Fastnacht Celebrations

A number of German festivals and celebrations are derived from Catholic tradition. One of those is Fastnacht, which is a winter celebration that precedes the Catholic Lenten season leading to Easter. The Lenten season begins in late winter on a Wednesday and lasts forty days -- forty days during which practicing Catholics engage in fasting and sacrifice (usually in the form of giving up something that one enjoys). As the winter is already an austere time of year, the Germans use the last week before Lent as a time for wild and raucous partying, a 'last chance' so to speak. This is a short photo album with some scenes from the Fastnacht parade done in February 2004 in the town of Nussloch where we live, with some background information about Fastnachts in general.

Fastnacht celebrations last throughout the week But most of the costumes in the Nussloch parade preceding Ash Wednesday, the day kicking off the were of the homemade variety, as were a number Lenten season. The majority of them happen on of the 'floats'. Groups such as construction the Thursday the week before, serving as an engineers, sanitation workers, and farmers took the occasion for parties and parades such as the one opportunity to sell (or in some cases lampoon) their Veronica came across in our 'hometown' of craft. Later on was a marching band consisted of a Nussloch. As some of these pictures show, these similar batch of flannel-clad folks in construction parades show off some rather wild costumes. gear. Costumes such as these are often available in the German department stores after Christmas (much like how Halloween costumes are sold in the states).

Fastnacht is mostly celebrated in southern BadenWuerrtemberg and Bavaria, and certain Black Forest towns have particularly noteworthy events, many with a Halloween theme. One of the more famous that we are familiar with (but have not seen) is in the central Black Forest town of Rottweil who host celebrations on the Sunday beginning in the extreme cold of 5AM! Nusslochers are a bit more normal than that, we suppose.

The kids really get into the act, too. Some of them were together as a class, all dressed together in a common theme. Or some of them, like the peppy cripple at bottom right, simply join their parents in a display. This was the funniest of the groups. They came from the local clinic showing off some of the their trickier patients.

A lot of the local clubs, in this case a biking club, Some groups went all out on the floats, too, such as put forth floats or parades for advertising. The this Scottish Castle built on a pickup truck (we local soccer club and horse club did the same. This think) and packed with people. Most of the floats was a favorite among our photos -- we wondered have a farming theme -- barns with lots of hay and how old this particular contraption was. But hey, it pseudo-farm folk in wacky costumes! still worked!

The parade went all around the tiny downtown of Nussloch for a couple hours, and virtually the entire town turned out to participate or watch. That's the beauty of these events, it's a cool excuse for the town (and neighboring communities, too) to have some fun during the dead of winter.
(C) 2004 Tom and Veronica Galvin

Sword dances from Germany, Austria & Switzerland

There are various sword dances known to have existed in Germany, Austria and Germanspeaking Switzerland. These dances are among the oldest: sword dances performed by the Guilds of Smiths and Cutlers in Nuremberg were first recorded in 1350, there are records of sword dances in Brunswick and Cologne prior to 1500, and records of dances all over Germany in the 16th century. There are paintings of sword dances in Zrich in 1578 and in Nuremberg in 1600. The side from berlingen in Germany, first recorded in 1646, but possibly dating back to 1538, is the oldest sword dance side still in existence.

The Nuremberg Cutlers Guild dance from ca 1600 The dances are generally similar to longsword dances, but generally with simpler figures and add elements such as elevating a captain on a lock of swords. The dances were usually performed by members of Guilds, who often had special dispensations from local authorities to allow them to perform the dance. In some parts of Germany and Austria, the sword dance was a special privilege permitted only to miners, as miners were uniquely permitted to carry swords for protection with many mines being in remote mountain areas.

Sword dances in German-speaking countries often include flag waving routines, and in some cases the leader of the group is lifted up on a lock to wave the flag. In Austrian miners' dances, the leader may also give a traditional speech. The Germanic sword dance traditions, according to the Austrian ethnologist Richard Wolfram, almost always include the symbolic death and reawakening of one of the participants. There is some belief from the 8th century writings of the Venerable Bede and 19th century research by Jakob Grimm, but little explicit evidence, that sword dances were part of the springtime rites for the Teutonic pagan goddess of fertility Ostara (also known as Eostre) after whom Easter is named in which the death and reawakening sequences might have had ritual importance.

berlingen sword dance

berlingen lies in the southwest of Germany and claims the oldest continuously performed sword dance, whose existence was first specifically recored in 1646. It was the preserve of the Vintners' Guild, which is first mentioned in 1538, a date which has been claimed as the date of foundation of the team. The sword dance was originally performed by the Vintners as part of the town's Shrovetide celebrations, but was later moved to the Schweden Prozession, an annual celebration on the second Sunday of July of the town's successful defence against the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War. The Schweden Prozession starts with a Mass at the cathedral, followed by a two hour procession, another Mass, and the performance of the sword dance first in the main square then in front of the cathedral.

Prior to the procession, the team meet for a breakfast of local sausages and water, and the team's fool, the Hnsele is symbolically thrown out. The Hnsele is masked, wears a black costume with rags of brightly coloured cloth and bells, and carries a whip; he is traditionally banned from speaking to the other dancers and does not attend Mass. Legend has it that in the past the town raised an army to defend its traditional freedoms against the Holy Roman Emperor, and all the troops attended a Mass before leaving, except one man (Hnsele) who went to the pub instead and was the only man killed in the battle. The Hnsele character also appears in other local customs associated with the Fasnacht carnival at Shrovetide. The tradition has been kept alive by the berlinger Schwerttanzkompanie, which maintains its own records back to 1892, and was refounded in the early 1950s after permission was given to carry swords (otherwise prohibited by a general ban on carrying arms in post-War Germany). Membership is strictly controlled, in the spirit of the rules of the Vintner's Guild, and considered to be a great honour. The dancers wear costume based on formal attire from the eighteenth century, with triangular hat, dark blue frock coat, red waistcoat, white shirt with wing collar and bowtie, black breeches and black shoes with large silver buckles. A sprig of rosemary is worn in the left lapel reputedly so that its smell would wake any dancer who fell asleep during Mass!

The dance itself is peformed by linking up in a chain, but not in a closed circle as in rapper or longsword. The chain then performs some figure-of-eight manoeuvres, then a figure where the dancers pass repeatly under an arch formed by a sword, with the last dancer adding his sword to the arch each time until all the dancers are included and the swords have formed a mesh. The Hnsele character then stands under the centre of the mesh and the dancers cheer while circling around him (possibly an evolved form of the mock execution found in other sword dances). There are then simple single-over and single-under type figures. At the end of the sword dance, the dancers take partners from the women in traditional dress who follow the procession and perform a sequence of couples dances.

Drrnberg sword dance

The Drrnberg sword dance, from near Hallein in Austria, is a special example, first recorded in 1586; it was traditionally performed exclusively by salt miners, and has a number of complex figures representing actions performed in salt mining, such as climbing ladders of swords, passing through a mine gallery of swords and bucket lifting.

In common with many other European sword dances, the Drrnberg sword dancers elevate their leader on a lock, where he gives a traditional speech, but the dance also includes a figure, called Haldensturz, where an upper tier of dancers stand on the backs of those below them; the two tier figure is very rare in linked sword dances with the Perth Glovers' dance as well as some dances from Galicia and the Minho province of Portugal being the other examples known. The dance is known to have evolved considerably in its history, with performances lasting around 90 minutes in the 16th and 17th century, and being shortened to 45 minutes in the 19th century. The whole performance now includes a band of 50 musicians, flag bearers and 20 dancers.

Traunstein sword dance

The former salt-mining town of Traunstein, in the south-east of Bavaria close to Berchtesgaden, and therefore not far from Drrnberg, is the home to a sword dance still performed today. The first record of the sword dance in Traunstein comes from a ledger in the town records detailing payment of 1 guilder to the sword dancers for a performance in 1530. Over the years the dance died out locally, but the 1530 reference was discovered in 1922 by Dr. Georg Schierghofer, a local pharmacist who was re-organising the town archives. He then arranged for the dance to be reconstructed in time for a performance at the town's 800th anniversary in 1926. This reconstruction was achieved by the Turnverein Traunstein in 1925.

The choreography of the reconstructed dance was developed by Frank Absmeier, the song by Irma Peetz, and the costume designed by Prof. Wolfgang Quincke, who based it on the clothing worn locally in the 16th century.

The dance includes both linked and mock combat figures, the mock execution of a fool, so common in German sword dances, as well as the elevation of a dancer on a lock of swords. It is said to celebrate spring driving out the winter, and is performed during the Georgiritt, a traditional South German festival celebrating St. George, which traditionally takes place in Traunstein on Easter Monday.

After the inevitable hiatus caused by the war, the Traunstein sword dance has been performed at the Georgiritt every year since 1948.

Other linked dances

The German speaking countries also have a variety of linked dances using hoops or garlands rather than swords, such as the famous Schfflertanz performed at carnival time once every seven years since 1760 by members of the Guild of Coopers in Munich as thanksgiving for the end of a local plague epidemic (their next performance will be in 2012). The dance performed by mechanical figures features on the Glockenspiel of the Munich City Hall (see photograph). Another linked dance was that of the iron miners of Httenberg in Carinthia, Austria, traditionally performed at the Laubhttenfest on the first Sunday after Pentecost. From Wolfram' description, this traditional performance started with a parade of the entire workforce of the iron mine in decorated uniforms, then forming a marching circle around a waving flag; a fool comes forward and gives a traditional calling-on speech, then twenty-five dancers in a linked row perform over and under figures; the last dancer in the chain, called the Schwoaftrger is enclosed and falls to the ground as if dead then is revived by a touch of the fool's wand.

Sword dance and Nazi ideology

Unfortunately, during the 1930s in Germany, there was increased interest in sword dancing by the National Socialists and their sympathisers, and much nationalistic comment was made about them. Earlier, in the 19th century, various nationalistic German authors asserted that the sword dancing was Germanic in origin, citing the reference to sword dancing from the Roman author Tacitus's Germania in support of their claims. The Austrian ethnologist Richard Wolfram (a member of the Nazi party) wrote in his 1937 book Deutsche Volkstnze that the sword dance was originally performed by all Germanic peoples, including the English and Scandinavians, and not by any others presenting as bold fact a theory without supporting evidence. The Nazis exploited these to assert that the sword dance was proof of the supposed German racial superiority and a symbol of Aryan unity. Hans von der Au and Bernhard von Peinen published Deutscher Schwerttanz in 1935, describing a model sword dance based on the elaborate dance performed by ethnic

Germans in Sibiu (Hermannstadt) in Romania. The authors suggested the dance be performed by the party's storm troops and the SS. Further discussion of this is available in Steve Corrsin's excellent article Sword Dances of the NSDAP, published in the American Morris Newsletter in 2006.

Links

Stuttgarter Spielkreis Traunstein sword dancers Volkstanz Neckartailfingen

Bibliography
Violet Alford, Sword Dance and Drama, London: Merlin Press, 1962 Aenne Goldschmidt, Handbuch des deutschen Volkstanzes, 6th ed, Stuttgart: Walter Kgler Verlag, 2001 Kurt Meschke, Schwerttanz und Schwerttanzspiel im Germanischen Kulturkreis, Berlin, 1931 Karl Mullenhoff, ber den Schwerttanz, Berlin, 1871 Herbert Oetke, Der deutsche Volkstanz, Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1982 Trevor Stone, The berlingen Sword Dance Ceremony, Rattle Up My Boys 1995; 5(4):15. Richard Wolfram, Schwerttanz und Mnnerbund, Kassel, 1935 Richard Wolfram, Die Volkstnze in sterreich und verwandte Tnze in Europa, Salzburg, 1951 Kurt Zinnburg, Der Schwerttanz der Drrnberger Bergknappen, Salzburg: Salzburger Druckerei, 1981. The photographs of the Traunstein sword dancers on this page are by Alexander Ostermeyer and were sourced from the Wikipedia pages on Schwerttanz, and are copied under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 licence. The photographs may therefore be freely copied for use elsewhere as long as the source is thus credited and the same terms applied.

Sword dances from France

Le Bacchu-Ber
The best known of the French linked sword dances is the Bacchu-Ber, also known as Ba'cubert, from the village of Pont de Cervires near Brianon in the Dauphin region of the French Alps. It is performed annually on the 16th August, the day dedicated the St Roch, the patron saint of the village. The name remains something of a mystery: it has been suggested that it is named for Bacchus, the Roman god of wine (Arisitide Albert, 1842), and also that it is a corruption of Basquibere (implying a Basque-Iberian origin for the dance, Chabrand, 1920) or of Bal Couvert for a dance performed in an enclosed space (mentioned in texts in 1866).

It is a slow dance of 45 figures performed over around 15 minutes, accompanied by singing of mouth music, nonsense syllables such as la dra tan la and la de ra tan la similar to Scottish Gaelic port a-beul. Traditionally, the dancers are unmarried men, and singers unmarried girls. The dancers are dressed in white shirts and trousers, with black bow tie and red sash. The choir wear traditional dresses with shawls.

The dance starts with the dancers processing on and forming a circle facing inward; swords are held upright in the right hand, then lowered to the ground with points crossing at the centre of the circle. The leader then salutes the man on his left (No. 9), picks up his sword, and salutes the man on his right (No. 2) while offering him the point of the sword. No. 2 then does likewise and the others follow in turn to form the hilt-and-point chain. Next comes La Lve, where a series of movements of the dancers under a single sword is followed by the formation of a loose lock placed over the shoulders of No. 1, while the rest of the dancers drop down to one knee and jump up again repeatedly.

The next part is Les Figures, where various different shapes are formed with the swords. The dancers move around with a slow shuffle, creating a style which is very slow and deliberate even more so than longsword dances! Once all the figures have been

completed, the dancers return to the circle, release each other's sword point and march off with swords held vertically. The organisation of the team was formalised in 1887 with the foundation of the Socit du Bacchu-Ber, who then went on tour with the dance to Marseille, stopping on the way at Sisteron and Manosque. Like any modern dance team, they had some tall tales about the dance for their audiences, and as was fashionable in the 19th century, came up with a rather fanciful attempt at claiming a classical origin: Dance of Greek origin, imported to Rome by Pyrrhus in 200 BC. This dance became, later, familiar to Julius Caesar, who had it performed by his soldiers, during his meals. Extract from advert for performance of the Bacchu-Ber in Marseille in 1887 The dance was first mentioned in local records in 1731, and a book about tradition with the first formal notation was written by Raphael Blanchard and published in 1914. The most important collector of the tradition was Fernand Carlhian-Ribois, who recorded a detailed notation of the dance in 1936.

Les Olivettes
The other French linked sword dance is Les Olivettes, native to the area around Toulon in Provence, and first recorded in 1777. It was preceeded by a play and had associated characters, including a King, Prince, Marshal, Herald and Harlequin. The Harlequin was hoisted on a lock to recite a verse at one point in the dance; the verse quoted in Violet Alford's Sword Dance and Drama is in French, rather than Provenal, suggesting that the dance had changed significantly over time.

Bibliography
Violet Alford, Sword Dance and Drama, London: Merlin Press, 1962 Raphael Blanchard, Le Ba'cubert, Paris: douard Champion, 1914 Andr Carnini, Le Bacchu-Ber et les danses d'pes dans les Alpes occidentales, Aix-enProvence: Editions Edisud, 1996 The photographs of the Bacchu-Ber on this page were sourced from the Wikipedia page on Bacchu-Ber and are copied under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionShare Alike 3.0 licence. The photographs may therefore be freely copied for use elsewhere as long as the source is thus credited and the same terms applied. The White Boys dance from the Isle of Man The Isle of Man has one recorded linked sword dance the White Boys. A notation of the dance is included in Ivor Allsop's book Longsword dances. It was preceded by a play similar to a Mummers play. The play was performed by characters called St George, St Denis, and St Patrick (representing England, France and Ireland respectively) as well as

the Doctor, Big Head and Little Devil Doubt. An alternative version of the play has also been notated with St George, Sambo, Prince Valentine, the King of Egypt and the Doctor as characters. The participants in the play wore rag coats, which were mainly white (hence the name), except for the Doctor, who wore black. It is not clear whether the dancers were similarly dressed. A photograph of the the white boys costume is available on the Manx National Heritage website. The dance itself was performed by six dancers, with the Doctor from the play moving in and out of the set rather like a rapper character. The dance starts with pairs of dancers moving under arches formed by the swords of other pairs, then hilt-and-point chains passing under a sword (as in longsword dances), after which a lock is formed by a sequence of movements of swords under and over other swords (as opposed to the simultaneous tying movement used in rapper and longsword). The lock formed by the swords was used to seat one of the characters, the Doctor, who was then elevated to shoulder-level in a similar way to the elevation of characters on locks in continental European linked sword dances. The tradition had died out locally during the 1890s, but efforts to revive it have been made since. A film of a revival group was made by John Kanine in 1930. As far as I am aware, the White Boys dance is not currently being performed. Bibliography Ivor Allsop, Longsword Dances, Brattleboro: Northern Harmony Publishing Company, 1996 Mona Douglas, Manx Folk Dances: Their Notation and Revival Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society 1937; III(2):110-16. William Harrison (ed), The White Boys Manx Society 1869; 16:166-71. Longsword - Revesby - Scotland - Isle of Man Germany & Austria - The Low Countries - France Italy - Spain - Czech & Slovak - Croatian - Others Home - Introduction - Reference - Directory - Photos - Videos - Links Sources - Copyright/Disclaimer - Site Map

Beginning Spring with the Frhlingsfests

The Frhlingsfest is one name for a town's or city's Spring Festival. Spring festivals are very common as the school year heads toward its end and the flowers come into full bloom. Certain special events, such the Wittmontag and Happy Mosel Winefest celebrations, are peculiar to a specific village. But it seems like all towns, large and small, ring in the spring in their own special way. And so, here is a brief montage of four spring festivals or events, each a little different.

Walldorf. In mid-April, we found advertisements for a Frhlingsfest parade in Walldorf, just a few miles from our house, so we decided to attend. The day was very gray, rainy at times, but that didn't prevent the crowds from coming out in full costume. Most of the costumes were of a medieval nature, like this group here.

The dominant group of participants were children, who were broken out by school and class. It seemed like several area schools were represented -- one had their children carry flags, another flowers, another pretzels stuck on top of a colored stick. The objects were color-coded, like the red and green flags you see here, according to the age group.

Nussloch. Naturally, we took advantage of the Spring Meanwhile, the town square was a forum for a Festival held right outside our house, too. Nussloch's Saturday night open air concert, and on Sunday it event is called the "Brunnenfest" or fountain festival, played hosts to various events such as a fashion show, as it takes place on the main square where the town's shown here. (It wasn't a fashion show in the Milanfountain resides. While Nussloch's fall festival is catwalk-with-anorexic-babes, this was ordinary people loaded with food and beer tents and music, the modeling the newest 'ordinary' outfits, available at

Brunnenfest has more of a business theme -- the town's businesses remained open after hours and on Sunday (very unusual in Germany).

local merchants.) There were plenty of amusement park rides and such as well.

Rastatt. The city of Rastatt hosts a weekend-long Most of the early attendees were families, especially Spring Festival in its festival grounds just across the with little kids, and groups of teens looking to hang Murg River from the old city. The Spring Festival out. That was the typical pattern at most of the small consisted mostly of amusement park rides and games, festivals, the bigger crowds tended to come out in the with fireworks slated one of the nights. later afternoon/early evenings.

Munich. Munich's Frhlingsfest lasted for over a month, and was about half as large as the Oktoberfest. In fact, it seemed almost exactly like the Oktoberfest except for all the beer tents.

We were there on a Friday with a couple hours to spare, but as we could not stay late, the festival was sadly empty. So, we spent our time taking a ferris wheel ride that gave us some spectacular city views and a good look at the Peterskirche (shown at upper left here).