Shepherd carts

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Barrow from 1860

The shepherd's cart is the living and sleeping place of a traveling shepherd . The most common form is a two-wheeled (wooden spoke wheels), all-round closed cart, which was usually pulled by a donkey or an ox. Rarely from a horse, since horses were too expensive for shepherds to maintain.

history

The shepherd's cart is probably one of the oldest vehicles of mankind and was already used by semi-nomadic, Neolithic steppe inhabitants. See traffic history in prehistory and early history .

The shepherd carts (barrows) of the 17th century were so low that they could only be entered on knees. They were used exclusively for the shepherd's night 's sleep next to his flock of sheep in the open field. At the end of the 19th century, shepherds' carts were built to stand in. They usually contained a bed, a small table top and a bench and were used by the shepherd as weather protection, pen office, sleeping and storage depot (food for humans and dogs).

  • Inside view of a shepherd's cart

  • Four wheeled shepherd cart (Surrey, UK)

  • Inside view of a shepherd's cart (Surrey, UK)

Today, a shepherd's cart can usually only be found in a museum, as the wooden vehicles are no longer in use. The hermit and artist Hans Anthon Wagner has been living in southern Germany since 1974 in a shepherd's cart built in 1864, which he himself renovated true to the original.

The shepherds' wagons were later transformed into the “traveling” wagons, which have survived into the present day as showman wagons and circus wagons.

literature

  • Hans Anthon Wagner: Shepherd cart philosophy: poems and stories of a hermit. Breitenholzer Igelverlag, Ammerbuch, 2nd edition, 2005, ISBN 978-3-937292-36-6 .
  • Hans Anthon Wagner: Shepherd cart philosophy: a recluse tells. Breitenholzer Igelverlag, Ammerbuch, 5th edition, 2017, ISBN 978-3-937292-36-6 .

Web links

Commons : Shepherd carts  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • The shepherd's car in model making in different scales. (No longer available online.) In: holz-ott.com. Formerly in the original;

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Press articles / media. In: hans-anthon-wagner.de. February 15, 2019, accessed April 12, 2019 .