ON THE SURFACE OF IT: THE DEATH OF ERNST VON PFUEL
Today in Berlin: 3 December, 1866
On December 3, 1866, a cold and damp Berlin winter day, the country and the king were in mourning: General Ernst von Pfuel was dead.
Gone was the man who together with Blücher robbed Napoleon of his French stronghold, Paris, and later ruled the city on behalf of the Prussian king. Gone the main force behind the almost miraculous return of the stolen Berlin Quadriga to the top of Brandenburger Tor (there was a reason why Prussians mocked Napoleon as the “Horse-thief from Paris”). Gone the once Prussian Prime Minister and Minister of War.
But first and foremost, gone the man who prevented thousands of Prussian soldiers from losing their lives not in “the glory of the battle” but through unnecessary yet sadly pretty common cause - drowning.
It began in Prague. It was there that in 1810 von Pfuel established the first military swimming school worldwide. Seven years later he opened the first Prussian Militär-Schwimmanstalt in Berlin - a swimming school for young troops.
In Köpenicker Straße in today’s Berlin-Kreuzberg, right in the middle of the river Spree, a curious wooden construction appeared. A training pool was created by ramming thick wooden posts into the river bed and building a sort of a roofed-over arcade around the opening to provide a bit of privacy when changing clothes or suffering a nervous breakdown. The walls also prevented passers-by from the unseemly onslaught of disrobed human bods.
The “academy” educated thousands of boys and young men. Girls and women had to wait for another several decades to partake of that privilege. Nevertheless, only in its first 50 years of existence (it closed for good in over a century later, in 1933) Pfuelsche Schwimmanstalt as it was named a year after the 87-year-old general’s death, trained some 70,000 swimmers. Both civilian and military.
As for General von Pfuel, he might be remembered by many as a great military man and a bit of a royal disappointment A.D. 1848, but equally many should recognise him as the father of a swimming stroke known as breaststroke. So next time you are gracefully cutting through the surface of the water with your head upright and proud, spare a kind thought for the man who wanted us to swim not so much as fish as like frogs.
And here a little fun fact about the Prussian Generalissimo: Ernst von Pfuel was a close, not to say, bosom, friend to the Prussian National Treasure, novelist, playwright and poet, Heinrich von Kleist. The two spent quite a lot of time together, travelled together and shared their delight in Swiss lakes and landscapes. So much so that in one of the letters dated January 1805, Ernst von Pfuel penned these words:
I often gazed upon your beautiful body with truly girlish feelings as you stepped into the lake before my eyes in Thun. An artist could have it serve as his study. Your small curly head, set on a graceful neck, two broad shoulders, a sinewy body, the whole a perfect picture of strength, as if you were modelled on the most beautiful young bull ever sacrificed to Zeus. […] I will never marry, be you my wife, my children, and my grandchildren!
Spoiler alert: he did marry. Twice. But his avid interest in teaching swimming to young cadets, experts today agree, also had that extra-curricular background.
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