House inscription

Half-timbered courtyard from 1779 in the Hohenhorst peasantry with house inscriptions (gate and entablature)

As house inscription is commonly referred to inscriptions on religious, public and private, in many buildings, residential buildings or outbuildings such as barn, bakehouse, stables, storage or carriage house.
According to their content, house inscriptions can be divided into four main groups: building inscription , building claim , saying inscription (also called house saying ) and, in a broader sense, the group of signs .

distribution

Inscriptions were widespread far beyond the borders of today's Federal Republic of Germany , especially in Switzerland , the Austrian Alpine countries , Alsace , the north-western Netherlands , Denmark and the old colonist areas of Transylvania . However, apart from church and other public buildings and apart from pure building inscriptions, no separate house inscription culture has developed in the rest of Europe . Even Roman inscriptions are not really comparable with the German-language ones.

Emergence

The historical roots of the house inscription culture lie in the distant past. In the form of symbolic signs, the house inscription is likely to have been known in pre-Christian times. Already the Teutons attached skulls of slain animals to doorways or house gables to ward off and protect against malicious forces. A well-known trademark of pagan origin are the crossed horse heads on the house gable. These horses - as the animals of the (all) powerful and (protective) powerful gods and rulers - were less used for decoration. They should - like the pentagram and other symbols of Christian or pre-Christian character such as the cross or tree of life - rather guarantee protection and defense. This demand for protection is one of the fundamental characteristics of house inscriptions in later times. In isolated cases German-language house inscriptions can be found as early as the beginning of the 14th century, German-language inscriptions even from the early Middle Ages - e.g. B. a grave inscription from the end of the 10th century from Bingen (now in the Museum Mainz). However, we can only speak of a widespread custom or a real house inscription culture in rural areas around the turn of the Reformation secularism. "What was before that are 'forerunners', and what finally comes a full four hundred years later after the end of the actual period of circulation of the inscriptions is 'rearguard'."

Main groups

Building inscription

An important function of early house inscriptions is the documentation of the time of completion of a newly built or modified house. The early building inscriptions were therefore limited to the indication of the year of construction and thus functioned as a kind of building document. An example:

ANNO D (OMI) NI 1598

Later the names of the builders were also given, often also the name of the carpenter responsible. The builders (and possibly also the carpenter) wanted to create a memorial for themselves with such inscriptions. Today, they often serve (also) as genealogical evidence for posterity.

Typical building inscription

Building phrase

In contrast to the building inscription, the building claim contains “executive and evaluating elements”, but (unlike the saying inscription ) is usually linked to a specific event such as B. the reason for a construction project, difficulties in building a house, high costs or extraordinary events during the construction period:

BOVWENT IS A LUST

WAT TT COSTS [HEW IK DON'T KNOW]

ANNO 1610

or:

A ray of dark layers of clouds

that was strange and fateful

Destroy our barn here

when the thunder rang in the distance.

Inscription

The house inscriptions a distinction between secular and religious inscriptions saying can house sayings make. Example of a secular saying:

ALWAYS HAPPY IS DANGEROUS

ALWAYS SAD IS TOUGH

HAPPY IN TIME IS IMPOSSIBLE

ONE AND OTHER IS PLEASANT

In contrast, trust in God and the willingness to obey God's will characterize religious sayings. That this basic attitude was widespread in the past is proven by saying formulas such as God's blessing everything is important or Who has trusted in God probably built: They are among the most common house sayings in the entire German-speaking area.

As the following inscription shows, religious inscriptions asked for God's blessing or for protection for the house, equipment and the people living in it.

We built this house

And have entrusted it to God

He wanted to protect it from misfortune and danger;

And all who live there forever

Also everyone who goes in and out

May God be protected.

House inscription

If existing sayings were adopted, varied or supplemented - which was not uncommon - it was not because of stupid imitation. Rather, it was characterized by constant processing, repeated meditation of the contents of the saying. That means: From and in the repetitions you can see what people in their time particularly valued in their area of ​​life, what moved them, what shaped their thoughts and actions.

character

Symbol of the tree of life on a house inscription

"The signs on the house (jewelry, symbols, brands) require the same careful consideration as the inscription itself in order to be able to make a folklore statement from the overall picture", even if signs such as flowers, tendrils, hearts, curlicues, etc. are often pure today ornamental importance is assigned. In many cases, however, this also reflects the concern for protection, fertility, etc. This also applies in a very similar way to symbols such as the pentagram and other symbols of Christian or pre-Christian character such as the cross or tree of life (see illustration). The situation is different with brands (house brands, coats of arms and maker's marks).

Special forms

Puzzle inscriptions

Abbreviations or deliberately made puzzles of house inscriptions often cause considerable difficulties for the observer. This is less true for well-known abbreviations such as IHS (for Jesus), M R (for Mary) or M (for master). Abbreviations, however, which only have a few letters, to which at most a year is added, require detailed examination. They cannot always really be resolved.

However, what may seem puzzling today often did not require any further explanation in the past. So z. B. the letter combination BDIEL (= building that is a pleasure), the addition of which (“I didn't know what it costs”) was well known in earlier times.

A riddle inscription that is difficult to resolve at first glance is located on the lintel of a hall gate in Langwege near Dinklage . It is:

GGGUSXGBDHADDGIUA

and can - ultimately - easily be resolved by recourse to traditional sayings: God give happiness and blessings. Christ (X). God protect this house, everyone who goes in and out .

Occasionally house inscriptions are actually written as riddles, often they are biblical riddles, e.g. E.g. on Jonas in the whale's belly, the donkey carrying Christ to Jerusalem or on Eve as in the following example:

It was a woman, a beautiful figure,

She married 'before she was one o'clock,

And gave birth before she was a year

And died before she was born.

Chronograms

A chronogram is commonly an inscription that transmits the year of construction in encrypted form. In the classic chronogram, every letter that means a number in Latin gives a numerical value. The following chronogram e.g. B. contains the year of construction 1751 (1 × M = 1000, 1 × D = 500, 2 × C = 100, 1 × L = 50, 1 × I = 1):

MELCHISEDECH

In contrast to the present example, the important letters are usually noticeably capitalized, so that you can easily see that the year of construction is given in the house inscription. “Praise and peace be to this house” is the translation of the following chronogram, which is one of the oldest in southern Oldenburg. The year is also given in digits (Anno 1678):

S I T L A V S ET PA X H VIC D O MVI

Many consider such chronograms to be particularly learned and artistic not only because they were written in Latin, but also because they also require special linguistic dexterity. This also applies to the following chronogram, which contains the year 1773 and translates as "God guard what the sexton at Holten built" (the specialty of the inscription is a successful play on words: custodiat = guard - custos = guardian, guardian):

D E V S CV STO DI AT QUO D CV STOS HO L TENS I S POS VI T

There are also chronograms in German, e.g. B. the following from 1770:

A C H L ASS H I R I N O HERR GESEGN T SE I N

Z V A LL E M WAS H I R GEHET A V S V N D E I N

Inscriptions in alliteration

An essential feature of most house sayings is the end rhyme. The alliance rhyme, on the other hand, only occurs "in traces" and usually in the form of deliberate repetition of very old sayings. Bar words (initial rhyme / alliteration) can be found in house sayings almost only in twin formulas, because these are as common and memorable as z. B. in this:

O God, you g boar all g Ueter

Sey but this H auses H Ueter

The inscription on a house built in Grandorf (Holdorf / Südoldenburg) in 1751 contained a real, Germanic all-round rhyme - it was a quote from the Bible (2 Cor 5: 1). It read:

An H not Auss with H alls made

But eternal in H immel.

A house saying in all of the rhymes is on a Rauhen Schüürn near Bakum (Vechta district), most likely around 1720 to 1730. This inscription is preceded by a motto (it looks like an awkward translation from Low German ):

That is different because the Hogelschlag was and the great storm 29 NOVB 1836

(This was changed when the hailstorm and the great storm November 29, 1836)

This building phrase refers to a devastating storm that caused great damage in the year of change (1836). Affected by this structural “change”, which was obviously accompanied by a reduction in the size of the entrance, was the inscription above the barn door - it had to be shortened (like the entrance from around 3.30 m to 2.60 m today). The complete saying was (completion within the brackets):

Wind Worr Hogel has been kind to us

Van Harm Befrey (us oh Lord)

(Wind, weather, hail have been gracious to us

Deliver us from harm, oh Lord)

In the inscription all the words are:

W ind - W orr, g nedig - g ewesen, V to - Be f rey;

i s - u ns; [ u ns - o ];

H ogel - H arm - ( H err)

The peculiarity of this inscription consists in the fact that it is a stick rhyme (Hogel - Harm - Herr), in which - due to the regular alternation of Low German and High German - all words (even if not full). It also contains an encrypted but unambiguous commitment to the Trinity through the triple H. The Low German word "Harm" clearly refers to the situation of the people on this farm in the 18th century: to need and indebtedness, to self-employment and the associated taxes and services that made economic recovery impossible. The request contained in the inscription (Van Harm Befrey uns o Herr) can certainly be read as a demand for freedom hidden in the prayer formula (libera nos, domine) - all of this indicates that the author of this unique inscription in the German-speaking area is literary and theological must have been well versed.

Cultural and historical significance

Inscriptions on houses and gables, over driveways and entrances - mostly they were carved into the wooden beams of half-timbered houses - are an expression of an ancient demand for protection. That is why they were originally installed in places where the house was most at risk - on the roof, over the door and gate. Following on from pre-Christian ideas (e.g. horse heads on intersecting windboards), threatening forces at the hall gate and front gable are to be kept away through defensive magic, prayer and blessings. German-language house inscriptions can be found in isolated cases as early as the beginning of the 14th century. However, we can only speak of a widespread custom or a real house inscription culture in rural areas around the turn of the Reformation secularism.

House inscriptions are one of the few written evidence from the rural world of the 16th to 18th centuries. Century. Because they reflect the client's self-image and attitude towards life and provide important insights into the thinking and beliefs of the rural population, they are of particular interest from a folk and linguistic point of view, and are of (cultural) historical and genealogical importance. On closer examination, numerous inscriptions can be traced back to common themes and motifs (for example to the motif of the “peregrinatio vitae”, the ongoing pilgrimage on earth).

In certain rural regions of the German-speaking area - but not in the cities - house inscriptions have been part of the cultural tradition and custom for many centuries. The "high time" of house inscriptions in rural areas was formed in the second half of the 17th century, the 18th century and the first two thirds of the 19th century. Those who follow up on the custom of house inscriptions in later times, i.e. in the late 19th and 20th centuries, often do so - as can easily be seen from the corresponding sayings - in a mindset that corresponds to the respective time of origin, which often has little in common has with the original task and function of house inscriptions.

literature

• Herbert Clauß: House inscriptions of the Bersenbrück district. In: Heimat yesterday and today. Issue 17, Bersenbrück 1973.
• Oswald Curtze: The house inscriptions in the Principality of Waldeck , publisher: A. Speyer, Arolsen, 1871. ( digitized online )
• Robert Rüegg: House sayings and folk culture. Basel 1970.
• Theodor Tebbe: stroke of luck inscription. A contribution to the research of house inscriptions in the Oldenburger Münsterland. Dinklage 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-023329-6 .
• Theodor Tebbe: The Vincke house inscription circle. Life and work of Johannes Vincke, Johannes Thomes, Anton Tumbrägel and Joachim Widera Dinklage 2015, ISBN 978-3-00-049296-9 .
• Anton Tumbrägel: Bauerntum und Zeitgeist , In: Heimatkalender für das Oldenburger Münsterland, Vechta 1957
• Anton Tumbrägel: House inscriptions of the Oldenburger Münsterland. In: Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde. 1959, pp. 1-56
• Johannes Vincke: The house inscriptions of the parish Belm. Osnabrück 1948.
• Joachim Widera: Possibilities and Limits of Folklore Interpretation of House Inscriptions. Frankfurt a. M. 1990, ISBN 3-631-43023-X .
• Günter Willenborg: From the house inscription to landscape archeology . In: Heimatblätter . Supplement to the Oldenburgische Volkszeitung from October 9, 2010 (No. 5 / 89th year), p. 46.
• Clemens Woltermann, Walter Deeken: House inscriptions and gable in the Oldenburger Münsterland. Friesoythe / Vechta 1981, ISBN 978-3-88-441010-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to Widera 1990, pp. 84, 102f, the signs (jewelry, symbols, brands) clearly belong to the house inscription; see. also Tebbe 2008 p. 10, Tumbrägel 1959 p. 2 and Vincke 1948 p. 5
2. ↑ cf. all in all the results of the Vincke house inscription circle ; Widera 1990 p. 4ff emphasizes that it was precisely the rural soil on which the house inscriptions have become common property, but not the city, in which, apart from the Hildesheim-Hanover-Braunschweig area, it never developed The distribution of house inscriptions and especially house sayings comparable to the country has come.
3. ↑ Widera 1990, pp. 19-26, deals in more detail with the distribution of house inscriptions in Europe and Islamic areas. He states on page 22: Apart from house inscriptions in the Basque Country, by religious or other public buildings and pure building inscriptions have locked himself in the rest of Europe, the traditional countries of Italy and Spain with their religiosity, no house saying culture developed .
4. ↑ In 1990, Widera discussed the question of the much older roots of the house inscription culture on pp. 15–17, taking into account the relevant specialist publications.
5. ↑ Widera 1990, p. 12f and p. 323, footnote 38.
6. ↑ Widera 1990 p. 17f
7. ↑ Widera 1990 p. 84f; Tebbe 2008 p. 10f
8. ↑ Widera 1990 p. 86ff; Tebbe 2008 p. 11f; Clauss 1973 p. 372
9. ↑ Tebbe 2008 p. 20; see. Widera 1990 p. 59
10. ↑ cf. Widera 1990 p. 102f
11. ↑ Widera 1990 p. 102f; see. also Tebbe 2008 p. 36, p. 74, p. 80ff.
12. ^ Willenborg 2010
13. ↑ Tebbe 2008 p. 18ff; see. Widera 1990 p. 100f
14. ↑ Tebbe 2008 p. 18f; Widera 1990 p. 53ff, p. 101
15. ↑ Rüegg 1970 p. 364; Tebbe 2008 p. 102f
16. ↑ The inscription is analyzed, discussed and historically categorized in more detail in Tebbe 2008 pp. 95–112
17. ↑ http://www.hausinschriften.com - cf. the work of Widera and Tebbe, whose aim is to explain the content of house inscriptions, which is often difficult to reconstruct today.
18. ↑ Widera 1990 p. 303. In the Oldenburger Münsterland, the house inscription experienced its heyday from 1750 - 1850 (Tebbe 2008 p. 9).
19. ↑ Tumbrägel 1957 p. 91f; Widera 1990 pp. 304f

Web links

Commons : House inscription  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• http://www.hausinschriften.com
• House inscriptions in the Lippe district