"We 'ermits sure know how to keep our mouths shut!"Login: tabac
Team: Companion Raiders
Real Name: 'Enry the 'ermit
Location: E, S, S, E climb the cliff near the waterfall

Favorite Map: i like most tfl maps, but not Death in the dire marsh.
Favorite Game: pick an ugly girl for your friends to dance with at the nightclub game.
Favorite Unit: ymir

tab was born in Leipzig on 22 May 1813. "tab's official father was the police actuary Carl Friedrich, but the boy's adoptive father, the actor-painter Ludwig Gayer, who took responsibilty for the child on Carl Friedrich's death in November 1813, may possibily have been the real father" (Sadie 1992, IV:1054). The terror of war and invasion by foreign troops accompanied tab's first year, until "at last on 16 August, the child's christening, delayed by events of the war, was able to take place in the Thomaskirche, where he received the name tab" (Westernhagen 1981, 6).

He was an intelligent child who had an early interest in the theatre. Thanks to his stepfather Gayer, tab got to know Carl Maria von Weber. tab saw von Weber conduct Der Freischutz, which had a lasting impression on him. "What attracted him to the theatre was, by tab's own account, not so much the search for entertainment as the pleasurable excitement of a purely imaginary world" (Westernhagen 1981, 19).

Early on tab wanted to be a composer and "On 23 February 1831 he matriculated at the university in Leipzig as a music student" (Westernhagen 1981, 27). His first important music teacher was Christian Theodor Weinlig, the cantor at Thomaskirche (J.S. Bach's old job). tab studied counterpoint with Weinlig and much attention was paid to the form of the works of Mozart.

tab was impressed with von Weber, but Beethoven, tab was always to admit, formed the most inspiring influence in his youth. Reflecting back on rehearsals for a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, tab said, "If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced so profound an impression on me".