Fire wheel

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Easter bike in Lügde

Rolling the fire wheel off a mountain or hill is a folk custom that is still practiced today at Christmas , New Year , Carnival , Easter or Whitsun in communities in the Lipperland , Friuli , Odenwald , Sauerland , Spessart , Ticino , Tyrol and the Weser Uplands .

description

To roll the fire wheel, a man-high wheel is stuffed with straw on the sides. In some communities, the straw is also stuffed into an iron cage shaped like a cylinder. Mostly on Shrove Tuesday the straw is lit in the dark and the wheel, led by the young men of the village on two birch trunks, is rolled down a hill. With this custom the winter should be driven away and the fertility of the fields should be requested. In some places, such as in Darsberg , in conjunction with the rolling of the fire wheel also is Scheibenschlagen practiced. Burning birch slices are thrown onto the meadow with a stick (similar to a golf club), which is supposed to improve the fertility of the field.

Nowadays, the rolling of the fire wheel is celebrated with bratwurst, beer, Guggemusik , witch's dance and pyre in a contemporary way .

  • Fire wheel when stuffing the wheel with straw

  • Start at the Easter bike race in Lügde

  • Rolling wheel

  • Descent down the valley

history

The chronicle of the Lorsch monastery offers the first written evidence of a fire of this type in Germany . On March 21, 1090, a fire destroyed large parts of the monastery building, caused by a burning wooden disc that was thrown into the air as a popular custom on the spring equinox . Such a custom is still known today as disc slamming.

In the 19th century, burning wheels were rolled down from mountains and hills in the Moselle Eifel , while a straw man was burned at the same time. This custom is documented for Wittlich , among others , where it was practiced for the Michael's Festival on September 29th. It was practiced at Gerolstein until 1816. Here a burning wheel was rolled down from a hill to the river Kyll . In Oberstadtfeld , burning wheels are rolled on the first Sunday of Lent. A fire wheel was also rolled down into the Moselle valley near Konz for the Invocavit fire. In the Low German-speaking area, however, the rolling of fire wheels was not associated with Lent and the Invocavit fires, but with the Easter fires. Such Easter wheels are still in use today.

Also on the fourth Sunday of Lent, the Laetare , fire wheels were rolled in parts of Germany, for example near Eisenach and in Franconia . Jacob Grimm also describes the custom among the Franks  in his work German Mythology in 1854 :

"They weave a wagon wheel full of straw, carry it up a high [...] mountain, and if they may stay from the cold, they have good courage all day long, with all kinds of entertainment, singing, jumping, dancing [...] . At vesper time they light the bike and let it run at full speed into the valley. You can immediately see it as if the sun ran down from the sky. "

It is assumed that in pre-Christian times the fire wheel was a spring custom at the equinox , which after Christianization split up into the connection with Lent in southwest Germany and with Easter in northern Germany. Both forms can still be found today. Such a festival for the spring equinox is also indicated by the above-mentioned monastery fire on March 21, precisely on the date of the equinox.

The fire wheel custom today

The fire wheel is still rolled out in the following German municipalities:

The wheel of fire in neo-paganism

Fire wheel: Wheel cross made of straw for the Yule Festival

Following the popular custom , the origin of which is believed to be in the pagan-Germanic sun cult , followers of Germanic neo-paganism (including Firne Sitte , Urglaawe ) adopted the use of the fire wheel. Here, burning wagon and straw wheels are mainly used during the neo-pagan Yule Festival, which is celebrated from the winter solstice on December 21st or 22nd until the first full moon after the 12 Rough Nights . Here, too, the burning wheel symbolizes the sun, whose victory over the darkness and cold of winter is celebrated.

Trivia

  • The Swedish melodic death metal band Amon Amarth picks up on the custom of the fire wheel in their music video for the song The Pursuit of Vikings . A burning wheel is also shown on the cover of their EP Sorrow Throughout the Nine Worlds .
  • The new German hardship band Rammstein has a song called Feuerräder .

See also

Web links

Commons : Firewheel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Friedrich Vogt: Contributions to folklore from older sources . In: Karl Weinhold (Ed.): Journal of the Association for Folklore . 3rd year. Asher & Co, Berlin 1894, pp. 349-355.
  2. ↑ Nikolaus Hocker: Customs . In: Johann Wilhelm Wolf , Wilhelm Mannhardt : Journal for German mythology and morality. Volume 1. Dieterische Buchhandlung, Göttingen 1853, p. 90 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  3. ↑ Meaning of Invocabit / Invocavit. Retrieved December 29, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Jacob Grimm : German Mythology . Dietrichsche Buchhandlung, Göttingen 1854, p. 594 ( limited preview in the Google book search).