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Hanging by a (silken) thread

According to legend the Chinese empress Si Ling Chi observed around 3000 BCE how an inconspicuous caterpillar that had dropped from a tree into her tea wrapped itself into a shiny thread.
For a long time, China successfully kept the secret of silk production and maintained high prices for the luxurious fabric – in ancient Rome silk was worth it’s weight in gold. The empire in the Far East knew how to undermine every attempt to spy out the secret with distractions and false information.
Yet finally one attempt was successful – around 522 two cunning monks appeared in the court of the Byzantine emperor; they had hollowed out their walking sticks to transport mulberry tree seeds and the stolen eggs of the bombyx moth whose caterpillars produce the silk filament all the way to Europe.
Like no other European ruler king Frederick II promoted silk production. To make Prussia independent of foreign supplies he caused large plantations of mulberry trees to be planted. In 1784 about 21 000 mulberry trees grew in Potsdam and its environs. The cool climate in Brandenburg, illnesses that befell the caterpillars and the labour-intensive work process were the reasons for the collapse of the Prussian experiment.