Blue Monday

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The blue Monday is a name for the non-working Monday . Blue making stands for idleness in general or absenteeism in professional life.

history

Traditionally it was customary in many small and craft businesses to only work “at half speed” on Monday. However, this custom has been pushed back more and more in recent years. An explanation of the term refers to the custom, on Mondays in Lent the churches to decorate with blue or purple cloth. The freedom to work the fast Mondays soon became often after holidays, extended to the other mounting of the year.

  • around 1510, in the people's book Till Eulenspiegel describes the 49th history of how Eulenspiegel beat wool on a holiday because the draper had forbidden him to celebrate on Monday.
  • In 1520, Duke George the Bearded of Saxony ordered "that no craftsman should keep a good Monday, and that he should not be rewarded with any public holidays during the week either ".
  • In 1531 he renewed the ban because no one obeyed it.
  • 1726 prohibiting the Blue Monday prompted in Augsburg an uprising of the shoe servants , the fellows in other cities (eg. As in Dresden ) were invited to join.
  • In 1731 a Reichstag edict was issued with a ban, which was renewed in 1764 and 1771.
  • In 1794, the general land law for the Prussian states forbids journeyman to stay away from work on the "blue Monday", "only on Sundays and those festive days whose feyers are decreed according to the laws of the state, he may omit work".
  • In 1810 all meetings of journeymen are banned in Saxony, as well as "the celebration of the so-called good or blue assembly".

Customs

The custom goes back to the saying blue Monday, hunger Tuesday . In the hairdressing trade and often in the catering trade , it is still common today to keep the shop closed on Mondays after the busy weekend . Most museums are also closed on Mondays. In the GDR , bakeries were generally closed on Mondays to compensate for the Saturday on which they were open.

To skip work

The origin of the idiom, meaning “not going about your work, staying away from work or school for no good reason”, is not certain. There are different hypotheses:

  • The phrase originated from the expression blue Monday . Originally the Monday before Ash Wednesday, so named after the liturgical color of the altar hangings in the churches. Later adopted for the work-free Monday of the craftsmen: "make blue Monday" would have expanded to mean "do not work, stay away from work"
  • It was created through the mediation of the Rotwelschen from Yiddish belo "without". Thus would be from belo Resulting rotwelsches lo , lau (as in the phrase 's for free "for nothing, for free") in the reinforcing shape w e lo , w e lau ( "very bad, very bad, very bad, nothing at all nothing ”) has become“ blue ”and has thus been adopted into everyday colloquial language as a red-wish expression, making blue in the sense of“ doing nothing ”, which is not proven, but is postulated .
  • In an explanation not supported by linguistics, it is assumed that the phrase originated from the practice of dying , especially the indigo or woad dyers , who allow the dyed fabrics to air dry in a final phase of the dyeing process, but only in this phase Oxidation creates the blue color. Because the blue dyers would have paused their work in this phase, the technical process of making blue would have resulted in a general expression for “doing nothing”, and the expression blue Monday should also be derived from this, because Monday is the usual day for this blue dyeing phase has been. This theory seems questionable, however, because the dyeing workflows applied to all days and not just Monday, and the dyers had to do other work during the oxidation phase . In addition, the oxidation phase takes less than an hour.

Repeated blushing is a form of absenteeism . Due to their employment contract, employees are subject to a permanent duty to work , which is exceptionally suspended in the event of real absenteeism such as incapacity for work . If the incapacity for work lasts longer than three calendar days , it must be proven in accordance with Section 5 (1) sentence 2 EFZG by submitting a corresponding medical certificate of incapacity for work . So disability is present in the narrower sense if the employee to the employer a medical certificate ( " Certificate ") to submit a doctor. However, the employer is entitled to request the presentation of the medical certificate earlier. He can even do this from an individual employee - for example because he is suspected of turning blue. Since doctors cannot differentiate between “real” and “simulated” illnesses for every clinical picture described by the patient (“ certificate of convenience”), doubts about the evidential value of a certificate may arise with the employer .

Blaumachen is an indicator of the quality of working conditions or the ability and willingness to work of people. Blaumachen correlates, among other things, with problems in privacy and motivational factors; it can also be due to a lack of job satisfaction or a lack of work motivation .

Going blue can be interpreted as a physical escape . A final escape is the termination in order to terminate the employment relationship . The less definitive forms of physical escape include turning blue or “celebrating sick”, “escaping” in meetings and committees , “settling down” in the form of business trips or internal resignation .

Use in Austria

The Freedom Party of Austria traditionally describes the day after an election as Blue Monday, alluding to its party color blue (in Austria, voting is usually done on Sundays). On that day, their candidates are mostly unavailable and there are no meetings of party committees. This means that even the party leaders can celebrate very extensively at the election ceremonies that take place on election evening.

literature

  • Isabella Andrej: The "Blue Monday". - A form of resistance to industrial discipline of working time. Seminar paper at the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, New History, WS 1993/94 (Univ. Prof. Edith Saurer , Work and Workers' Struggles in Europe, 18th to 20th Century ) ihs.ac.at (PDF; 0.3 MB).
  • Christiane Wanzeck: On the etymology of lexicalized color word combinations. Investigations using the colors red, yellow, green and blue (= Amsterdam publications on language and literature. 149). Rodopi, Amsterdam 2003, ISBN 90-420-1317-6 .
  • John Holloway , Edward P. Thompson : Blue Monday. About time and work discipline. Translated from English by Lars Stubbe. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89401-538-1 .

Web links

Wiktionary: make blue  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Bote : An entertaining book by Till Eulenspiegel from the state of Braunschweig. Edited and translated by Siegfried H. Sichtermann. 2nd Edition. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-458-32036-9 , pp. 143-146.
  2. ↑ a b Dieter Schuster: Chronology of the German trade union movement from the beginning to 1918. With a foreword by Rüdiger Zimmermann and registers by Hubert Woltering. Bonn 2000 Chronology: 1794–1847 . Friedrich Ebert Foundation ; accessed on May 19, 2019.
  3. ↑ Horst and Annelies Beyer: Sprichwortlexikon . Eighth edition. Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-323-00120-6 .
  4. ↑ blue . In: Friedrich Kluge, Elmar Sebold (arrangement): Etymological dictionary of the German language. 23rd edition. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-012922-1 , p. 116.
  5. ↑ Monday. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 12 : L, M - (VI). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1885, Sp. 2524 f . ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  6. ↑ blue . No. 524. In: Siegfried A. Wolf: Dictionary des Rotwelschen. German crooks language. Buske, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-87118-736-4 .
  7. ↑ make blue, make blue and blue Monday . etymologie.info; accessed on May 19, 2019.
  8. ↑ Peter Bützer: No idleness on Monday . In: Chemistry in Our Time . tape 46 , no. 3 , 2012, p. 192 , doi : 10.1002 / ciuz.201290036 .
  9. ↑ BAG, judgment of November 14, 2012, Az .: 5 AZR 886/11
  10. ↑ Albert Ritter: Absenteeism . In: Josef Sauer u. a. (Ed.): Occupational safety from A – Z. 2014, 2013, p. 12.
  11. ↑ Gerhard Comelli, Lutz von Rosenstiel: leadership through motivation. 2011, p. 120.
  12. ↑ https://www.nachrichten.at/archivierte-artikel/wahl2015/wahlkampfschmankerl/Blauer-Montag-fuer-die-Wahlsieger;art174294,1986488