Frederick the Great and Bill Clinton

Harry S. Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.

Or, if you prefer a more ancient version: Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Victoria, Mahatma Gandhi.

What do all these have in common and share it with Fredrick the Great? Besides being statesmen?

I am quite proud that I found that link all alone, when I looked at a wood engraving of Adolph Menzel (who in 1840 illustrated the “History of Frederick the Great” written by the historian Franz Kugler with about 400 wood engravings). 

What do you see?

That the relationship between father and toddler son seems to be quite OK at that time – spending ‘quality time’ together?

Well, that was not what I meant. Please look at the picture very closely.

Yes: Little Freddy stretches out his left hand to get the ball.

Right away I pounded my search into the internet (http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/forms/hand.html)  – and it is true. Frederick the Great was a left-hander. The statesmen mentioned above were it too. As Queen Victoria.

Now there is a lot written about left-handers. Smart things and absolutely balmy things.

I didn’t enrol our child for the Waldorf Kindergarten when by absolving the required ‘Mother-preparing-courses’ (fathers don’t need courses) and by reading Steiner I found out that even today they 're-educate' left-handers to write with the right hand (“If the child loves his mother”, they told me, “it will do that lovingly”), but, even more bizarre, they see left-handedness as a karmic punishment: “One is re-born as a left-hander because one has lived a debauched, voluptuous life in former life.”

Oh!

They said that to me literally in the Hildesheimer Waldorf-Kindergarten – it is possible that other Waldorf institutions have a more liberal concept, but even now an Austrian left-hander adviser writes:

“Especially cautious parents should be who want that their child should visit a Waldorf school. Left-handedness was seen in original Waldorf pedagogy still as a karmic problem (…) (www.kindaktuell.at)  

My father was a left-hander, whom they „re-educated“. I am ambidextrous (very convenient – though I am very sorry to say I cannot remember my former life). And our son is a pure left-hander – never having any problem whatsoever with that.

I don’t know what it meant for Frederick II.

I hope at court they knew this quote by John Donne (1572 – 1631):

„Reason is our soul’s left hand, Faith her right.“

Both are important. 

Frederick II: Malaria in Prussia?? Are you kidding?

One can discover so much about Fred browsing a bit here and scrolling a bit there!

„As a 15-year-old he suffered from jaundice, with 28 he picked up a persisting form of malaria, which plagued him later again and again with attacks of fever, cold shivers and fits of dizziness“, writes Tilmann Bendikowski in his essay „The Eternal King“.

I thought: “What? Malaria? In Prussia?? Where did he get that?“ The internet offered only the Staufer Emperor Friedrich II (1194 – 1250), whose son had died of malaria. Then I saw that Albrecht Dürer, Oliver Cromwell and Friedrich Schiller were ‘famous malaria-victims”.

But nothing about my Friedrich II.

Was the author mistaken? (As I in my last post on Freddy: I spoke of his ‘Tobacco-colloquium’ – but that was the vice of his father, the “Soldier-King”).

Then I found „fever of the marsh’ and ‚alternating fever‘ – (these words used in novels I had never connected to malaria).

“In days gone by malaria was common also in countries with temperate climate, among them Germany. (…) Into the 18^th century there were many epidemics. Great parts of Germany were hit hard, but especially the marsh and moors at the coast. (…) Through river regulation and colonizing of the moors numerous breeding places for gnats were destroyed. (…) In the developing coastal landscape Anopheles maculipennis typicus ousted the fever transmitting Anopheles maculipennis messea.” (Wiki)

In his essay about Frederick Mr. Bendikowski wrote:

“Nobody could quite help Frederick, because he developed also in medical issues the inclination to know everything better than the experts. As an example: when drinking the vast amounts of coffee in the morning he sometimes used to put some grains of mustard seeds into it – he thought that best.”

After living a few years on this beautiful earth I do agree with Freddy: one should not rely on the“ experts“ only, but also use one’s common sense.

Coffee belongs to the same plant family as Peruvian bark, a bark that was used by Peruvian workers successfully against malaria fever, and brought to Europe in 1640 by the Jesuit Order in form of powder. The medicine fabricated out of Cinchonia was later later called “quinine”. And grains of mustard seed were used by alternative medicine in foot baths against fever – so maybe Fred was not that daft by using them – though even a placebo-effect would be fine.

Today in Europe malaria has been exterminated. But don’t let us rejoice to early!

In 1997 the county council of the little German town Cuxhaven had to deal with the question “Marsh fever – Are there possible risks in marsh counties?”, because they had found in a cowshed a gnat of the family Anopheles atroparvus, one (!), which is a carrier for malaria. (When you say 'to make a mountain out of a molehill' we say in Germany 'to make an elephant out of a gnat') As Europe is getting warmer it might create a warm and damp climate that could encourage the spread of these gnats.

Well – there helps only one thing, even if Mr. B. might blame me that I believe that I do know everything better than the experts („I? Me?? Never !!”) :

Carefully I pour a Gin tonic into my glass.

That should, as we all know, help against malaria through its content of quinine in the tonic water - used regularly. (In India British people were forced to use the tedious gin only to mask the bitterness of the quinine J.

Why has Schweppes reduced the amount of quinine? Again a dark conspiracy of the pharmaceutical industry?? 

Sláinte!