Interesting German statement on banning Coffee

Frederick the Great of Germany issued a declaration banning coffee in 1777, which made it clear that he was partial to beer. This statement is interesting and worth reading:

I was heartbroken to learn that our people's coffee consumption was increasing and that our country had an outflow of money. Excessive soaking in coffee all over the world must be strictly prohibited and corrected. Beer is our nation's drink, and our people must not give it up. I, my ancestors and the officials of the whole country all grew up drinking beer. Beer nourishes our country's tens of millions of officers and soldiers, wins countless battles and makes countless outstanding achievements. I do not believe that officers and soldiers who drink coffee can withstand the suffering of the battlefield. If the bugle of his Japanese War sounded, how to charge and kill the enemy?

Although a ban on coffee was issued, the people turned a deaf ear to it and drank it. Frederick the Great had to nationalize the right to roast coffee, and only royal institutions were allowed to bake beans, so as to control private baking, thereby reducing the circulation and consumption of coffee. Those who have the right to bake beans, either imperial relatives or relatives of the country, have become a status symbol. In order to carry out the order, Frederick the Great sent a large number of wounded officers and soldiers who could not go to war to act as coffee "big noses" and sniffed out the lawbreakers who stole coffee from street to street, which had a great deterrent effect. But coffee can only be banned for a while, not for a lifetime, and at the beginning of the 19th century, coffee became one of the most popular drinks in Germany. Today, Germany is still the world's second largest importer of coffee beans. According to the statistics of the International Coffee Organization, Germany imported 17012699 bags of raw coffee beans in 2000 ○○, about 1.02 million tons, second only to the 23189758 bags in the United States, about 1.39 million tons. Coffee and beer are still Germany's favorite drinks, each with three meals, and the tension of the past has long since been lost.