Map showing the location of the Strait of Otranto.

Bay of Vlora

Otranto harbour

The Strait of Otranto (Albanian: Kanali i Otrantos; Italian: Canale d'Otranto) connects the Adriatic Sea with the Ionian Sea and separates Italy from Albania. Its width at Punta Palascìa, east of Salento is less than 72 kilometres (45 mi).^[1] The strait is named after the Italian city of Otranto.

History[link]

During World War I, the strait was of strategic significance. The Allied navies of Italy, France, and Great Britain, by blockading the strait, mostly with light naval forces and lightly armed fishermen, hindered the cautious Austro-Hungarian Navy from freely entering the Mediterranean Sea, and effectively kept them out of the naval theatre of war.

However, the barrage was notoriously ineffective against the German U-boats operating out of the Adriatic, which were to plague the Allied powers for most of the war throughout the Mediterranean.^[2]

In 1992, Albania and Italy signed a treaty that delimited the continental shelf boundary between the two countries in the strait.

In 1997 and 2004, nearly 100 people lost their lives trying to illegally cross the strait following the 1997 unrest in Albania and poor economic conditions in the Tragedy of Otranto and the Karaburun tragedy.

In 2006, the Albanian government imposed a moratorium on motor-powered sailing boats on all lakes, rivers, and seas of Albania to curb organized crime.^[3] The only exemption to the rule are government owned boats, foreign owned boats, fishing boats, and jet boats. In 2010, the moratorium was extended for 3 more years, until 2013.

References[link]

Coordinates: 40°13′10″N 18°55′32″E / 40.21944°N 18.92556°E / 40.21944; 18.92556

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Otranto
—  Comune  —
Comune di Otranto
Otranto seen from the Castle
Otranto Location of Otranto in Italy
Coordinates: 40°09′N 18°29′E / 40.15°N 18.483°E / 40.15; 18.483
Country	Italy
Region	Puglia
Province	Lecce (LE)
Frazioni	Porto Badisco, Conca Spellucchia
Government
• Mayor	Luciano Cariddi
Area
• Total	76 km2 (29 sq mi)
Elevation	15 m (49 ft)
Population (August 2010)
• Total	5,531
• Density	73/km2 (190/sq mi)
Demonym	Idruntini or Otrantini
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code	73028
Dialing code	0836
Patron saint	Blessed Otrantine Martyrs
Saint day	August 14
Website	Official website

Otranto (Italian pronunciation: [ˈɔːtranto]; Latin: Hydruntum) is a town and comune in the province of Lecce (Apulia, Italy), in a fertile region once famous for its breed of horses.

It is located on the east coast of the Salento peninsula. The Strait of Otranto, to which the city gives its name, connects the Adriatic Sea with the Ionian Sea and Italy with Albania. The harbour is small and has little trade.

The lighthouse Faro della Palascìa, at approximately 5 km southeast of Otranto, marks the most easterly point of the Italian mainland.

About 50 km south lies the promontory of Santa Maria di Leuca (so called since ancient times from its white cliffs, leukos being Greek for white), the southeastern extremity of Italy, the ancient Promontorium lapygium or Sallentinum. The district between this promontory and Otranto is thickly populated and very fertile.

History[link]

The fortress

Otranto occupies the site of the ancient Hydrus (in Greek: Ὑδροῦς) or Hydruntum (in Latin), also known as Hydrunton, Hydronton, or Hydruntu. Otranto was a town of Greek origin, which, in the wars of Pyrrhus and of Hannibal sided against Rome.

In Roman times it was a city in the Provincia Calabria. As it is the nearest port to the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, it was perhaps more important than Brundisium (present Brindisi), under the Roman emperors as a point of embarkation for the East, as the distance to Apollonia was less than from Brundisium.

In the 8th century, it was for some time in the possession of duke Arechis II of Benevento. It remained in the hands of the Byzantine emperors until it was among the last cities of Apulia to surrender to the Norman Robert Guiscard in 1068, and then became part of the Principality of Taranto. In the Middle Ages the Jews had a school there.

In 1480, Mehmet the Conqueror sent an Ottoman Turkish fleet to invade Rome under the command of Gedik Ahmet Paşa. The army reached the shore on 28 July 1480 and the city was captured in two weeks on 11 August 1480. The Pope in panic, called for a crusade to be built up by Ferdinand I of Naples, among them notably troops of Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus. Turks controlled the city for 13 months. Mehmet II died en route to capture the rest of Italy ^[1]. His successor Bayezid II ordered Gedik Ahmet Paşa to be hung and the Turks retreated at the end on 11 September 1481.

Historic map of Otranto by Piri Reis.

In 1537, the famous Turkish corsair and Ottoman admiral Barbarossa captured Otranto and the Fortress of Castro, but the Turks were eventually repulsed from the city and the rest of Puglia.

In 1804, the city was obliged to harbour a French garrison that was established there to watch the movements of the English fleet. Under the French name of Otranto it was created a duché grand-fief de l'Empire in the Napoleonic kingdom of Naples for Joseph Fouché, Napoleon's minister of Police (1809), the grandfather of Margareta Fouché. The family used the title of duc d'Otrante after Joseph Fouché's death.

Main sights[link]

The Cathedral of Otranto

Torre Sant'Emiliano, not far from the Palascìa lighthouse

The sea front

Otranto main sights include:

• The Castello Aragonese (Castle), reinforced by Emperor Frederick II and rebuilt by Alphonso II of Naples in 1485-1498. It has an irregular plan with five sides, with a moat running along the entire perimeter. In origin it had a single entrance, reachable through a draw-bridge. Towers include three cylindrical ones and a bastion called Punta di Diamante ("Diamond's Head"). The entrance sports the coat of arms of Emperor Charles V.
• The Cathedral, consecrated in 1088, a work of Count Roger I adorned later (about 1163), by Bishop Jonathas, with a mosaic floor; it has a rose window and side portal of 1481. The interior, a basilica with nave and two aisles, contains columns said to come from a temple of Minerva and a fine mosaic pavement of 1166, with interesting representations of the months, Old Testament subjects and others. It has a crypt supported by forty-two marble columns. The same Count Roger also founded a Basilian monastery here, which, under Abbot Nicetas, became a place of study; its library was nearly all bought by Bessarion.
• The church of San Pietro, with Byzantine frescoes.
• The catacombs of Torre Pinta.
• Idro, a small river which the toponym Otranto stems from.

Culture[link]

Otranto is the setting of Horace Walpole's book, The Castle of Otranto, which is generally held to be the first gothic novel.

See also[link]

• Bishopric of Otranto
• Ottoman invasion of Otranto

Sources and references[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Otranto". Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. 
• Heraldica.org- Napoleonic
• GigaCatholic

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Otranto

• archdiocsan website (Italian)
• Adrian Fletcher’s Paradoxplace – Otranto Cathedral Mosaics Photo Page
• Otrano Video in English

References[link]

Martin Niemoller on a postage stamp, painted by Gerd Aretz in 1992
Born	14 January 1892 Lippstadt, German Empire
Died	6 March 1984(1984-03-06) (aged 92) Wiesbaden, West Germany
Church	Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union Confessional Church Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau Evangelical Church in Germany
Writings	First they came...
Congregations served	St. Anne's in Dahlem, Germany
Offices held	President, Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau (1945–1961) President, World Council of Churches (1961–1968)
Title	Ordained Pastor

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German anti-Nazi theologian^[1] and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem "First they came…".

Although he was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler,^[2] he became one of the founders of the Confessional Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. He vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph,^[3] but made remarks about Jews that some scholars have called antisemitic.^[4] For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945.^[5][6] He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help the victims of the Nazis.^[3] He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt.^[3] From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972.^[7] He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Youth and World War I participation[link]

Martin Niemöller was born in Lippstadt, then in the Prussian Province of Westphalia (now in North Rhine-Westphalia), on 14 January 1892 to the Lutheran pastor Heinrich Niemöller and his wife Pauline née Müller, and grew up in a very conservative home.^[3] In 1900 the family moved to Elberfeld where he finished school, taking his abitur exam in 1910. He only got 50 A stars!

He began a career as an officer of the Imperial Navy of the German Empire, and in 1915 was assigned to U-boats. His first ship was the SMS Thüringen. In October of that year he joined the submarine mother ship SMS Vulkan, followed by training on the submarine SM U-3. In February 1916 he became second officer on SM U-73, which was assigned to the Mediterranean in April 1916.^[8] There the submarine fought on the Saloniki front, patrolled in the Strait of Otranto and from December 1916 onward planted mines in front of Port Said and was involved in commerce raiding. Flying a French flag as a ruse of war, the SM U-73 sailed past British warships and torpedoed two Allied troopships and a British man-of-war.

In January 1917 Niemöller was coxswain of SM U-39. Later he returned to Kiel, and in August 1917 he became first officer on SM U-151, which attacked numerous ships at Gibraltar, in the Bay of Biscay, and other places. During this time the SM U-151 crew set a record by sinking 55,000 tons of Allied ships in 115 days at sea. In May 1918 he became commander of the SM UC-67. Under his command, SM UC-68 achieved a temporary closing of the French port of Marseilles by sinking ships in the area, by torpedoes, and by the laying of mines.^[8]

For his achievements, Niemöller was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. When the war drew to a close, he decided to become a preacher, a story he later recounted in his book Vom U-Boot zur Kanzel (From U-boat to Pulpit). At war's end, Niemöller resigned his commission, as he rejected the new democratic government of the German Empire that formed after the resignation of the German Emperor William II.

Weimar Republic and education as pastor[link]

On July 20, 1919 he married Else née Bremer (born July 20, 1890 – died August 7, 1961). The same year he began working at a farm in Wersen near Osnabrück but gave up becoming a farmer as he couldn't afford to buy his own farm. He subsequently pursued his earlier idea of becoming a Lutheran pastor, and studied Protestant theology at the Westphalian William's-University in Münster from 1919 to 1923. His motivation was his ambition to give a disordered society meaning and order through the Gospel and church bodies.

During the Ruhr Uprising in 1920 he was battalion commander of the "III. Bataillon der Akademischen Wehr Münster" belonging to the paramilitary Freikorps.

Niemöller was ordained on June 29, 1924.^[8] Subsequently, the united Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union appointed him curate of Münster's Church of the Redeemer. After serving as the superintendent of the Inner Mission in the old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia, Niemöller in 1931 became pastor of the Jesus Christus Kirche (comprising a congregation together with St. Anne's Church) in Dahlem, an affluent suburb of Berlin.^[9]

Role in Nazi Germany[link]

Like most Protestant pastors, Niemöller was a national conservative, and openly supported the conservative opponents of the Weimar Republic. He even welcomed Hitler's accession to power in 1933, believing it would bring a national revival. However, he decidedly opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. In 1936, he signed the petition of a group of Protestant churchmen that sharply criticized Nazi policies and declared the Aryan Paragraph incompatible with the Christian virtue of charity.^[3]

The Nazi regime reacted with mass arrests and charges against almost 800 pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers.^[10] In 1933, Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund, an organization of pastors to "combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background."^[9] By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in founding the Confessional Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches.^[9] The author and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann published Niemöller's sermons in the United States and praised his bravery.^[3]

However, Niemöller only gradually abandoned his national conservative views and even made pejorative remarks about Jews of faith while protecting—in his own church—baptised Christians, persecuted as Jews by the Nazis, due to their or their forefathers' Jewish descent. In one sermon in 1935, he remarked: "What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!"^[11]

This has led to controversy about his attitude toward the Jews and to accusations of anti-Judaism. Holocaust scholar Robert Michael notes that Niemöller's statements were a result of traditional antisemitism and that Niemöller agreed with the Nazis' position on the "Jewish question" at that time.^[4][12] Werner Cohn, an American sociologist, who lived as a Jew in Nazi Germany, also reports on antisemitic statements by Niemöller.^[13]

Thus, Niemöller's ambivalent and often contradictory behaviour during the Nazi period makes him one of the most controversial enemies of the Nazis. Even his motives are disputed. The historian Raimund Lammersdorf considers Niemöller "an opportunist who had no quarrel with Hitler politically and only began to oppose the Nazis when Hitler threatened to attack the churches."^[14] Others have disputed this view and emphasize the risks that Niemöller took while opposing the Nazis.^[3] Nonetheless, Niemöller's behaviour contrasts sharply with the much more broad-minded attitudes of other Confessing Church activists such as Hermann Maas. The pastor and liberal politician Maas — unlike Niemöller — belonged to those who unequivocally opposed every form of antisemitism and was later accorded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.^[15]

Arrest and imprisonment[link]

Arrested on 1 July 1937, Niemöller was brought to a "Special Court" on 2 March 1938 to be tried for activities against the State. He was fined 2,000 Reichmarks and received a prison term of seven months. As his detention period exceeded the jail term, he was released by the Court after the trial. However, immediately after leaving the Court, he was rearrested by Himmler's Gestapo—presumably because Rudolf Hess found the sentence too lenient and decided to take "merciless action" against him.^[16] He was interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.

After his former cell-mate Leo Stein was released from Sachsenhausen to go to America, he wrote an article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly in 1941.^[2] Stein reports that having asked Niemöller why he ever supported the Nazi Party, Niemöller replied:

I find myself wondering about that too. I wonder about it as much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: "There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany."

I really believed, given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time—that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while.

I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me.

Release and postwar activities[link]

In late April 1945 Niemöller was transferred to Tyrol together with about 140 other prominent inmates, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on May 5, 1945.^[17] According to Lammersdorf, there had been some attempts to whitewash his past, which were, however, soon followed by harsh criticism because of his role as a NSDAP supporter and his attitude toward the Jews.^[14] Niemöller himself never denied his own guilt in the time of the Nazi regime. In 1959, he was asked about his former attitude toward the Jews by Alfred Wiener, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. In a letter to Wiener, Niemöller stated that his eight-year imprisonment by the Nazis became the turning point in his life, after which he viewed things differently.

Niemöller was president of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau from 1947 to 1961. He was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, signed by leading figures in the German Protestant churches. The document acknowledged that the churches had not done enough to resist the Nazis.^[18]

Under the impact of a meeting with Otto Hahn (who has been called the "father of nuclear chemistry") in July 1954, Niemöller became an ardent pacifist and campaigner for nuclear disarmament.^[19] He was soon a leading figure in the post-war German peace movement and was even brought to court in 1959 because he had spoken about the military in a very unflattering way.^[20] His visit to North Vietnam's communist ruler Ho Chi Minh at the height of the Vietnam War caused an uproar. Niemöller also took active part in protests against the Vietnam War and the NATO Double-Track Decision.^[21]

In 1961, he became president of the World Council of Churches.^[9] He earned the Lenin Peace Prize in 1966.

He died at Wiesbaden in 1984.

See also[link]

Poetry portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Martin Niemöller

• Franz Hildebrandt
• "Martin Niemoeller" James Bentley (The Free Press, New York, 1984) ISBN 0-02-902730-6

Notes[link]

Selected Writings[link]

• From U-boat to Pulpit, including an Appendix From Pulpit to Prison by Henry Smith Leiper (Chicago, New York: Willett, Clark, 1937).
• Here Stand I! with foreword by James Moffatt, translated by Jane Lymburn (Chicago, New York: Willett, Clark, 1937).
• The Gestapo Defied, Being the Last Twenty-eight Sermons by Martin Niemöller (London [etc.]: W. Hodge and Company, Limited, 1941).
• Of Guilt and Hope, translated by Renee Spodheim (New York: Philosophical Library, [1947]).
• “What is the Church?” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, vol. 40, no. 4 (1947): 10–16.
• “The Word of God is Not Bound,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, vol. 41, no. 1 (1947): 18–23.
• Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemöller’s Letters from Moabit Prison, translated by Ernst Kaemke, Kathy Elias, and Jacklyn Wilfred; edited by Hubert G. Locke (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., c1986).

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Martin Niemöller

• Who Was Martin Niemoller?
• Martin Niemöller's famous quotation: "First they came for the Communists" What did Niemoeller really say? Which groups did he name? In what order? Harold Marcuse, UC Santa Barbara (2005)
• Niemöller's famous quotation as posted by Holocaust Survivors' Network
• Corruptions of "First They Came"
• A biography of Niemöller
• The text (and an English translation) of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
• Pastor Martin Niemöller, Sonal Panse