CATALONIA TODAYTHURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2008

CTSUMMER 15

Front pages from history

● The Josep Bosch Collection isa privately funded project to re-cover, restore, preserve and ex-hibit historical newspapers fromall over the world. Initiated inMay 1968 it now includes thou-sands of original newspapers inmany languages. The collectionhouses a vast array of news-papers depicting important his-toric events, published in thecity or country where the eventtook place.

The collection spans from1898 (the year of the SpanishAmerican war over Cuba) to thepresent day. That war coincided with a new era in the history ofnewspapers; better design,bigger type and headlines, theuse of more graphics. Also a fa-mous by-product, 'yellow' jour-nalism, which saw big-city pub-lications, especially in NewYork, compete for readers fer-ociously with headlines ever-more bold and news increas-ingly sensationalised. Truly itwas the beginning of the goldenage of the newspaper, as it be-came hugely influential and ubi-quitous in society. Many fearthat this golden era is now com-ing to an end because of the newtrend towards electronic dis-tribution of news via televisionand the world-wide-web.

The collection’s most salientcatalogues include events in theFirst and Second World War, thehistory of aviation and space dis-covery, the Cold War, the Span-ish Civil War (with more than3.500 newspapers), the historyof Asia and a special section on"famous people".

The newspapers are all orig-inal, as published, and some arerestored and treated to preventfurther deterioration and to fa-cilitate their exhibition. Com-mon treatment for preservationincludes surface cleaning, to re-duce superficial dirt accumu-lated through dust or humidity;washing, to avoid the risk ofacidity and withdraw dirt andstains; alkalization (or de-aci-dification), to combat acid de-terioration by neutralizing theacid present in papers; mendingof tears; reinforcing brittle paperby backing it with Japanesepaper, filling areas of paper loss;and the removal of mould is alsocentral to the process.

In different formats, this col-lection has been exhibited in 14

cities in nine countries: Spain,Switzerland, Austria, Montene-gro, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay,Panama and El Salvador.Among some of the locations

where the exhibitions were heldare the Prunksaal of the AustrianNational Library, the Museo delas Ciencias Príncipe Felipe, inValencia, the Museo del Canal

Interoceánico de Panama, in Pa-nama City; and Casa América, inMadrid. The nomadic nature ofthe collection means that soundpreservation is all-important.

JOSEP BOSCH

Holding the front page

THE JOSEP BOSCHCOLLECTIONCONTAINSTHOUSANDS OFHISTORICAL FRONTPAGES FROM ALLOVER THE WORLD

Keeping the world connected with it’s past

Josep Bosch at the Prunksaal of the National Library in Vienna, with a copy of France-Soir, reporting on the famousMay 1968 student revolt, the newspaper that started the collection. Top right: La Vanguardia’s 1929 front page of asoldier kissing his sweetheart. Bottom right: El Diluvio’s defiant Civil War message from 1936

The International Federation of Library Associ-ations is the global voice for archives and collec-tions worldwide that has been responsible forallowing maximum access to newspapers span-ning the last century. Founded in 1927, and withmembers from 155 countries worldwide, theIFLA has been a front-runner in championingfreedom of information, and allows major li-braries to interact and learn from one-anotherabout preservation and organisation.

Each year the IFLA holds a conference whichdiscusses the maintenance of the world’s mainnewspaper collections, addressing issues thatwill determine the longevity of our written heri-tage. Within Europe the federation brings to-gether the leading newspaper collections basedin cities such as Stockholm, Zagreb, Dortmundand London, working to increase the wealth ofshared historical knowledge. In an increasinglyelectronic age, such work to preserve printedmaterial by those such as the IFLA is crucial.

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● The top image shows the Daily Heralds’ re-port on the Allied declaration of war. In earlySeptember 1939 the United Kingdom andFrance declared war on Germany following itsinvasion of Poland, an ally that the countrieshad sworn to protect from it’s neighbour. Pre-viously the allies had followed a policy of ap-peasement that allowed Hitler to take Austriaand the Sudetenland into Nazi hands unop-

posed.The lower image refers to the Japanese attack

on the US military naval base at Pearl Harbour,Hawaii. The base was devastated and over 2,000troops killed as the US was officially draggedinto the war. The exclamation of the headlineunderlines the surprise factor of the attack. TheUS was then fighting on two fronts in Europeand the Pacific until the end of the war.

War breaks out in Europe and the Pacific

● The Daily Chronicle (later absorbed by the Daily Mail) relaysthe events of the 1917 February Revolution, as the last RussianTsar Nicholas II, was forced to abdicate. As regiment after regi-ment of his previously loyal army mutinied and chaos brokeout in the cities, a Provisional government formed to takecharge and forced the Tsar to stand down as ruler.

The abdication of Nicholas II

● After an assault on the city by Nationalist troops that lastedjust under a month, the City fell into Francisco Franco’s handson January 26th 1939, and all but ended the Civil War as the lastmajor Republican stronghold was captured. By March of 1939,the Republican army had disintegrated and the governmenthad fled to exile in France .War’s end was announced April 1.

Franco captures Barcelona

Front pages from history

● Chicago’s Daily Times leads with a bold andsimple statement chronicling the capture ofBerlin by the Allies which signalled the end ofWorld War II. Following the suicide of AdolfHitler on April 30, and the meeting of Sovietand Allied troops at the river Elbe, the Alliestook control of Berlin. The day before the deathof the Fuhrer and a day after the assassination ofMussolini by Italian partisans, Nazi troops inItaly surrendered and began to return to Ger-many. Germany itself officially surrendered onMay 7, before the Allied leaders met at Potsdamto conclude earlier agreements about the occu-pation of post-war Germany on the 11. The war,which had raged for six long years, was finallydeclared over on August 15 1945 when the Jap-anese surrendered.

The final fall of Berlin

CATALONIA TODAYTHURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2008

CTREVIEW 17

Front pages from history

● On August 5, 1962, LAPD police sergeant Jack Clemmons was the first to find Marilyn Monroedead at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. Many questions remain unansweredabout the circumstances of her death but it was recorded as "acute barbiturate poisoning" and"probable suicide".

On November 22 in the following year President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Har-vey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. Oswald himself was killed two days later by Jack Ruby before he couldbe put on trial. In 1979 The House Select Committee on Assassinations declared that Harvey Os-wald did not commit the crime alone, but that he was part of a bigger conspiracy group.

The JFK assassination and Monroe’s suicide

● On July 26, 1952, The Spiritual leader of theNation of Argentina, Eva Perón, died. Havingsuffered terribly from cancer, and undergonechemotherapy, which was extremely rare at thetime, Perón weighed just 36kg towards the endof her life. On the news of her death the entirecountry ground to a halt and an official state fu-neral was organised in Buenos Aires. Perón hadpushed for a vice-presidential role alongside herhusband, President Juan Perón, however heruncertain health prohibited the move fromhappening. She had to endure attacks of sexism,especially from the military, but her strength ofcharacter won the love of a nation.

Evita immortalised

● The Havana Times recounts the abrupt end of Fulgencio Ba-tista’s regime in Cuba in 1959, as Fidel Castro led the fightagainst the increasingly disillusioned leader. Having resignedfrom his government post, Batista made sure his entire familywas evacuated to the US without helping any others.

Batista abandons Cuba

● The sensation that was The Beatles crops up for the first timeon one of Britain’s front pages. John Lennon, Paul McCartney,George Harrison and Ringo Starr formed the band in 1960 andenjoyed unprecedented success for the next swinging decade.

Beatles into limelight in UK

● On January 30t1948 Mahatma Ghandi wasshot while out on his evening walk in Delhi by aHindu extremist Mahasabha, NathuramGodse. He held Ghandi responsible for makingIndia weaker through the payments made tofierce rivals Pakistan. On August 15 of the pre-vious year, Ghandi had secured a full transfer ofpower from the British and established full in-dependence. His close friend and colleague Ja-waharlal Nehru addressed the nation after hisdeath with the words, "Friends and comrades,the light has gone out of our lives, and there isdarkness everywhere".

Ghandi murdered after securing independence

CATALONIA TODAY18 CTSUMMER

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2008

Front pages from history

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● In 1989, the UK Times newspaper reported on twostories that shook the world and marked a change inthe history of Communism. In June, a student protestin Tiananmen square in Beijing ended in a massacrewhen the ruling Communist party sent army units in

to break-up the demonstration. A fontpage photo-graph of a young man with a shopping bag preventinga column of tanks from entering the square became theiconic image of the unfortunate incident.

Other iconic images came out of another world-

shaking moment in 1989 when the Berlin Wall, for solong the symbol of the Cold War between East andWest, finally came down in November. Germans fromboth sides of the divide joyously tore the wall downwhile the border guards looked on.

Two events that became landmarks in the history of world Communism

● On September 11, 2001 the world changedwhen two passenger planes were flown into theWorld Trade Center twin towers in New York.The co-ordinated attack attributed to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network also involved anotherplane crashing into the Pentagon and a furtherplane that crash-landed in Pennsylvania. Theincident set off a chain of events that led theBush administration to invade Afghanistan toroot out the Taliban government that had shel-tered Al-Qaeda and to invade Iraq and deposethe Saddam Hussein regime. The 9/11 incident,as it has become known, also provided some ofthe most startling and horrific images ever seenin the world’s media.

9/11, the day thatchanged the world

● Neil Armstrongbecame the firsthuman being towalk on the moonin July 1969. Thehistoric eventdominated head-lines. The eventproduced one ofthe most famouslines ever spoken:"That’s one smallstep for man, onegiant leap for man-kind"

Humanson moon