Christian Friedrich Heineken (February 6, 1721 - June 27, 1725) from the small town of Lubeck in northern Germany went down in history as the most brilliant child ever born on earth. According to legend, he met with the king and spoke several languages fluently, but was never able to celebrate his fifth birthday.
If Christian had to take an IQ test today, his result would probably exceed 180. He was not autistic, though. Like a sponge, the baby absorbed knowledge from various fields, not limited to one subject. He was not withdrawn and communicated well with people, amazing them with his conclusions and harmony of speech.
By ten months (according to other sources, by two months), the baby did not google like peers, but built articulate sentences. In a year, Christian recited the Pentateuch by heart. By the age of two he had studied world history and without hesitation listed the most important geographical discoveries.
Lubeck / wiki-org.ru
He learned French and Latin. At the age of three, he switched to mathematics and biology, then to religious studies. His favorite reading material was the illustrated encyclopedia in Latin "The Sensual Picture of the World" by Jan Amos Kamensky, which the boy read until late at night. The little fidget liked to talk about the merits of Rhine wines or discuss the genealogy of the oldest Germanic surnames.
Christian Heineken was the second child, while his older brother lived to old age and followed in the footsteps of his parents, linking his life with art. The prodigy's parents were quite ordinary people. Father is an unknown architect and a mediocre artist, mother sold art in her shop. The upbringing of the boy was entrusted at first to a nurse-nurse - a tough and domineering woman who did not tolerate objections and believed that she knew exactly how to raise children correctly. Her “what I see is what I sing” teaching method has hardly influenced the development of the amazing abilities of the baby.
The eyes of the students and professors at the Lübeck Gymnasium were wide open when the three-year-old toddler climbed into the department. The kid began his report with a biographical sketch of the Roman emperors and Israeli rulers, and then turned the topic towards the unusual geography of his native country and the features of the human skeleton. The chains of facts were striking in their consistency, while Christian skillfully "juggled" data from various fields of science.
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The fame of the unusual boy quickly spread around the neighborhood, so frequent guests of the house (mostly bohemians) certainly wanted to see the miracle with their own eyes. Constant visits and "work" for the public greatly exhausted the child prodigy, but added authority and popularity to his parents. According to the American psychologist Leta Stetter Hollingward, children of genius are often simply emotionally unprepared to deal with serious philosophical and ethical problems, and this leads to tragedies - from insanity to early death.
The bored royal court was happy with a new fun - a little boy who answered the most stupid questions without embarrassment, and surpassed many learned men in his harmony of thoughts. The boy's popularity reached the court, and his parents hardly wanted to miss the unique opportunity to appear in high society. His parents took him to Copenhagen, despite the fact that Christian's body had already begun to protest against such heavy loads - the child felt unwell and could hardly make notes. Throughout the year, the kid had to surprise the adults again and again.
One of his first lectures was attended by the king, who called the wonderful child "Miraculum" (translated from Latin as "phenomenon, miracle"). The boy passionately dreamed of meeting the main man of the kingdom, with whom the know-it-all planned to share the fruits of his own scientific research. According to one legend, it was the history of Denmark written by him, according to another - navigational maps. Christian's condition deteriorated rapidly. He hardly slept and ate poorly, constantly complained of body aches and headaches, was capricious, every hour he asked him to wash and change clothes.
Experts believe that little Christian developed celiac disease, a digestive disorder caused by proteins in cereals. The court doctors recommended a diet that could save the boy's life: low-fat soups, sugar and beer. But the mother was so afraid to "upset" the wet nurse, who believed that the best and only food for her pupil was porridge, that she chose not to change anything.
As before, visitors were not refused, and they indulged their curiosity by the bed of a dying child. When the child's body was covered with edema, he almost stopped getting out of bed. A few days before his death, the baby said philosophically in Latin: "Life is smoke." For several weeks, “not indifferent” people flocked from all the neighborhoods to look at the miracle child lying in the coffin for the last time, while the parents carefully wrote down the names of all influential persons who came to church.
Could the "baby from Lubeck" live a long and happy life? And who is to blame for his early death: vain parents, a nurse and her views on the diet, nature, which endowed Christian with an excessive thirst for knowledge, which the child's body simply could not cope with? If he was born in our time, the tragedy would probably have been avoided, but history, as you know, does not tolerate the subjunctive mood.