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Talk:Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher

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Anecdote

A good article about a noble fellow. Pity I can't recall the origin of the following anecdote, else I'd add it to the article: Blucher was relatively unlettered in the tradition of the Prussian aristocracy of his time: when, after Waterloo, Blucher was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws, he said, why Gniesenau can be my apothecary, and it appears that the old blood-drinker was unclear on the meaning of the degree.

Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111@yahoo.com)

3-10-2005: I have tracked down der alte Feld Marschall's innocent expostulation as best I can to a book published in 1883 and reviewed that year by the Nation in America. I have added it for color with NPOV as best as I can: for NPOV doesn't mean we can't make old Blucher appear as he was, a rather colorful old fellow.

Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111@yahoo.com)


  • While colorful, I suggest it is really apochryphal. The interpretation "Doctor" as a assumption that the holder is a physician instead of an academic is primarily an American custom, and not German. The term for physician in Germany is Arzt, not Doktor. Blücher would associate "Doktor" with a person holding a PhD, not a medical man. The story is an illustration that something is not necessarily true, even thought it appears in print in an old book. The original author obviously had no knowledge of German, Germany, or its culture. --StanZegel 16:23, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but you are wrong. While the term 'Arzt' is indeed correct for a doctor of medicine, his academic qualification gives him the title 'Doktor' in German. Itzenplitz 13:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

bad translation.

Frederick's quote on Blucher appears mis-translated. I know enough German to see the word 'teufel' as devil. A word which does not appear in the English translation. Perhaps a native speaker of German can more properly translate this.

The translation was correct as far as I can tell, but I replaced it with one that also refers to the devil/hell aspect. A modern translation would probably be "Rittmeister v. Blücher may FOAD!" --Matthead 17:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Frederick the Great's German was famously bad and often riddled with spelling errors, but I've never seen him use the wrong word before. How about "Horsemaster v. Bluecher can go to the devil"?

"Rittmeister" is captain of cavalry in Prussia. Dead-cat 13:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

pregnant with an elephant

I recently came across the following story about Bluecher: that at some point, he believed that he was pregant with a baby elephant, fathered by a French grenadier. Some versions suggest that this caused him to be removed from command for a while during the 1815 campaign. I first came across this story in the novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, but I've found other versions of it on various internet sites, some of which purport to discuss actual history. Is there any truth to this story? Is it a story that his contemporaries told about him, to explain his erratic behavior during the Waterloo campaign?

gorlim 05:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that this interpretation is based on misunderstanding of Blücher's German. I recall reading (and can try to trace the source if wanted) that 'being pregnant with an elephant by an X' was a way of saying in Berlin vernacular that this 'X' was giving a person headache. IOW, what Blücher meant was something like 'those damn Frech are causing me trouble'. - Mikko H. 19:22, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The story appears as well in Talk:Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. One discussant mistakenly attributed the delusion to Helmuth von Moltke the Elder and was corrected, to wit that the general who thought himself pregnant with an elephant was von Blücher. Richard David Ramsey 03:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

His grave today?

In 1945 his grave was destroyed by russian troops, his corpus exhumed and his skull used as football to play soccer/football. Today, now in Poland, his grave looks exactly like the russians left it 60 years ago. Picture: http://wroclaw.hydral.com.pl/67611,foto.html (copyrighted) Should this be mentioned? 84.181.103.30 12:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks, both here and in Soviet war crimes where it is likely to gain from more hits. Done. Richard David Ramsey 04:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Idiom

A German idiom "ran wie Blücher" may have existed a long time ago, but is no longer used or understood today.

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