Pepper sack

The Confiscation of the Pepper Sack, a
historicizing oil painting about the time of the Thirty Years War by Carl Plinke , 1894

At first businessmen belonging to the Hanseatic League were mockingly referred to as pepper sacks , but also Nuremberg merchants or the merchants of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie . The word can be traced (for example as Dutch peperzak ) from the 13th century onwards and was then used later, especially from the 16th century, as a general contemptuous term for a rich merchant or wholesaler. This name came about because the prosperity of some of them was based on the trade in spices from overseas, for which the term “ pepper ” was used in the Middle Ages . To this day, “pepper sack” is sometimes used disparagingly for rich people who are ruthlessly concerned only with money and power, and to this day it is used disparagingly, especially for the Hamburg upper class.

Accordingly, Nürnberger Pfeffersack is a mock name for Nuremberg merchants, probably based on their trade in Levantine spices .

literature

• Lutz Röhrich: Pepper . In: Lexicon of the proverbial sayings. Berlin 1994, p. 4619.
• Pepper sack, m.. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 13 : N, O, P, Q - (VII). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1889, Sp. 1639 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).

Web links

• Pepper sack that. In: Digital dictionary of the German language .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Zimmerische Chronik . Volume 2, p. 434.
2. ↑ Josef Karlmann Brechenmacher : Etymological dictionary of German family names. Limburg an der Lahn 1957–1963, Volume 1, p. 125.