Post Swede

Postschwede is a name for the profession of the postman in the North German dialect . In East Low German , the term "Landschwede" is also used for the job of a farm worker . The origin of the name Postschwede is traced back either to the postal connections maintained by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War and the so-called Swedish era, or to the Low German “Schwitieh”, bon vivant, which is said to have originated from the French “suitier”.

The travel writer Ludwig Passarge reported in 1867:

“Strangely, in East Prussia we also speak of a 'postal Sweden' and a 'rural Sweden'. I had previously imagined that the 'old Swede' came from the 'Swedish Era', i.e. the seventeenth century, when the battles of the Thirty Years' War, and later the wars of the Swedes with Poland and the Great Elector, brought them into connection with Germany in many ways ; when the 'blue boys' were as well known in Memel and Tilsit as in southern Tyrol. From this meeting, however, only the 'old Swede' could be explained, not the 'Post and Country Swede'. Only in Sweden did the explanation come to me from a Mecklenburg traveler who also announced that in his “closer” fatherland it is not the “Swede” but the “suitier” that is associated with “old, post and country”; So Swede is just a corruption from suitier, which is Schwitieh in Low German. If one considers that the old original Sweden is called Svithiod, the confusion cannot be noticed. 'Schwitieh' is the name for the cheerful, somewhat relaxed bon vivant throughout northern Germany. Since people who went to the post office and to agriculture - at least in earlier times - were usually unable to get on in other subjects because of their 'Schwiten', the connection between Schwitieh with the post office and the country is self-explanatory. "

In contrast, the Deutsche Verkehrs-Zeitung 1879 describes:

“During the Thirty Years' War the Swedes had set up a kind of field post service in the parts of Germany they had occupied, using dragoons to establish the connection between the locations of the individual units with their headquarters and with their homeland. These Swedish dragoons, which probably also dealt with taking letters to private individuals, received the name 'Postschweden' in the mouths of the people, which has survived until now and is still used, jokingly. "

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ludwig Passarge: Sweden, Wisby and Copenhagen. Wanderstudien , Brandstetter, 1867, p. 206
2. ^ Deutsche Verkehrs-Zeitung , 1879 quoted from Postschwede , Wanders Deutsches Sprich emphasis-Lexikon , Volume 3, Leipzig