Berline (wagon)
The Berline horse-drawn carriage (plural Berlinen ) is a two- or four-seater fully sprung touring car. The wagon type got its name from its proximity to Berlin and the popularity it gained at the Brandenburg court in the second half of the 17th century .
Invention and dissemination
The Brandenburg builder Philip de Chiese is considered to be the inventor of this horse-drawn carriage, which was very well known in the Baroque era . He had developed this means of transport for himself in order to be able to make a trip to Paris on behalf of his sovereign more comfortably than with the carriages used up until then . This car attracted such attention on the way, but especially in the French capital, that Chiese immediately received a number of orders for a replica. In the period that followed, he produced an undisclosed number of the two-horse vehicles and exported them to France , Holland , Poland , Russia and Sweden, among others . The Electress Dorothea also used such a carriage in 1671. In 1683, the Great Elector, through his Paris ambassador, Ezekiel Spanheim, presented the French Sun King Louis XIV with a gold-plated specimen including ten horses.
However, de Chiese's invention is not fully secured, and in some cases it is claimed that it was first manufactured in France.
A carefully carried out research by employees of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein also points to the development by de Chiese.
The grammatical-critical dictionary of the High German dialect by Johann Christoph Adelung from 1793 reports: "Philipp de Chiese, General Quartermaster and first master builder of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm the Great, first made it known in Paris."
Construction and types
In the case of the Berliners, the four-seater coach box was hung over and not between the very high cranked long trees, so that the front wheels could be higher and still undercut. The coach box had two floor-to-ceiling doors and hung in straps on wooden or steel springs. The vehicle was pulled by two horses harnessed side by side. Around the middle of the 18th century, the two-seater half - Berliners hanging in C-springs appeared, in which the passengers sat opposite each other ( vis-à-vis ). The four-seaters were also used as first-class Berlin cabs . Towards the end of the 18th century, carriages with a movable roof, the so-called Stadtberlinen, were increasingly popular.
The Berline was used in particular as a touring car and stagecoach , and in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries it was increasingly displaced by the similarly sprung Landauer , which had the advantage of a fully openable folding top.
The last German stagecoach line Bad Kissingen – Bad Bocklet or Aschach Castle exists on behalf of Deutsche Post AG . A “Berline with Coupé” is used, a reconstruction from 1967 from the main workshops for motor mail vans in Bamberg.
etymology
In the dictionary of the Académie française , the word berline appears in 1718 for a type of carriage with a new type of suspension, with softer springs than other carriages. This is the oldest French dictionary reference. In 1721 it is stated that the carriages appeared a few years ago and were called brelingue or brelinde by some . However, berline is correct because they came from Berlin in Germany. Others would attribute the invention to the Italians. Johann Christoph Gottsched wrote in 1748 about the use of the term berline by the French:
"Where you got the thing yourself from a neighboring people, you have to keep your word: as the French call a pushing carriage Berline because it was invented in Berlin."
In the treatise on carpentry by the French cabinet maker André-Jacob Roubo , published in 1771, it says:
"A second type of modern cars is called berlins , to Berlin, the capital of Prussia, where they were invented ... The berlins are now the most common cars and there are several types of it ... The actual berlins or berlins à deux fonts for four people and the Half-Berlin vis-à-vis for two people ... [A lighter kind of Berlin] is called Carrosse coupé or Berlingot , but mostly Diligence . "
Re-use of the name
In today's French, the word berline denotes a closed passenger car with two side windows each in the automotive industry (whereas a sedan has three side windows) and in mining a mine car . In Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, berlina is also the common name for this type of vehicle. The diverse uses of the berline in other countries are most likely due to the exports that took place at the time.
literature
- Car . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 16, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 318.
- Karl Eduard Vehse : History of the German courts since the Reformation . 48 volumes. Hamburg 1851 to 1858
Web links
- The last German stagecoach on the Bad Kissingen website
Individual evidence
- ↑ Horst Strasbourg: Carriage with the "Berline" . In: BZ am Abend , October 24, 1983
- ^ Karl Eduard Vehse : History of the German courts since the Reformation , Volume 1: Preußen, Hamburg 1851, p. 139. Text archive - Internet Archive
- ↑ a b Jutta Schneider: June 3, 1671: First exit with a "Berline" . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 6, 1996, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 60-61 ( luise-berlin.de ).
- ↑ Kluge: Etymological Dictionary . Berlin 1999, p. 99 with further references
- ↑ Adelung: Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of High German Dialect . Volume 1. Leipzig 1793, pp. 882-883
- ↑ wagon . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 16, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 318.
- ^ Nouveau Dictionnaire De L'Academie Françoise . Volume 1, A – L, Paris 1718, p. 146. Text archive - Internet Archive
- ↑ berline . Center National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexikales
- ^ Dictionnaire universel françois et latin . Volume 1, Paris 1721, column 993. Text archive - Internet Archive
- ^ Johann Christoph Gottsched : Foundation of a German language art , 1st edition, Leipzig 1748, p. 150. Online . 3rd edition 1752, p. 194, 4th edition 1757, p. 203, 5th edition 1762, p. 198, after the 5th edition in Selected Works , Berlin / New York 1968–1987, Volume 8 , P. 242. All of these issues are online.
- ↑ André-Jacob Roubo: L'art du menuisier-carrossier . L'art du menuisier , part 3, volume 1, Paris 1771, p. 459. gallica.bnf.fr