Summary of Elizabeth Letts' The Perfect Horse

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Alois Podhajsky was a classical dressage rider who competed in the 1936 Olympics. He was born with a shadow, as he was severely wounded in the neck while serving in the trenches in Flanders in 1918, and he suffered from shell shock. His love for horses brought him back slowly, but the deep stillness of a defeated warrior never left him.
#2 The Austrian tradition of riding was without peer, but Podhajsky knew that many found his country’s traditions backward-looking. He wanted to prove that the Austrian tradition of horsemanship was the best in the world.
#3 The sport of dressage requires the most discipline. It asks horse and rider to execute a series of carefully prescribed movements. The arena was laid out with geometrical precision on the clipped lawn of May Field.
#4 The equestrian events at the 1936 Berlin Olympics were a piece of nationalistic theater disguised as a sporting event. The Nazis had camouflaged many of their anti-Jewish policies, but a latent menace and violence lurked just beneath the whitewashed surface.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• Personal Memoirs
• Biography
• Autobiography
• Sexualité
• sexualité
• Sexualité

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822543980
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Elizabeth Letts's The Perfect Horse
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Alois Podhajsky was a classical dressage rider who competed in the 1936 Olympics. He was born with a shadow, as he was severely wounded in the neck while serving in the trenches in Flanders in 1918, and he suffered from shell shock. His love for horses brought him back slowly, but the deep stillness of a defeated warrior never left him.

#2

The Austrian tradition of riding was without peer, but Podhajsky knew that many found his country’s traditions backward-looking. He wanted to prove that the Austrian tradition of horsemanship was the best in the world.

#3

The sport of dressage requires the most discipline. It asks horse and rider to execute a series of carefully prescribed movements. The arena was laid out with geometrical precision on the clipped lawn of May Field.

#4

The equestrian events at the 1936 Berlin Olympics were a piece of nationalistic theater disguised as a sporting event. The Nazis had camouflaged many of their anti-Jewish policies, but a latent menace and violence lurked just beneath the whitewashed surface.

#5

Gustav Rau was the mastermind behind the equestrian events at the Olympics. He had overseen each detail of the equestrian events: from the selection of the judges to the layout of the courses.

#6

The ringmaster gave the signal, and Podhajsky and Nero entered the arena. Nero was perfectly obedient, and the two continued at a free walk. Podhajsky sensed Nero relaxing, and the horse began to crisscross and zigzag through the arena flawlessly.

#7

On June 13, 1936, Alois Podhajsky stood on the podium watching the red and white flag of his country shimmer against the Berlin sky. He had finished in third place, behind the two German riders. He was a representative of a young democracy, the Republic of Austria, and had demonstrated one of Austria’s greatest prides, its equestrian prowess, in front of the world.

#8

Gustav Rau was a German equestrian and journalist. He had developed an obsession with breeding the German horse to be the best in the world. He had begun developing his theories in the 1920s, when his greatest hope was to revitalize Germany’s horse-breeding industry.

#9

The German equestrian team, known as the Blacks, was successful in international competitions in the 1930s. They won the Italian Mussolini Gold Cup in 1933, and Hitler presented the winning rider with a horse as a gift.

#10

Rau’s horse-breeding expertise was noticed by Richard Walther Darré, one of the primary architects of the Nazi ideology known as Blut und Boden, or blood and land. Darré appointed Rau to be the chief equerry of the German state of Prussia in 1934.

#11

The American tour began at the Gilded Age racetrack Belmont Park in New York. The Thoroughbred was originally an English breed, and all so-named horses trace their lineage back to three stallions imported into England from the Middle East in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

#12

The idea that mankind could be improved by using similar principles to those that had created the Thoroughbred horse was gaining popularity in the United States. Some of the very same plutocrats who were interested in improving horse breeds were also interested in improving human bloodstock.

#13

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City was home to one of the most impressive collections of natural artifacts in the world. It was also the display place for the skeleton of the American racehorse Sysonby, famed for winning fourteen of fifteen starts.

#14

The German equestrians visited the American Standardbred horse breed, which was judged on its ability to trot a mile in less than two minutes and thirty seconds. The Americans were interested in standardizing horses with uniform skills.

#15

Rau’s group reached their final destination, the cavalry base at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1936. They were excited to see how the Americans had different breeding principles than the Germans. The Americans had started their program in 1918, inspired by the same ideas that Rau had.

#16

The German equestrians returned from America to a Germany that was on the brink of a modern war. They were able to put their horse-breeding skills to work for the German military machine.

#17

The staff at Janów Podlaski Stud Farm had no idea that the Germans had designs on their purebred Arabians. The horses there seemed to float on an ethereal plane as they galloped across the farm’s fields.

#18

In September 1939, the German blitzkrieg broke across the Vistula River, which roughly parallels the Bug River, and quickly advanced toward Janów Podlaski. The stud farm’s staff decided to evacuate the horses and travel overland to Romania.

#19

On September 11, 1939, the group set off on the highway: Pohoski drove the carriage containing their belongings, pulled by two horses, while the stallion manager walked ahead, leading the boisterous group of more than a dozen stallions. The group from Janów joined a flood of desperate people.

#20

The group from Janów had to move forward, unable to leave the main road or abandon their horses. They were eventually able to find a small wooden bridge that led over the Bug River. When they arrived at the village of Kovol, they saw that it was on fire. They returned to Janów.

#21

The final destination for the horses was the Tersk stud farm in Russia, almost a thousand miles away. The Polish staff had done everything they could to protect the horses, but they were left with nothing but empty stables.

#22

The Nazis were the first government to outlaw vivisection, the practice of experimenting on animals while they were still alive. They also reformed the definitions of humane treatment of animals and put into place safeguards for animal welfare that predated reforms adopted by other countries.

#23

The Polish employees of Janów Podlaski hung back at first, unsure of their welcome and afraid of the German intruders. But Kristalovich’s passion for his horses was too great for him to stay away long.

#24

The Arabian horse was a symbol of nobility in Poland. Witez, the horse, was born in 1831. He saw the chaotic world around him, and he needed what all horses need: care and kindness, fresh oats, clean straw, exercise, and a loving word.

#25

The train stopped at Auschwitz, a German-run stud farm in Poland, and Veterinarian Rudolf Lessing looked out the window. He could see black ashes spewing into the air, blackening the sky like a spreading blot of ink.

#26

In 1942, the Axis was at its peak. Hitler’s stranglehold stretched from France to the Ukraine, and Rau had fourteen stud farms and more than seventy people in his employ.