Landlady verse
Wirtinnenverse (also called "Frau-Wirtin-Verse") are joke or mockery poems, mostly with crude obscene or sordid content based on a traditional melody in its rhyme scheme.
Lore
According to the reference in the print in Deutsche Liederhort by Erk - Böhme , this is a "Rhenish folk song" and "in all newer Commers books (student song books (cf. Kommersbuch )) since 1840", also otherwise very frequently printed in books of everyday songs since 1844 (but not in those of the youth movement). Variants of the song type have been recorded many times and published in various collections and editions since Kretzschmer / Zuccalmaglio, Volume 1 (1840) (there the song numbers 14, 107 and 174), that is Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio : Deutsche Volkslieder ... (after Preliminary work by A. Kretzschmer). Scientific editions began with Franz Wilhelm von Ditfurth : Fränkische Volkslieder (1855), Volume 2, No. 343, Ernst Meier ( Ernst Heinrich Meier ): Swabian Folksongs with Selected Melodies , Berlin 1855, No. 82, Ernst H. Wolfram: Nassauische Volkslieder (Hessen), Berlin 1894, No. 419, Augusta Bender : Oberschefflenzer Volkslieder ([Baden] 1902), No. 145, to Sigmund Grolimund: Folksongs from the Canton of Aargau , Basel 1911, No. 15, and August Kassel / Joseph Lefftz : Alsatian folk songs [, Strasbourg 1940], No. 50, and more often. - In 1902 Johannes Bolte referred to a similar text to which FM Böhme had already referred, “There is an inn on the Rhine, all the truckers come here ...”, which is documented before 1819 (according to Böhme “around 1809 / 1814 ”) and which obviously represents the original version of the later more erotically charged text. It is about "bad wine", about a man who harnesses the horse incorrectly, about the son who wastes his money, and about the maid who "waits" for soldiers. The German Folk Song Archive ( Deutsches Volksliedarchiv ) can provide evidence of undated song pamphlets from the 19th and 20th centuries, including a song pamphlet document dated around 1780.
shape
meter
The stanza used is the Lindenschmidt strophe . Thus, a landlady verse has five lines just like a limerick , but with the rhyme scheme [aabxb]. While a limerick consists mainly of amphibian ice (three-syllable ◡ - ◡), the hostess verse prefer iambi (two-syllable ◡—). In the verse of the innkeeper, the a-lines and the orphan (x) end male , the b-lines female . Also deviating from Limerick, the a-lines and the orphan are four-seated , the b-lines three -seated in hostess verse .
template
The first stanza reads:
- There is an inn on the Lahn.
- All the carters arrive there.
- The landlady is sitting by the stove,
- the carters around the table,
- the guests are drunk.
content
Tradition invites you to improvise and write rebellious texts. The origin of the first verse is likely to be in the early 19th century. Hundreds of new stanzas have been added over time.
Ridiculous verses
Verses of ridicule can be aimed at general types or at individually intended persons and are not necessarily obscene. For example, three mocking verses referring to anatomy professor Spiter, which Curt Goetz in his comedy Frauenarzt Dr. Praetorius has recorded. The first goes like this:
- There lives a wise man here
- who can fathom what you lack.
- He does dissect you nicely.
- If you want to know something about yourself
- all you have to do is die.
(Source: Goetz, Curt. Gesammelte Bühnenwerke. Berlin-Grunewald: FA Herbig (Walter Kahnert), undated (C) Copyright 1937 and 1952 by Curt Goetz: p. 725 f.).
Zotenverse
More and more it was mainly a matter of depicting animal and sexual happenings, not only openly shameless, but rather grossly exaggerated. Here is a less hearty example:
- The landlady also has a doctor,
- of the opera melodies.
- Since he is a virtuoso ,
- but if he should blow Wagner
- then it goes in the pants.
A lexicon leaves characteristic examples better to be passed on orally. Men in particular, when they were among themselves (military, students, craftsmen), wanted to rebel against the otherwise required prudish with such supposed “boldness” . Since the sexual emancipation of the late 20th century, there has hardly been any need for such “relief”.
Others
Verses of women and landladies also circulated among German soldiers in World War II, for example:
- The landlady had a dream
- it was so beautiful, it's hard to believe
- he was like a Te Deum:
- She saw the guide stuffed
- in the British Museum.
supporting documents
- Lyrics and melody
- Recordings of the song with more or less trimmed personalities are available from the Comedian Harmonists as well as from Will Höhne.
- Film The landlady of the Lahn .
- Cloudy source . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1967, p. 81 ( Online - May 15, 1967 ).
- Peter Stähle: Just do one verse . In: The time of May 25, 1967
- The inn on the Lahn. A folk song. Verlag Karl Schustek, Hanau am Main 1966. (Collection of hostess verses with 8-page foreword.)
- Hans Günther Bickert / Norbert Nail: The inn on the Lahn: The legendary "Gasthof zum Schützenpfuhl" in Marburg and its guests. With an article about "Letters of Heaven" . Marburg: Büchner-Verlag 2019 ISBN 978-3-96317-166-6 (print) [On the history of the Lahnwirtshauslied p. 17–24].
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ludwig Erk , Franz Magnus Böhme : German song library . Volume II. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1893, No. 858, p. 653. ( digitized version )
- ↑ This is not a scientifically reliable edition, but it is the template for some reprints. The editor was more concerned with the aesthetics of the idealized text than with the actual vowel of a variant.
- ↑ There is the note: "The worst thing we could say about the maid was that she is waiting for soldiers ..."; Bender criticized the vilification of the innocent.
- ↑ bound galley proofs of a no longer published book
- ↑ According to these records (here is a selection) the song was also popular outside of student tradition.
- ↑ Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 12 (1902), p. 103 f.
- ↑ See above on that mountain. German folk songs , Volume 1, ed. by Hermann Strobach , Rostock 1984, no. 93, “There is a tavern on the Rhine ...”, around 1809/1814.
- ↑ Cf. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich : "Erotisches Lied". In: Handbuch des Volksliedes , ed. by RW Brednich et al., Volume 1, Munich 1973, pp. 612–614 ("Frau Wirtin ..."; with further references), and Otto Holzapfel : Lied index : The older German-language popular song tradition ( online version on the homepage of the Volksmusikarchiv des Bezirks Oberbayern ; in PDF format; ongoing updates) with further information.
- ↑ Ernst Kern : Seeing - Thinking - Acting of a surgeon in the 20th century. ecomed, Landsberg am Lech 2000, ISBN 3-609-20149-5 , p. 163.