The basic pattern of the “world calendar” goes back to a concept developed by Marco Mastrofini in 1834 . In 1930 Elisabeth Achelis founded the World Calendar Association (WCA) , which subsequently endeavored to enforce the world calendar first at the League of Nations and then at the UN . In the 1930s to 1950s there were efforts in both organizations for calendar reform . The world calendar was given the best chance of implementation. However, no decision was made for a calendar reform or a preferred alternative calendar.
In 1955, the WCA dissolved after internal disputes. It was succeeded by the International World Calendar Association (IWCA) .
The system of the world calendar
The world calendar is a modification of the Gregorian calendar . Like this, it divides the year into twelve months . First of all, the outstanding feature is the permanent, fixed link between date and weekday. Each year starts on Sunday January 1st. The year of the world calendar is divided into four quarters of 91 days each. The first month of each quarter (January, April, July and October) counts 31 days and the remaining two months 30 days each. The switching rule was adopted from the Gregorian calendar reform (1582). Significant differences to the currently existing Gregorian calendar exist in the respective month lengths and in the interruption of the week sequence at the end of the year and in leap years also in the middle of the year.
The weekly cycle has been aligned with the monthly cycle on a quarterly basis: The first month of each quarter begins with a Sunday. In order to enable the following year to start again with a Sunday, December 30th (always a Saturday) is not followed by a Sunday, but as the 365th day of the year, the so-called world day , which is not assigned to any month or week ( → Epagomene ). In leap years, an additional day is inserted after June 30th, which is also outside the monthly and weekly cycle.
The world calendar largely coincides with the Gregorian calendar from September 1st to February 28th.
The new world calendar (with Sunday as the first day of the week)
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World day
Advantages and disadvantages
Proponents of the world calendar point to its simple structure. The year always begins with a Sunday, and every other date is always assigned the same weekday every year. The quarters each cover 91 days, precisely fitting for 13 weeks. Since all four quarters are of the same length and the months within the quarters consist of 31 days, 30 days and another 30 days, the comparison of quarterly statistics is considerably improved. According to the World Calendar Association, World Day on the week-free New Year's Eve should be a day of pause throughout the world, which expresses the bond between mankind.
Critics criticize the traditional interruption of the weekly sequence. Also the fact that in leap years in the middle of the calendar on Saturday, June 30th, there is no Sunday, but first the inserted leap day, even without a week, is a break with the millennia-old tradition of the seven-day week without exception, which has passed since its introduction the Babylonians survived all calendar reforms and became part of such diverse calendar systems as the Jewish calendar , the Christian calendar and the Muslim calendar . In addition, the world calendar makes it difficult to integrate many church festivals that are linked to astronomical events (e.g. Easter ). The acceptance of the world calendar is made more difficult by the fact that three daily dates are deleted: March 31, May 31 and August 31. However, these are only a tenth of the daily dates that would have been omitted in the international perpetual calendar , which among other things was a disadvantage compared to the world calendar (but above all because of the difficult to divide 13 months).
Even Auguste Comte took in developing his positivist calendar Mastrofinis idea of interrupting the weekly cycle through an inserted special day.
variants
In a variant of the world calendar presented by Josef Suran in 1998, a leap week between June and July is inserted instead of the leap day and the world day . This is called Tychon because it is outside the monthly cycle. So you would have a common year of 52 and a leap year of 53 weeks. Since the current weekly calendar already provides for this, this variant of the world calendar could already be used. To do this, one would have to equate the first seven days with the first calendar week.
Another variant is the common civil calendar . In contrast to the world calendar, the last month of a quarter always has 31 days. He also uses a leap week instead of the additional days. This is also in the middle of the year, but here it bears the name "Newton".
