Rhön costume
The traditional costume of the Rhön people is called the Rhön costume . The term particularly includes clothing from the 18th century. As early as 1850, men no longer dressed in the traditional self-made clothing and some time later the traditional costume in the Rhön had completely disappeared from public life. Attempts have only been made in the last decades of the 20th century to revive the memory of it in local museums and traditional costume associations.
background
Clothing served to mark the social and political status of the wearer well into the 19th century. It was not for nothing that clothes make the man in the past . Philip III had issued the first dress code in 1279, which contained regulations down to the most private sphere. On the edge of the Rhön, the Schweinfurt hierarchy divided the population into three classes in 1680 and in 1710 a dress code forbade servants to wear gold and silver. There was no resistance to such ordinances, since differences of class were accepted by everyone as "God-given". The socially and especially politically segregating character was also evident in the respective costume.
For a long time, the saying applied to the clothing of the Rhön people:
"Home-spun, home-made is the best peasant costume"
Most of the Rhön people lived from agriculture and were both producers and customers of their own products. There was a small loom in almost every household and until the first decades of the 20th century, sheep wool was spun in the spinning rooms in winter and flax was also spun into the 19th century . The convivial get-together in the spinning rooms had led to a ban on them by Prince-Bishop Franz Ludwig von Erthal in 1783 .
Appearance and distribution of the costume
In the area of Lower Franconia there were two distinct areas of different traditional costumes. The so-called Rhöntracht in the area of the Black Mountains and on the Saale was rather simple in execution, while the Saale costume, which was worn on the Lauer and in the Saalegrund, but also in the area around Langenleiten and Stangenroth , was more elaborate. With Catholic peasant women, the principle "the more colorful - the better" applied everywhere, while Protestant peasant women in the Rhön dressed in dark clothes. When it comes to clothing, you have to take into account that the Rhön was known as the “land of poor people”.
The costumes experienced their heyday at the beginning of the 19th century. Later, people wearing traditional costumes were laughed at as backward by the urban population. From 1850 onwards, men’s costume had largely disappeared from public life. It was not until over 100 years later that individual associations began to be formed, which maintained the traditions of their ancestors and sometimes found old costumes on storerooms and in chests. In 2015 , the Franconian Open Air Museum Fladungen organized an information day “Wear traditional costumes” and the traditional costume association Abtsroda appeared in traditional costumes from around 1800 at pageants.
Contemporary reports from around 1860
In the Kingdom of Bavaria , to which large parts of today's Hessian Rhön belonged at the time, “physics reports” were prepared across the board between 1858 and 1861 on each of the regional court districts of the time, including on issues of ethnology and on clothing for the population. Even if the district doctors were not trained for an ethological report and their reports were very subjective and the quality of the work depended very much on the motivation of the individual author, the reports give an accurate picture of the population of the time - even if more from the point of view of the authorities .
For the regional court district of Bischofsheim , “light clothing” made of a self-woven, dense fabric (called Beidergemeng ) made of half- linen , with sheep's wool also being used instead of cotton, is written. It is mentioned that wooden shoes were only worn in winter , while in summer the entire population went barefoot . Richer farmers wore a fur hat instead of the traditional Franconian hat as a three- cornered hat. Clothing according to current fashion was not yet common in the district at the time and the women only wore calf-length skirts to make it easier to walk in the mountainous terrain. Within the district, the doctor observed different color variants from south and east of Kreuzberg.
The regional court district of Brückenau reports that the population both in the city and in the surrounding rural communities tend to dress according to new fashions and that the choice of clothing is more for aesthetic reasons. The district doctor reports that the “woolen” clothing is too warm in summer and not sufficiently warm in winter. The looms that still exist in most houses would, at best, still be used for the production of coarse linen cloths. The clogs were the only part of the earlier costume that was preserved. Since the children, who often have to walk a long way to school, are very poorly dressed, they often fall ill in winter.
In the report from the Hammelburg regional court district , the local doctor writes that the population dresses simply and modestly. Blue and green printed cotton fabrics were used as headscarves, neck scarves and hats, while the skirts were made from both mixed materials. While the men around the town of Hammelburg wore trousers and skirts made of simple cotton or wool fabrics, clothing in the Rhön villages was still approaching traditional costumes. Here, too, reference is made to the poor clothing of the children, which was only spruced up on a few festive days and the vaccination days. (The smallpox vaccination was the first voluntary vaccination at the time and probably the only day of the year that residents saw a doctor in their village.)
The doctor from the Hilders district court describes details of the old costumes from the area, which had largely disappeared in 1861. In earlier times men wore long hair, which at that time could only be found in a few old men in Neuswarts and young girls no longer wore the traditional red bows in their pigtails as an outward sign of their virginity . It is reported that thirty years earlier farmers still wore knee-length trousers made of white leather, woolen black or dark blue stockings, a large kerchief , a black silk neckerchief and a large kerchief . A round felt hat with a wide brim served as headgear. This costume was used as Sunday clothing . The leather trousers of deceased ancestors or clothing made of linen were worn as work clothes. Less well-off people wore clothes of the same cut and replaced leather and cloth with two-piece gems. The doctor reports of the long durability of the materials previously used and that they have been replaced by "Saxon cloth" and established fashions. Even the earlier costume of women had largely been suppressed at the time. As a rule, wooden shoes were worn as footwear, and leather shoes were only worn on public holidays by those who could afford them.
From the district court of Kissingen it was reported that in the city of Bad Kissingen and the surrounding area the costume had already completely disappeared. The rapporteur deplores the high cost of fashionable clothing and, particularly in the case of women's clothing, their frivolity at the expense of morality . The change took place more slowly in the villages and the population mainly wore simple clothes from Beidergemeng.
The district doctor from the district court district of Mellrichstadt only reports on simple, practical clothing made of cloth or linen. As a special feature, he points out that Protestant women in particular wear straw hats.
The report from the Weyhers district court points out that only a few men still wear the traditional knee-length trousers. Particularly among the residents of closed towns, they have been displaced by more modern “European French fashions”. For women in rural areas, the traditional costume, consisting of wooden shoes, blue woolen stockings, a linen apron and a long skirt made of Beidergemeng, was still preserved. He points out that the clothing is partly made from used materials ("plucked from old clothes and prepared"). In summer, women only wear sleeveless camisoles of different colors in everyday life and a vest over them in winter. Self-knitted red scarves made of wool were the most common. As Sunday clothing, the traditional costume was already replaced in the country by clothing made from factory-made fabrics.
Picture gallery
Pair from Stangenroth around 1801
Two girls from Oberelsbach going to church around 1817
Farmer from Wülfershausen around 1850
literature
- Government of Lower Franconia (Ed.): From the Rhön inhabitants, after Peter Back. Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7954-1839-7 .
Web links
- Rhön-Tracht on the website of the Hessian Association for Dance and Costume Care
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tracht from Stangenroth (man). In: Database of traditional costumes (Historisches-Unterfranken.UNI-Wuerzburg.de). Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Tracht from Stangenroth (woman). In: Database of traditional costumes (Historisches-Unterfranken.UNI-Wuerzburg.de). Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
- ^ A b c d district council of the Bad Kissingen district (ed.), Hanni Chill, Ulrich Lutz: Our country - sources, wine, basalt. University printing house H. Stürtz, Würzburg 1989, ISBN 3-8003-0319-1 , p. 50/51.
- ↑ Dieter Kremp: On the wisdom and customs of our peasant ancestors: Everyday life in the village in the good old days. Engelsdorfer Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-96145-000-8 ( preview at googlebooks )
- ↑ Thomas Heiler : The Rhön and its inhabitants from the Middle Ages to the present in Thomas Heiler, Udo Lange, Gregor K. Stasch, Udo Verse: The Rhön - History of a Landscape , Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-7319- 0272-0 , p. 172.
- ↑ Impressions from the traditional costume day , press release from the Franconian Open Air Museum Fladungen (accessed on September 20, 2018)
- ↑ Website of the Trachtenverein Abtsroda , (accessed on September 20, 2018)
- ↑ Lower Franconian physics reports on historisches-unterfranken.uni-wuerzburg.de, (accessed on September 20, 2018)
- ↑ Klaus Reder : What are physics reports? , first printed in: Klaus Reder, Claudia Selheim, Joseph Weiß: The Miltenberg district around 1860. Medical officers report from the district courts of Stadtprozelten, Miltenberg, Amorbach, Klingenberg and Obernburg . Würzburg 1999, pp. 12-22.
- ↑ Physics report from the District Court of Bischofsheim vor der Rhön , p. 21/22, (accessed on September 20, 2018)
- ↑ Physikatsbericht vom Landgericht Brückenau , p. 68, (accessed on September 20, 2018)
- ↑ Physikatsbericht vom Landgericht Hammelburg , pp. 78-80, (accessed on September 20, 2018)
- ↑ Physikatsbericht vom Landgericht Hilders , pp. 49-51, (accessed on September 21, 2018)
- ↑ Physikatsbericht vom Landgericht Kissingen , pp. 46-50, (accessed on September 21, 2018)
- ↑ Physics report from Mellrichstadt Regional Court , p. 18, (accessed on September 21, 2018)
- ↑ Physikatsbericht vom Landgericht Weyhers , pp. 43–45, (accessed on September 21, 2018)