Naked Hans

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The terrible flood of water , contemporary copper engraving of the Burchardi flood in 1634

Blanker Hans is a pictorial name for the raging North Sea during storm surges . Hurricane-like storms over the North Sea and other sea areas are also used.

Origin and use of the term

Relief on the level tower of the Hamburg Landungsbrücken : "Wohr Di, if de Blanke Hans kummt" (= be careful when Blanke Hans comes)

The linguistic origin of the name is unclear; an assumption derives it from the designation of the spray as blank ("white"). The linguist Gerhard Bauer also sees (without specification) in the expression a phenonym, i.e. a name derived from the appearance. The Germanist Henning von Gadow does not rule out a personification whose relation he does not specify, while the Duden editor Rudolf Köster generally gives the first name "Hans" as origin. The ethnologist Bernd Rieken has put forward another interpretation, according to which blank here means "bare" or "naked" and Hans is to be understood as a common name, so "blanker Hans" pejoratively means "something naked and completely average".

The chronicler Anton Heimreich traced the expression in his North Frisian Chronicle in 1666 back to the dikemaster of Risum , who is said to have called out "Despite now blank Hans" after the completion of a new dike in the North Sea. A short time later the dike broke during the Burchardi flood in October 1634.

The Kiel-born poet Detlev von Liliencron made the name popular in his ballad Trutz, blanke Hans . The "Blanke Hans" was artistically processed in many ways, including in paintings of the same name by Hans Peter Feddersen (1902) and Hans Hartig (1912).

Name borrowing

After the storm surge in 1962 , a green area and a street in the settlement for the flood victims in the Bremen district of Huchting were named "Blanker Hans". There is a children's and youth center of the same name on the street. In Büsum on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein there was the storm surge world event "Blanker Hans" from April 2006 to December 31, 2015 . It was a permanent exhibition with multimedia elements in its own building with accompanying events on various topics related to the North Sea.

literature

  • Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen : "Trutz, Blanker Hans". The fight against the North Sea. In: Bea Lundt (Ed.): Northern Lights. Historical consciousness and historical myths north of the Elbe (= contributions to historical culture. Volume 27). Böhlau, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-412-10303-9 , pp. 67-84.
  • Otto S. Knottnerus : A dangerous existence. Ambivalence of the early modern coastal society. In: Norbert Fischer , Susan Müller-Wusterwitz, Brigitta Schmidt-Lauber (eds.): Staging of the Coast (= series of publications by the Isa-Lohmann-Siems Foundation. Volume 1). Reimer, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-496-02800-0 , pp. 107-149.
  • OHLSDORF - magazine for mourning culture: "Death and storm surge in art" [1]

Web links

Wiktionary: Blanker Hans  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

supporting documents

  1. ↑ As phenonyms, Bauer understands "names that designate environmental phenomena that are beyond human reach". Gerhard Bauer: German naming. 2nd, revised edition. Weidler, Berlin 1998, p. 59.
  2. ^ Henning von Gadow: Review of Gerhard Bauer: Namenkunde des Deutschen. In: Contributions to name research . Vol. 24, 1989, pp. 380-385, here p. 383 (excerpt) .
  3. ^ Rudolf Köster: Proper names in the German vocabulary. A lexicon. De Gruyter, Berlin 2003, p. 65 . So does Lutz Mackensen : 3876 first names. Origin, derivatives and pet forms, distribution, famous name bearers, commemorative and name days. Südwest, Munich 1969, p. 77.
  4. ↑ Bernd Rieken : The North Sea is Murder Sea. Storm surges and their significance for the history of mentality in the Frisians. Waxmann, Münster 2005 (habilitation thesis, University of Vienna), p. 196 .
  5. ^ Anton Heimreich : North Frisian Chronicle . Edited by Niels Nikolaus Falck . Vol. 2. Perthes and Besser, Hamburg [Tondern] 1819, p. 134 f. : “That the Lord God could turn the land by leaving out the waters, these North Frisian landscapes ... on the day of Burchardi ... of the 1634th year especially had to learn, and that at that time, how one was safest, and the dikes so well stood that ... the dikemaster von Risummohr, after the dyke had been built, put his spade on the dyke and said presumably: Despite now bright Hans! "
  6. ↑ Nina Hinrichs: Death and storm surge in art. In: Ohlsdorf. Magazine for culture of mourning. No. 123, November 2013.
  7. ↑ Blanker Hans. In: Umweltbetrieb Bremen , accessed on September 7, 2015.
  8. ↑ See Reiner Haase: Redevelopment backlog in the children's and family center / concept for a solution will be presented in June. Blanker Hans faces an uncertain future. In: Weser-Kurier , May 18, 2015.
  9. ^ Report on the website of the Schleswig-Holstein newspaper publisher from October 26, 2015