Night watchman

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Night watchman, copper engraving 1799

Night watchman is a profession that arose with the existence of the first major cities in the Middle Ages . The night watchman ensured security and order at night and sometimes announced the time. Today the job title is still partly used in property protection , and tour guides continue to offer historical night watchman tours.

job profile

Historical development

Night watchman in a small town around 1905
Night watchman from Erbach im Odenwald , painting by Wilhelm Trübner , 1901. With uniform coat, walking stick, signal horn, lockable lantern, broad-brimmed hat.

The task of the night watchman was to walk through the streets and alleys of the city at night and to ensure peace and order. He warned the sleeping citizens of fires , enemies and thieves . He supervised the proper locking of the front doors and city ​​gates . Often one of the tasks of the night watchman was to announce the hours - less as information than more to indicate that he was doing his duty properly. This announcement could also take the form of a night watchman song. The night watchman had the right to stop, question and, if necessary, arrest suspicious people who were out and about at night.

Typical equipment of a night watchman included a halberd or similar polearm , lantern, and horn . The night watchman, although he performed an important job in the city, such as the skinner or the executioner , was mostly one of the dishonest professions and therefore lived in very modest circumstances. There are several exceptions to this rule. In Friedberg , Bavaria , for example, the night watchmen were put in turn by the guild boys. In Speyer , the city council set up a well-endowed "night council" with city council powers, which was capable of reading and writing and which must have previously achieved the rank of sergeant. In Mainz , the military kept the night watch, for which the Walpode was responsible.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the task of the night watchman changed to the extent that there were increasingly "silent" night watchmen, which was made possible by the invention of the watchman's noctuaries and laborer's regulators by the Englishman Samuel Day (1803). These are mechanical clocks in which the night watchman had to put a slip of paper into a previously covered hole at certain hours as evidence of his regular tour. In the morning, a police officer checked that all the holes were filled.

Karl Gutzkow wrote in his features section Berlin's moral neglect , published in 1843 :

“The theft in Berlin is made easier by the lack of supervision and the furnishing of the houses. The number of night watchmen is far too small. These 'purrs' are old, retired military personnel or other prospects who, out of desperation, take up a service that they almost only do pro forma. The night watchmen in Berlin are often decrepit old people. With a meager salary, they are dependent on the sports of their service. [...] The Berlin night watchman has a bunch of a hundred house keys hanging on his body and unlocks anyone who wishes to enter the first best house after ten o'clock in the evening. The tips are his revenue . You can see that there is no place in the world where thieves are as comfortable as in Berlin.

The night watchman's area is too spacious. He has more streets under him than he can supervise. Busy with his tips, he cares very little about street life. He only listens to someone calling him to be let into a house. [...] The tours through the streets are made without paying any attention. [...] If he makes his tour, his pipe will announce him and the thieves have time to disperse while he is passing.

Berlin must triple the number of guards and place them under a military discipline like Hamburg . The Hamburg Guardians are a real protection guard against the enemies of order and property. "

- Karl Gutzkow: Berlin - Panorama of a cosmopolitan city

With the widespread introduction of street lighting and new police laws around the turn of the 20th century, most night watchmen were abolished. In Turkey, on the other hand, the night watchmen as so-called Bekciler were only established in 1914.

Except in Turkey, night watchmen are mostly employed in private security services and work for the nightly property protection of museums or industrial plants.

In a broader sense, temporary living conditions nowadays also perform night watchman duties, according to the principle of “ guarding by living ”.

Maintenance of tradition

Actor disguised as a night watchman in Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Night watchman on the student fountain in Bonn
Night watchman as a signpost in Springe

In some cities, city guides act as “night watchmen” and report in an entertaining way from the city's history and the daily work of the night watchman. There are night watchman monuments in Rinteln , Zwönitz , Laufenburg , Dresden and Hildesheim , and night watchman fountains in Stuttgart and Hanover . In Bonn , the night watchman is pictured on the student fountain in front of the university.

To traditional customs and traditions in 1987 in the Danish town Ebeltoft the European night watchman and towers guild founded. It includes 157 night watchmen and watchmen from the Czech Republic , Poland , Switzerland , Austria , France , the Netherlands , Great Britain , Denmark , Norway and Germany .

On March 27, 2004 in Bad Münder at the Deister night watchman from all over Germany formed a guild . The name of the association is “German guild of night watchmen, towers and figures e. V. “The guild has more than 200 robed people in Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands. The guild's headquarters have been in Rees since 2016 . The associations maintain and disseminate the folk goods of the night watchmen and tower keepers , for example through nightly tourist tours or appearances at folk festivals.

As of May 2019, Helmut Egartner from Obertilliach is the last night watchman in Austria.

Literary processing

In literary texts, the figure of the night watchman is often linked to the role of a satirical commentator on world events. His position as an outsider predestines him - similar to the figure of a fool - to appear as a warning of the truth, to hold up a mirror to society and in this way to criticize the authorities and the ruling systems. With the figure, a reinterpretation of the actual activity of this profession is carried out: The person who is actually supposed to ensure peace and order becomes a rebel and troublemaker. Famous examples of this are the night watchman, poet and narrator cloister in night watch. Von Bonaventura (1804, presumably by Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann ) or the commander of the city guard Samuel Mumm in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels ("Laws are there to make you think before you break them.").

Conceptual environment

politics

The catchphrase night watchman state is a polemical name for a form of government that is limited to guarding security.

chess

In chess composition , a night watchman is a chess piece that is not required for the solution or the thematic content and is only used to avoid secondary solutions. Night watchmen significantly reduce the value of a chess composition.

Vernacular

Carl Spitzweg : The Sleeping Night Watchman (around 1875)

The vernacular often describes a forgetful, slow or idiotic person as a "night watchman".

As a night watchman is referred to in the restaurant and the beer , which is still the previous day in the direction of a dispensing system.

A night watchman is also a human left behind in a toilet that cannot be flushed down until the next day.

See also

literature

  • Reinhard Banse: Service badge for night watchmen. In : Orders and Medals. The magazine for friends of phaleristics, publisher: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ordenskunde , Issue 125, 22nd year, Gäufelden 2020. ISSN 1438-3772.
  • Peter Bahn: Do you guys listen and let me tell you ... The story of the tower keepers and night watchmen. Book accompanying the exhibition of the museum in the Schweizer Hof, Bretten. Bretten 2008, ISBN 978-3-928029-47-6 .
  • Gerlinde Haid : Calls (I). In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 4, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7001-3046-5 .
  • Friedrich Scheele, Martina Glimme (ed.): Slaept niet die daer wakes: from night watchmen and towers in Emden and elsewhere. Accompanying volume for the exhibition of the same name, publications by the Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum and Emder armory 11. Isensee, Oldenburg 2001, ISBN 3-89598-761-1 .
  • Josef Wichner: Calls for the hour and songs by the German night watchmen. Regensburg 1897

Fiction

Web links

Commons : Night watchmen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Night watchman  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wikisource: Night Watchman  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. Song archive: Night watchman song.
  2. Children's group with the night watchman in Obertilliach , accessed on May 17, 2019
  3. Original with cloak, lantern and halberd: Helmut Egartner is Austria's last night watchman. , accessed on May 17, 2019
  4. East Tyrol: Winter silence instead of a ski circus , accessed on May 17, 2019