Juffer

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A Juffer - Ripuarian "Jufe" or "Jofe" (plural "Jufere", nickname "Jüfesche" or "Jööfche") - denotes in the Rhineland , especially along the Rur between Heimbach ( Eifel ) and the Jülich Land and on the Inde in the area around Eschweiler originally a virgin, prayer sister or bigot. Today the word is used derogatory, mostly connected with the addition “old” and in the sense of “ stuck , ossified, unfit (old) virgin”: Do köt di aal Jufe op os Huus aan! ('The old maiden is approaching our house!')

Juffern in sagas and apparitions

On the other hand, Juffern are part of sagas in the western Rhineland. A particularly large number of Juffern sagas are known from the Düren , Eschweiler and Jülich areas at Rur and Inde , because they were collected and published there a hundred years ago by Heinrich Hoffmann (1848–1917), the school principal of Düren. It can be assumed that there were also many Juffern sagas between the Eifel and the Rhine , but only a few have been written down. In these legends, the Juffern - contrary to today's usage - are described as self-confident, majestic and ageless virgins before whom the trees bow. They rarely wear headgear such as pointed hats, myrtle crowns or veils. You appear either in groups of three or alone. They are called dumb beings, and legends warn against speaking to them as this would result in death. They walked benevolently and kindly, sometimes mourning, through their sanctuary and stood out for their pretty, fairy appearance, majestic gait and elegant clothing - in stark contrast to the ugly witches who also have their place in the world of legends and fairy tales on the Rur. Eyewitnesses particularly noticed the clothing, who spoke of clothing reminiscent of the matrons' costume , dazzling white robes and long silk that rustled when walking. This is the origin of names like wisse Juffer (= white Juffer) and ruschije Juffer (= rushing Juffer). In addition, there was also the "schwazze Juffer" (black Juffer), whose appearance was considered ominous. Often this noise announced the Juffer shortly before their appearance .

Legends from Dürboslar , Frauenrath and Röhe tell of a trio of Jufferers: They are called Kriesch or Gräll Märge, Pell Märge and Schwell Märge.

There are also reports of dancing and exulting juffern, who perform happy fertility and mythical moon dances mostly in May and at midsummer. Again, there is a clear difference to witches: Jufferndanzplatz are not in the dark forest, but on meadows and fields.

Some Juffern are settled in old castle walls and can be equated with deceased castle maidens. In various cases, especially in the Jülich region, they take on the role of white women who are spotted in or near the castles and who, by their appearance, often announce the death of a family member. Here we are certainly dealing with the amalgamation of two types of sagas (technical term: contamination).

A possible explanation of the numerous Juffern sagas with Juffern and headless women are the images of gods and matron stones , which were beheaded or mutilated during the Christianization , because Juffern sagas come at least apparently almost exclusively from areas where matron stones were also found. Furthermore, like the matrons, they only appeared in a certain area, their protected area. However, the matron hoods , which suggest marriage , do not appear in the sagas. According to this interpretation, the Gallo-Roman goddesses, the so-called matrons, lived on after the end of their worship in the world of legends and as apparitions in popular belief. The emphasis on the virginity of the Juffern can be an indication of the dominance of the middle, virgin goddess of Matron Trinity or a Christian emphasis.

The Juffer as a damaging revenant

In several traditions from the Jülich region (Koslar, Linnich) there is talk of Juffern, which by no means fit into the picture sketched above of a noble virgin walking across the fields, blessing and smiling. Often these phenomena were described as headless, and then they were consistently considered dangerous. The origin of the figure type "headless Juffer" is sometimes attributed to Christian destruction, which found its expression, for example, in the smashing of the heads of pre-Christian matron pictures. But this seems to be a bleak interpretation from retrospect, because the type of the headless is by no means tied to the Juffer, but also to the "headless man" and - above all on the middle reaches of the Rur - to the " headless rider ", the Encountered living people both damaging and admonishing at night. The "headless Junker" from Koslar grabs the breast of a maid who walks across the fields at night and makes her lose weight and die within a few days.

The vernacular tried to explain the headlessness of these apparitions with a crime that was not atoned for during lifetime and for which the person concerned should have been beheaded. In the case of the Juffern, it was often assumed that they were child murderers; H. about young women who, out of fear and shame, had killed and buried their newborns or thrown them into the river. Such a "Kengsjuffer (Kindsjuffer)" was spotted on the Rur near Leversbach (between Düren and Nideggen ). The young woman had drowned herself and was afterwards on the north side of the cemetery, i. H. in unconsecrated earth, was buried ( donkey burial ). Child murder and suicide were traditionally a reason for the return of women; That is, she got out of the grave at night and went about as a "living corpse" at the site of her crime. The "Juffer von Leversbach" always carried a bundle in her arms, which was supposed to symbolize her murdered child. The fact that the passing dead often appeared without a head can best be connected with the age-old belief that the head is the seat of the soul. Since the headless revenants had committed a serious crime during their lifetime, their souls had to burn in purgatory or in hell, while the rest of the body had to go around night after night as a warning to the living. Such revenants were considered dangerous. You could neither address nor mock them. At most, the person who met them was allowed to say a prayer for the salvation of their souls, which meant the redemption of the sinner and the end of her haunted. Those who did not adhere to this taboo often paid with their life: the dead woman crushed him, dragged him into the river or slapped him so violently that the man died from it or fell into a lifelong infirmity. Especially on rivers and streams, the Juffer appeared as a pop-up , d. That is, she jumped on the living person's back and allowed herself to be carried a little while, becoming heavier and heavier and pressing the completely exhausted person to the ground before jumping off and disappearing into night and fog. The Rhenish Juffer shares this trait with other haunted characters in the region, the Aachener Bahkauv (Bach calf) and the werewolf , who is called " Stüpp " in his crouching variant between Düren and Cologne .

The above-mentioned dancing and cheering juffern often faced threatening female figures who included the nocturnal wanderer in their dance and left him exhausted or half-dead on the ground. Through the wild dance they had deprived him of the life force that they apparently needed to go on living themselves. This brings this variety close to central and eastern European mythical figures (viles, vampires). Tradition often reports that the dancing juffern would not let go of the man they had once grasped until he was completely exhausted. This leads to the conclusion that they were by no means disembodied spirit beings, but rather “living dead”, to whom popular belief attributes special physical strength. Only recently does the revenant character of these beings seem to have faded into the background in favor of a certain ghostliness, although this is in open contradiction to other traditions. It cannot be denied that some collectors of sagas of the 19th century intervened here in editing and brought the undead Juffern into the vicinity of good fairies, which was then ideally suited to underpin the matron theory.

A mixture with the fairy type can also be seen in a special variant of the Juffer, which occurs mainly between Düren and Linnich: On certain nights, a black Juffer comes out of a tree near the "Haus Verken" estate near Merken (Kr. Düren) and proclaim the names of those people who will die within a certain period of time. Whoever sees them is also doomed to die. Sometimes the person concerned sees himself in a dream or in a ghostly apparition in the dance with the Juffer or with the three Juffern, whereby his / her imminent passing is announced. Possibly we are dealing with the Baumjuffer with a relic of the belief in female tree spirits who have merged with the figure of the Juffer. Also the shape of the after-eater or catcher, i.e. H. of a still “active” deceased, who pulls his relatives underground from the grave, may have flowed into this figure.

This fact could be used as evidence that the Juffer - or at least important elements that have united to this legendary figure - was originally a revenant and was viewed as damaging. This would be in line with the thesis recently put forward by various sides that the belief in malicious undead was not limited to the Southeast European area and only concerned the vampire type, but should be viewed as a pan-European belief that extends from Greece and the Ukraine to to Iceland and was only reshaped almost beyond recognition by later influences, whereby Christianity and especially the Protestant churches as well as industrialization, but also the falsification by romanticizing saga collectors, played an important role.

Examples of Juffern sagas in the Rhineland

In advance of the local distribution of the traditional Jufferner sagas, it should be noted that almost all of the relevant records go back to the Düren senior teacher Heinrich Hoffmann. All later collections of sagas are based almost exclusively on his research, which he carried out between 1900 and 1910 in the area between Heimbach (Eifel) and the Jülich region and in the Eschweiler area. As can be seen from the explanations of his biographer Gottfried Henssen, the scientific usability of the printed edition from 1911-14 is impaired by three shortcomings: 1. The informants were in the vicinity of the industrial cities on Rur and Inde (Düren, Jülich and Eschweiler) often not or no longer willing to give information openly about the well-known ghost figures (Juffern, werewolves , revenants ), because they did not appear to be superstitious to the headmaster Hoffmann, who appeared as an authority. 2. Hoffmann published only part of his extensive and now almost completely disappeared records. 3. Hoffmann assigned a certain type of saga to a place, but did not note whether and, above all, how often he could prove it elsewhere. Therefore, a quantifying, that is, a focus-setting allocation or distribution of the Juffern belief, for example in an area with an archaeologically proven matron cult , is rather speculative.

Headless Juffern occur in the Eschweiler area: between Kinzweiler and Hehlrath , near Kinzweiler Castle , near Hastenrath , near Lürken , in Schevenhütte , near Gut Bovenberg between Nothberg and Hü Hügel , in Eschweiler's old town , in Röhe and near Haus Palant near Weisweiler .

  • A Juffer is reported at Greenskuhl at Drimbornshof in Dürwiß .
  • According to legend, you shouldn't get too close to the Juffer in Kuhgasse (today: Bismarckstraße ) in Eschweiler (Aachen city region) because it is dangerous.
  • A legend from Heimbach Castle (Düren district) and a legend from Dürwiß (Aachen city region, formerly Jülich district) tell of Juffern who shake fruit thieves from the trees, drive them away and then cheer and clap.
  • The Juffer vom Hohenstein near Eschweiler is particularly beautifully dressed and carries a silk umbrella, a silver-studded book of the dead in her hand and a wreath of flowers on her head. You shouldn't speak to them, otherwise you will be noted in the book and have to die that same year.
  • The Juffer von Jüngersdorf (Düren district) wears a black robe as if in mourning, and her face is covered by a long, flowing black veil. Others are dressed half white and half black.
  • In Kall (Euskirchen) Juffern haunt in the forest child Hardt, where to but still found no Matronensteine. At a Roman canal and the Stolzenburg there is told of three Juffern, which are reflected in the Urft and bring death to those passing by.
  • In Merzenich (Düren district), a farmer reports of three dancing Juffern who, one afternoon, laughing and holding hands, dancing in circles on his oat field.
  • The Juffern von Nettersheim (Euskirchen district) sit on moonlit nights where Schleifbach and Wellerbach flow into the Urft . Above these places there is a matron temple.
  • At Scherpenseel (district of Eschweiler) a white, death-bringing Juffer is said to live in an old tree. She emerges at midnight, walks or floats to the Gressenicher Mühle , which in local legends was also known as the witches' playground (in the form of a cat), and then returns to the tree.
  • In Türnich (Rhein-Erft district) there is a report of a Juffer who lives in the so-called "Juffernbuche", loves the sun and moon and appears at midnight, at noon or at dusk.
  • In Cologne on Hohe Strasse near the Severinstorburg , a noble, beautiful, richly curled, very tall lady is haunted and meets hikers at night. She is mute and her embrace brings death within a few days. Of course, it should be noted here that belonging to the Juffern type is very questionable, because this haunted figure clearly belongs to a rural and by no means a metropolitan area. Of course, it is possible that legendary elements from the rural surrounding area (Rhein-Erft district) merged with a ghost figure from the city, for example of the "White Woman" type.
  • Between Ederen and Freialdenhoven (Düren district, formerly Jülich district), Juffern haunt the Merzbachtal, as a poem describes.
  • In the "Sage of the Globeflowers" it is the Juffern who keep the trolls from sinking into the "spongy". To mark the way, they let flowers with yellow heads (globeflowers) sprout from the moor.
  • Between Nideggen and Heimbach there is a red sandstone rock, the so-called 'Jufferlei'.

There are more Juffern sagas in and near Bonn , in Derichsweiler (Düren) , Gürzenich (Düren) and Leversbach near Untermaubach (Düren district), Hehlrath (Aachen city region), Mechernich (Euskirchen district), Nörvenich (Düren district) and Weisweiler (Aachen city region , formerly Düren district) as well as near Bedburg (Rhein-Erft district), near Gey (Düren district), near Koslar, Linnich and Tetz (near Jülich) and Hambach (Düren district), near Satzvey (Euskirchen district), near Cologne Wahn and between Euchen and Bardenberg near Würselen (Aachen city region).

Monuments

In Geilenkirchen (Kr. Heinsberg) a modern fountain sculpture by the Aachen sculptor Bonifatius Stirnberg reminds of the "Haihover Juffer".

Others

literature

  • Hans Bächtold-Stäubli, Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer (Ed.): Concise dictionary of German superstition. Ten volumes. Berlin 1927–1942. (Reprint: with introduction by Chr. Daxelmüller. Berlin 2000).
  • Eva Behrens-Bommel (ed.): Legends and traditions of the Jülich country . Jülich 1996.
  • Franz Cramer: Roman matron cult as reflected in folk tradition. In: Eifel calendar. 1936, p. 29.
  • M. Cremer: What people tell each other on the Erft. In: Erftbote. 1951, pp. 74-76.
  • Gerda Grober-Glück: Sit up and sit up according to the collections of the Atlas of German Folklore. In: Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde. 15-16, 1965, pp. 117-143.
  • Karl Guthausen: Sagas and legends from the Eifel and Ardennes. Volume 2, Aachen 1994.
  • Gottfried Henssen (Ed.): Legends, fairy tales and Schwänke of the Jülich country. From the estate of Heinrich Hoffmann ed. u. supplemented by own records. (= German people on the Rhine. 6). Bonn 1955.
  • Heinrich Hoffmann: On the folklore of the Jülich country. 1st part: Legends from the Rur area. Eschweiler 1911 and Part 2: Legends from the Indes region. Eschweiler 1914. - Most important source on the subject!
  • Peter Kremer: Where horror lurks. Terrifying stories of bloodsuckers and headless riders, werewolves and revenants on Inde, Erft and Rur. PeKaDe-Verlag, Düren 2003, ISBN 3-929928-01-9 .
  • Peter Kremer: Dracula's cousins. On the trail of the revenant belief in Germany. Extended edition. Düren 2006.
  • A. Course: Book of legends and legends. Cologne 1881.
  • Sophie Lange: Where goddesses protect the land. Matrones and their places of worship between the Eifel and the Rhine. UHP Hinz Verlag, Sonsbeck 1994, ISBN 3-9803876-0-7 .
  • Sophie Lange: Divine matrons, healing Marys and legendary Juffern. In: Series of publications by the Eschweiler history association. No. 12, Eschweiler 1991. (online)
  • H. Roggendorf: Mechernich: Old and new on home and parish history. (Cologne 1929).

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