Mathias Joseph Fischer

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Fischer's Maathes, undated photo from Kurtrier (1920)
Memorial plaque on the house where he was born
Fischer's Maathes on the locust fountain in Trier

Mathias Joseph Fischer (born April 10, 1822 in Trier ; † February 25, 1879 ibid) was a Trier merchant and a well-known city ​​original as Fischer's Maathes . The memory of him is still fostered in Trier today.

Life

Mathias Fischer was born as the youngest of five children of the bookbinder Johann Fischer (1788–1882) and his wife Susanne. He attended the Jesuit grammar school (today Friedrich Wilhelm grammar school ) up to the tertiary and then began an apprenticeship in his father's company. The bindery was in the bread 26, near the school, and also sold pens so that fisherman with his former classmates in contact was that made him 1848 "honorary" in the Primanerkompanie the vigilantes recordings. There he excelled as an expert in firearms until he almost blew himself up during an exercise through negligent recklessness. This mishap, which caused great laughter among his comrades, is passed down in writing through the memories of a contemporary, Ferdinand Meurin.

In the same year he worked as a cigar dealer on Brotstraße and became a member of the Democratic Association. There, however, he was not taken very seriously and characterized as “a genius known throughout the city, who was accepted into the Comité so that someone would be able to deal with the cards and help get the benches in the hall… not sane and not at all for voting elected ". Nevertheless, after the failure of the March Revolution, he played a role when he and Edgar von Westphalen buried incriminating political documents in the Weißhauswald in order to prevent reprisals against sympathizers. Fischer's participation in this action is attested by a letter dated June 8, 1870, in which Westphalen reports that he “packed all files, manifestos, well-intentioned proposals, etc. of the London junta in a pair of tin boxes, these in the presence of the The cigar merchant's Fischer sealed it up and made it up when he went for a walk to Weisshäuschen and buried them all there on H. von Haw's Territorio with Fischer ”.

On April 23, 1852 he married Maria Katharina Meckel (born November 24, 1818). At that time he was working as a grocer's shop on Simeonstrasse. After the death of his father, he took over in 1864 the grocery store in the pants Street 9. A few years later passed away on July 20, 1870 his wife. After her death, Fischer led a bachelor's life again, was often to be found in pubs in the evenings and there addressed the Viez . He was also a long-time member of the Trier Carnival Society Heuschreck . Because of his quick-witted sayings in Trier dialect, he was well-known in the city: "He loved to be the center of rough jokes, passive as well as active, delighted the regular round with funny jokes, let himself be teased, but could also be extremely rough." He commented on an excursion , which his friend Pitt Blasius undertook together with his wife in a landau , with the words: "Pittchen, are you called Eiren kite flying?"

He was usually dressed in a flowered dressing gown with a hip cord, a cap with a silk tassel and slippers. As a heavy smoker, he always had a long tobacco pipe with him. Because of his golden glasses he was sometimes called "Brillfischer".

On the morning of February 25, 1879, Mathias Fischer hanged himself in his shop on Hosenstrasse. Apparently this was not a spontaneous decision, since according to witnesses he had driven a strong nail over his shop door about 14 days beforehand, ostensibly to fix a board for drying cigars there. His death was announced in several Trier newspapers. The Trierische Zeitung wrote that the suicide of the "well-known and original Trier personality" caused a sensation. The Saar-Mosel-Zeitung suspected a mental disorder as the cause, as one had "recently noticed several signs of profundity" in Fischer. There is no contemporary evidence for the rumor that later emerged that Fischer himself hung a sign reading “Closed due to death” on his shop door before his suicide . The burial took place (as was customary at the time for suicides) in the smallest of circles and without church blessing, the exact location of the grave is not known. Fischer's estate was publicly auctioned. The house in which his business was located no longer exists. It had to give way to a new building in 1898.

Afterlife

Helmut Haag as Fischers Maathes in the folklore and open-air museum Roscheider Hof

Already at the beginning of the 20th century, Mathias Fischer, as a representative of Trier humor, was included in the no longer existing local history collection ("Walhalla") in the Red House on the main market .

The carnival society also honored his memory. Since 1977 he has been represented as a sandstone figure on the locust fountain created by Willi Hahn in Nagelstrasse, along with other Trier originals ( Koorscht un Kneisjen , Krons Ton and the Wichshänschen ). Since 1999, the Fischers Maathes, played by Helmut Haag, has also been a stage figure at Carnival meetings in Trier . In addition, a restaurant in Trier is named after him. On 1 April 2009 was a designed by the sculptor Franz Schönberger at his birthplace in Brotstraße 26 plaque mounted in bronze. On it one of the most famous sayings of Fischer can be read: "Better to laugh than to be naughty."

In several books, jokes and anecdotes of the "original Trier wine coziness of indestructible memory" are rumored:

  • Hermann Jung: Fischer's Maathes and his cronies. A happy Moselle book of the old Trier original and his loyal cronies Ponte-Hanni, Fehres Gustav u. Clüsserath's Tomi. Noske, Borna 1936
  • Nikolaus Lackas: Jokes and jokes from the fisherman's maathes. 1st edition 1930 under the title "Ebbes fier ze laachen!", 5th edition Saar-Verlag, Saarbrücken 1952 (Reprint Akademische Buchhandlung, Trier 1983, ISBN 3-88915-015-2 )
  • Erich Müller: Maades on Hanni Sonnenburg-Verlag, Trier 1958
  • Fischer's Maathes. Jokes and anecdotes, on the 125th year of death. Weyand, Trier 2004. ISBN 3-935281-35-8

Much of it is, however, not considered authentic, especially since there was a contemporary of the same surname, the tailor Nikolaus Fischer († 1885), who was also known as a joker. In the oral tradition, sayings of both people have probably mixed up, some things were probably made up. Maathes became, to a certain extent, a literary figure when, for example, anecdotes are told about him in which he talks to his friends about car traffic or other problems of the present that he probably hardly knew. The popularity of the figure of the fisherman Maathes can be explained, among other things, by the fact that many of the anecdotes ascribed to him express a “stubborn idiosyncrasy vis-à-vis any authority”, for example in the saying: “Eich maachen everything met, if only one gient de Praising goes ”.

swell

  1. cf. Gottfried Kentenich : History of the city of Trier from its foundation to the present . Lintz, Trier 1915. p. 823
  2. Heinz Monz: The Trier “Democratic Association” ended in the Weißhauswald. In: "The worst point in the province". Democratic revolution 1848/49 in Trier and the surrounding area . Städtisches Museum Simeonstift, Trier 1998. pp. 593–597
  3. Some Trier originals from earlier times. In: Kurtrier 1920, No. 4, p. 60
  4. Karl Schmal: Something from the fisherman's maathes. In: Trierische Chronik 17. 1921, pp. 157–159
  5. Entry on Heuschreck-Brunnen in the database of cultural assets in the Trier region ; accessed on February 27, 2016.
  6. Memorial plaque for Fischer's Maathes . In: New Trierisches Jahrbuch . Volume 50. (= 61.), Trierisch Association, Trier 2010, ISSN  0077-7765 , pp. 247-248.
  7. "Fischers Matthes" revealed ( Memento from December 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). 16vor.de of April 2, 2009.
  8. ^ Karl Christoffel: From rascals and rascals of the lust for wine in the Trier region. In: New Trierisches Jahrbuch 1961, p. 100
  9. ^ Trierischer Volksfreund from November 24, 2004

literature

Web links


This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 22, 2007 .