Land of milk and honey
The land of plenty (of . Mhd sluraff = loafers; "The land of lazy monkey"; also Schlarraffenland or Hans Sachs Schlaweraffen Landt or Schlauraffenlandt ) is a fictional place from various fairy tales , is present in which everything in abundance.
The motif
In the riverbeds of the land of milk and honey, milk, honey or wine flow instead of water (in reference to e.g. Deuteronomy 6.3 ( Dtn 6.3 LUT ) and many other passages). All animals hop and fly through the air, already pre-cooked and ready to mouth. The houses are made of cake. Instead of stones, there is cheese lying around. Enjoyment is the greatest virtue of the people of the land of milk and honey, hard work and diligence are seen as sin . Old age is helped with the fountain of youth, for example: whoever has an old woman / who sends them to the bath too / they hardly bathe for three days / so a young prostitute becomes around eightteen years old.
Land of milk and honey is therefore mostly used today to refer to a paradise of idleness and idly lying around.
The idea as such already occurs in antiquity ( Greek comedy , Lukian , Herodotus , Strabo ). Already in the 5th century BC There were similar ideas with the Greek poets Telekleides and Pherekrates ( roasted Krammetsvögel with small cakes flew into one's throat ). The description of Aurea Aetas in Virgil's 4th Ecloge also shows features of the later Schlaraffe saga, but here the motif of abundance and glitz is missing. In German, the term Gugelmüre appeared in the Middle Ages for a utopian land of milk and honey . The French Fabliau de Coquaigne emerged in the middle of the 13th century and survived in English and Dutch versions into the 15th century. In the middle of the 14th century, Boccaccio describes in the Decamerone (3rd novella of the 8th day) a land called Bengodi , where wine, sausages, cheese and other delicacies are naturally available in abundance.
A popular representation in 14th century Ireland was the utopian Cokaygne . In addition to free food and drink, it was also about social equality and free sexuality . It was located in the fictional country of Cokanien , west of Spain .
In Germany the subject in the submerged Shrovetide play of the 15th century before 1494 by the humanist Sebastian Brant as a parody on the paradise and as a criticism of the climate of an increasingly secularized clergy and functionless becoming noble feudal society in his Ship of Fools (Chapter 108) is designed. It is later taken up in a poem by Hans Sachs .
For the people at the time, the image of the land of milk and honey had a special fascination, because an adequate supply of food was by no means the rule and times of hunger were frequent. Work was often seen as a plague that one had to undergo for the sake of bare survival and that left little time for leisure.
A continuous tradition in texts and images extends into the 19th century, when the Brothers Grimm with Das Märchen vom Schlauraffenland , which focuses less on the culinary aspects than generally on the topic of satirical role swapping, and Ludwig Bechstein ( The fairy tale of the true liar in German fairy tale book from 1845 and The brave beggar man in the New German Fairy Tale Book ) created the versions of the fairy tale known today.
In the bourgeois age, the motif serves to enforce the bourgeois achievement principle (nobility through virtue and achievement) against the alleged decadence of the nobility by birth. Erich Kästner lets the protagonists of his children's book Der 35. Mai or Konrad rides in the South Seas travel through the land of milk and honey.
Concept as utopia
In the literature of the 17th century, the land of milk and honey is referred to as utopia . An example is a map in the Atlas Novus Terrarum , a later version was printed by Matthäus Seutter , and the cartographer was Johann Baptist Homann (1694). The full title is:
Accurata Utopiae Tabula. This is the newly discovered SCHALCK WELT, or the so often named but never recognized SCHLARRAFFENLAND. Reinvented ridiculous land table. Wherein all and every vice is divided in the special kingdom, provinces and dominions - Beyneben also the adjoining countries The RELIGIOUS of the temporal UP and DOWN regions including an explanation gracefully and useful are presented by Author anonymous.
In Johann Andreas Schneblin's explanation of the wonder-strange country charts UTOPIÆ 1694 the complete title was:
Johann Andreas Schneblin's explanation of the wonder-strange country charts UTOPIÆ / so there is / the newly-discovered Schlarraffenland / where all and every vice of the roguish world / as special kingdoms / rulers and areas / with many ridiculous cities / vestments / spots and villages / Rivers / mountains / lakes / islands / sea and sea bosom like no less of these nations customs / regiment / trade / sampt many legible / foolish rarities / and remarkable ideas described very clearly; Presented to all right-wing vice friends as a mockery / to those who love virtue as a warning / and to those with melancholy hearts as an honest indulgence. Printed for Arbeitsshausen / in the graff work industry in the year / since Schlarraffenland was discovered.
Others
- Heinrich Mann published the novel Im Schlaraffenland in 1900 .
- A children's opera by Paul Hindemith is called the land of milk and honey.
- The Hungarian fairy-tale land Operencia is thematically similar, but without irony or moralization .
- Aufruhr im Schlaraffenland is a German fairy tale film from 1957.
- Deichkind released the album Aufstand im Schlaraffenland in 2006 .
- In 1949 the illustrated book Globi will ins Schlaraffenland was published .
- In 1952 the picture book Mecki in the land of plenty was published .
- Franz Lehár composed Peter and Paul Reisen ins Schlaraffenland , an operetta for children in a prelude and five pictures. Libretto: Fritz Grünbaum and Robert Bodanzky. Premiere December 1, 1906 Vienna (Hell cabaret in the Theater an der Wien).
- The folk song Big Rock Candy Mountain by Harry McClintock describes a modern version of the land of milk and honey for the late 19th century, including cigarette trees and wooden-legged police officers.
- Johann Baptista Homann: Map of the land of milk and honey (Schlarraffenland) 1694 - Newly discovered Schalk-Welt , Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, reprint 1694/1999, ISBN 978-3-932554-60-5
- Johann A. Schnebelin: Johann Andreas Schnebelin's explanation of the wonder-strange country charts UTOPIÆ , Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, reprint 1694/2004, ISBN 978-3-936030-38-9
- Graham D. Caie, Norbert H. Ott: Cockaigne . In: Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. 7, 1995, Col. 1477–1479.
- Dieter Richter: Land of plenty: History of a popular utopia, Cologne, ISBN 3-596-12780-7
Web links
- Article by Christine Kasper ( Memento from April 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on October 6, 2012
- The fairy tale of the land of milk and honey in a series of postcards by Oskar Herrfurth with the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Bechsteins
Individual evidence
- ↑ Our vocabulary , Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1972, page 340: slur-affe = lush and thoughtless living idler.
- ↑ Quoted from Von dem very best Land so auff Erden ligt on Wikisource - Published 1671
- ↑ George W. Tuma, Dinah Hazell: The Land of Cokaygne. In: sfsu.edu. English Department, San Francisco State University, accessed June 21, 2017 (New English version. In the Middle English original: en: s: The Land of Cokaygne on Wikisource ).
- ↑ Rolf Cantzen: “Do what you want!” - utopias of freedom . Ed .: Bayerischer Rundfunk (= radioWissen ). July 15, 2015, p. 7–8 ( manuscript (PDF; 91 kB, 17 pages), audio (mp3; 20 MB) [accessed on June 21, 2017]).
- ^ E. Götzinger: Reallexicon of the German antiquities. Leipzig 1885, p. 899. Entry on zeno.org