Nubbel burn

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Nubbel in Cologne's Südstadt (2011)

Nubbel is a term that appeared around 1950 for a traditional, dressed man-sized straw doll as a figure of the scapegoat in the Rhenish carnival . The nubbel hangs over many pubs during the carnival season and is burned on the last night of the carnival.

history

The Zacheies is thrown into the Rhine by the Maigeloog bollard (2010)

Nubbel is a Cologne term that was already in use in the 18th century. It is used when you cannot or do not want to provide further details, e.g. B. " Nubbels Chris " ("someone"), " dä es beim Nubbel " ("he is somewhere"), " dat wor dä Nubbel " ("that was someone"). In the standard work of the Cologne language "Dictionary of the Cologne dialect" from 1905, however, he is not mentioned, but the Zachaies. Adam Wrede and Will Hermanns mention and explain the word.

Nubbel is another name, mainly used in the Cologne area, for the " Zacheies " (Cologne form of the Hebrew Zacchaeus ), which was burned at the end of a fair. In Poll , the tradition has at least been preserved over the centuries. Today the Zacheies is symbolically thrown into the Rhine by the Maigeloog bollard and fished again in the night of May 1st. In 1913, a cremation was announced in Cologne-Buchheim on the occasion of one of the oldest fairgrounds on the right bank of the Rhine, the Buchheimer fair. Thereupon the fair was banned. It was not until 1950 that there was another zacheies burning in downtown Cologne on the occasion of the St. Severin fair . A straw doll is hung up on the fairground or in front of an inn at the beginning of the fair. This doll embodies the fair. On the last day of the fair, she is burned or buried. This zacheies is also called nubbel.

The burning of a figure in connection with the carnival has been historically tangible in the Rhineland since the beginning of the 19th century. Ernst Weyden from Cologne writes in his memoirs of the 1820s, in which the carnival events in Cologne were reorganized, that on Ash Wednesday “Carnival was buried”: “With a formal corpse escort, a doll was carried through the city on a stretcher and burned same in a square. ”Weyden relates the event to an“ old festival usage that was still preserved in southern Germany and even in Greece ”and wants a“ pompous carnival funeral ”as a Mardi Gras game also in 1812 for the Napoleonians stationed in Cologne at the time Have seen troops.

The anthropologist James Frazer saw customs such as the mimed death of the carnival to be related to similar customs in other cultures in which the apparent death of a divine or supernatural being plays a role - as a prerequisite for a resurrection in a better form. Elsewhere, it is death itself that is dramatically executed. Frazer reports the burning of a carnival figure made of straw or cardboard on Violet Tuesday or Ash Wednesday from Lazio , Abruzzo , Catalonia , Provence and Normandy , elsewhere the doll is buried (in Lechrain ), drowned ( Jülich ) or hung (Tübingen area ). In some Ardennes villages there are supposed to have been sham courts and mock executions; the "Carnival Tuesday", the carnival in the French-speaking area as Mardi Gras , was embodied by a young man who was shot at with blank cartridges. However, after a fatal accident in Vrigne-aux-Bois , this custom ceased. The "Out Wear of death" with similar characteristics described Frazer for Central Franconia, Bavaria, Thuringia and Silesia, as a mid-Lent tradition on the Fourth Sunday of Lent .

procedure

The exact course of this tradition differs from town to town and pub to pub. Usually the nubbel is attached to the bars on Weiberfastnacht , the prelude to the street carnival. In a short procession around the block, he is solemnly buried by candlelight on Carnival Tuesday at midnight, and in some places only on Ash Wednesday.

Then an indictment is presented, mostly in dialect and often in rhyme. The accuser is a carnival jeck who disguised himself as a clergyman. At first the crowd defends the Nubbel, in the end they are convinced of its guilt and demand vengeance. The prosecution then culminates, for example, in rhetorical questions such as: “Who is to blame for drinking all of our money? Who is to blame for cheating on us? ”. The cheering crowd answers the speaker with a loud “Dat wor der Nubbel!”, “The Nubbel is to blame! It should burn! ”Or something similar.

According to popular belief, all sins and wrongdoings committed during the carnival season are wiped out with the nubbel. After the nubble has been burned, it goes back to the pub and the party continues to carnival music until Ash Wednesday begins in the morning and Carnival time is over.

The custom of the nubbel burning is widespread in large parts of the Rhineland, but the meaning varies regionally. In some areas, the nubbel (which has a different name here) is considered the “godfather” of the carnival, whose life ends on Ash Wednesday.

Similar customs

There are a number of similar ceremonies in the Rhineland and beyond, some of which refer to much older traditions. Here are some examples:

media

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adam Wrede : New Cologne vocabulary. Volume KR. P. 239.
  2. ^ Fritz Hönig : Dictionary of Cologne Dialect , 1905, Bachem Verlag, Cologne, pp. 148 and 221
  3. ^ New Cologne vocabulary, Volume II 1981, Greven Verlag Cologne, p. 239
  4. ^ New Aachener Sprachschatz 2010, Öcher Platt eV Aachen, without pagination
  5. ↑ Peter Simons: Illustrated history of Deutz, Kalk, Vingst and Poll. Nagelschmidt, Cologne-Deutz 1913, Kirmes in Poll, p. 336.
  6. ↑ Minister saves Zacheies. ( Memento of the original from February 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on: porz-online.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.porz-online.de
  7. ↑ a b poller-heimatmuseum.de Poller Heimatmuseum, fair in Poll
  8. ^ Adam Wrede : New Cologne vocabulary. Volume KR. P. 239.
  9. ^ Ernst Weyden : Cologne on the Rhine fifty years ago, moral images together with historical references and linguistic explanations. (1862), reissued unchanged under the title Köln am Rhein one hundred and fifty years ago. Morals along with historical references and linguistic explanations. and with an afterword by Max Leo Schwering. Greven Verlag, Cologne 1960, pp. 140f.
  10. ↑ James Georg Frazer: The golden branch. The secret of the beliefs and customs of the peoples. (= rowohlt's encyclopedia cultures and ideas. 483). Reinbek near Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-499-55483-6 , pp. 437, 439-453.
  11. ↑ Hippedotz or hopping Ditz ?. on: wz-newsline.de. (Westdeutsche Zeitung Newsline), February 5, 2008, accessed January 25, 2013.