Butcher jump
The butcher's jump is a traditional, communal bathing of butchers in a fountain, for whose origin and meaning there are different variants. The custom that is still common today is considered to be the end of the apprenticeship.
At the Fischbrunnen in Munich, the butcher apprentices were acquitted on Shrove Monday until World War II , which today corresponds to the handing over of the journeyman's certificate as a butcher's training, who then rushed into the water of the fountain and were also submerged. When they surfaced, the butcher apprentices were doused again with buckets full of water. It should have been a kind of baptism, since the apprentices were then free from their youthful sins. The Tyrolean folk song archive keeps an undated leaflet in which this custom is described: "The carnival = time or the jolly Hanswurst and the butcher = jump in Munich."
The tradition of the butcher's jump still exists in Salzburg today. Originally this initiation took place at the Florianibrunnen, a fountain with a figure of Saint Florian von Lorch on the Alter Markt in Salzburg , today this initiation ritual is held in a wooden barrel in the courtyard of St. Peter's Abbey .
literature
- Clemens Zerling : rebirth rituals in the market or village fountain. Butcher jump, guild and marriage baptisms. In: Wolfgang Bauer , Sergius Golowin , Clemens Zerling: Heilige Quellen, Heilende Brunnen. Neue Erde, Saarbrücken 2009, ISBN 978-3-89060-275-2 , pp. 82–91.
Web links
- [1] - Alternative story to the Metzgersprung
- RTS regional television Salzburg on YouTube about the Metzgersprung 2012
- orf.at: Traditional butcher's jump in St. Peter , accessed on October 25, 2013
- Metzgersprung on www.muenchen.de