Gauch

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This "grimace stone", which was once emblazoned on the city fortifications of Bergen and is now in the local history museum Bergen-Enkheim , was probably intended to deter " jugglers " and other traveling people ; the inscription on the fool's banner reads “far du gauch 1479”.

Gauch is actually an outdated name for the bird known today as the cuckoo , but the word has always had the double meaning "fool, fool, fool."

Etymology and usage

Gauch is the older of the two German names for the cuckoo. It was first encountered in the 8th century, i.e. in the earliest evidence of Old High German (ahd. Gouh ; mhd . Gouch ), and can also be found similarly in Old Saxon ( gōk ), Old English ( gēac ) and Old Norse ( gaukr , derived from Swedish . gök , Danish . gøg and English dialect gowk ), and is therefore part of the common Germanic hereditary vocabulary. Around 1350, that is, in Middle High German, the onomatopoeic, that is to say the bird's call, cuckoo appeared alongside these traditional names, and it was increasingly displaced; for example, Luther's translation of the Bible gave preference to the cuckoo . In New High German, Gauch has completely disappeared as a bird name in colloquial language and can only be found in the written language in poetic and archaic speech (for example in Karl Simrock's translation of the Nibelungenlied from 1827, which asked Hagen: "Shall we pull gas?")

The metaphorical meaning of the word “fool, fool, stupid” can already be traced in Old High German and is explained by the fact that the cuckoo was considered foolish in popular opinion because of its monotonous reputation. In this or a similar meaning (as also in the sense of "dupe, poor Trop", "rogue, rogue" or "mind Weak, cretin"), that as an insult, which remained Gauch far longer in use, particularly in some Alemannic dialects is but now also out of date; already Goethe and Uhland used this expression only in need of rhyme. In some compound words , however, the word has survived to this day, for example in the name of Gauchheil , a primrose that was previously used in folk medicine to treat the mentally ill. In dialect, the meadow foam herb is also called gauch flower (elsewhere also cuckoo flower ).

The word juggler (“pocket player, street artist”) is possibly derived from the gauch in the sense of “fool” ; plausible, but just as unsecured, is a relationship with the originally Low German word Geck ("vain man, stutzer", but originally "court jester") and its Rhineland variant Jeck ("carnival jester ") as well as the geek ("comical kauz," "Technology-loving, but socially awkward eccentric"), who only recently got from English into German, but is ultimately a loan from German Geck (or Gauch ). This hypothetical family of words may also include the Gigerl ("Kleidernarr, Dandy)", which is native to Upper German , especially Austrian , but folk etymology tends to explain it as a vain rooster .

Gauch was also used as a family name in the Middle Ages (a Conradus Gouch is documented in Tyrol in 1185, his namesake Cuonrad Gouche in 1291 on Lake Constance), today this surname is more common in the Palatinate and Hunsrück .

Uses in art and literature

The work Das Narrenschiff by Sebastian Brant takes up the Gäuche. Gauche (love fools) disguised as fools stand on a ship. In the 13th paragraph - Von buolschänke - is told of Venus , who carries three gauche and a monkey and listens to the call of the cuckoo. Brant also picks up on guests for the first time by juxtaposing the guests with fools.

The Gäuchinnen (singular Geuchin ) appear much more clearly in Thomas Murner's Geuchmat. Here they are mentioned explicitly and represent the role of the fraudster.

In addition, "some suspicious gauch" appears as an opponent of the lyrical self in Heinrich Heine's Enfant Perdu . The Gauch is therefore also the enemy of freedom there, as the lyrical self fights for it.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ As evidenced by The Exclusion of Non-Sedentary People , website of the German Historical Museum Foundation , part of the online presence of the exhibition Germany as a country of immigration: Migrations 1500-2005 (viewed on March 30, 2018).
  2. ↑ Gauch. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 4 : Forschel – retainer - (IV, 1st section, part 1). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1878, Sp. 1524 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  3. ↑ Gauch. In: Digital dictionary of the German language . The information there on the etymology comes from the entry Kuckuck in Wolfgang Pfeifer : Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen. 2nd Edition. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993.
  4. ↑ Hagen has the well-known brood parasitism of the cuckoo in mind, so the question here means "Should we raise cuckoo children?"
  5. ↑ Gauch. In: Trübners German Dictionary. Volume 3: GH. De Gruyter, Berlin 1939, p. 29.
  6. ↑ fool. In: Friedrich Kluge, Elmar Seebold: Etymological dictionary of the German language. 25th, updated and expanded edition (e-book), Berlin u. a. 2012.
  7. ↑ dude. In: Friedrich Kluge, Elmar Seebold: Etymological dictionary of the German language. 25th, updated and expanded edition (e-book), Berlin u. a. 2012.
  8. ^ Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd edition, 1989. sv geek, n. And geck , n. 1 .
  9. ^ For example, in the entry Gigerl in the Wiktionary.
  10. ↑ The Ship of Fools - Chapter 13. Spiegel, accessed September 4, 2014 .
  11. ↑ The Ship of Fools - Preface to the Ship of Fools. Spiegel, accessed September 4, 2014 .
  12. ↑ Thomas Murner, Franz Schultz: The Geuchmat . In: German writings . tape 5 . KJ Trübner, 1981.
  13. ^ Heinrich Heine: Enfant Perdu. In: Heinrich Heine: Works and letters in ten volumes. Volume 2, Berlin / Weimar 1972, pp. 124-125 ( zeno.org ).