Geschichten aus der Geschichte · Richard Hemmer und Daniel Meßner

GAG549: Coca und Cola

·1 hr 16 min·6 clips

Jan Müller reveals why Coca-Cola was forbidden in his punk rock circles and secretly appeared in Tocotronic's artwork.

1. Geschichten aus der Geschichte episode 549 traces the history of Coca-Cola from Andean coca traditions through European cocaine science to the invention of the soft drink. 2. Hosts Richard and Daniel are joined by guest Jan Müller, bassist of Tocotronic, who proposed the topic and co-narrates alongside Daniel while Richard plays the uninformed listener. 3. The episode's core question is how a leaf chewed in South America for 8,000 years ended up as a global branded soft drink after European chemists, physicians, and marketers transformed it across the 19th century. 4. Jan explains that Spanish conquistadors observed coca-chewing among Andean populations since the 1500s but neither adopted the practice nor imported the plant to Europe, unlike potatoes, tomatoes, or tobacco. 5. The Catholic Church initially banned coca-chewing in colonial South America but Spanish colonial authorities reversed the ban because coca allowed mine workers to labor harder and generated tax revenue. 6. The first significant coca plant samples reached Europe in 1749 via French physician-botanist Joseph de Jussieu, carried aboard a scientific expedition to South America, but only in quantities sufficient for botanical description. 7. Italian physician Paolo Mantegazza self-administered coca leaves daily for two years in Argentina starting in 1854 and published a report in 1859 describing the sensation of chewing 60 grams as flying 'through the spaces of 77,438 words.' 8. Mantegazza concluded that moderate coca consumption was unproblematic and noted European ignorance of a plant used for centuries, directly inspiring Angelo Mariani to develop a commercial coca product. 9. Corsican pharmacist Angelo Mariani launched Vin Mariani in 1863 — Bordeaux wine mixed at six milligrams of coca per ounce — marketed as a cure for stomach complaints, nervousness, and 'general malaise,' reaching nearly one million bottles per year by 1900. 10. Mariani's marketing campaign deployed 14 volumes of celebrity endorsements ('Albums Mariani') with over 1,000 testimonials including Jules Verne, Thomas Edison, Queen Victoria, and Emile Zola. 11. Pope Leo XIII gave Mariani a gold medal for Vin Mariani and reportedly kept a personal flask 'for moments when prayer was not enough'; he lived to 93, making him the longest-lived reigning pope in history. 12. US President Ulysses Grant drank Vin Mariani as medicine to manage throat cancer pain in his final months, at the suggestion of Mark Twain, who encouraged Grant to write his memoirs to support his family. 13. Between 1880 and 1920, nearly 100 different coca wines appeared on the European market in imitation of Vin Mariani, with Mariani responding by diversifying into coca elixirs, pastilles, and tea. 14. The Austrian frigate SMS Novara returned from its 1857–59 world circumnavigation with 30 pounds of coca plants collected at the request of Göttingen chemist Friedrich Wöhler, who passed them to student Albert Niemann. 15. Albert Niemann extracted cocaine from those plants in the winter of 1859–60 in Wöhler's Göttingen laboratory and gave the substance the name 'cocaine' — the first time the alkaloid was isolated and named. 16. Merck in Darmstadt began commercial cocaine production in 1862, initially marketing it as a medicine; Sigmund Freud published 'Über Koka' in 1884 reporting on his own cocaine experiments and concluding the drug had medical utility. 17. Viennese ophthalmologist Karl Koller, drawing on Freud's work and Mantegazza's reports, demonstrated cocaine as the first local anesthetic at a congress in Heidelberg in October 1884 — a watershed moment in surgical history. 18. The episode uses a relaxed three-voice format with Jan as an informed guest and Richard as a genuinely uninformed listener, creating natural moments of discovery; Jan's anecdotes from Tocotronic's touring history and punk politics add cultural texture. 19. History enthusiasts interested in the intersection of colonial science, 19th-century patent medicine culture, and pharmaceutical history will find this episode particularly rewarding. 20. Listeners who prefer episodes conducted entirely in English or who have no interest in German pop-cultural references to Tocotronic will likely find the tangents distracting.

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