Juggler
Juggler is a collective term for showmen and other entertainers who present their skills to the public on the street, at markets or festivals.
Today the word is almost only used in historical or historicizing contexts, i.e. to describe premodern times and conditions. Originally and in a narrower sense, it meant sleight-of-hand and magician (hence the expression “to pretend something, to feign false facts”), but in common parlance other wandering showmen are also counted among the jugglers, i.e. artists and acrobats such as tightrope walkers or jugglers , also bear leaders , menagerists , ventriloquists , fire-eaters or card-readers , also actors (especially comedians like buffoons , harlequins , etc.), sometimes also quacks and other barkers with an unusual assortment, less often traveling musicians ( minstrels ).
etymology
The etymology of the word juggler is obscure, although it is already widely attested in Old and Middle High German (ahd. Gougalāri as early as the 9th century, the verb goukelôn, gougolôn "gaukeln" in the 10th century); here it referred first and foremost to magicians and in this respect apparently finds an almost exact equivalent in Old English gēogelerer "magician, magician" (noun of the verb gēogelere , " bewitched by a spell"). However, it is doubtful whether it is a Germanic word and whether "magician" is the original meaning. Just as well could ahd. Gougalāri and ae. Gēogelerer borrowings of the Latin ioculator "buffoon, jester" (from Latin iocus "fun, joke", from it also English joke "joke"), which in turn resulted in the juggler in French , a word that covers a very similar area of meaning as in Germans denote the jugglers and by no means just juggling acrobats, but general traveling showmen or comedians. But it is also conceivable that the juggler belongs to a family of words around the root word Gauch , i.e. the old Germanic, but now archaic or dialectic name of the cuckoo , which has always been used as a swear word and then as much as “fool, fool " Idiot " means (as already ahd. Gouh and mhd. Giegel ; the cuckoo is considered stupid in the popular imagination of the Germans). A juggler would be someone in the real sense of the word who behaves as stupidly as a fool.
Social status
Unlike today's terms entertainer, artist or comedian, the term jugglers partly negative connotations, because with him dishonest Itinerant people is connected, which is just out to pull the money out of the inexperienced citizens, or as cutpurse to deprive. For this reason, jugglers used to stand outside the social class and had no legal, ecclesiastical or social validity. Legal texts such as Sachsenspiegel and Schwabenspiegel , but also city rights , did not protect the lives of travelers, their integrity or their property.
Nowadays the term is used more impartially. It happens that artists even refer to themselves as jugglers or that a street festival takes up the term in its name. The term juggler has also largely given up the connotation dishonest , although a certain reluctance towards jugglers and similar professional groups is still maintained today. In contrast to jugglers who show nothing they cannot do, the term pretend in its negative meaning is more likely to deceive magicians and sleight-of-hand. However, the term juggler refers more to the juggler and artist than to magicians and sleight-makers.
The subject of jugglers in art
Jugglers have often become objects of artistic processing. The painter Hieronymus Bosch depicted the juggler in one of his most famous oil paintings, and in 1905 Pablo Picasso painted “The Juggler Family”.
literature
- Frank Meier: jugglers, prostitutes, pied piper. Outsiders in the Middle Ages. Thorbecke, Ostfiltern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7995-0157-6 .
For literary processing see:
- The jugglers of Harry Thürk
- The juggler Pamphalon by Nikolai Leskov
- Juggler legend by Irmtraud Morgner
- Under jugglers of arnulf zitelmann
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ juggler. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 4 : Forschel – retainer - (IV, 1st section, part 1). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1878, Sp. 1563–1565 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
- ↑ Juggler. In: Digital dictionary of the German language . The information about the etymology there is identical to the text of the entry . In: Wolfgang Pfeifer : Etymological Dictionary of German. 2nd Edition. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993.
- ↑ fool. In: Friedrich Kluge , Elmar Seebold : Etymological dictionary of the German language. 25th, updated and expanded edition (e-book), Berlin u. a. 2012.
- ↑ goochelaar. In: Marlies Philippa et al .: Etymologically Woordenboek van het Nederlands. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2003-2009.
- ↑ Example: Lenzburger Gauklerfestival , accessed on June 28, 2018.