Go over the Wupper

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Walk over the Wupper, work of art Wupperbrücke Rader Straße, Hückeswagen

The phrase going over the Wupper has several meanings in German usage. The crossing of the river Wupper is synonymous with dying , for imprisonment , but also as a paraphrase for bankruptcy and for flight and emigration . With its different meanings, it is considered to be one of the most interesting German expressions. There are various explanations for their interpretations. The idiom is very widespread in the German-speaking area, even in Switzerland and Austria; thus the rather small river Wupper has an unusually high level of awareness in the German-speaking area.

Derivations

Classic

The phrase going across the Wupper was seen as the Bergisch counterpart to the phrase going across the Jordan . As a border river, it was ascribed to be an equivalent of the border river Styx in Greek mythology. The river Styx separated the realm of the living from Hades , the realm of the dead.

The courts and the prison

Sketch of the situation of the prison and district court (1852)

The Bendahl correctional facility was located in the east of Elberfeld on the city limits of Barmen . Executions by guillotine were also carried out in it until 1912 . Who in 1852 newly built " Royal Prussian District Court Elberfeld " on an island in the Wupper, the "island", which now as a court Island is known, was condemned and had over the river, which was either sentenced to death or at least to prison and had to go to jail.

The district court , which also includes the bankruptcy court of the industrial city of Elberfeld, is also located on the island of Justice . In order to file for bankruptcy, the businessman had to cross the Wupper and the interpretation arose as to who “went via the Wupper” went bankrupt.

Into freedom

The Heckinghauser Zollbrücke , the oldest stone bridge in Wuppertal (1775). It connected the Bergisch Barmen with the Brandenburg Langerfeld (incorporated in 1922)

Another interpretation goes back to the practice of the Prussian soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I of forcibly recruiting young men as soldiers in his territory after his coronation in 1713. With the County of Mark , his area ended on the Wupper, and on the other bank of this border river lay the Duchy of Berg , where the men were safe from forced recruitment. Many men fled their military service and forced recruitment across the waters of the Wupper and emigrated to the safe Duchy of Berg. This practice of forced recruitment continued under the successors of Friedrich Wilhelm I, Friedrich II and Friedrich Wilhelm II . The Silesian Wars and finally the Seven Years War required many soldiers for decades. The Barmer side of the Wupper benefited from the immigration of healthy, strong young men, but it damaged the economic strength of the Brandenburg side.

The death

The Fuhr , part of the southern part of Elberfeld (1880)

An old interpretation of the phrase says that on one side of the Wupper there was a settlement whose cemetery was on the other side of the Wupper. To be buried in the cemetery, the deceased had to cross the Wupper and would have gone across the Wupper. No cemetery is shown on old maps for the southern Elberfeld suburb ; therefore there were actually burials on the other side of the Wupper in the northern part in the municipal churchyard or later in the cemetery outside the city fortifications .

Speculatively, there is said to have been a prison whose death row is said to have been accessible via a Wupper Bridge , similar to the Italian Bridge of Sighs . More recent is the interpretation that refers to the Kemna concentration camp on the banks of the Wupper in the 1930s .

The environment

Wupper at the Beyenburger bridge at the height of the street Porta Westfalica, border crossing between Berg and Mark

After the beginning of industrialization, which brought with it a large increase in population, more and more untreated sewage from the neighboring communities and industrial companies was discharged into the Wupper. This led to the water quality of the Wupper deteriorating rapidly, after the Emscher it was seen as the dirtiest river in Germany and was ecologically dead. Only in the source area of ​​the Wupper, where it is called Wipper , there was still life in the water, in the rest of the course the river, however, no longer. The Wupper itself was literally "gone over the Wupper". This process stopped at the beginning of the 21st century. Although the condition of the river has improved a lot since then, the Wupper still has poor bathing water quality. Fish are now being released again in the Wupper and the first salmon are returning to spawning in the Wupper.

See also

Individual proof

  1. ↑ redensarten.net: Go over the Wupper - [redensarten.net]. In: redensarten.net. July 17, 2017, accessed on August 16, 2019 (German).
  2. ↑ a b The Wupper. In: oberwipper.de. December 30, 2008, accessed August 17, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c Sunday question: Where does it come from? "Go over the Wupper". In: domradio.de. July 17, 2016, accessed August 16, 2019 .
  4. ↑ SWRWissen, SWRWissen: Where does “Go over the Wupper” come from? In: swr.de. swr.online, April 11, 2019, accessed on August 16, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b Interpretations of the meaning of “go over the Wupper”. In: rga.de. https://www.rga.de , December 30, 2014, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
  6. ↑ redensarten.net: Go over the Wupper - [redensarten.net]. In: redensarten.net. 2017, accessed on August 17, 2019 (German).
  7. ↑ ENVIRONMENT: From all pipes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1977 ( online ).
  8. ↑ The spawning season starts: Salmon and Co. are returning to the Wupper and tributaries. In: wupperverband.de. November 20, 2017. Retrieved August 17, 2019 .

Web links

Commons : Go across the Wupper  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: go over the Wupper  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations