May girl

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Adorned May-girl

Maimädchen were in customs called young girls who went 1 May singing and with a wreath of flowers in hair through the village streets to collect gifts. Among the different customs that included corn rings , which carry decorated Maibäumchen ( birch twigs ) or in other areas of Maikerl which a frame with Maigrün wore. This custom is still maintained in Dannenbüttel . Another meaning has established itself in connection with the form of the virgin auction, which is handed down in many areas at the beginning of spring. The may girl is also called may woman or may bride.

Milan or Milan marriage, maiden auction

Girls were auctioned off in taverns in the Cologne area at the beginning of May. For this, the young boys elected a chairman to run the auction. Now the girls who were not present were offered for sale. The auction began with the announcement that everyone present had to bid for one of the maize girls according to the old custom. The bid was awarded to the one who offered the most talers for his favorite. However, payments were not made in thalers, but in pfennigs, which corresponded to the number of thalers and flowed into a communal fund. The boy was solemnly awarded the auctioned girl, which gave him the opportunity to take his maiden girl out to all village festivities for a year. He thus acquired the right to approach the girl. The girl who achieved the highest price was declared May Queen for the following year .

Burn Milan

In some villages in the Siebengebirge , at the end of the auction, the connection to the May girls from the previous year was decided in the night on a hill through a swan song and the symbolic burning of straw dolls. This served to visibly cancel the previous right to these girls. Then the boys went into the forest to cut a maypole or maypole rice for the newly auctioned girl and plant it in front of the girl's house.

Word origin

The name Mailien comes from the month of May and means to borrow, to lean. The girls were quasi “lent” = borrowed from the boys, ie transferred as a loan, which is why it was also referred to as a mail marriage.

Origin of the custom

Carl Rademacher saw as the origin of this custom the girls' auctions in West Africa, Syrian daughter huts or an old custom of offering women for sale from Old Babylon , which Herodotus passed on. Herodotus reports that in Babylon the girls, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, were publicly auctioned in order to enter into a marriage. Beautiful or rich girls achieved higher prices than the others. A minimum bid was set for each girl, the additional amount offered was given to the girls as a dowry. In Milan this has been passed down to some extent, so the young man publicly buys a kind of right to the may girl. He only bids on a girl whose love he wants to win.

The maiden auction is also proven in the Cologne Carnival of the 16th century. Herrmann Weinsberg reports in 1538 that he got a maiden for money as a fief during Shrovetide, with whom he was allowed to dance during Shrovetide. Some fiefdoms also lasted longer, their goal being to initiate marriage.

This custom of the girls' auction, which is still carried out in some villages in the Cologne area, is viewed very critically by some. It meant a humiliation of the women whose value was appraised at the auctions. Women who had only fetched a low price became the mockery of the community. Since this custom was no longer compatible with the modern image of women, it was abolished in most places.

reception

May girl in the poem

  • Karl Gotthard Graß: The pilgrim or the May girl. Romance from a rhapsodic poem. The spirit with the lamp or the holy nights . In: Livona. A historical-poetic paperback for the German-Russian Baltic Sea provinces . Friedrich Meinshausen, Riga / Dorpat 1812, p. 81–83 ( archive.org - with sheet music on p. 80 music composed by A. Preis).

Stories and comedies were written on the subject of the virgin auction and the Milan marriage.

  • WHERE von Horn : The Mailehen . In: Johannes Erler, A. Wiegand (Ed.): Collected folk tales . tape 3 . S.-A. Geibel Verlag, Altenburg 1907 ( books.google.de ).
  • Florentine Gebhardt: The Mail Marriage. A cheerful game f. Volk u. more mature youth (=  youth and people's stage . Issue 448). A. Strauch, Leipzig 1926, OCLC 72527223 .
  • Heinrich Ruppel: Mailehen: game in two acts. According to a Hessian folk custom (=  young people and club stage . Issue 68). Bernecker, Melsungen 1939, OCLC 177177614 .

literature

  • Wilhelm Mannhardt: Chapter V. Vegetation spirits: Maibrautschaft . In: The tree cult of the Teutons and their neighboring tribes; mythological investigations . Borntraeger, Berlin 1875, p. 422-496 ( archive.org ).
  • Carl Rademacher : Maisitten on the Rhine - The Mailien . In: Friedrich Salomon Krauss (Hrsg.): Am Ur-quell: Monthly for Folklore . tape IV , booklet IX / X and XI. G. Kramer, Hamburg 1893, p. 227–232 and 237–241 ( archive.org ).
  • Hans Sendling: Maisitte and Mailehen . In: Velhagen and Klasings monthly books . Vol. 19, volume 2 . Velhagen and Klasing, Bielefeld 1905, OCLC 255027354 , p. 314-320 .
  • Friedrich Dierker: The Rhenish Mailehen by its essence, its distribution and its position in the community (=  contributions to Rhenish folklore in individual representations . Volume 11 ). Martini & Grüttefien, Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1939, OCLC 245696046 .
  • Mail marriages . In: Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer , Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (Hrsg.): Concise dictionary of German superstition (=  concise dictionaries for German folklore ). tape 5 : Garlic - Matthias . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-11-084009-X , Sp. 1537–1538 ( books.google.de ).
  • Michael Faber: For the first, the second and the third. Women's auctions in the Rhineland. In: The bride. Loved - sold - bartered - stolen. On the role of women in a cultural comparison. Exhibition catalog, Volume 2, Cologne 1985, pp. 440–450.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nauholz lives - Traditions nauholz.de.
  2. ^ Chronicle of Dannenbüttel from 1500. In Abschmitt 1972. zumgutenhirten-sassenburg.de.
  3. ↑ Mail marriage . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition. Volume 13, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1908, p.  125 .
  4. ^ A b Carl Rademacher : Maisitten am Rhein - The Mailien . In: Friedrich Salomon Krauss (Hrsg.): Am Ur-quell: Monthly for Folklore . tape IV , booklet IX / X and XI. G. Kramer, Hamburg 1893, p. 229-230 ( archive.org ).
  5. ↑ fiefdom . In: Former Academy of Sciences of the GDR, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): German legal dictionary . tape 8 , issue 5/6 (edited by Heino Speer and others). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1988, ISBN 3-7400-0075-9 , Sp. 879-895 ( adw.uni-heidelberg.de ).
  6. ↑ Christine Stark: “Cult prostitution” in the Old Testament? The Qedeschen of the Hebrew Bible and the motif of fornication (=  Orbis biblicus et orientalis . Volume 221 ). Academic Press / Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Friborg / Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-53021-8 , p. 10–11 ( books.google.de ).
  7. ↑ Elisabeth Skrzypek: "The women were great ..." Women celebrate the fifth season . Oertel Spörer, Reutlingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-88627-691-2 , p. 25th f .
  8. ↑ Michael Faber: For the first, for the second and for the third. Women's auctions in the Rhineland . In: The bride. Loved - sold - bartered - stolen. On the role of women in a cultural comparison . tape 2 . Cologne 1985, p. 440-450 .