enactment of war trauma in Bauhaus theatre and festivals. These and other experiments led to radical and subsequently conservative revisions of masculine identity. The paper suggests that the construction of a new disciplinary identity through institutional and media reproduction rather than its economically limited innovations in mass production forms the real legacy of the Bauhaus for the twentieth century. The essay draws heavily on personal statements by Bauhaus students and masters, and juxtaposes these with theoretical analyses of masculine formation. This technique at least in part allows for the theorists and historical subjects to speak for themselves. [source] An Alternative Path to Modernism: Carl König and Architectural Education at the Vienna Technische Hochschule, 1890,1913JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 1 2001Christopher Long Between 1890 and the outbreak of the First World War, the Vienna Technische Hochschule was among the leading training grounds for modern architects and designers in central Europe. This essay explores the school's curriculum and the role that its doyen, Carl König (1841,1915), played in the training of many of the region's modernists. By stressing such issues as construction, materials, and spatial planning rather than the search for a modern style, König, despite his own conservative approach to architectural design, provided crucial lessons for his students, many of whom were able to trace novel and widely divergent paths to modernism. [source] Nationalism, international factors and the ,Irish question' in the era of the First World WarNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 1 2005Karen Stanbridge The ,Irish question' encompassed negotiations leading to the partition of Ireland in 1921. The paper considers factors that contributed to the growing tendency for the major players involved in the struggle , Irish nationalists, unionists and British officials , to adopt postures that were mutually irreconcilable. Conceptualising the problem in terms of Rogers Brubaker's ,triadic nexus' model of nationalisms reveals that the rigidity was encouraged by the dynamic interaction of nationalist representations employed by the three parties in response to the postures adopted by their rivals. Further, international factors , specifically, the prevailing international definition of nation and the position taken by the authority in place to adjudicate claims of nationhood , combined with regional pressures to consolidate Irish, Ulster and British nationalisms in such forms that militated against a compromise solution. By amending Brubaker's model to include international as well as regional forces, the analysis shows how understanding of the Irish contest can be enhanced if conceived as issuing from the continuous and reflexive interaction of three distinct nationalisms with and within an international context that itself was structured with respect to questions of nation. [source] Conditional recognition as an instrument of ethnic conflict regulation: the European Community and YugoslaviaNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 2002Richard Caplan The European Community's conditional recognition of new states in Yugoslavia in 1991,2 represents the revival of an approach to ethnic conflict management that harks back to the Congress of Berlin (1878) and the minority treaties negotiated at the end of the First World War. Despite the historic parallels, and the continued relevance of this approach to ethnic conflict regulation, scholars have given scant attention to the strategic logic governing the EC's use of recognition. This article seeks to recover the conceptual thinking behind the EC's recognition policy. It argues that however much extra-strategic considerations may have informed EC policy and however imperfectly that policy may have been implemented, conditional recognition represented a genuine attempt to address some of the presumed sources of violent conflict in the region. [source] A Parliamentary Victory: The British Labour Party and Irish Republican Deportees, 1923PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 2 2010IVAN GIBBONS After the 1918 general election the Labour Party became the official opposition party at Westminster. In response to the growing Irish republican campaign to establish an independent Irish state the Labour Party had to re-assess its relationship with Irish nationalism. The Labour Party was now acutely conscious that it was on the verge of forming a government and was concerned to be seen by the British electorate as a responsible, moderate and patriotic government-in-waiting. Although it had traditionally supported Irish demands for home rule and was vehemently opposed to the partition of Ireland, the Labour Party became increasingly wary of any closer relationship with extreme Irish nationalism which it believed would only damage its rapidly improving electoral prospects. Therefore the Labour Party supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 even though it underpinned the partition of Ireland and sought to distance itself from any association with Irish republicanism as the new Irish Free State drifted into civil war. In early 1923 the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) alighted upon the new issue of the arrest and deportation without trial, to the Irish Free State, of Irish republicans living in Britain who were obviously British citizens. The attraction of this campaign for the Labour Party was that it enabled the party to portray itself as the defender of Irish people living in Britain without having to take sides in the Irish civil war. In addition the Labour Party was able to present itself as the protector of civil liberties in Britain against the excesses of an overweening and authoritarian Conservative government. One of the main reasons the issue was progressed so energetically on the floor of the House by the new PLP was because it now contained many Independent Labour Party (ILP) ,Red Clydesiders' who themselves had been interned without trial during the First World War. Through brilliant and astute use of parliamentary tactics Bonar Law's Conservative government was forced into an embarrassing climb-down which required the cobbling together of an Indemnity Bill which gave tory ministers retrospective legal protection for having exceeded their authority. By any standard, it was a major achievement by a novice opposition party. It enhanced the party's reputation and its growing sophistication in the use of parliamentary tactics benefited it electorally at the next election which led to the first Labour government. [source] Regulierungswettbewerb im Deutschen Reich (1871,1914): Welche Erfahrungen sind für die Europäische Union relevant?PERSPEKTIVEN DER WIRTSCHAFTSPOLITIK, Issue 1 2004Gerold Ambrosius The past experiences of economically and politically integrated areas are neglected in this discussion. On the basis of an evolutionary concept of institutional competition this paper outlines how regulatory competition between the ,Bundesstaaten' of the German Empire of 1871 , in its political structure comparable with the European Union , and between the Empire and foreign countries performed up to First World War. The special case study deals with the regulation of food of wine, beer and meat, but the article tries to work out general hypotheses about institutional competition between different jurisdictions. Especially the limits of regulatory competition are brought out. [source] Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War , By Alan KramerTHE HISTORIAN, Issue 4 2009Barbara C. Allen No abstract is available for this article. [source] Alexis Carrel: Genius, Innovator and IdeologistAMERICAN JOURNAL OF TRANSPLANTATION, Issue 10 2008P. Dutkowski Alexis Carrel was a Frenchman from Lyon, who gained fame at the Rockefeller Institute in New York at the beginning of the 20th century. He was the first to demonstrate that arteriovenous anastomoses were possible. Alexis Carrel was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contributions to vascular surgery and transplantation in 1912. He was a versatile scientist, who made numerous discoveries from the design of an antiseptic solution to treat injuries during the First World War to tissue culture and engineering, and organ preservation, making him the father of solid organ transplantation. Together, with the famous aviator and engineer Charles Lindbergh, they were the first scientists capable of keeping an entire organ alive outside of the body, using a perfusion machine. Due to his many dubious ideas and his association with fascism in the 1930s and during the Second World War, many of his scientific achievements have been forgotten today and taken for granted. [source] Renewing the War on prostitution: The spectres of ,trafficking' and ,slavery'ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 3 2009Sophie Day The 1990s saw government initiatives restricting immigration in many countries, and a good deal of popular unease. Associated policies have targeted sex workers, as with the Policing and Crime Bill that is currently in its Third Reading in the House of Commons (UK). In the name of ,victims' of a trade organised by ,evil' traffickers, this Bill seeks further sanctions against all of those involved. This editorial asks whether initiatives during the current recession might not seem to succeed but for the wrong reasons. Immigrants are already leaving the UK in search of a living while local workers, who were promised safer working conditions in the wake of the murder of five women in Ipswich (2006), will be punished more and more. With its apparently humanitarian efforts to ,stop the traffic', the UK government will turn out to have replaced our ,slaves' from abroad with home-grown substitutes, and effectively solidified and further excluded an underclass. This situation suggests striking parallels with the panic over white slavery during the last comparable period of globalisation culminating in the First World War. [source] Woolgrowers, Brokers and the Debate over the Sale of the Australian Wool Clip, 1920,1925AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2001M. J. Keneley Prior to the First World War, the selling of the Australian wool clip rested firmly in the hands of the large woolbroking firms. An agreement between the British and Australian governments during the war saw many of the wool-selling functions of broking firms taken over by the Central Wool Committee. At the conclusion of hostilities, brokers moved to regain their role in the market. However, market conditions had changed. On an international level, traditional trading relationships had broken down, leaving commodity markets unstable and prices unpredictable. On a local level, woolgrowers had benefited from the wartime orderly marketing scheme and the high price guaranteed by the British government for their wool clip. As a result, they had begun to demand a greater role in the selling arrangements of their clip. This paper investigates the debates over the sale of the wool clip in the 1920s and how woolbrokers and growers eventually arrived at an understanding as to the manner in which the market should operate. [source] Sacred Sovereigns and Punishable War Crimes: The Ambivalence of the Wilson Administration towards a Trial of Kaiser Wilhelm II,AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 4 2007Binoy Kampmark Conventional wisdom characterises President Woodrow Wilson as a progressive internationalist in the making of foreign policy, sceptical of international practices such as secret diplomacy and balance-of-power theories. An examination of the Wilson Administration's record in quelling Allied attempts to punish Kaiser Wilhelm II after the end of the First World War provides a contrasting view. The White House, leading figures in the State Department and a large grouping of prominent lawyers argued that punishing the German sovereign for waging war in violation of treaties would destabilise international order and lose the peace. Current American reluctance to participate in the International Criminal Court and fears of an undue intrusion of an international judiciary on the merits of foreign policy make an understanding of these reservations timely. [source] A Possession for Ever: Charles Bean, the Ancient Greeks, and Military Commemoration in AustraliaAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 3 2007Peter Londey For many people after the First World War, the classical world of Greece and Rome provided a language of commemoration; those who fought on Gallipoli were often keen to see parallels with the Trojan war of 3,000 years earlier. Charles Bean, Australia's classically-educated war correspondent, Official Historian, and chief visionary behind the Australian War Memorial, was as imbued with the classics as any. What is striking, however, is that Bean largely ignored parallels with Troy, focusing instead almost exclusively on fifth-century BC Athens. Bean wanted more than a language of commemoration; he desired an historical backdrop which would emphasise the place in history of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Only the Athenians could provide a fitting parallel for the youthful democracy of Australia. [source] Attitudes towards German Immigration in South Australia in the post-Second World War Period, 1947-60AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 4 2005Jan Schmortte Considering the reaction against Germans in Australia during and after the First World War, it is surprising that German immigration to Australia was permitted again soon after the Second World War and even subsidised by the Australian government. Just seven years after the second war fought with Germany within a generation, Australia signed a five-year agreement to permit Germans to immigrate. This article examines the extent of the Australian public's acceptance of this policy during the period from 1947 to 1960. It concentrates on the state of South Australia where some of the earliest settlers in the colony had been of German origin, where their behaviour and achievements had been praised in historical writings about the colony, and where German immigrants may, therefore, have been viewed more positively. Yet there was some suspicion towards and discrimination against Germans in South Australia after 1945. Negative stereotypes of Germans were apparent in comments made by politicians and in press reports. However, these fears were minor and faded even further when more Germans arrived in Australia. [source] The Origins of World History: Arnold Toynbee before the First World WarAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 3 2004Gordon Martel Arnold Toynbee's ambitious work A Study of History was a phenomenal publishing success in its day, but it came under severe criticism from academic historians. In recent years, there has been something of a Toynbee revival among the proponents of the growing discipline of world history. This article suggests that Toynbee makes a somewhat unlikely founding figure for the broadly liberal and cosmopolitan world history movement, and investigates the very particular origins of Toynbee's vision of world history in the intellectual world of the pre-1914 British Empire, and especially in Toynbee's education at Winchester and Oxford. [source] The Mobilisation of the Intellectuals 1914,1915 and the Continuity of German Historical ConsciousnessAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 3 2002John A. Moses There is renewed historical interest in the role played by intellectuals in all belligerent countries in the period leading up to and during the First World War. Whereas prior to the war scholars from all countries engaged in civilised scientific discourse, immediately after the outbreak of war they appeared to re,discover their own fatherlands and became passionately patriotic, placing their expertise at the service of their respective countries for the prosecution of the war. On closer scrutiny, however, the case of the German intellectual elite appears significantly different from their counterparts in other belligerent countries. They perceived themselves, more than, say, the British academic community, and certainly earlier than these, as virtual prophets called to justify their nation's war policies. This paper investigates the perceptions of German intellectuals, their explanation for the war and their various war,aims programs. It is suggested that the intellectuals/academics contributed in no small way to the formation of German political will. [source] Dinosaurier-Skelette als Kriegsziel: Kulturgutraubplanungen, Besatzungspolitik und die deutsche Paläontologie in Belgien im Ersten Weltkrieg,BERICHTE ZUR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE, Issue 1 2004Christoph Roolf Abstract The paper deals with the unnoticed and sweeping activities of German scientists and university disciplines in the context of German occupation policy and plannings of plundering cultural assets as war pillage during the First World War. It exemplarily shows the case of palaeontologists in occupied Belgium: Their main project was the famous excavation site of skeletons of the dinosaur Iguanodon in the small town Bernissart. After a new excavation between 1915 and 1918 they planned, with the support of occupation authorities, the transportation of dinosaur skeletons into German natural history museums and collections as war pillage. [source] First report on autochthonous urease-positive Trichophyton rubrum (T. raubitschekii) from South-east EuropeBRITISH JOURNAL OF DERMATOLOGY, Issue 1 2005M. Arabatzis Summary Background,Trichophyton raubitschekii is a dermatophyte belonging to the T. rubrum complex and is differentiated principally by its positive urease activity and production of profuse macroconidia and microconidia in culture. It is classically isolated from African, South-east Asian and Australian aboriginal patients with tinea corporis or tinea cruris. Objectives, This study was undertaken to screen Greek and Bulgarian clinical isolates identified as T. rubrum for T. raubitschekii and to delineate these strains by two molecular methods used for the first time in T. rubrum epidemiological studies. Methods, Ninety-five Greek and 10 Bulgarian strains, originating from various body sites, initially identified as T. rubrum, were screened for urease activity. The biochemical properties and morphology of the urease-positive strains were determined. Strains were delineated with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-ribotyping amplifying repeat elements of the intergenic spacer region and by PCR fingerprinting. Results, Five Greek and one Bulgarian T. raubitschekii strains were identified comprising isolates from patients with tinea manuum (one), tinea corporis (one), tinea cruris (one) and tinea unguium (three). Only one strain had the classical T. raubitschekii microscopic morphology, whereas the remaining five presented a dominant arthroconidial phenotype. Both typing methods clustered all T. raubitschekii and T. rubrum isolates together in the same group, indicating strain homogeneity in the genetic regions examined. Conclusions, The reported isolation of T. raubitschekii in the Balkan and South-eastern Mediterranean regions extends the geographical distribution of this species. As the more primitive T. raubitschekii probably represents the parental population of T. rubrum, the Greek and Bulgarian T. raubitschekii strains could represent a remnant of the T. rubrum spread that took place after the First World War, rather than being a recent epidemiological event. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||