Virtue arrow

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The virtue arrow was a specially shaped hairpin for a hairstyle , which was often worn with the so-called "ear iron cap" until the end of the 19th century in the wider area around Koblenz on the left bank of the Rhine . The carriers were Catholic girls, from puberty to their wedding.

description

Hairpin called virtue arrow from the area around Kaisersesch , Moseleifel , second half of the 19th century
A vintage in the style of Rhine Romanticism painted by Adolph Richter in 1842. The girl in the center of the picture wears the hairstyle with a silver virtue arrow and an embroidered iron cap.

A wide, Silbern or golden hairpin was the most eye-catching jewelry a female hairstyle, with the braided into a chignon twisted braids were put together. Existing specimens show the hairpin as a silver-plated or gold-plated brass leaf with a cast grip piece soldered to it. Both are often decorated with engraved floral motifs. The hairpins are between 18 and 22 cm long and almost 3 cm wide at the soldering point to the handle. The sheet is rounded to a blunt point.

With this hairstyle, a small, tight-fitting, embroidered cap or a wide band of velvet or silk covered the back of the head, held in place by a U-shaped, bent, narrow brass bracket sewn into the hem of the skullcap.

This type of attachment was already recognizable in paintings by old masters of the 16th and 17th centuries on the hoods of Dutch and Flemish women.

In the Rhine and Moselle Franconian dialect of the distribution area described here, both “Hoarnohl” (hairpin) and “Ooreisemötsch” (ear iron cap) were called. Representations of this hairstyle with the virtue arrow can be found from the early 19th century in many pictures of the Rhine Romanticism and in genre painting with religious motifs. She has also been featured in family and portrait photos since the 1860s.

A related hairstyle was probably also worn in central Italy. In his pictures from the landscapes of the Middle Rhine, published in Leipzig in 1880, Christian Mehlis compared the hairstyle of the young girls with "[...] hair arrows reminiscent of Roman patterns". This comparison - and a possible declaration of origin - is supported by a classical marble bust of a peasant girl from Frascati, which was modeled by Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1774 based on a plaster model made before 1768. It shows a hairstyle in which the long braids on the back of the head are neatly pinned together with a large needle (probably broken off at the ends). In contrast to the Rhenish hairstyle, the Italian women probably did not braid, but instead wrapped two thick strands of hair with fabric.
A portrait of two Italian women in national costumes around 1830 also shows a hairstyle with a hairpin decorated on to hold the braided neck knot. The late Romantic painter August Lucas (1803–1863) already showed a similar hairpin version (like Hürter's drawing in 1902 ) in several drawings by young Italian women from his stay in Italy for several years.

In popular parlance in the Rhineland towards the end of the 19th century, the term virtue arrow or innocence pin came up for this type of hairpin. Perhaps influenced by the previous Kulturkampf or also genre pictures with religious themes and the virtue arrow as an unmistakable pictorial element, some saw it not only as hair ornaments, but as a sign of custom and morality.

Distribution area

Probably the earliest mentions of this hairstyle can be found in a French description of the population of the Département de Rhin-et-Moselle of the Prefect Boucqueau from 1803/04: “La coiffure nationale des filles des bords du Rhin est un fort petit bonnet de soie… les cheveux ... tournées autour d'une large aiguille d'argent. "A little earlier, a Sergeant Fricasse of the French Revolutionary Army stationed in the Aachen - Jülich - Cologne area describes the costume of women there:" As headgear they wear small, velvety hoods in different colors, [ …] They braid their hair into several braids, which are rolled up behind the hood like a snail and held by a large, two-finger-wide silver pin. "

In the middle of the 19th century, according to a description by the historian August von Cohausen in the yearbook of the Friends of Antiquity Research of the Rhineland 1852 , the virtue arrow was carried on the left bank of the Rhine south of the Ahr region, up the Rhine to beyond Boppard and up the Moselle to the area of Cochem . Photographs from the second half of the 19th century also document this hairstyle for the Maifeld and the front Hunsrück .

The virtue arrow was worn by Catholic girls from puberty to wedding. Often it was the godmother's gift for confirmation . Occasionally the brides also wore the virtue arrow to the wedding ceremony.

The area of ​​distribution last described here lies largely within the limits of the “Lower Archbishopric” in the Diocese of Trier . The characterization “Catholic costume” is absolutely correct, because it was not worn in the Protestant enclave of Winningen . And the boundaries of the distribution area were obviously upstream of the Rhine and Moselle, the areas of the reformed, former "rear county of Sponheim ". The virtue arrow was probably not worn by young women from Koblenz ; It is not documented either in old photographs or in portraits of Catholic bourgeois daughters. In a collection of German costumes published by Carl Jügel in Frankfurt am Main in 1832 , a virtuous arrow bearer is shown on the sheet "Coblentz". It is possible, however, that the location Koblenz does not mean the city, but rather stands for the area. In landscape and city views, for example by Johann Baptist Bachta , Johannes Jakob Dietzler or William Turner, girls with this hairstyle can often be seen in the foreground as a romanticized cliché.

history

It is considered certain that the virtue arrow was carried in the region to the left of the Rhine around Koblenz as early as the 18th century; whether everyday or only on special occasions and church holidays is not known. From the middle of the 19th century, when the regional costume was worn less and less and the girls from the country also dressed in a contemporary fashion, the virtue arrow remained in use. The little cap, sometimes also called "Cochemer Mützchen" and "Trierisches Halbmützchen", seems to have been worn less and less. At the turn of the 20th century - if you take photos from this time as a reference - only older unmarried women wore an arrow of virtue to festive occasions and to church. The incipient urbanization of rural areas, but also the fashion to wear one's hair shorter and unbraided, made this hairstyle an old-fashioned appearance for young girls. At the same time, however, virtue arrows found their way into folklore collections and were kept and presented together with the traditional costumes, which had largely disappeared.

  • Women of virtue arrows from the Lower Moselle , photographed around 1890

  • Anna Maria Brachtendorf from Löf , b. 1876

  • Maria Margaretha Goebel from Lay , b. around 1870

  • Elisabeth Matheis from Löf, b. 1877

  • Elise Schunk from Niederfell , b. 1872, unmarried.

  • Maria Anna Etzkorn from Löf, b. around 1860, unmarried.

Literature and image sources

  • Philippe Boucqueau: Mémoire statistique du Département de Rhin-et-Moselle, adressé au Ministre de l'Intérieur. To XII. Archives Nationales, Paris. [1]
  • Jacques Fricasse, Journal de marche du sergent Fricasse de la 127e demi-brigade 1792–1802, Paris 1882
  • Albert Kretschmer : The big book of national costumes. Rheingauer Verlagsgesellschaft Eltville 1892, page 32.
New edition as reprint: Allpart Media Verlag, Berlin 2010 ISBN 978-3-86214-009-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan van Steen (1625–1679), Prinsjesdag, David Teniers (1610–1690), Boerenkermis, Anthonis Mor (1519–1578), Portrait of Anne Fermely, all Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
  2. ↑ Walter Kölzer, The hairstyle with virtue arrow , pp. 50–55
  3. ↑ Cornelis Krusemann (1797–1837), Een van zin , Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
  4. ↑ z. B. from 1836, Italian women at a fountain , JP Schneider Collection, Frankfurt am Main
  5. ↑ P. Bouqueau, Mémoire statistique du département de Rhin et Moselle , p 83
  6. ↑ J. Fricasse, Journal de Marche du Sergent Fricasse de la 127e Demi-Brigade; 1792–1802 Avec Les Uniformes Des Armees de Sambre-Et-Meuse Et Rhin-En Moselle. , Pp. 57-58