Billy goat auction
The Deidesheim billy goat auction is an old town festival in the form of a history game, which is celebrated every year on the Tuesday after Whitsun in the town of Deidesheim an der Weinstrasse ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) in the Upper Palatinate . The highlight is the auction of a billy goat .
overview
The festival goes back to an old Whitsun legal custom: For several centuries, the city of Lambrecht had to deliver a billy goat every year to compensate for grazing rights in the forest area of the city of Deidesheim. In 1808, even Napoleon Bonaparte was called upon to mediate because of disputes over contractual details . Later, in the second half of the 19th century, the once serious agreement, Lambrecht's obligation to deliver, developed into a folk festival . It is estimated that it attracts eight to ten thousand foreign visitors annually, so that the small town's less than 4,000 inhabitants become a minority.
In reminiscence of the history of the billy goat auction, two Palatine sculptors created a billy goat fountain in each of the two cities involved - Gernot Rumpf from Neustadt an der Weinstrasse in 1985 at the Deidesheim city hall, Theo Rörig from Hettenleidelheim in 2000 on Herzog-Otto-Platz in Lambrecht.
Traditionally, “billy goat sausages” are served in many Deidesheim households on Whit Tuesday on the occasion of the billy goat auction; they are actually veal sausages .
history
The town of Lambrecht, located a few kilometers from Deidesheim in the Palatinate Forest , had had permission to graze cattle in the Deidesheim “Hinterwald” since 1404. In return, which was first mentioned in 1534, but had probably already been requested before, Lambrecht had to deliver a billy goat to Deidesheim every Whit Tuesday at sunrise . According to the formulation at the time, this had to be “bene cornutus et bene capabilis” ( Latin for “well horned and well shackled”) so that it could be used for breeding. The youngest Lambrecht citizen - the youngest bride and groom since 1934, as there was no longer any entry into civil rights in the old sense - had the task of delivering the billy goat in Deidesheim. The goat was then auctioned in Deidesheim in favor of the city sack. However, there were repeated disputes about the quality of the buck between the two cities.
At the beginning of the 19th century - in the meantime the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine was temporarily part of French national territory - there was another dispute. Deidesheim sent a messenger to Napoleon Bonaparte to end the dispute. In his camp during the conquest of Spain , the general signed the following decree on November 26, 1808 : "The old grazing rights are still granted, but that they [note: the city of Lambrecht] continue to pay the usual recognition of a well-horned and well-pouched billy goat ..."
In 1851 - now under Bavarian administration - another dispute broke out. Deidesheim rejected the trestle supplied by Lambrecht because it did not have the required properties and the delivery was only made after sunrise. The billy goat was not accepted the next year either, so Lambrecht stopped deliveries. Eventually Deidesheim filed a lawsuit, and in 1857 the appellate court in Zweibrücken decided the process: Lambrecht had to deliver the contractually guaranteed bucks for the years 1851 to 1857 and Deidesheim had to pay the court costs. Therefore, eight bucks were delivered in 1858, but one of them was rejected again.
For a long time it was not easy for the city of Lambrecht to find a suitable billy goat; In 1910 a goat even had to be bought from Thuringia . The reason was that the Saanen goat , which was preferred in the Palatinate at that time, had no horns, so it could not meet the requirements.
The city of Lambrecht has called its parish fair on the 1st weekend in August Gäßbock-Kerwe as the equivalent of the Deidesheim billy goat auction . The Palatinate dialect can be spoken with a long ä and means billy goat church fair in High German .
Deidesheim had an agreement similar to that with Lambrecht with the towns of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse , Haardt and Gimmeldingen : In order to compensate for their grazing rights, these towns had to give the Deidesheim council a snack every year. However, the three towns were able to buy their way out of this obligation in 1755 with a one-off payment.
History game
prehistory
In the meantime, what was once a serious matter has turned into a folk festival for the delivery and auction of the tribute goat , which successfully strives to preserve the old tradition. Although the day is a normal working day, the event is attended by up to ten thousand guests each year.
The template for the history game about the “High City Court”, which is presented in front of the Deidesheim town hall , comes partly from the “Historical Whitsun Festival Deidesheim / Palatinate”, which was performed on Whitsun 1927 with over a hundred participants in the Alte Bleiche. This piece was written by the Lambrecht author Karl Rauch . The plot of the play took place in 1528, at a time when Deidesheim was still part of the Prince Diocese of Speyer .
Hike to Deidesheim
The tribute goat must be handed over by the youngest bride and groom from Lambrecht at sunrise at the Deidesheim tree line. This is about three hours' walk from Lambrecht. At 5:30 in the morning, a kind of popular hike starts in Lambrecht, because the young bridal couple is accompanied by up to 200 people.
At the Deidesheimer Hütte , the group is greeted by a Deidesheimer dressed as a “prince-bishop's forest ranger” along with a “town soldier” flag . The forest ranger reads out the letter of safe conduct and serves the Lambrecht couple a sip of wine from their Schlotterkrug. After singing the Lambrecht billy goat song , the march to Deidesheim city limits takes place.
At 10 a.m. the group is received by the Deidesheim delegation, consisting of the mayor, city council, Kolping band, the Deidesheim primary school students and a large number of onlookers, at the southern entrance to the town. Here the primary school students sing the Deidesheim billy goat song . Everyone then moves to the square in front of the historic town hall, where the “High City Court” is located.
Hearing of the "High City Court"
The groom hands over the handover certificate to the " mayor ". Then the trial of the city court begins, during which the buck is checked for his horn and his ability to be disciplined. While the city judges can answer the question of whether the billy goat is well-horned for themselves by simply looking, the question of the nature of its bag requires the expertise of the “prince-bishop's cattle yard master”. He carries out an examination with practiced fingers and gives his consent with the words: "... and as far as its usage is concerned, I stand with my word for the fact that the buck is good for breeding." If there are no complaints, it applies the buck as accepted.
Further discussion material for the city court now provides the question of the distribution of the climbing price due in the evening for the billy goat. According to an old contract, the proceeds of the auction between Deidesheim and the neighboring town of Niederkirchen are to be divided in a ratio of 2: 1, because after the municipalities were divided in 1819, both towns still share certain areas and paths. However, the division only has to be made if the mayor of Niederkirchen was present at the handover of the buck in the forest at sunrise and the auction in the evening. However, to the amusement of the festival participants, the city court notes that he was absent from the morning handover. After the words “I saw the mayor of Niederkirchen yesterday evening in a Deidesheim inn. He probably didn't get the good Deidesheimer wine there, because it is strong and has already knocked some people off their feet “it is finally decided that Niederkirchen's claim to a third of the climbing price for this year has been forfeited.
After the court session, the Lambrecht bride and groom received cheese bread and wine as agreed. The event now has a break until the afternoon; the goat may fortify itself with fresh grass for its auction.
Preparation of the auction
The event continues at 3 p.m. with a concert by the Kolping Chapel. From 16 hours a folkloric program takes place - with folk dances of the folk group, with the barrel hatching and the coopers impact . The barrel hatching is a competition between boys and girls, in which it is important to get in and out of a wooden barrel as quickly as possible through the little barrel door; it is reminiscent of a time when children still had to clean wooden barrels that an adult would not have fit in. The Küferschlag is a historical change song between a cooper and his journeymen. Since there are no more cooper in Deidesheim, the song is performed by the Liederkranz men's choir .
Now another session of the city court begins. The judgment made in the morning regarding the acceptance of the billy goat is confirmed again. Then the grazing rights for the coming year are negotiated with the emissaries from Neustadt, Gimmeldingen and Haardt. The mayor of Niederkirchen also appears before the city court and asks for a share of the climb price for the neighboring town; However, this is refused to him by the city court with reference to the contractual condition. The meeting is followed by greetings from the Mayor of Deidesheim, the Palatinate Wine Queen and the Wine Princess of the Deidesheim community .
There has been a competition since 1949, in which the public can estimate the likely rise price until the start of the auction. Vouchers from Deidesheim gastronomy and various wine prizes are available to those who come closest to the result.
auction
After the auction conditions have been read out, the largest bell in the tower of the neighboring Catholic parish church of Ortisei begins to ring at exactly 5:45 p.m. , and the auction on the double-sided town hall stairs begins. Exactly "with the strike of the sixth hour", the last stroke of the parish church bell at 6 pm, the hammer falls.
The bidder must put the rise price in cash on the mayor's table in the council chamber before he can take the billy goat and the certificate with him. The sums paid for the goats vary considerably; in the last ten years they have ranged between 2200 and 6100 euros.
Stage works and film
Hippolyt August Schaufert (1834–1872) addressed the billy goat auction in his comedy A Kiss at the Right Time or the billy goat by Lambrecht , which was transferred to the Palatinate in 1990 by Bruno Hain under the title Deerschte Schmatz om right square . In 1924 Europa-Film AG (Berlin) made a documentary entitled Fröhlich Pfalz, Gott erhalt’s ; for this, on September 21, 1924, a Sunday, the billy goat auction with all the trimmings was held for the second time in the same year. The billy goat auction festival is also the subject of the operetta Palatinate Musicians by Hans Striehl, which premiered in 1956 .
literature
- Karl Heinz Himmler, Berthold Schnabel , Paul Tremmel : Tuesday after Whitsun - the high point in the life of the Deidesheim billy goat . Ed .: Office for Tourism, Deidesheim. D. Meininger Verlag, Neustadt / Weinstrasse 1982, ISBN 3-87524-023-5 .
- Heinz Schmitt : Celebrations and everyday life. A contribution to the folklore of Deidesheim . In: Kurt Andermann, Berthold Schnabel (Ed.): Deidesheim - Contributions to the history and culture of a city in the wine country . Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen 1995, ISBN 3-7995-0418-4 , p. 327-333 .
- Heinz Schmitt: billy goat, wine and state visits - Deidesheim over the last 150 years . Ed .: City of Deidesheim. Verlag Pfälzer Kunst, Landau in der Pfalz 2000, ISBN 3-922580-82-3 , p. 93-96 .
- Berthold Schnabel: Documented history of the Lambrecht billy goat from its beginnings to 1809 . In: Heimatfreunde Deidesheim und Umgebung e. V. (Ed.): Deidesheimer Heimatblätter. Contributions to the history of the former prince-bishop's office in Speyer and today's Deidesheim association . No. 5 , 1990. ( OCLC 180565940 )
Web links
- Billy goat customs on lambrecht-pfalz.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Schmitt: Festival and everyday life…. P. 327
- ^ Karl Heinz Himmler: Chronicle 75 years of the Lambrecht tourist office. (No longer available online.) Lambrecht Tourist Office, 2003, archived from the original on May 18, 2010 ; Retrieved June 9, 2014 .
- ↑ Regional hiking trail. Deidesheim - Geißbockweg. (PDF) Verbandsgemeinde Lambrecht (Pfalz), accessed on September 7, 2019 . (PDF; 1.0 MB)
- ↑ The Steigerer since 1900! Tourist Service GmbH Deidesheim, accessed on June 20, 2019 .
