Shepherd Garden

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Setting up and decorating a shepherd's garden instead of the Christmas crib was one of the pre-Christmas customs in some Protestant regions of Bavaria. Occasionally the name Christmas garden is also found.

The setting up of the Schäfergarten was closely connected with the domestic Christmas events; It was set up at the same time as the Christmas tree and also dismantled around Epiphany .

The most important distinguishing feature from the Christmas crib is the lack of any reference to the birth of Christ in the Schäfergarten. There is neither the stable in Bethlehem , nor the Christ child in the manger, nor Mary and Joseph .

Design

Shepherd gardens come in a wide variety of sizes, from table to room size. They are usually surrounded by a picket fence. In the Sechsämterland , the shepherd's garden was laid out with moss and equipped with houses, pavilions and often still functioning fountains. Sheep with their shepherds, dogs and other animals were placed in between. The figures were either carved from wood or molded from clay. Folklorists therefore suspect that the clay figures, like the figures in the Christmas cribs, often came from potters in Marktredwitz.

history

In the Sechsämterland, as in the neighboring Ascher Ländchen, there was a custom of setting up a shepherd's garden from the middle of the 18th century. Wunsiedel was not familiar with the nativity scene, despite being in close proximity to Marktredwitz . In the rest of the Sechsämterland and in the entire county of Bayreuth there were neither public nor private crèches . That was due to the denomination of the residents, most of whom were Protestant.

Regional particularities

Larger shepherd gardens as well as the Marktredwitzer landscape cribs were designed as landscapes with stones, pieces of bark, trees and moss. As there, the buildings were often kept in the Alpine style, as were the figures in traditional Upper Bavarian costumes. It is known from the Arzberger area that the Christmas tree was set up in the middle of the Schäfergarten .

literature

  • Gerhard Bogner: The new nativity dictionary. Knowledge - symbolism - belief. A manual for the crib fan . Lindenberg 2003
  • Alfred Frank: Krippenkunst im Marktredwitzer Land , in: Heimatbeilage to the official school gazette of the administrative district of Upper Franconia 59 (1977), p. 14ff.