A Factual Background For The Well-Known Story Of King Fritz

by R. Willner (for Nov. 1994 issue of Die Hausfrau magazine)

 

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Historians may forgive me if I seek to show Friedrich II not
as the famous "Soldier-King", but in connection with potatoes.
There is already something (recorded) about that.
In the year 1744, thus 250 years ago, he was the first European
ruler to enact by decree that hunger would be battled with the
"new fruit".
He ordered that seed-potatoes be issued to many farmers at no
cost, but the farmers considered cultivation of grain-crops
more important, and most of the free potatoes rotted unused.
This angered the Prussian King, and in 1756 he gave the order
that potato cultivation would proceed without delay. He went
personally out to the fields and had his dragoons supervise
the compliance with his order.
Still, a systematic cultivation did not take hold in Prussia;
other (states) began it.
Already in 1588, Marcus Rumpold, the private cook of the Prince-Elector (Archbishop) at Mainz, composed the first potato-recipe, and called the tuber the most important means of human sustenance next to bread.
In the year 1648 the Pilgramsreuth farmer Hans Rogler travelled to Rossbach in the Sudetenland to visit his relatives. There he ate potatoes for the first time, and obtained for himself a basket of such tubers, that his family at home especially relished, cooked and sprinkled with salt and caraway seeds.
Then he planted the greater part of this field-crop in the earth inside his garden. When he dug up the garden in autumn, he found "the soil full of potatoes".
This also persuaded other farmers of the Rehan-Hof district to grow potatoes.
The chronicle states further, that in the year 1697 were 22 families in that same area, who cultivated potatoes in their gardens and produced altogether more than 200 hundredweights (i.e., 10 U.S. tons altogether).
In the Sudetenland, potatoes, called "earth apples" there and
"arpln" in local dialect, were already treasured much earlier.
Thus the manager of the Schuttenitz superintendency manor had
the assignment of delivering "earth apples" to the bishop in
Leitmeritz and the unpopular ruling house in Prague, and that
was already in the year 1580.
In the Bohemian central mountains around this time, a simple
tasty meal was already prepared from this tuber.
One ate the potatoes as a midday meal, cooked, skinned, sprinkled
with salt and spread with butter and onion slices. Cooked and
mashed potatoes were mixed with salt and various spices as a
supplement to meat courses; this porridge was called "arplfauke"
(earth-apple mush).
Soon the tubers were grown also in the district around Warnsdorf-
Schluckenau and also treasured in Lausitz (Lusatia).
Margravess (Marchessa/Marquesa) Wilhelmine, a sister of the Prussian King, who lived in Bayreuth around 1740, ordered that a substantial quantity of potatoes be imported from the Sudetenland for her farmers. It is assumed that it was she who suggested potato cultivation to Friedrich II.
When the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro pushed into the
territory of the Incas, took King Atahualpa prisoner and demanded
gold for his release, he received it. But he broke his word
and had Atahualpa slain.
Potatoes and maize (corn) were already long known there, and
Pizarro wanted to bring these vegetables to Spain. However,
because of other priorities, this remained undone.
The Spanish King Philip II received in 1565 a shipment of
selected potatoes from the governor of Cuzco in Peru. He sent
them to the ailing Pope Pius IV "for the restoration of his
health". The pope praised the good flavor and felt improvement
in his health.
The farmers around Seville cultivated potatoes in small amounts
from 1573 on. The girls there treasured the flowers of the
potato plants.
In the beginning, this vegetable was not much valued as a food;
it had the stigma of being "poor-people's food". Later, however,
those in "better" houses prepared meals of potatoes with sharp
spices, bacon and fatty meat.
Adventurous is the history regarding the person of the English pirate Sir Francis Drake. The favorite of Queen Elizabeth I should have brought the tubers from America to England. In the process, the freebooter raided Spanish ships, to seize gold and precious jewels for "her majesty". Still, it is unlikely that he brought potatoes to England. He was actually still under sail for about two years on all the world's oceans before he reached home waters. If he had indeed loaded potatoes, these would have long rotted during the interim. It is more likely that Drake in 1586 transferred to the mariner Sir Walter Raleigh several sacks of potatoes, which Drake had plundered from some Spanish ships in the Caribbean (Sea).
Raleigh then planted the tubers on his estate in Ireland, where they thrived abundantly. The Prince-Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (of Brandenburg) had (some of) them imported from Ireland in the year 1651, which he then had planted in the Berlin Amusement (Botanical) Garden because of their beautiful flowers.
Spain and Italy saw it differently. There the tubers were indeed
eaten by the poorer classes, but the rumor soon spread that
the "tartatoufli" were poisonous.
It was a long time until the word "tartatoufli" was modified
into tartuffell and then kartoffel (in German-speaking
countries).
This thesis, that the potato as a night-shade growth, not only
produced poisonous berries from the flowers, but had poison
also contained in the tuber, was first disproved in the 1700's
by reputable physicians.
When and by what means the "earth apple" came to the Sudtenland
is, however, not completely understood.