What do you
think of, quite spontaneously and without looking it up on Wikipedia, when you
think of Frederick the Great?
I have to
confess: history is not quite my cup of tea.
I remember all teachers I ever had: in English I
saw in Frau Dr.Mergel what I wanted to become: a real “Lady”. Till this day I
am grateful to Dr. Liebe – French lessons – for his positive view of me (quite
in contrast to the monk Mr. Franzen, who broke out of his order and taught us
Latin, and who prophesied a dark future for me as wedded wife, adding “And for
children you are also not suited” which burdened me for a long time – though in
spite of him I quickly married. And still am.)
Unforgetable is the ‘shining light’ Mr. Schmädicke, my class teacher in sports and biology. When I was 15 I had such a crush on him that I would have eloped with him unscrupulously –
but the crush was only on my side.. .sigh…For
him I worked so hard that I got the best mark in biology, and in sports I
jumped from the highest diving board and
suddenly was able to do a handstand! Yes – an inspiring teacher lends you
wings!
But in
History: who were my teachers? I only remember the old history maps, and that
for the umpteen times we started with the Greeks and the Romans, very
thoroughly, but just shortly before the National Socialism we had no more time,
so sorry – we will do that next term!
– but when next term came, we repeated the old Greeks and Romans once again, to
be on the safe side… Although a lot of our teachers at the very posh grammar
school The Barkhof in Bremen were really old so they might have told us from their own
experiences.
But why
that talk about Frederick the Great?
This
morning our Berliner Zeitung presented us with a special magazine: F. To the 300th Birthday
of Frederick the Great. The cover was a picture by Andy Warhol from
1986.
And I
thought: Well – why not?
When I look
back upon my first year living in Berlin, I see a lot of action, but no common thread.
For 2012 that common thread will be Frederick the Great.
Don’t panic:
I will handle that very individually.
Till now I
wasn’t very interested in that man. The words that sprung spontaneously to my
mind were:
The Old Fritz/tobacco colloquium/ snuff/ Voltaire/ enlightened
absolutism/ potatoes (of course)/
music/ Seven Year’s War/ Sanssouci/ three-cornered hat/ a very tiny potentate (as so often)/ and “The first servant of
his nation”.
Come to
think of it: quite a lot. Our History teachers couldn’t have been that bad.
So when from
now on you see an “F” in front of a title, you know: Frederick the Great.
As you might say:
"Let's Blitz the Fritz!" (Softly, please).
