Nutcracker
A nutcracker is a tool for opening nuts or for cracking nutshells. Nutcrackers come in different shapes and variants.
Types
Functional nutcrackers
- Pincer-like nutcrackers consist of two arms that are connected by a joint. The nut is placed between the arms, which are then squeezed together, causing the nutshell to explode.
- Screw nutcrackers , spindle nutcrackers consist of two parts: a kind of shell into which the nut is placed and a lid or a screw that can be screwed into the shell. The nutshell is destroyed when screwing on.
- With the centrifugal nutcracker , the nut is placed in a balloon that is clamped in a metal cylinder. Then it is pulled back and released, the nut shatters on the opposite metal wall of the nutcracker.
In addition to these main forms, there are numerous other designs in which the nuts are cracked by pressing or hitting the shell. In the nutcracker from Drosselmeyer , for example, a metal cup forms the abutment. The movement of the handle is transmitted via a lever mechanism to a spring-mounted metal plate which compresses the nut in the cup. The leverage reduces the force required to crack a nut. Another type consists of a rubber bell with a grooved metal striking plate inserted in the center, which is placed on a metal base. A blow with your hand on the rubber bell bursts the nut, which was placed in a hollow in the metal floor.
A pincer-like nutcracker
Nut slingshot made of aluminum
Cup-shaped nutcracker with lever mechanism
Functional nutcrackers
Decorative nutcrackers
- Nutcracker figures made of wood that crack the nuts in their "mouth" using lever technology. These figures are set up as decorations during the Christmas season . The wooden figures originally called Nussbeisser and intended for the trade were made around 1650 in Berchtesgaden and from 1735 in Sonneberg . In the Ore Mountains , the production of nutcracker figures spread in the second half of the 19th century with the center in Seiffen . The often grim appearance of the nutcracker's faces resembles the authorities of the time ( forester , gendarme , king , hussar , etc.). An approx. 35 cm large nutcracker of this type is produced in around 130 work steps and can consist of up to 60 individual parts. Mainly spruce or beech wood is processed, and materials such as fur, bristles, leather, fabric, cord and brightly colored colors are used for decoration.
- Giant nutcrackers are set up as decorative elements at Christmas markets. For a long time until 2017, the largest known nutcracker on Christmas markets was a 6 m high specimen on the Osnabrück Christmas market. Since November 2017, it has been exceeded by a 7.60 m high specimen on the CentrO Christmas market in Oberhausen . The largest nutcracker in the world is the 10.10 m high and 3285 kg heavy knight Borso von Riesenburg , who is in front of the nutcracker museum in Neuhausen / Erzgeb. stands.
history
The first nutcracker, consisting of two lever arms, already existed in antiquity. His invention is attributed to Aristotle . An already quite decorative model made of bronze from around 300 BC. BC was found in a grave near Taranto . The lower classes, who did not have such a device, used either a stone, a hammer, or their teeth. Even Leonardo da Vinci should have been working on a device for cracking nuts. In any case, he developed a lathe for turning wooden figures. There was evidence of figural nutcrackers as early as the 16th century. King Henry VIII of England gave his second wife Anne Boleyn an ornately carved cracker. Jacob Grimm describes in this context that nutcracker figures developed from idols to appease the house spirits.
The heyday of the ornate nutcracker figures began in the 18th century when they were first carved in Val Gardena and Oberammergau . In South Tyrol mainly funny types were made from the people, in Bavaria oriental characters. From 1735, wooden nutcrackers came from Sonneberg in Thuringia on the market. In addition to the Sonneberg rider , the Sonneberg nutcracker became a symbol of the world toy city until the 1920s .
After mining ceased in the 19th century, people in the Ore Mountains looked primarily in the so-called toy corner between Seiffen, Olbernhau and Neuhausen / Erzgeb. for new sources of income. They mainly focused on turning and the production of decorative objects made of wood, such as chairs and furniture, but also on the production of wooden toys and window figures such as angels and miners , candle arches , smokers and nutcrackers. The most popular figures of the "lever men" were gendarmes, soldiers and kings. Friedrich Wilhelm Füchtner turned the first nutcracker in the shape and color known today from the Ore Mountains around 1870. The figures with the huge mouth should inspire respect. Nutcrackers were also made as caricatures. For example, Napoleon was portrayed as a nutcracker after the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , and later also Bismarck .
The brightly painted figures were of course also popular with children; they were sold at the Christmas markets and were also considered children's toys in the 19th century. But the functional nutcracker was also discovered by designers, for example in the Art Nouveau phase .
Nutcracker in literature and on the stage
The nutcracker achieved literary fame through the Christmas fairy tale Nutcracker and Mouse King , which ETA Hoffmann wrote in 1816. The figure was a hussar: "He wore a very nice, purple, shiny hussar jacket with lots of white strings and buttons, just such trousers and the most beautiful little boots that an officer's feet had ever come across."
A Christmas story by Struwwelpeter author Heinrich Hoffmann , which he wrote in 1851 under the title King Nutcracker and Poor Reinhold , is not quite as well known . Hoffmann had previously bought the figures from the Ore Mountains that appear in this book and were drawn by him as objects for demonstration at the Nuremberg Christmas Market . The title character is a proud king who introduces himself with the words: “King Nutcracker, that's my name, hard nuts that I bite into. I swallow sweet kernels diligently, but the bowls, eh, I'd rather throw them away because I'm king. ”The story also contains a parody of the imperial hymn , which brought the work a temporary ban on publication.
The ballet The Nutcracker by Pyotr Tchaikovsky had July 6th . / December 18, 1892 greg. premiere in Saint Petersburg . The literary model is again ETA Hoffmanns Nutcracker and Mouse King .
literature
- Jacob Grimm: German Mythology. Volume 1 and 2nd reprint of the 4th edition. Fourier, Wiesbaden 2003.
- Chemnitz vocational school for tourism (ed.): Nutcracker of the Saxon Ore Mountains. Husum Verlag, Husum 1998 ISBN 978-3-88042-864-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Osnabrück Christmas Market. Tourist-Information Osnabrück, accessed on November 29, 2014 .
- ↑ Nutcracker and smoker built. Giant Christmas figures from Fehrenkamp stand at the Centro. Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, accessed on December 24, 2017 .
- ↑ Uwe Löschner: Our records. (No longer available online.) First nutcracker museum in Europe, archived from the original on December 5, 2014 ; Retrieved November 29, 2014 .
- ↑ Angelika Neumann: Giant journeyman gets coconuts small . The world's largest nutcracker has invited to the first royal holiday fair in Neuhausen. In: Free Press . Neuhausen August 10, 2008 ( freiepresse.de [accessed February 25, 2012]).
