Spinning room
The term spinning room (also light bar , Lichtkärz , z'Liacht , go to light , light evening Liot-Oobad , Rockenstube , Kunkel chamber or Brechelstube called to spend the formerly widespread custom of long winter evenings together especially with social handicrafts).
history
Spinning rooms were in the winter meeting of unmarried women: Usually, met a girl year in order for his dowry to spin and do other crafts; this was not only for socializing, but also had economic reasons: Before the introduction of electrical lighting, pine chips , candles, oil lamps and heating material could be used more efficiently through shared use and thus saved.
“Light or spinning rooms are places of a very lively village culture that aimed to reconcile work and life. The spinning room is held alternately on one farm or the other, the women and girls spin, the boys make music, or folk songs are sung, witch and ghost stories are told and all sorts of entertainment are entertaining. The spinning rooms not only served to earn a living, but were news exchanges and critical forum as well as a place for youthful sexual culture and boozy exuberance. Because of the moral riots that occurred during this, spinning room regulations, ie police regulations regarding the time and duration of the get-together, had to be issued in various countries ; in the area of the former Kurhessen they were banned completely as early as 1726. Numerous folk tales, historical illustrations and spinning-room songs of these social gatherings have been handed down far beyond Central Europe. "
Young men did not always go to the spinning mills. As long as they were too young to go to an inn, they met separately from the girls in their age groups. However, it was often common for the boys to visit the girls at the end of the evening and accompany them home. That was one of the few occasions where it was possible to initiate a relationship halfway unobserved. As a result, spinning rooms were regarded by secular and clerical authorities as places of sexual debauchery: for example, from the 16th century onwards, both Catholic and Protestant sides made efforts to ban the light rooms; In some cases, the musicians playing there for the dance were arrested, as the meetings were also intended to serve as an independent exchange of news. The control was partly guaranteed by the installation of a light lord , who was responsible to the clergy.
The church convents in Württemberg, consisting of the bailiff, pastor and two to three judges, developed into a real moral police. In the 18th century, in addition to light candles (spinning rooms), game evenings, skittles, extramarital pregnancies and carnival customs were punished with fines and imprisonment after criminal interrogations.
Ernest Borneman mentions the following obscene terms from the spinning room jargon:
- Brechel bride, flax queen , merchant bride, rough bride : the prettiest girl was elected Brechel bride at the time of the flax break.
- Brechelbusch : The Brechelbraut possessed as a scepter a tree-top decorated with ribbons, which she threw among the boys so that they could fight: Whoever conquered it, won the favor of the Brechelbraut.
- Farkel : On the back of her smock, the Brechelbraut wore a flax wreath, which the boys tried to soak with a bucket of water to get the girl to hang up her skirts and petticoats to dry.
- Agent bottle : The flax rubbish ( Agen ) was stuffed into the boys' waistbands by the girls, which served as a playful pretext for a quick grab at the so-called best piece , the male genital .
- Pile of meat : After the dance, all participants let themselves fall to the floor, creating the highest possible crowd in which there was an opportunity for mutual contact. This custom in particular caused offense and was condemned in numerous sermons.
- flax, flax : telling nonsense, making stupid jokes .
- drying hair : drying or coiting flax .
- Brechelkinder : Children born in autumn who could possibly have been conceived in the spinning mills during the flax crushing in the previous winter months.
Portugal
In imitation of this old village custom, Emanuels d. Size at Évora the Seroëns de Portugal (Port., German: Portuguese spinning mills ), described by several poets , were held. The most brilliant period of Portuguese court life took place in this palace .
Web links
- On the history of the spinning room or spinach in the Sorbian-Wendish region
- To the association for the care and dissemination of the art of wool spinning in Tyrol
- Uni-Münster, early modern times online: Control of the youth as a problem
- "The light room": Herkomer Museum opens workshop for creative things in good company
- About a contribution on BR television Not too pious: Lichtstuben in Lower Franconia
- A contribution on BR television (on YouTube): The spinning room in the Hersbruck Shepherd Museum
literature
- Uwe Henkhaus: The greenhouse of immorality. Songs, pictures and story (s) from the Hessian spinning room. Hitzeroth, Marburg 1991, ISBN 3-89398-075-X .
- Ernst Bornemann: Sex in the vernacular. The obscene vocabulary of the Germans. Parkland-Verlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-89340-036-2 , 2nd part: Dictionary according to subject groups. Section 52: “Manners and Customs”.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b badische-zeitung.de , news, culture , December 26, 2011, Michael JH Zimmermann: Rumors in the dark - How light rooms put the authorities on alert (December 31, 2011)
- ↑ Sigrid Hirbodian , Andreas Schmauder and Manfred Waßner (ed.): Community in transition . Volume 19 A city in transition The history of Meßstetten. No. 19 . Tübingen 2019, p. 172 .