Zucker Geschichte / Histoire du Sucre
On the back the "history" of the picture
A passage in Homer's Odyssey is used as prove
that the ancient Greek already knew coffee.
When the whole court of King Menelaus lamented
for the lost Odysseus, beautiful Helena scattered
a remedy into the wine that dried her tears.
In the last decades of the Ancien Régime,
the Parisian Cafés were regarded as breeding ground
for revolutionary ideas. In July 1789, Desmoulins
called on the people to storm the Bastille from the Café de Foy
There is a report that claimed Muhammad knew
the potion of coffee gave him strength.
Enough to make him lift
40 horsemen from the saddle.
In Constantinople, where the two cultures of
"morning" and "evening" clashed,
the Islamic coffee defeated the Hellenic wine.
The Dervishes started a religious campaign against
the emerging coffee, calling it a Devil's Drink.
Preached that on Judgment Day the faces of coffee drinkers
would be as black as their drinks.
Inspired by the popularity of coffe,
Johan Sebastian Bach wrote his coffee cantata
with the recurring text: "how sweet does coffee taste,
sweeter than a thousand kisses, milder than muscat wine">
In the seventeenth century, doctors argued violenty
whether coffee was harmful or useful.
Many doctors even recommended washing with coffee
to take full advantage of it's healing power.
In 1511, Khair-Beg, the governor of Mecca,
forbade drinking coffee because the women
complained to him about the men drinking coffee
all night long and letting the women sleep alone
Legend has is that coffee was discovered because
the goats of the Schehodet Monastery had eaten the coffee
plant and fruits for the first time.
The abbot of the monastery noticed it because
the goats did not sleep at night
In Cairo, cafeteria were banned in 1521,
because coffee stimulated the people to such an extent
that there were great tumults and
nocturnal disturbances.
Napoleon said: "I had always seven pots of coffee
on the fire, so I could spent awake nights with
The Turks to discuss.
By divorce and jail, a Turkish law threatened
those men who denied their wives their coffee
In 1750, Maria Theresia resolved the competition between
spirits distillers and coffee-makers with the Solomonic edict:
in the future, coffee-makers may also make schnapps and
the alcohol distillers can also produce and serve coffee.
Coffee was under Louis XV, a favorite court drink.
The king had a real passion for coffee and
honored his friends by making it himself.
In spite of the French ban of Dutch food,
Brazil acquired coffee in the 18th centruy,
when the Brazilian Palheta seduced the wife of the French governor
and the smuggled a coffee plant into a bouquet of flowers
Coffee, first hostile and despised, became a fashion drink
in Paris. At the French court, Fu Barry even had himself painted
as a coffee drinking sultanan.
In good old Vienna the coffee hour was very holy.
When the owner of "café Fenstergucker" had to move,
he did not dare to disturb his guests while drinking
so he moved them with chairs, tables and all.
The Humanist Bellus was the first to send
coffee seed to Europe in 1596. He send it to the physician
and botanist Charles de Lécluse. For a long time pharmacists
sold coffee as a very expensive and rare drug
At the golden horn in Konstantinopel in 1554 two merchants,
Hakim from Aleppo and Dschems from Damascus, opened their
first coffee-hause. It was called "Mekteb-i-irfan"-
the school of the educated, and coffee was considered
"the milk for the actor and thinker"
During the continental blockage imposed by Napoleon,
researchers had to seek a substitute for coffee.
Lentils, pumpkin seeds, elderberries and tigernuts were brewed
and met with little enthusiasm. Finally they made do with chicory.
In the Biedermeier Period, a real coffee break
took place: in Hamburg alone, in 1841, 36.000 tons of coffee
were imported. The women spoke during the drinking of coffee
so much that since then the names "coffee gossip" and
"coffee sisters" were introduced.
In good old Vienna the coffee hour was very holy.
When the owner of "café Fenstergucker" had to move,
he did not dare to disturb his guests while drinking
so he moved them with chairs, tables and all.
At the golden horn in Konstantinopel in 1554 two merchants,
Hakim from Aleppo and Dschems from Damascus, opened their
first coffee-hause. It was called "Mekteb-i-irfan"-
the school of the educated, and coffee was considered
"the milk for the actor and thinker"
During the continental blockage imposed by Napoleon,
researchers had to seek a substitute for coffee.
Lentils, pumpkin seeds, elderberries and tigernuts were brewed
and met with little enthusiasm. Finally they made do with chicory.
In the Biedermeier Period, a real coffee break
took place: in Hamburg alone, in 1841, 36.000 tons of coffee
were imported. The women spoke during the drinking of coffee
so much that since then the names "coffee gossip" and
"coffee sisters" were introduced.
In 1763, Frederick the Great levied so high a toll
on coffee that powerfull brigades bribed the police
and smuggled coffee across the border
While in 1683 the Turks were beaten definitively
by the Christian army at the gates of Vienna,
they abondened a large number of coffee sacks.
The so-called "fodder for camels" was to be burned
but Kolschitzky recognized hem, saved hem and
opened the first coffee shop
In Paris in 1690, a small limping Turk called
"Candiots" introduced a new form of coffee-making.
He ran a "hot drink trader" and filled
three cups for two Coins
Chronicler Theophane reports that the Byzantine Emperor
Heraclius besides precious object, also carried sugar from
the looting of the residence of the Sassanid king Chosrès
The Persian Nasir-i-Khosrau reports around 1040 that
76.300 of sugar was used in Egypt on the sultana banquet table
in the form of lime trees, statuettes and all sorts
of figurines.
In the drug theory of Dioscorides (about 110 AD),
it's said that "sakharon" aka sugar, dissolved
in water, is good for the stomach, easing the
intestines and helping with kidney disease
Buddha traveled India. In Pataliputra a rich
merchant offered him a fine meal.
Buddha, however, only accepted a drink of
grape juice with sugar
Chronicler Theophane reports that the Byzantine Emperor
Heraclius besides precious object, also carried sugar from
the looting of the residence of the Sassanid king Chosrès
In Venice, sugar confectioners were already detectable
in 1150. A maritime shipping regulation speaks of shipping
sugar powder in bags and sugar in crates.
Coffee that is sweetened with sugar was
worshiped in Europe in the 216th year after the
Venetian sanguine in 1512 in Cairo.
Around 1042, the heir to the throne of Seville
prepared a mud bath of sugar and precious spices
in which the princess took her beauty bath
In the Indian code of Manu, about 2 years a.c.
was written that the theft of a sugarcane was highly punished
and the thief would be reborn as a bird
Around 1690 Hamburg experienced an "economic miracle"
thanks to the sugar refinery. Prosperity and wealth prevailed.
About 8.000 people are said to have lived from
sugar production and trade.
India's sugar pipe, it grows on moderate large trees;
if one presses the tender root, a juice flows out,
which is as sweet as the most delicious honey.
From a song by Varro Narbonensis(82-37 BC)
In the 11th centry the Al-Biruni
residents of an Indian area were said to be
11.000 years old because they lived exclusively
on the healing and fortifying sugarcane.