Posted on 12/01/2002 2:55:14 PM PST by zapiks44
TWO TOUGH QUESTIONS:
Question 1: If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?
Read the next question before scrolling down to the answer of this one.
Question 2: It is time to elect a new world leader, and your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates:
* Candidate A: Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
* Candidate B: He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every evening.
* Candidate C: He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn't had any extramarital affairs.
Which of these candidates would be your choice? Decide first, no peeking, then scroll down for the answer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt Candidate B is Winston Churchill Candidate C is Adolph Hitler
And by the way: Answer to the abortion question - if you said yes, you just killed Beethoven.
Pretty interesting isn't it? Makes a person think before judging someone.
Roosevelt or Hitler?
Now that is a toughie.
The answers would be considered by our contemporary thought processes and, in Beethovan's case ... well, most geniuses are considered nuts anyway, so let the lady have her fun.
Not really.
Question 2 was a sophmoric sort of parlor game, the attributes listed were cherry picked and incomplete...
"Garbage in Garbage out"
With regard to Question 1, what's to 'think about'?
Murder's murder.
But unfortunately, you either conveniently (or possibly unknowingly) left out a few facts:
Hitler also delved into using mind-altering drugs, worshiped satanism and the occult, and could change his personality and temperment at the drop of a hat.
Pick up a book called "Rule By Secrecy" and learn more about him, the Teutonic Knights and Knights Templar's plans for world domination. Scary part is, it's still on-line to happen.
Here are the facts: Maria Magdelena Keverich Laym was a widow when she married Johann van Beethoven. Her husband and infant had both died, but nobody knows why (lots of possibilities in those days). In 1796 she gave birth to her first child with Johann, a son, but he died shortly after birth. (Again, nobody knows why, but lots of babies died.) Beethoven was born next - therefore he was his mother's third child, not the 9th. His brother Kaspar was next, who died in 1815 of tuberculosis. Next Nikolaus Johann, who died in 1848 of old age. Three more children were born but all died very young, causes unknown.
Beethoven's mother died of tuberculosis (in 1787), Beethoven's father probably of a heart attack complicated by alcoholism (in 1792). Chemical tests on Beethoven's hair have shown no mercury, therefore he probably did not have syphilis as has been rumored (mercury being the standard treatment in those days.) He was just a grouch (which is O.K. - he was an immensely talented grouch).
Beethoven's father WAS an alcoholic, and went downhill steadily after his wife's death, but at the time of Beethoven's birth he was gainfully employed as a court musician for the Electors of Cologne in Bonn, as his father had been before him. Johann's wife was the daughter of the overseer of the kitchens for the Elector of Treves at Ehrenbreitstein, which is probably the basis for the dismissive comment of Ludwig v. Beethoven (sr.), her prospective father-in-law, that she was a "chambermaid" (he was opposed to the marriage). Of course this was not true & sprang more from spite than anything else - her family were well-to-do bourgeois and no more "servants" than Ludwig Beethoven Sr. was because he was Kapellmeister to the Elector.
For further reading:
Schmidt-Görg, J. Beethoven und die Geschichte seiner Familie (J. Beethoven & the History of his Family) (Bonn, 1964).
Probably more than you ever wanted to know about L.v.B.'s family, but I finally got annoyed enough to say something about this travesty. As if there weren't enough people in history with REAL family and medical problems . . .
Also forgot to mention that there's nothing about blindness or mental retardation in the family. Beethoven had his ups and downs with his two surviving brothers, and they sometimes acted in what he considered an improper way (mostly in imprudent marriages, in both cases), but neither was mentally defective. Nikolaus Johann did have an appalling squint, but he wasn't blind.
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