Flea leg
A special shape of a pipe tamper for tobacco pipes is called the flea leg . It is always made of porcelain in the shape of a woman's leg with a shoe and is about 6 to 8 cm long. Compulsory for the flea leg are a painted stocking with a garter belt and bow (sometimes also a suspender belt ) and one or more small fleas on the thigh. The flattened upper end is used to press the tobacco.
The motif of the revealed female leg with a stocking is not uncommon in Rococo painting and can be found in the long tradition of erotic flea literature . The flea plague of that time inspired the Marburg scholar Otto Philipp Zaunschliffer (1653–1729) to write a joking legal treatise on fleas that appeared in Marburg around 1683. In a new edition (with the falsified information 1768) this work was deliberately incorrectly attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . This later edition shows a lady revealing her leg for the purpose of flea control. This illustration of the treatise popular among law students is intended to be a possible model for the flea leg.
Flea legs came into fashion as a male smoking utensil in the last third of the 18th century and were produced by many porcelain manufacturers, for example in Meissen . The flea leg experienced an upswing as a student accessory from 1870, as it probably allowed a playful handling of disreputable erotic motifs. Flea legs can be found in student associations until the 1920s, whereby the garter belt is often kept in the association colors and mutual dedications are attached.
literature
- Robert Paschke : Studentenhistorisches Lexikon , GDS archive, Cologne 1999, p. 109 f., ISBN 3-89498-072-9
- Marion Maria Ruisinger: Fleas in the Museum! Catalog of the German Medical History Museum Ingolstadt, issue No. 42, Ingolstadt 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anonymous: Dissertatio iuridica de eo quod iustum est circa spiritus familiares feminarum hoc est pulices etc. , Frankfurt / M. 1768
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Legal treatise on the fleas (de Pulicibus) . 3rd edition, Altona 1866, p. 109
