Jeff Tedford ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>Over the past six weeks I've been training for my new position teaching
>English - oops, Communication Skills- in an Urban St Louis Career Academy.
>I've heard it confidently stated,with the air of a known fact, that
>Beethoven was black.

OH NO, PLEASE NOT AGAIN!!!

This is predicated as far as I can tell, on a single fact: that Beethoven
was in his youth referred to as "Der Schwarzer", literally "the black".

However, to leap from that to an assumption that Beethoven was, as the PC
would put it today "African-American" is not only ridiculous but displays
a profound ignorance about Europe before the 20th century.

To call someone black then was often simply a a synonym for "swarthy".
Indeed, there is an entire categoy of people, the "Black Irish" who are no
more negroid than Beethoven.  They are however, dark-haired and dark-eyed,
becuase they are the descendents of the Spanish Armada crews who were
shipwrecked on the Irish coast in 1588.

Deryk Barker
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