Rübezahl

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Enlargement of the demon according to Helwig
Modern Rübezahl statue in the Giant Mountains

Rübezahl ( Krakonoš in Czech , Liczyrzepa in Polish ) is the mountain spirit ( Schrat ) of the Giant Mountains . There are numerous legends and fairy tales about him .

Surname

The origin of the name Rübezahl is not clear. In 1561 Martin Helwig wrote Rübenczal on his map . In 1662 Johannes Praetorius gives different spellings like Rübezal, Ribezal, Riebenzahl . In his collections, Rübezahl appears multifaceted, sometimes a giant , guardian of the mountain treasure, as a monk who leads people astray, as a raven or a donkey and often diabolus, Satan . In his first Rübezahl story, Johann Karl August Musäus gave a legendary explanation of the name in 1783. According to this story, Rübezahl kidnaps the king's daughter Emma, ​​whom he wants to marry, into his underground kingdom. With turnips, which she can transform into any shape she wants, he tries to satisfy her longing for her home. But the beets wither. Finally the woman promises him her hand if he tells her the number of beets in the field. If he does not succeed in this, he has to let her go. The mountain spirit immediately gets to work. To be sure that the number is correct, he counts again but comes to a different result. Meanwhile, the prisoner flees to her Prince Ratibor on a beet that has been transformed into a horse and mocks the ghost by addressing it as a turnip. Therefore, he becomes very angry when he is given this ridiculous name.

In addition to the legend How Rübezahl got its name, there is a further explanatory thesis, a connection between the proper name Riebe and the Middle High German word zagel for "tail", which could refer to the pictorial appearance as a tailed demon. In Czech it is called Krakonoš, which could go back to krk or krak "mountain pine" and nosit "wear"; In Polish, the name Liczyrzepa (literal translation beet + counting ) has been traceable since 1898 , but Duch Gór ("mountain spirit") or Rzepiór are also used.

Rübezahl is a mocking name, the mention of which within his realm, the Giant Mountains, conjures up the anger of the so named. The "correct salutation" is "Lord of the Mountains". A respectful name is also "Mr. Johannes". In the Riesengrund near the Schneekoppe , a botanical locality with a particularly large abundance of plants is called “Rübezahl's Gärtchen”, and other peculiar stone formations are also named after him (e.g. “Rübezahlkanzel” above the snow pits ).

legend

According to legend, Rübezahl is a capricious giant or mountain spirit. Even the first collector of Rübezahl sagas, Johannes Praetorius (see below), described Rübezahl as a character of a very ambivalent “contradicting spirit” that could appear just and helpful in one moment, malicious and capricious in the next. Musäus characterized him as follows:

“Because you should know your friend Rübezahl, is like a genius of strength, moody, impetuous, strange; villainous, raw, immodest; proud, vain, fickle, today the warmest friend, tomorrow strange and cold; at times good-natured, noble, and sensitive; but in constant contradiction with himself; silly and wise, often soft and hard in two moments, like an ey that falls into boiling water; mischievous and honest, stubborn and flexible; according to the mood, how humor and inner urge make him grasp every thing at first sight. "

- Musäus , folk fairy tale of the Germans. Second part contains legends by Rübezahl , 1783

The mountain spirit appears to people in different shapes. In particular, he shows himself as a monk in an ash-gray robe (comparable to Wodan in a cloud coat), but also as a miner, junker, craftsman and in a similar shape and disguise, but also in animal form or as an object (tree stump, stone, cloud). Rübezahl is the weather master of the Giant Mountains and thus resembles the wild hunter . Unexpectedly, it sends thunder and lightning, fog, rain and snow down from the mountain, while everything was still shining in the sun. He is generally kind to good people, teaches them remedies and especially gives gifts to the poor; but if he is mocked, he will avenge himself heavily, for example through storms. Sometimes it leads hikers astray. He is said to have a garden with miracle herbs, which he defends against intruders. Humble gifts from the mountain spirit such as apples or leaves can turn into gold through his power , just as, conversely, he occasionally transforms money he has paid into a worthless currency.

The Rübezahl sagas are set in the Giant Mountains and the immediate vicinity. Individual sagas name specific villages and towns in the mountains as the place of action. To play the mendacious Tuchscherer in Giersdorf , Rübezahl as a woodcutter in Hirschberg in the Giant Mountains , Master Zwirbel in Landshut , Pretty Susie in Lomnitz , The uncut innkeeper in Marschendorf and the magic wand and Rubezahl performs a concert on in Schmiedeberg in the Giant Mountains .

Oldest evidence of the legend

Rübenczal , illustration from 1561, after Martin Helwig

The earliest evidence of Rübezahl's figure comes from the second half of the 16th century, but probably goes back to popular ideas that are at least 100 years older. At first he was just a local legendary figure who only later became known nationwide. In 1553 a gemstone hunter ( whale ) issued a warning to beware of mining ghosts in an itinerary , especially warning of Riebenzahl . This is evidence for the assumption that Rübezahl was originally a mining spirit. Miners from the Harz brought the legend to Silesia in the 15th century; Miners from Schwaz in Tyrol and called to the Giant Mountains are said to have contributed to the further development of the legend . Franz Köckritz mentions the mountain ghost Rupicina (Rübezahl) in his Latin poem Sabothus, written around 1555 , sive Silesia . The first illustration by Rübezahl dates from 1561, when he was portrayed on the first map of Silesia by the German cartographer Martin Helwig as a tailed demon (here called Rubenczal ) in the middle of mountains and villages. The Lutheran theologian Christoph Irenäus published a devil's tale in 1566, according to which Rübezahl, wearing a monk's robe, appears in Warmbrunn , leads unsuspecting hikers on wrong paths and then laughs at them mockingly. This story soon spread and found its way into the Promptuarium Exemplorum by Andreas Hondorff . According to an entry for 1576 in Simon Hüttel's Chronicle of Trautenau , which refers to reports from Tyrolean woodcutters working in the mining industry, Rübezahl is said to have caused a flood.

A pastor Rausch claimed to have observed the mountain spirit around 1600 as he drove through Schmiedeberg in a carriage. The Silesian doctor Caspar Schwenckfeldt published a report for bathers in 1607, according to which Rübezahl only reacts angrily if he is mocked and then sends storms, is the owner of mountain treasures and can appear in human and animal form. In the first decades of the 17th century, more scattered information about the shape of the mountain spirit emerged. Sometimes other names such as Ronsefall are assigned to it . A Tyrolean document from 1619 describes it as Rubezagel . One attempt to explain his origins was that he was a Frenchman who had mutated into a revenant .

Early editions

Johann Karl August Musäus (1735–1787)

The Rübezahl sagas were collected and written down for the first time by the German compiler and polyhistor Johannes Praetorius in his Daemonologia Rubinzalii Silesii (3 volumes, 1662–1665) and Satyrus Etymologicus. Or the Reforming and Informing Beet Number (1672). In total, Praetorius recorded 241 stories about the mountain spirit. To date, no more comprehensive work on this subject has appeared. It made Rübezahl a figure known far beyond the borders of Silesia. Praetorius gives as sources on the one hand printed books and on the other hand oral and written reports from settlers in the Giant Mountains and tourists. He referred to information from medicinal plant dealers who collected herbs in the mountains and then brought them to pharmacists for further processing. The root men regarded Rübezahl as a patron saint and claimed that he provided their plants with special healing powers . Usually a picture of the mountain spirit was put up in the quacks' booths, on which he appeared as a giant with a wild beard. But Praetorius also allowed his own ingenuity to flow into his work, as he admitted. He also transferred motifs of heroes from popular books ( Faust , Till Eulenspiegel ), the devil , the wild hunt and other things to Rübezahl . The legends have a coarse character, as it was popular at the time of the Thirty Years War .

Praetorius was followed by a series of anonymous books on the mountain spirit, but it was only a collection of five longer legends by Rübezahl that the German writer Johann Karl August Musäus published in his folk tales of the Germans in 1783 that had a lasting effect on its national fame and popularity . Here the mountain spirit, dubbed the lord of the gnomes, is nowhere near as demonic and brutish as in Praetorius. In one of these stories a countess as a follower of Voltaire does not believe in the existence of ghosts until she is attacked on the way in the Giant Mountains and rescued by the mountain spirit.

Later reception

Rübezahl , Moritz von Schwind , 1859

In the 19th century at the latest, Rübezahl became a figure of identification for the Silesians. His figure has been treated in a wide variety of genres. So wrote Carl Maria von Weber and Friedrich von Flotow each an opera Rübezahl (Weber Rübezahl 1804/05 remained a fragment, Flotow's opera was first performed in 1853). Hans Sommer's opera Rübezahl and the Sackpfeifer von Neisse was first performed in Braunschweig in 1904. Eduard Heinrich Gehe took up the subject in his libretto for the opera Der Berggeist (1825) composed by Louis Spohr . However, the composer was dissatisfied with the text, so that the dramatist and narrator Georg Döring (1789–1833, Legation Councilor of the Duke of Meiningen) was commissioned with the final libretto for Spohr's opera. Wolfgang Menzel wrote the drama Rübezahl (Stuttgart 1829). In the Riesengebirgslied created by Othmar Fiebiger and Vinzenz Hampel in 1914/15 , which developed into a popular regional anthem, the refrain refers to Rübezahl.

Visual artists were also interested in the topic. The oil painting by the Austrian painter Moritz von Schwind (1859) had a particularly lasting effect on ideas about the appearance of the mountain spirit. The German painters Ludwig Richter and Peter Carl Geissler created important romantic illustrations by Rübezahl . The material is mainly widespread and popular as a book of legends for children and young people. To this day, revisions and repeated editions, such as the book by Musäus, are published. The expulsion of the German Silesians after the end of World War II did little to detract from the popularity of the mountain spirit. Today it is used by Polish and Czech tourism as an advertising medium for the Giant Mountains.

In 1945, the Polish author Józef Sykulski , who moved to Hirschberg, introduced the Polish name Liczyrzepa , a direct translation of the German name Rübezahl, for the "evil spirit of the Giant Mountains and Hirschberg" (Zły Duch Karkonoszy i Jeleniej Góry) .

In 2017, Rübezahl became the title character of Wieland Freund's youth novel Krakonos .

Other works:

In 1999, Börngen named the asteroid (10764) Rübezahl .

museum

The first Rübezahl Museum was opened in May 2005 in Görlitz . After the death of its founder, Ingrid Vettin-Zahn, the facility was closed again. There is also an exhibition on the spirit of the mountains in the “Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann House” museum (Dom Carla i Gerharta Hauptmannów) in Szklarska Poręba (Schreiberhau) and in the Karkonoskie Tajemnice (Museum of the Secrets of the Giant Mountains) in Karpacz (Krummhübel).

Film adaptations

particularities

The first Polish book published in the new Polish territories after the Germans were expelled in 1945 was a collection of translated Rübezahl sagas. The teacher Józef Sykulski had literally translated the name of the mountain spirit into Liczyrzepa , which was later criticized by linguists. In the following years hostels, a lottery game, a fruit wine and a ski lift were named Liczyrzepa . In the village of Sosnówka (formerly the Seidorf near Karpacz ) there is the only “ul. Liczyrzepy “(Rübezahlstrasse) in Poland.

literature

Book cover for Karl August Musäus: Fairy tales by Rübezahl , with pictures by Wilhelm Stumpf, Nuremberg 1914
  • Karl August Musäus : Fairy Tales by Rübezahl , with pictures by Wilhelm Stumpf , Nuremberg 1914
  • Lucyna Biały: Duch Gór - Rübezahl. Geneza i upowszechnienie legendy. Plan, Jelenia Góra 2007.
  • Henning Eichberg : Rübezahl. Historical change of shape and shamanic actuality. In: Yearbook of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau. 32: 153-178 (1991).
  • Mateusz J. Hartwich: Rübezahl between tourism and nationalism. From a contested symbol to the unifying patron of the German-Polish-Czech border region? in: Petr Lozoviuk (Ed.): Border area as a research field. Aspects of the ethnographic and cultural-historical research of the border region (= writings on Saxon history and folklore. Volume 29). Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2009, pp. 192–218.
  • Stephan Kaiser (Ed.): The Lord of the Mountains Rübezahl. Exhibition catalog. Museum for Silesian Regional Studies, Königswinter-Heisterbacherrott 2000.
  • Ines Koehler-Zülch : Rübezahl . In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales, Vol. 11, Col. 870–879.
  • Johann Karl August Musäus and others: Legends of the Rübezahl . With a foreword by Otfried Preußler and a color-illustrated afterword by the editor Harald Salfellner. Vitalis, Prague 2011, ISBN 978-3-89919-170-7 .
  • R. Münchgesang: Rübezahl, The Spirit of the Riesengebirge, legends and tales retold for the youth with pictures by F. Müller-Münster. Enßlin & Laiblins Verlagbuchhandlung, Reutlingen 1933.

Editions in selection

  • Chr. Kutschera: Rübezahl. Legends and rascals . Stuttgart 1950.
  • Lotte Weitbrecht : Rübezahl. Freely told after Johann Karl August Musäus . Newly edited and illustrated with text drawings by Karl Mühlmeister. Thienemann Verlag, Stuttgart 1956.
  • Johannes Wüsten : Rübezahl . Dresden 2013, ISBN 978-3-86276-078-7 .

Web links

Commons : Rübezahl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Read literature online

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b This translation was introduced by Stanisław Bełza (1849–1929) in his novel W Górach Olbrzymich ("In the Giant Mountains") published in 1898 . See also Karkonosze i Sudety (2007): Duch Gór. Największa w historii powódź w Karkonoszach. Od legendy do czasów współczesnych Tadeusza Różewicza ( Memento of the original of May 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.karkonosze.ws
  2. ↑ Georg Liebusch suspected in his book Skythika, or etymological and critical remarks about old mountain religion and later fetishism (Camenz 1833) in the Rübezal an old mountain god or mountain spirit who had fled to the heights of the Giant Mountains together with some "staunch admirers" to escape Christianization.
  3. ^ E. Berger: Rübezahl and other mountain sagas. Gustav Fock bookstore
  4. ^ Franc. Faber: Sabothus, sive Silesia (written around 1555). In: Gottfried Tilgner (Ed.): Primitiae Silesiacae sive Franc. Fabri vulgo Koeckritz Sabothvs et Silesia. Johann Groß Erben, Leipzig 1715, p. 13.
  5. ↑ Ines Koehler-Zülch : Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales, Vol. 11, Col. 870 f.
  6. ↑ Johannes Praetorius: Daemonologia Rubinzalii Silesii , 1662. Des Rübezahl's other, and very fresh historical part , 1662. Rübezahl's third and completely Nagel-new historical part , 1665. Full texts available online at zeno.org
  7. ^ Ines Koehler-Zülch: Encyclopedia of fairy tales . Vol. 11th Col. 871 ff .; Gertraud Meinel: Rübezahl . In: Klaus Doderer (ed.): Lexicon of children's and youth literature . Weinheim and Basel, vol. 3, p. 221 ff.
  8. ^ Józef Sykulski: Liczyrzepa, zły duch Karkonoszy i Jeleniej Góry . Księgarna ZNP "Oświata", Jelenia Góra 1945.
  9. ↑ https://www.boersenblatt.net/2018-04-18-artikel-wieland_freund_gewinnt_mit__krakonos_-rattenfaenger-literaturpreis_2018.1456252.html
  10. ^ Ferdinand Freiligrath: From the Silesian Mountains in the Gutenberg-DE project
  11. ↑ Minor planets discovered on Tautenburger Platten , website of Freimut Börngen