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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.
