Emergency shirt
An emergency shirt is a shirt that ( according to popular superstition ) has to be spun, woven and sewn under magical ceremonies by two girls who must still be virgins (or have not yet reached the age of seven). Sometimes the emergency shirt had to be made on the night of December 24th to 25th, i.e. Christmas Eve. Two human heads are embroidered on the chest of the shirt, the one on the right wears a long beard and a helmet and the one on the left with a crown like the one worn by the devil. Crosses are also added to both sides of the shirt. It has sleeves and is about half the length of the person who is supposed to wear it.
During the Thirty Years' War , soldiers liked to wear such shirts under their clothes, in the hope that they would be protected from bullets and sword blows, and that the shirt would make them “firm” and invulnerable. Hence the fact that you put on this shirt when there was a threat to life and limb - that is, you were in need - the name of the "emergency" shirt comes from. Such shirts were also often put on by women giving birth who believed that they would have an easy and safe birth.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gustav Freytag: Pictures from the German past in the Gutenberg-DE project