No-one sank von Bismarck
QUESTION Was Germany’s Otto von Bismarck a serial duellist? Whom did he fight?
PRUSSIAN statesman Otto von Bismarck (1815-98) dominated German and European affairs in the second half of the 19th Century. In the 1860s, he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states – deliberately excluding Austria – into a powerful German Empire under martial Prussian leadership.
As a young man, Bismarck studied law in Göttingen in 1833, living outside the city walls in a small house now known as Bismarck Cottage. According to popular legend, he was banned from living inside the city because of his rowdy behaviour.
He was thoroughly committed to one of the university’s favourite pastimes, a type of duelling called the Mensur. These duels consisted of ‘academic’ fencing matches between students representing different fraternities. They were an opportunity to assert oneself by acquiring a reputation as a skilled fencer, ready to defend the honour of the fraternity.
The term Mensur, known since the 16th Century, was derived from the Latin mensura (measure). During a bout, the duellists stood in front of each other, the distance between them allowing them to strike a sword stab without changing initial position.
The distance was calculated individually for each pair of students, depending on the length of their arms.
These supposedly ‘friendly’ bouts could be brutal affairs, with losers suffering severe injuries.
Bismarck was an imposing figure, 6ft 3in in height, powerfully built and a terror on the fencing floor. He fought more than 25
Mensuren and was wounded only once – according to him, by a foul stroke.
Bismarck was only once involved in a genuine duel. Shortly after his appointment to the Bund (the body which regulated the German Confederation), its president, the Austrian envoy Count Thun, lit up a cigar during a session of the smaller council. By custom, only the president of the Federal Council had the right to smoke in meetings. Wanting to demonstrate for Prussia a status equal with Austria, Bismarck immediately lit up a cigar, too.
When news of this affront reached Georg Freiherr von Vincke (1811–75), a deputy from Hagen in Westphalia in the Prussian lower house and an equally fiery character, he ridiculed Bismarck, accusing him of lacking diplomatic discretion.
Bismarck replied that ‘his remark exceeded not only the boundaries of diplomatic discretion but even the normal discretion that one had a right to expect from every properly educated man’.
The following day Vincke sent Bismarck (via his second, Herr von Saucken-Julienfelde) a ‘challenge to a duel of four bullets’.
Bismarck counter-offered a duel with sabres, but Vincke refused. The duel took place on March 15, 1852.
The two men had been persuaded to fire to miss each other and honour was satisfied – though Bismarck claimed: ‘I would have preferred to continue the fight. Since I was not the person insulted, I could say nothing. That was it; everybody shook hands.’
Bernard Fischer, London SW14.
QUESTION Following the success of TG4 and Welsh-language TV
channel S4C, are there any TV channels broadcasting in Breton? TV BREIZH (Breizh is Breton for Brittany), a private French regional station for the Brittany region, was launched in 2000. Until 2004 it was a predominately Breton channel, but by 2004 much of the scheduling was replaced with old US shows such as Murder She Wrote and Columbo, and TV movies. Programmes in the Breton language decreased and by 2010 it was entirely in French.
Another regional TV station, France 3 Bretagne, was founded in 1964. This broadcasts two daytime magazine-type shows in Breton called Bali Breizh and Mouchig-Dall. Its prime-time broadcasting is in French.
This all reflects the decline of the Breton language which has reduced from more than a million speakers in around 1950 to about 200,000 today. The Breton language is classified by Unesco as ‘severely endangered’. Michael Fraser, Bath, Somerset.
QUESTION I recall my grandfather burying vegetables in a large box of sand to preserve them. Was this practice commonplace? Did it work?
THROUGHOUT World Wars I and II and the rationing era in Britain, millions of gardeners helped grow food. By 1943, there were 3.5million allotments, producing more than a million tons of vegetables.
You needed to store quantities of root vegetables – carrots, swedes, beetroot, celeriac, etc. – before the first frosts. This could be done easily by storing them in a cool, dark shed or cellar in suitable boxes or tubs filled with horticultural sand or peat-free compost.
This method isn’t recommended for potatoes. These are usually best stored in a hessian sack; the sacking allows them to breathe while excluding light.
It was also common to store root crops in a clamp, made by digging a shallow rectangular trench, into which is put a base layer of straw, bracken or shredded paper. Root crops are stacked in layers, dispersed with straw or sand, built up into a cone shape.
On the outside of the clamp, a final layer of straw is used with a little straw spike at the top, to let moisture escape. The soil removed from the trench is then used to cover the clamp.
Failing that, most root vegetables can be adequately stored by being left in the ground, simply by removing the stems and covering them in straw. Mrs May Gillingham, Much Hadham, Herts.
QUESTION Further to the question about Norbert Dentressangle lorries, what is the origin of the name Norbert? Are there any other famous Norberts?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, there’s a singer called Norbert Rier, vocalist with seven-man folk pop group the Kastelruther Spatzens (The Sparrows of Kastelruth, a town in northern Italy). They are massive in German-speaking areas, and in Kastelruth, Norbert Rier is a legend on the scale of Elvis Presley. David Johnson, Wimborne, Dorset.
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