Word: consulant
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Wolf was a career diplomat who routinely joined the Nazi Party and, in 1940, was posted as consul to Florence. At the time, the city seemed a diplomatic backwater, ideal for a man whom one of his later beneficiaries described as "reserved, even lackadaisical." It was only when Italy began to fall apart militarily and the Germans came in to hold the country that the mild, art-loving consul began to show his true fiber...
Technically, the title is wrong. Neither Wolf nor any one individual can be called "the man who saved Florence." But the consul's efforts were quietly heroic in limiting the damage. Aiming at something like Is Paris Burning?, a more exciting account of a threatened city, Author Tutaev, who is a specialist in Russian affairs living in England, sets down what he has unearthed with workaday, amateurish zeal. But the facts are eloquent enough. In 1955, Gerhard Wolf, Nazi, was made an honorary citizen of Florence and cited for "acts of incalculable courage, humanity, sense of brotherhood and Christian feeling...
...second exhibit, Van der Marck showed 34 drawings of "proposed colossal monuments," including giant baked potatoes and pizza pies, by Claes Oldenburg, who was raised in Chicago, where his father was Swedish Consul General. Van der Marck is already talking of floating an Oldenburg on Lake Michigan, as part of Chicago's 150th birthday celebration next summer. After all, Van der Marck figures, since his job is to show what is living in the mind of the artist, what is the point of keeping it confined to a museum...
There seemed to be no good reason for the Ford Motor Co. Ltd. of Britain even to consider a new car. For those who preferred the compact and medium-sized auto, it was already producing Anglias, Consuls and Prefects; for bigger-car buyers, it was manufacturing Zephyrs and Zodiacs. The market appeared to be covered. Then, Ford planners spotted a potentially lucrative gap. To fill it, they created the Cortina, a car in the Anglia price range but with roominess comparable to the Consul...
...Later. Few Americans faced real physical peril. One exception was U.S. Consul General John R. Barrow, who, with his British counterpart, was trapped by howling crowds on the upper floors of the U.S. consulate in the Syrian city of Aleppo. When the mobs set fire to the building, they escaped by sliding down ropes dropped from the back windows. With the help of Syrian security cops, they were able to hire taxis and, with six other Americans and Britons, made it safely to the Turkish border...