Otto Piringer

Otto Piringer (born February 20, 1874 in Broos ; † November 3, 1950 ibid) was a Romanian-German pastor and writer. He comes from the ethnic group of the country dance , but was best known for his works in Transylvanian Saxon dialect.

Life

The fortified church of Agnetheln, on the left the building of the old elementary school, today Școala Generală No. 1

He was born in Broos ( Hungarian : Szászváros , Romanian : Orăştie ) in 1874 , a city in southwestern Transylvania, which at that time belonged to the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy . His family belonged to the ethnic group of the rural people who were expelled from Austria in the 18th century because of their Lutheran faith and settled in Transylvania . The family name Piringer goes back to transmigrants from what is now Upper Austria . The majority of these Austrian Protestants settled in the three "country villages" Neppendorf , Großau and Großpold , where their cultural peculiarities and their language, the rural language, have been preserved . Individual rural residents also settled in other places in Transylvania, where their number was lower and they therefore adapted linguistically and culturally to the Transylvanian Saxons , including Otto Piringer's family.

Otto Piringer himself left his hometown at a young age and studied philology and theology in Cluj-Napoca . In the course of his studies, he also went to Germany and attended the universities in Marburg an der Lahn and Berlin . Back in Transylvania, he was elected rector of the secondary school in Agnetheln im Harbachtal at the age of 22 in 1896 , a German-language school run by the Evangelical Lutheran regional church . In rural Agnetheln he was enthusiastic about the customs still practiced there and the natural use of the Saxon dialect. So he campaigns for the preservation of the annual Urzellauf. The urban Saxon bourgeoisie, on the other hand, believed, in keeping with the trend of the times, that they had to cut old braids in order to completely devote themselves to progress. As a school principal, Piringer was also involved in the social life of Agnetheln. In order to get the youth out of the inns, where there was a lot of drinking, he founded a music club with a choir and two gymnastics clubs, one for the boys and one for the girls. Equal treatment for all members was also important to him in these associations, which was not a matter of course in the Saxon society at that time, which was strongly structured by class differences. In Agnetheln he also met his future wife, Gusti Schuller, daughter of the notary Martin Schuller. The wedding took place in 1898. The first child, Hilde, was born in Agnetheln.

After seven years in Agnetheln, Piringer was elected pastor of Talmesch in 1903 . In 1906 he got the pastor's post in Neustadt in Burzenland . In 1913 he changed again and was appointed to Großpold. With that he had now become the pastor of one of the three rural villages, an office that he was to hold for twelve years. During this time his writing began. He wrote humorous dialect poems as well as educational texts. His predecessor as pastor of the Großpolder, Ernst Thullner, who lived until 1918, was a well-known Saxon dialect poet and may have inspired the younger Piringer to write in the Transylvanian-Saxon dialect. In 1915 he was asked by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna to send in samples of rural aristocratic text for the Bavarian-Austrian dictionary . Piringer then wrote down some rural folk songs and wrote some of his own poems. These texts are preserved in the archives of the dictionary commission in Vienna and are valuable sources for research into rural areas. After the First World War , Transylvania now belonged to the Kingdom of Romania , he edited the “ New People's Calendar ”, which was widely used among the Transylvanian Saxons.

In 1922 his daughter Hilde married the German scholar Karl Bernhard Capesius , who was also known as a writer and wrote scientific works on both Transylvanian-Saxon and rural subjects.

In 1925 Piringer went back to his hometown Broos and became a city pastor there for many years. In 1934, the 200th anniversary of the immigration of the Landler was commemorated in a large commemoration, at which he gave the festive sermon. Otto Piringer stayed in Broos until the end of his life. He died there of a stroke on November 3, 1950.

Literary work

Piringer mostly drew his thematic material from his experiences as a pastor. So he described in anecdotal stories the life of the rural and petty-bourgeois population of Transylvania. The experience as a skilled speaker made it possible for him to use a lively narrative style. However, he usually placed his realistic stories in fictional locations so as not to expose real people to the ridicule of readers. In the manageable Transylvanian-Saxon society, however, the experienced readership knew pretty well which social phenomena Piringer was aiming at with his conclusions. In his dialect poems he sometimes used drastic expressions in order to increase the effect of the punch lines.

Priniger was also known to the other Saxon dialect poets of his time, including Schuster Dutz from Mediasch and Karl Gustav Reich, born in 1905, from Sibiu .

Works

Transylvanian-Saxon

• Schärhibesker. Lastich tales a Saksean rhymes by Otto Piringer , Gedrackt uch verlocht by W. Krafft, Härmestadt 1921
• Vum klene Piter uch senger Wält , stories, Hermannstadt: W. Krafft, 1926
• The Mērenzīker - Schärrhībesker u. Līdcher , Hermannstadt: Krafft & Drotleff, 1937

Rural poems

(Selection)

• Well kemt tes, kemt tes? Dro mer kemen jo af enker Verlongen
• Nit loss di, eh!

Standard German

• Pictures from the general church visit in the Unterwald; for the 80th birthday of S. Hochw. d. Mr. D. Dr. Friedrich Teutsch , Hermannstadt: Honterus-Buchdruckerei, 1932
• The young rector , memories of Agnetheln 1896–1903, Heilbronn, 1986 (published posthumously by the HOG Agnetheln)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Agnethler Blatt: No. 48, Volume 14, 2003 ( Memento of the original dated December 29, 2009 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. , by Kraus Walter (PDF, by HOG Agnetheln; 720 kB) 
2. ↑ Siebenbürger.de: Lecture Rosel Potoradi Otto Piringer in Drabenderhöhe , Johann Seiler 10 April, 2005.
3. ^ Reich, Karl Gustav . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)
4. ^ Siebenbürger.de: Otto Piringer: De iejenätzich Neeber , Hanni Markel and Bernddieter Schobel, February 23, 2010