It's Wednesday again, which means another installment of Shakespearean Imagination!
On this day in history – 1945, to be precise – the Soviet Union agreed to hand over power in West Berlin to US and British forces. Various treaties and agreements at the end of World War II divided both Germany and Berlin itself into three zones of occupancy – USSR, UK and USA – but the Soviets were in control of nearly all of eastern Germany and the entire city of Berlin. On July 11, 1945, the USSR announced that it would hand over all control of West Berlin to British and US forces. This was accomplished, without incident, the following day. The prevailing theory was that the USSR would refuse to relinquish their areas of control, but they upheld their part of the:
compromise : com•pro•mise /ˈkämprəˌmīz/ (noun)(verb) :
noun
– An agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.
– An intermediate state between conflicting alternatives reached by mutual concession.
– The expedient acceptance of standards that are lower than is desirable.
verb
– To settle a dispute by mutual concession.
– To expediently accept standards that are lower than is desirable.
Synonyms as a noun: agreement - settlement - accomodation - concession
Synonyms as a verb: concede - agree - settle – accommodate – (as a pejorative, jeopardise, imperil, weaken, etc, may also be substituted)
First seen in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (written 1596-1597). The full text of the play may be found here.
NB: Tensions in the divided city remained high, however, leading the government of East Germany to erect the famous (infamous?) Berlin Wall in 1961, creating a physical barrier between the two factions until its destruction in 1989 and Germany’s reunification the following year.
Information included in today’s post was sourced here.
