A caricature from 1856 reveals that the retraining of left handers was a recognised practise in 19th‑century Germany.
On one of my virtual excursions into the excellent digital historical library of the University of Heidelberg [1], I came across the weekly Bavarian-German magazine called Fliegende Blätter, so, Flying Pages. Founded in 1844, the magazine ran for more than 100 years, and was widely appreciated for its sure‑footed, satirical portrayal of the German bourgeoisie.
The caricature above, which I found in a 1856 issue [2], nicely reflects this sentiment. It is drawn by the physician and artist Ferdinand Schröder and entitled Das Mutterauge, the eye of a mother. And with this eye, the mother observes how her dear little boy Emil is about to hit his (likely) nanny with a stick. The mother does not like what she sees and, as every good mother would, decides to intervene, although for slightly different reason than expected.
“Aber lieber Emil, wie oft soll ich es Dir denn sagen?!“, she exclaims, “Schlägst Du schon wieder mit der linken Hand!!“
Translated:
“But dear Emil, how often do I have to tell you?! Again you are hitting with your left hand!!“
The dear son is using the wrong hand! He should rather hit the poor nanny with the stick in his right hand! This unexpected reason for the intervention is obviously meant as a social criticism. The servants do not really matter to those wealthy people. The seemingly trivial matter of the son’s hand preference is more important than the well being of the nanny. A moral bankruptcy.
The caricature does also show, however, that the retraining of left handers — the forced conversion of children to use their right instead of their preferred left hand — was “a thing” in mid-19th century Germany. Using it as a topic for mocking the rich people assumes that the reader is familiar with the concept. And indeed, it can be expected that retraining was quite frequently done at this time, and not only in Germany.
Today, we know that left handedness is at least partly determined by genetic factors [3], letting it appear barbaric to retrain a child against its innate preference. In the 19th century, however, it was usually assumed that handedness is just a matter of education and upbringing. And a person brought up well, so the common opinion, was to be right handed. A rule of proper etiquette. Real or want-to-be bourgeoisie parents had to train their children to write with their right hands. Raising a left-handed child, or being openly left handed, would have been a social embarrassment.
The retraining has luckily increasingly gone out of fashion, and left-handed members of Gen Z living in Europe or North-America will likely not have suffered through it. But many left handers of earlier generations[4] or of different cultural origin [5] have certainly experienced retraining. So, unfortunately, there are still too many out there with a first-hand experience of retraining.
[1] Heidelberg historic literature – digitized;
[2] source of caricature: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2122#0021
[3] review by Paracchini, S. (2021); https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13101792
[4] example from Germany: Guber, R. (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2018.11.005
[5] example from Africa: Alhassan, A.B. (2018).http://dx.doi.org/10.19080/GJAA.2018.07.555713