Gunfire
Schmauchlümmel is the central term of a conversation excerpt, which is attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and is quoted again and again in texts that refer to the dangers of smoking.
In this text it is said about the smokers who smoke
- " Stupid; it makes you incapable of thinking and poetry. It is also only for idlers, for people who are bored, who oversleep a third part of their life, a third part pampering with food, drink and other necessary or superfluous things, and then do not know, although they always say vita brevis what they are saying should begin with the last third part. [...] Smoking also includes drinking beer, so that the heated palate is cooled down again. The beer thickens the blood and at the same time increases the intoxication from the narcotic tobacco vapor. The nerves become dulled and the blood thickened to the point of stagnation. If things go on as they seem, after two or three people's ages one will see what those beer bellies and smokers have made of Germany. You will first notice it in the dullness, crippling and poverty of our literature. [...] And no hungry person is satisfied and no naked person is dressed. What could happen to the money! But there is also a gross rudeness in smoking, an impertinent unsociability. "
Origin of the text
The exact wording of the text excerpt originally came from the pen of the German historian Heinrich Luden (1778–1847), and was published shortly after Luden's death from his estate in the book Rückblicke in mein Leben (Jena 1847). Luden met Goethe for the first time in 1806 in Jena, in the house of the doctor Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland , whose patient also included Goethe. In the same company was one of Goethe's closest friends, the prince educator at the Weimar court and poet Karl Ludwig von Knebel (1744–1834), whose acquaintance Luden made. A few weeks later, during a visit from Luden to Knebel, the conversation turned to Goethe's reservations about sniffing and smoking, and the quoted passage was expressed. The wording comes from Heinrich Luden, who after a conversation with Knebel had reproduced the wording of a conversation with Goethe. This underlying conversation between Goethe and Knebel is not dated, the Artemis edition of Goethe's works (vol. 22, p. 518f.) States 1776 or 1806, only Luden's conversation with Knebel can be dated from spring to summer 1806.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from Wolfgang Herwig: Goethe's Conversations . Volume 2. Zurich 1969, p. 362f.
- ↑ See Luden (1847), pp. 90f.
literature
- Heinrich Luden: Looking back at my life. From the estate of Heinrich Luden. Friedrich Luden, Jena 1847 ( online PDF file).