Operencia

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Operencia (also Operenzia ) is the name of a fantastic empire from the Hungarian world of fairy tales and legends .

stories

Depending on the narrative tradition, it borders on India , the land of the Talians ( Italy ), the Franzia country ( France ), sometimes the sea or even the end of the world. In any case, a hiker must either pass or bypass the “Sugar Loaf Mountains”. Extraordinary things are always waiting for him when he arrives: mushrooms are about the size of farmer's hats and apples as children's heads. Numerous castles stand "... on a single duck's foot freely in the lofty heights and turn silently towards the sun" Even the farmers live in palaces. One of the fairy tales begins with:

And when there wasn't a single cruiser, not even a tiny piece of bread, left in the crooked hut, the poor farmer's youngest son set out to test his luck in the wide world. He wandered seven days and seven nights until he saw the Sugar Loaf Mountains on the border of the land of Operenzia. He thanked God, took courage, and quickened the pace of his tired boots.

If you want to ride over the passes of the Sugar Loaf Mountains into the land of the Talians in summer , then only at night. Because the sun burns so hot that even the steel of a saber melts. If you are thirsty in the mountains, you only need to wring out a cloud. However, one has to be very careful that the horses do not step a star from the sky.

background

The motif first appeared at the end of the 17th century. After the Turkish wars , Hungary had sunk into a completely impoverished province . Since the country had nothing else to offer, many Hungarian farm boys were forcibly recruited and committed to twenty years of military service. In Austria - by Hungarian standards - there was great prosperity. The name “Operencia” itself is probably borrowed from the old name Archduchy of Austria ob der Enns - today's Upper Austria .

When the soldiers took their leave (obschit) after twenty years, they returned to their villages. There they decorated their experiences and impressions in a very fairytale-naive-fantastic way. Significantly, there is a saying in Hungary : "He lies like an obschitosch".

etymology

Heinrich Kunstmann traces the term Óperenciás tenger back to the Greek aperantos (unlimited, infinite) and the Turkish loanword tenger , which is said to have stood for the Black Sea in Old Hungarian . Accordingly, the term should be a reminiscence of the infinite (Black) Sea from a time when the Hungarians were not yet settled.

Secondary literature

Hartmut Heller (ed.) - Strangeness in the process of globalization - Lit Verlag, Berlin - Hamburg - Münster. 2007 ISBN 3825808696

Web links

credentials

  1. ↑ Stephan Vajda : Operenzia, the fairy tale land of Hungarians , Merian 11th 1972. pp. 13-15
  2. ↑ Hartmut Heller: Strangeness in the process of globalization . Lit Verlag, Berlin - Hamburg - Münster 2007, p. 155.