Biblical narrative characters
Biblical narrative figures (also known as Egli figures ) are handicraft tools for representing and telling biblical stories . In different sizes (30, 50 and 70 cm) they are used for Bible study , teaching, pastoral care or exhibitions in order to make the stories of the Bible clear and understandable. They have no face so as not to define them by their expression. Feelings and intentions are expressed through body language .
history
The Origin of the Biblical Figures in Switzerland
Sister Anita Derungs OP , a nun in the Ilanz Monastery (Switzerland), developed the first biblical figures during the summer holidays of 1964. Sr. Anita was a teacher in Ilanz at the time . The suggestion for the moving figures came from the then President of the Mothers' Association in Graubünden , Ms. Fryberg-Candinas. She dreamed of a nativity scene for the family with moving figures. The biblical figures were created in the tradition of the Christmas cribs.
A lot of thought has been given to moving nativity figures. Various forerunners can be identified. However, their mobility failed due to inadequate materials such as the fragile wire. Sr. Anita Derungs worked with materials that could be found in every household: electrician's wire, also sisal wire, scraps of fabric and wood. She modeled the heads with rigid foam and covered them with duvet or warp velvet . These materials are still used today.
Josy Brunner found out about the efforts to create movable nativity scenes in the Ilanz Abbey. She was the director of the “House of Mothers” (today: Bildungszentrum Matt) on the Schwarzenberg , an advanced training facility of the Catholic women's and mothers' community (FMG) in Switzerland. Josy Brunner contacted Sr. Anita and was very interested in the figures.
These contacts led to the first nativity figure course in the autumn of 1964 in the “House of Mothers” on the Schwarzenberg. Josy Brunner and Sr. Anita were in charge. The first participants in the course were enthusiastic and in the following years worked with great dedication for the further development of the figures. Among these four to five "first generation women" were Beatrice Zimmermann, who later developed the 50s figures, and Maria Widmer . Maria Widmer lived in Baar at the time . Her husband was a teacher there. She got involved in maternal counseling in Baar, where she met the young Doris Egli, who came from East Germany and had married in Baar. In 1966 - two years after Sr. Anita had created the figures in Ilanz Monastery - Maria Widmer showed Doris Egli how to make the figures. As a result, Doris Egli came into contact with the figure women and worked enthusiastically in the further development of the figures. Her training as a designer at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart proved to be very helpful.
Material improvements and separation
The joint work of Doris Egli and the other figure women on the Schwarzenberg was short-lived. A conflict ignited the material. At that time, in the first figure courses, various things were tried out. Two technical improvements were significant:
The development of lead shoes
First, curtain lead was worked into the Schubimehl shoes; later it was printer's lead. For the lead block shoes, book printer bridges were attached to the sisal wire with adhesive plaster or insulating tape and shaped with Schubimehl. Pastor Werner Thommen cast the first simple lead shoes entirely from lead. Contacts with the blacksmith Berchtold Frei were established through a course instructor. He could work professionally and had been making lead shoes since 1975. His son Christoph Frei took over the production of lead shoes from him; to this day he delivers them in all figure sizes.
The development towards the bracket
Initially, the legs were made of sisal wire and the arms were made of electrician's wire. Over time, the sisal wire also caught on for the arms. But with that the two wires could no longer be looped around each other, otherwise the frame at the "neck" would have become too thick. First the two sisal wires were sewn together. But the hold was moderate. The decisive change came from Doris Egli. Together with her husband Primo, she developed a metal clamp to hold the two sisal wires firmly together.
With this clamped frame Doris Egli went on the market in 1976 under the name "Original Doris Egli Material". She wanted to file copyright claims on the Biblical Figures. She could not legally enforce this because too many women were involved in the development of the characters. It was only possible for her to obtain trademark rights in her name, hence the name “Original Doris Egli Material” - and Doris Egli's interest in not calling the figures Biblical figures, but Egli figures .
Egli's efforts to assert copyright claims on the figure frames led to a major conflict among the figure women in Switzerland, as all of them have so far contributed their ideas to the further development of the figures free of charge. Several attempts to mediate on the Schwarzenberg failed. Ultimately, the copyright claims led to Doris Egli's break with Schwarzenberg and the other female figures. Since then, Doris Egli has continued to work with her "original Egli material", and the Schwarzenbergs with their Schwarzenberg figures. That was in 1976
The situation in 2007
Today the Brändi Foundation in Horw (Switzerland) manufactures the figure frames. So many racks are needed every year that a workplace could be created for eight disabled people. The last major development on the figures was the flexible hand with the wire loop, which is also used by the Biblical Figures Association (ABF). It can be traced back to Beatrice Zimmermann, who introduced it in 1979. Doris Egli did not take over the flexible hand for her figure frames back then, but today she offers her own development with a flexible thumb. Over the years, three greats of Biblical characters have emerged. There are now 30s, 50s and 70s figures, and animals that go with the 30s figures.
Biblical narrative characters in Germany
In 1978 the Knoch parish family from Mägerkingen on the Swabian Alb traveled to Taizé and met the Marty family from Lucerne in Switzerland. A friendship developed between the families. Because Ida Marty was already giving courses for biblical characters at that time, the Knoch family got to know the characters there. In 1980, Pastor Werner Knoch was appointed director of Urach Abbey , the retreat of the Württemberg regional church . The following year in October 1981 the first figure course took place there under the direction of Ida Marty and Werner Knoch .
From the beginning, Pastor Knoch and Ida Marty didn't just want to offer workshops on how to make the figures. The figures should not only be movable nativity figures, but also serve to illustrate various biblical texts from the Old Testament and the New Testament . Because the figures were very important for Knoch and Marty as aids to understanding the Bible, design weekends with figures that had already been produced were offered soon after the first work courses. The participants no longer had to worry about the production of the figure, but could concentrate entirely on the Bible texts and their implementation in today. Between 1981 and 1994 Ida Marty conducted a total of 32 workshops, leadership and design courses in Urach Abbey. The partnership between the Biblical Figures and the Urach Abbey has existed almost since the foundation of the Urach Abbey (which was originally an Evangelical Theological Seminary ).
One and a half years after the first figure course with Ida Marty - in February 1983 - the first leadership course with Doris Egli took place. She was invited because she played a decisive role in the development of the characters. It was hoped for valuable new impulses from her. While Doris Egli's experience as an artist was impressive, it remained unsatisfactory with her as a course instructor. That's why Ida Marty and Werner Knoch decided to take the training of leaders into their own hands. An annual meeting of course leaders led by Knoch and Marty and a contact day with Doris Egli were planned.
Over the years, more and more German course instructors took on the training tasks in Stift Urach. From 1991 onwards, Marie-Luise Pöpel and Sigrid Meyer in particular took over Ida Marty's courses. When the pastor's Knoch family retired in 1994, Ida Marty also withdrew from the figure courses at the monastery. From the joint work of Werner Knoch and Ida Marty, the book As if you were there yourself was created, with biblical stories to experience by Werner Knoch, illustrated by Ida Marty.
After Pastor Udo Hofmann took over the management in Urach Abbey, the courses with Biblical Figures remained an integral part of the program there. They even expanded. Since the figures aroused unbroken interest not only in Urach Abbey, the number of course instructors rose steadily and countless workshops on figure making were offered. In Württemberg the biblical figures were mainly known as "Egli figures" because the women worked with Egli material that Doris Egli brought back from Switzerland during the contact days at the monastery.
Over time, Doris Egli was no longer able to procure the necessary material for the many courses. Despite the establishment of material depots, there were more and more delivery problems and, as a result, hamster purchases. In the meantime, some German course instructors, searching for new material sources, had rediscovered Schwarzenberg and blacksmith Christoph Frei and found that their material was at least equal to the only known Egli material. With Schwarzenberg material that was available, however, it was not allowed to work among the Egli-oriented course instructors.
After attempts at mediation failed, Silvia Dalferth, Gabriele Lohner and Marie-Luise Pöpel decided to found an association. The constantly expanding work with the figures required a neat framework. In April 1997 the foundation of the non-profit association Arbeitsgemeinschaft Biblische Figur - ABF e. V. The clear majority of the course instructors at the time joined the newly founded association. Doris Egli then withdrew from the pen.
The ABF took over the course offer, qualified primarily the leader courses with a detailed material folder and supplemented the offer with work courses with 50s and 70s figures.
The areas in which figures are used are still expanding. Narrative figures are used in church services , children's services , in kindergarten , religious education , confirmation classes , in adult education, in exhibitions, often also in the design of sermon texts in some local churches, puppet theater , exhibitions in supermarkets and much more.
The figures' popularity also spread abroad. There is evidence that figure courses take place in Finland, Luxembourg, France, Austria and probably other countries. There is an ABF course instructor in Iceland. Two women from Chile were trained, who are now in the Evang.-Luth. Church in Chile starting figure courses.
Biblical figures in Austria and the Czech Republic
In the 1990s, the Biblical Figures found their way to Austria via Germany. Regina Fucik and Annemarie Holzer (SSM) got to know the characters in Germany and from 1993 organized their first small courses in their Franciscan meeting center in Vienna. On her recommendation, the House of Silence in Styria invited Alexa Eckenstein as a speaker for a course in 1995.
Since the figures were still unknown in Austria, the course threatened to be canceled due to a lack of participants. To save the course from taking place, some young women from the Haus der Stille community also took part, including Elisabeth Waltersdorfer. As a trained hand weaver, she was enthusiastic about this combination of manual and spiritual work. Subsequently, she took part in other courses in the House of Silence, in the Franciscan Meeting Center in Vienna and in Germany.
Meanwhile convinced of the matter, she decided in 1997, together with Bernadette Wagner from Carinthia, who had also participated in some courses, to do the course leader training in Switzerland. Annemarie Holzer from Vienna also trained as a course instructor. While she went to Doris Egli in Germany, Elisabeth Waltersdorfer and Bernadette Wagner went to Schwarzenberg in Switzerland. The Upper Austrian theologian Martha Leonhartsberger was the third who, after attending a few courses with Lisi Waltersdorfer, went to Schwarzenberg in 2000 to train as a course leader.
Since 2003 there has been an annual meeting of course leaders. In 2006 the working group "Biblical Figures Austria" was formed without founding an association. In addition to the course instructors of the “Biblical Figures Austria” working group, there are also some Egli course instructors in Austria based on Annemarie Holzer.
Czech Republic
At a meeting of the Central European Biblical Works in Brixen (South Tyrol) in the summer of 1998, Elisabeth Waltersdorfer, the first Austrian course leader, and Anneliese Hecht (since 1982 advisor for Biblical pastoral work in the Stuttgart Biblical Works and author of a book about working with Biblical characters) were invited to present the Biblical characters . The figures aroused particular interest from the participants from Eastern Europe. As a result, the Austrian Bible Works organized a course with Lisi Waltersdorfer for participants from Eastern Europe in the Styrian House of Silence . Petr Chalupa from the Czech Bible Works and Marie Klašková were there.
Marie Klašková then trained as a course instructor in Schwarzenberg and is the only course instructor in the Czech Republic to date and she holds up to 20 figure courses per year throughout the country. For the figure work in the Czech Republic, she translated Anneliese Hecht's book, “Creative Working with Biblical Figures”, into Czech. In order to be involved in the exchange of experiences with other course leaders, she has been a member of the Austrian working group since 2008. The meeting of course leaders of the Austrian working group took place for the first time in May 2011 in Dolany near Olomouc in the Czech Republic.
Criticism of working with the characters
Criticism of the work with the biblical narrative characters was expressed mainly because the production is almost exclusively possible in courses and the procurement of materials is kept like a secret by some course instructors. The idea of protecting the characters from commercialization in this way is taken ad absurdum, since the course providers gain a market advantage in this way and, as quasi-monopolists, are themselves at the center of commercialization.
In response to this criticism, there are now a number of providers of ready-made narrative characters (e.g. the Children's Mission). The ABF e. V. offers additional material for work at home in its courses. In addition, anyone can obtain it from the association's material office. In Switzerland it is offered for sale in many craft stores.
literature
- Alsenz, Claudia & Stefan: Workbook Biblical Narrative Figures. Create Bible stories . Wuppertal: Brockhaus 1999.
- Antweiler, Desideria & Gerti Grillmaier: On traces of life with figures . (Publication of the German Catechist Association). Munich 2000.
- Working group Biblical Figures V. (Hrsg.): Werkstatt (quarterly publication of the association), Stuttgart.
- Bek, Birgit & Paulin Link: Experiencing and expressing faith. A workbook on working with biblical narrative characters . Munich: Don Bosco 2002.
- Brem, Gertrud & Lioba Hein: Bringing faith into play. Workshop book narrative characters . Ostfildern 2003.
- Dalferth, Winfried : And he touched her ... Shaping, experiencing and celebrating faith with biblical narrative characters . Leinfelden-Echterdingen: Verl. Junge Gemeinde 2001.
- Hecht, Anneliese: Creative work with biblical figures. Methods, exercises and Bible studies . Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk e. V. 1998.
- Neumann, Gini: Stories come to life. Use of the biblical narrative characters in religious education . Winemaker 2007.
Working groups and groups that work with biblical narrative characters
- Biblical Figures Working Group (ABF e.V.)
- Egli figures - description
- Interest group of Austrian course instructors for Biblical Figures
- Egli Figures Working Group Switzerland
- egli-figuren-Arbeitskreis Deutschland e. V.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schubimehl (brand name) is a material ground from wood for modeling.
- ↑ Idolatry on installments - via Egli figures at gierendenotizen.de, accessed on May 7, 2017.
- ↑ Create movable biblical figures and tell with them at abf-ev.de, accessed on May 7, 2017.
- ↑ Specialist outfitter for hand-made biblical narrative figures at erzaehlfiguren-hehle.com, accessed on May 7, 2017.