“A Little History of the Wind”: Wild dance between heaven and earth

In the spring of 1783, Joseph Michel Montgolfier sat by the fireplace, his gaze falling on the silk petticoat that his wife had hung up to dry. As he bulges in the rising hot air, he considers whether he should try again after his failed attempt to fly with a paper parachute. »Damp straw and old wool were burning in the fireplace. There was a lot of smoke.” Creating smoke under a silk balloon? “Humanity’s first airline passengers” would be a rooster, a sheep and a duck…

As Kerstin Decker tells it, you can see it in front of you. There are many stories in the book, which does not have the linear sequence of a “story” as the title might suggest. After all, it’s about the wind. »As quickly as it changes, perspectives change here too. This book sails with all winds.” They have many names: “Scirocco”, linked to Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”, Bora, Föhn, Mistral… How does Sahara sand get to Basel? Scientific explanations are essential. But in the past everything was “natural and supernatural at the same time.”

Air creatures: “Anyone who feels a sudden breath in the room when the windows are closed can assume that they are not alone.” An angel? A djinn? What I didn’t know: “On November 8, 392, all pagan cults were banned in Rome under the threat of death.” An emotional bond between humans and nature was broken, which was created not least by “the elemental spirits.” Previous cultures would never have had the idea of ​​“feeling superior to what surrounds them, to nature.” Everything has a soul and can therefore be influenced. And our soul travels with the wind at night.

The poet Else Lasker-Schuler tells how she wanted to breathe life into a seemingly dead butterfly, and she even succeeded. We breathe around 20,000 times a day. More or less 500 million times over the course of a lifetime.

Lively scenes alternate with essayistic passages. Extensive: After all, everything is touched by the wind. What a feat it is to collect all the details and compose them in such a way that we are given interesting facts in a highly entertaining way.

Desire to explore: West Virginia, 1832: A poor farmer’s son looks up into the sky and observes a total solar eclipse. William Ferrel, who had only been to school for two winters, began spending his hard-saved money on scientific books and in 1856 wrote “Essay on the winds and currents of the ocean.” For the first time someone explained where the wind blows from.

Around 1200 BC C.E. the first sails appeared over the Mediterranean, but depictions of ships are much older. Magellan, Columbus, Vespucci – the time of great discoveries and the slave trade. Not only the storm was dangerous, but also the calm. Ancient cultures were connected via the oceans much earlier, as Thor Heyerdahl was able to prove with his raft “Kon Tiki”.

What a leap from this naturalist to Rainer Maria Rilke, whom Marie von Thurn und Taxis, the mistress of Duino Castle, called “Doctor Seraphicus.” Are we now dealing with the study of angels? How do angels even fly? “Only when they spread their wings are they the alarm clocks of a wind,” said Rilke. From the angel of death to the plague in Europe, to miasma, the “sick wind”. What do you do when you feel like a leaf in the wind that is not favorable to you? Seek advice from the Stoics of antiquity: Kerstin Decker is a philosopher by training and can neither do without Ernst Bloch nor the “Wind of Change”, and certainly not the “Communist Manifesto”.

What a wealth of facts and thoughts! The 250 pages could easily have become four times as many. But you can also enjoy the quick movements and associative jumps while reading. Peregrine falcons in Manhattan, wind pollination, storms, longing for silence.

Right at the beginning of the book you can hear the rattling of a “Western mill” (Western wind turbine) in Sergio Leone’s famous film “Play Me a Song of Death.” It didn’t work with wooden wings, but with ones made of sheet metal. Generating energy from wind: How obvious! A great inventor in this field is the Leipzig pensioner Horst Bendix. With blades mounted at a height of 360 meters, his HBX 300 wind turbine could deliver electricity for two cents per kilowatt hour. High-altitude wind prospects: Wind turbines on the roofs of high-rise buildings in Berlin could cover 25 percent of their own needs.

Historical reviews and visions of the future, interesting facts about science and technology, economics and politics, inspiring excursions into art and cultural history: this book is like a dance between heaven and earth.