Beer organ

This article describes a compound student term, the musical instrument made from beer or other bottles is described under the bottle organ.

Beer organ is in some students compounds customary playful (sometimes slightly derogatory) designation for the piano , which on a bar or a Kommersbuch the singing of Kommersbuch songs accompanied.

Instrumental accompaniment for student Kneipp songs seems to be a comparatively late development. From the first half of the 19th century , when the student events still took place exclusively in public bars, no pictorial representation of a piano accompaniment or any other instrument has survived. Presumably because the pub owners shied away from the financial expense or feared the state of preservation of the expensive instrument. It can be assumed that the first pianos did not find their way into student pubs until the first corporation houses were built in the last decades of the century. The furnishing of these houses was based on the furnishings of a town house of the time, and this also included a piano. This popularity of the instrument also made it likely that there would be someone among the members of the association who could play on it.

The term "beer organ" is in the student tradition of creating joking expressions for ordinary objects or ordinary expressions for joking processes (" beer name ", " beer boy ", "beer waste", "beer word" etc.) with the prefix "beer" . Something similar is common among the soldiers of the German Bundeswehr, here with the prefix "NATO-" (for example "NATO eagle" for "roast chicken"). The term "Bier-Zeitung" has found its way into colloquial German, which is used for a collection of satirical articles that are reproduced on the occasion of a special event or a festival.

The allusion to the church instrument, the organ, is in turn in the student tradition of ridiculing aristocratic and clerical titles, terms and manners at drinking events (" beer state ", "beer duchy"). This was particularly popular in the first half of the 19th century - especially in Jena . The Kulturkampf in Prussia in the second half of the 19th century will hardly have had an inhibiting effect. Another possible explanation is that beer mugs (full or empty) were placed on the piano and reminiscent of organ pipes.

The pianist is called beer organizer or beer music here. The beer organ is operated (not played).

literature

• Harm-Hinrich Brandt and Matthias Stickler : Der Burschen Herrlichkeit - Past and present of student corporations , Historia Academica Vol. 36, Würzburg, 1998, ISBN 3-930877-30-9
• Paulgerhard Gladen : Gaudeamus igitur - The student connections then and now , Munich, Callwey, 1988, ISBN 3-7667-0912-7
• Friedhelm Golücke et al. i. A. of the Association for German Student History eV: Richard Fick (Hrsg.): On Germany's high schools , photomechanical reprint of the Berlin 1900 edition, SH-Verlag, Cologne, 1997, ISBN 3-89498-042-7
• Robert Paschke: Student History Lexicon , GDS Archive for University History and Student History , Supplement 9, Cologne, 1999, ISBN 3894980729
• Gerhard Richwien: Being a student, a small cultural history , Association for German Student History (GDS), Small writings of GDS 15, SH-Verlag, Cologne, 1998, ISBN 3894980494
• Friedrich Schulze / Paul Ssymank: The German student body from the oldest times to the present , 4th edition 1932, Verlag für Hochschulkunde Munich