There are a few pictures of Virgil here already, but it was this bust of him that first tugged at my heartstrings! Definitely my first history crush~

I couldn’t decide who my history crush is so I made a little collage. These people aren’t my history crushes because I’m secretly in love with them or because I support their world view. No, they’re just people who I’m interested in and I’m mature enough to be critical of their biographies. Stalin, a dictator who supported the murderer of 20 Million people from his own country, was a BAMF when he was young, but that doesn’t mean that I support the Stalinism. I like the design of the Wehrmacht uniform, but I’m totally aware about the war crimes the German soldiers committed while WWII (same goes for the SS). The person on the picture is Stauffenberg. At least he tried to kill Hitler, one year till the ‘party’ was finally over. I think Richelieu is a really interesting personality, although I think that the Siege of La Rochelle was a crime against humanity. Friedrich II. (HRR) is one of my favorite personalities in history. He was educated, intelligent and very calculating. On the one side he was tolerant and had no problems with ‘talking’ with the Arabs, but on the other side he was a huge supporter of the early inquisition. And Napoleon… well, we all know how he tried to bring the ideals of the French Revolution to Europe. Thousands of soldiers and civilians had to pay with their lives. Friedrich Schiller. Okay, he doesn’t kill somebody and never committed a real crime; he was an author to whom I have a little hate-love relationship. And Rousseau was a BAMF, an intelligent BAMF! And who’s left… ah yes, dear Emperor Caligula. Current historians revise his biography and try to separate between facts and myths/negative propaganda. We will see the results, but at the moment most people might know Caligula as one of the cruelest Emperors of Rome and yet he’s just fascinating.

TL;DR. Most of my ‘history crushes’ are people who were reckless, cruel and committed some awful crimes against humanity, but they also created whole empires and made indeed history. History is war and death, and everybody who can’t deal with that shouldn’t study it. And if people think that Goebbels or even Hitler are their ‘history crushes’, than it shall be. But I can’t understand why so many people make such a fuss about a Nazi crush, but don’t care so much when Stalin, Mao (who killed more people than Hitler) or any other crazy dictator is posted. And if a person is really in love with Goebbels, that person has another problem than haters on Tumblr. Fascination doesn’t necessarily equal admiration. And to have a history crush doesn’t mean that you support their world view. Try to see the difference.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Rabindranath Tagore, now fondly remembered as Gurudev, was an Indian poet and the first Indian man to win the Nobel Prize (for his collection of poems, Gitanjali).

He was also extremely handsome.

And although his life was marked by terrible presonal tragedies, this man was almost single-handedly responsible for reshaping Bengali culture.

Also he wrote stuff like this:

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age-old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same 
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Most of my favourites are already here, but going through MANY pages of this blog I’ve never found him, Antoine Lavoisier (1743 - 1794). It’s one of the best of the tights-white wigs-guys from around the time of French Revolution. A brilliant chemist and biologist, quite a religious chap with some social-political zeal pushing him to become a tax collector, which was one of the main reasons why he was tried and executed during the regime of Terror.
His portrait that I am particularly fond of was painted by Jacques-Louis David and includes his quite brilliant and quite hot wife Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze. Two in one then, enjoy!

So surprised I haven’t seen a YOUNG FDR. Hes such a babe, an outstanding president and a certified bad ass. 

This lovely lady is Lili Boulanger, a French composer who died at just 24, in 1918. A couple of years earlier, in 1913, she was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. She was 19 at the time. When she discovered she had Crohn’s disease, and thus only two years to live, the started finishing all her unfinished compositions. Her choral works are sombre and impressive. Personally, I love her D’un matin de printemps and Vieille prière bouddhique. (Youtube link to the last when you click on the photo.)

British actor Brian Aherne.

Dong-ju Yun (1917–1945) was a Korean poet, writer and freedom fighter whose lyrical and sensitive poems are still beloved in Korea.

Just Salvador Dali and Man Ray doing some crazy-wild eyes. Scary-cute.

I noticed FYHC doesn’t have a lot of Egon Schiele, so here’s another photo of the awesomely dead expressionist painter. And to be the protege of Gustav Klimt, now that’s something!