Hamburger greeting

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The Hamburg greeting “Hummel, Hummel - Mors, Mors” is a traditional saying or exclamation that originated in Hamburg , in which one person addresses a second person with “Hummel, Hummel”, who then replies “Mors, Mors”. It is not so much a greeting that is common in Hamburg , but rather a sign of recognition or a battle cry used by hamburgers .

Creation and translation

The greeting is probably due to the water carrier Johann Wilhelm Bentz , who died in 1854, who was one of the old Hamburg originals under the nickname and mockery of Hummel or Hans Hummel (see there for the origin of the name) and has remained a well-known and popular Hamburg figure to this day .

The children in the area liked to run after the heavily laden water carrier Bentz and call him the mocking name “Hummel, Hummel”. Bentz, who was unable to defend himself physically because of the heavy load, always replied with “Mors, Mors”, the short form of “Klei mi an'n Mors”. The latter is often referred to in the literature as a Low or Low German variant of the Swabian greeting ("Lick my ass").

use

During the First World War , the saying became the identification mark of the Hamburg soldiers.

The saying is not used by Hamburgers as a greeting in the narrower sense, but as a battle cry, for example in football, and occasionally as a recognition call when greeting another hamburger outside of Hamburg. It has already happened that bands that made guest appearances in Hamburg greeted their fans with a powerful "Hummel Hummel!", Which of course replied with a "Mors Mors!" It used to be common to greet hamburgers abroad with the words Hummel Hummel .

In the mid-1990s, the Hamburg greeting was used in the music track Nordisch by Nature by the band Fettes Brot .

For some time now, the greeting has been used in the context of the home games of the Hamburger Sport-Verein , the Hamburg handball club and the Hamburg Freezers . After a goal by the home team and the following cheers, the stadium or hall spokesman first calls out the name of the goalscorer and the current score. Finally, the call “Hummel Hummel” always sounds through the stadium, to which the fans tend to answer with the obligatory “Mors Mors”.

In fact, the use of "Hummel, Hummel - Mors, Mors" as a greeting in Hamburg arouses rather irritated looks and suggests that the outsider, ie. H. Not from Hamburg, speakers - locally also called Quiddje - want to stand out as a supposed connoisseur of Hamburg culture. The greeting from Schleswig-Holstein has been widespread in Hamburg since the 1970 / 80s: " Moin ", which can in principle be used at any time of the day or night.

In the 2008 state election, Die Grünen changed the Hamburg greeting to “Hummel, Hummel, Murks, Murks - creative ideas instead of old recipes”.

literature