13 September 1777 -- Frederick the Great Issues His Famous "Coffee and Beer Manifesto"

Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, BWV 211 (the Coffee Cantata) -- Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer, and Christian Friedrich Henrici, Lyrics

Over the past few months, the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo has become a household name in the West as the foci of humanitarian and cultural tragedies so horrific, so nightmarish as to beggar the imagination. My generation is witness to the unmaking of one of the world’s most ancient cities, an urban center that has withstood every tempest that has shaken the Levant for five-thousand or so years.

Long before Aleppo became synonymous with terror, atrocity, fear, and refugees, its place in the history books had already been secured. For millennia, Aleppo had occupied a strategic waypoint between Mesopotamia and various Mediterranean ports, a location ensuring its economic might and, to secure the wealth thus acquired, a military power with which to be reckoned. Before being thrust into the headlines as the first major humanitarian crisis of the 21st Century, Aleppo was best known to history students as the westernmost anchor of the famed Silk Road of antiquity, that remarkable and treacherous trade route stretching from Syria to southeast China.

So what does any of this have to do with coffee, music, and Frederick the Great? Stop rushing me: I’m getting there!

In the mid-16th Century, Melchior Manlich, an enterprising Bavarian entrepreneur made a hefty profit by selling drugs and plants imported the Levant. Shrewdly realizing the profits to be made were his firm able deal more directly with his suppliers, Manlich convinced his brother-in-law, a physician and fellow Bavarian with the unlikely name of Leonhard Rauwolf, to visit the Levant and Mesopotamia and personally negotiate additional trade arrangements.

After setting sail from France, Rauwolf disembarked in Lebanon in 1573 and set about his duties, visiting Tripoli, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Mosul, to mention only the more famous locals, as Manlich’s agent. But the commercial significance of Aleppo demanded the bulk of his attention, and that alluring city was his most frequent destination. Shortly after his 1576 return to Barvaria, Rauwolf published what would become a popular account of those eastern lands which had been mainly closed to European travel since the rise of Islam nearly a thousand years previously. His book contained the description of a peculiar drink, then unknown in Europe, of which Rauwolf had become fond during his many months in Aleppo:

"A very good drink they call Chaube that is almost as black as ink and very good in illness, especially of the stomach. This they drink in the morning early in the open places before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of China cups, as hot as they can, sipping it a little at a time."

This passage marks one of the first mentions of coffee in Europe. Rauwolf passed beyond this mortal realm in 1596 Within a century, coffee was no longer an unknown quality in Europe. It spread across borders like an invading army, conquering native populations with an rapidity and ease that alarmed and frightened traditionalists.

The great Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach wrote perhaps 300 or more cantatas during his life. The German poet Christian Friedrich Henrici (perhaps better known by his pseudonym Picander) frequently provided lyrics to Bach's music. Among the most entertaining of the joint endeavors was the “Coffee Cantata.” It speaks directly to Europe’s growing addiction to that enticing drink Rauwolf had encountered in the Levant.

In ten movements, Bach and Henrici tells the story of a feuding father and daughter, the conservative and traditional Mr. Schlendrian versus the  young and vivacious Liesgen. The daughter cannot do without her daily coffee but the father abhors the foul concoction and commands she leave off.

Mr. Schlendrian:

You naughty child, you wild girl,

ah! When will I achieve my goal:

get rid of the coffee for my sake!

Liesgen:

Father sir, but do not be so harsh!

If I couldn't, three times a day,

be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee,

in my anguish I will turn into

a shriveled-up roast goat.

Ah! How sweet coffee tastes,

more delicious than a thousand kisses,

milder than muscatel wine.

Coffee, I have to have coffee,

    and, if someone wants to pamper me,

    ah, then bring me coffee as a gift!

Mr. Schlendrian threatens poor Liesgen with the deprivation of every conceivable pleasure lest she give way -- no parties, no walks in the sun, not even looking out her window, but his daughter takes it all in stride. Finally, not know what else he can take, the exasperated father vows to never allow his daughter to marry unless she swears off coffee. Liesgen seemingly submits to this most dire of threats:

Even today,

dear father, make it happen!

Ah, a husband!

Indeed, this will suit me well!

   If it would only happen soon,

   that at last, instead of coffee,

   before I even go to bed,

   I might gain a sturdy lover!

Mr. Schlendrian triumphantly begins the search for his agreeable future son-in-law, completely unaware that he had been outwitted by the cunning Liesgen:

Now old Schlendrian goes and seeks

How he, for his daughter Liesgen,

might soon acquire a husband;

but Liesgen secretly spreads the word:

no suitor comes in my house

unless he has promised to me himself

and has it also inserted into the marriage contract,

that I shall be permitted

to brew coffee whenever I want.

Liesgen's fellow coffee enthusiasts would face down and defeat a martial foe so formidable as to awe even the great Napoléon himself. Sharing the sentiments of Liesgen’s frustrated father, Frederick II of Prussia (perhaps better known as Frederick the Great) sought to turn the rising tide of coffee in his powerful kingdom. On 13 September 1777, Frederick II issued his famous "Coffee and Beer Manifesto:"

It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors, and his officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer; and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended upon to endure hardship or to beat his enemies in case of the occurrence of another war.

Numerous explanations have been offered as motive for Frederick’s edict. The king himself claimed beer to be far healthier than its caffeinated rival. Some observers believe the king’s reaction was born of fear that Prussia’s national brews might be upstaged by this imported upstart. Actually, the reality is, as usual, far more simple. Mercantilism was the reigning economic and trade theory of that era, and, in all likelihood, Frederick was simply seeking the dam the flow of Prussian thalers to the coffers of foreign coffee merchants.

By 1781, Frederick had come to realize this was one war he could never win. Thus, rather than to continue to flail futilely at an opponent he could never defeat, the crafty monarch “legalized” coffee as a royal monopoly, and much profit ensued.