Bach FAQ 165

How Many Kilometers Are Two Miles?..

What a strange question. Everyone knows that distances in America are measured in miles. And one mile is 1.6 kilometers. Approximately. Everyone knows that... somehow. You could also convert it into nautical miles. Then one nautical mile would be about 1.85 kilometers long. But why would you want to calculate the distance between two Bach locations in nautical miles?..

Why would you need to know that?..

You don't have to at all..

What's Now That Funny?..

There are two places on my website where distance played a very strange role. Not anymore. Now I'm smarter...

The Bach Biographer Spitta explained..

In one of the earliest and certainly one of the three most famous Bach biographies, Philipp Spitta mentions a place in Thuringia with just a few words at the very beginning of his eloquent Bach biography. Nowhere else was this place mentioned in any other work about Bach. The place was called Gräfenrode. Back then..

For me, it is and has been a place of very special significance. Because I was able to discover that this is indeed where the Bach family originated. A few enthusiastic local historians had already discovered this before me. But... I rediscovered this finding. And I am now publishing it on my website..

Gräfenroda is located two nautical miles southwest of Arnstadt. Two nautical miles? Of course not..

Spitta defined the location of the Bach location of Gräfenroda as two miles southwest of Arnstadt..

As I was doing the final proofreading of all the texts, I remembered that I had laughed when I realized that these two Bach locations are about 14 kilometers apart. Not 3.2 kilometers. What a difference...

This resulted in a fierce contradiction. And I was reminded of the topic of “continental drift.” I enriched my text with this entertaining, cute discrepancy. That was phase 1 on the topic of “How many kilometers are a mile? More precisely, an American mile. Or a land mile. Because it couldn’t be true that Spitta gave the distance in nautical miles..

And once again I wrote about this distance..

This happened in the international section of my website, which provides information in 20 languages about the musical genius from Eisenach. Meanwhile, AI, or artificial intelligence, played an increasingly important role in my life. However, I always exercised the utmost care in checking everything. Sometimes even twice. Whether what this artificial intelligence says is actually true..

1873 to 1880 was the period during which Bach biographer Spitta created his mammoth work. Perhaps because it took no effort at all and no time, I added the year 1873 to my question about the discrepancy to “my” artificial intelligence. Quality by chance. That, too, is AI..

Gräfenrode (... back then) and Gräfenroda today: two miles southwest of Arnstadt..

I just did it. So I added the year of publication of Spitta's first part of his biography to my question..

So ... How Did Artificial Intelligence Surprise Me?..

With a response I hadn't expected in the slightest. Here is the wording:..

My question: Bach biographer Philipp Spitta describes the distance between two Bach locations in 1873 as two miles. What kind of miles could he have meant, and what is the distance today in kilometers? Whether miles or nautical miles, neither adds up to a distance of 14 kilometers..

The answer: The historical context is clear. In 1873, no longer during Bach's lifetime (1685–1750), but during the time of Philipp Spitta and his biography, the following emerges:...   ..

1. Situation 1873..

The German Empire was founded in 1871, and in the course of this, metric measurements (meters, kilometers, etc.) were introduced and made legally binding in 1872..

Officially, Spitta could have used kilometers as early as 1873. However, in everyday language and in older descriptions, the “mile” was still very much present. Spitta therefore probably deliberately used the older measure to describe distances vividly in the traditional sense..

2. What kinds of “miles” are there?..

There was the Prussian/geographical mile: approximately 7.532 kilometers..

There was also the Saxon Mile (Thuringia/Saxony, Bach region): approx. 9.06 kilometers..

In a scientific work such as Spitta's biography of Bach, it was most likely that he was referring to the commonly used Prussian (... geographical) mile ≈ 7.5 km: since the 18th century, this had been the most widely used reference measurement in literature and maps..

3. Conversion for ...   ..

2 miles = approx. 15 km Prussian mile (≈ 7.5 km each)..

2 miles = approx. 18 km Saxon mile (≈ 9.1 km each)..

Conclusion:.. 

When Spitta wrote “two miles” in 1873, he most likely meant the Prussian/geographical mile... i.e. around 15 km. Calculated according to Saxon tradition, it would have been around 18 kilometers..

My comment: Without AI, I would never have asked myself this question and would have continued to believe in continental drift. Not really, of course... now..

To the 100 most important Bach FAQ.

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