Black-Forest Carnival by DOUGLAS CHANDLER
There is something peculiar about February. The Romans knew it as the month of purification; the ancient Teutons as the time to get rid of accumulated grudges and other devilry; while the Catholic Church gave it a sort of special licence for Carnival before the Lenten fast. To whatever mixture of these and other traditional elements the South German Fasching owes its origin, the result is one of the strangest popular festivals to be seen in Europe.
In the pre-Lenten season, for a period of about three weeks, Carnival is celebrated throughout the Black Forest. It is the time known in Germany as Fasching, and, by a paradox, the Schwarzwald revels are more hilarious and characterized by more bizarre customs than those in any other locality in the country. The paradox lies in the fact that the Black Forest inhabitants are known during the rest of the year as extraordinarily earnest, humourless, pious folk.
The character of these sober Germans has been moulded by the vast expanses of frowning Black-pine forest and by the hardships of their life. Fasching offers an opportunity to escape briefly from the serious rôle of everyday, and they throw themselves with astonishing lack of self-consciousness into a protracted spree of madcap frolic.
As with most folk-customs, the true origins of the Black-Forest Carnival are lost in the mists of unrecorded time. But it is generally conceded that the Narren-Treffen (literally, Fools’ Meeting) as practised today is the outgrowth of early Germanic rites.
To the pre-Christian Teutons their forests and fields—the very air they breathed—were peopled with daemons. And because the daemonic spirits played so terrifyingly upon the fears of these simple folk, they imagined that fear could in turn be employed for devil-exorcism. It was thus that they evolved the elaborate mechanism of fear-inspiring masks, fantastic raiment and noise-making apparatus which makes a Schwarzwald Fools’ Meeting such a colourful orgy of the grotesque.
Ask the average villager why at this season of every year he and his neighbours don these absurd costumes, cover their faces with uncomfortable carved wooden masks, carry a weight of some sixty pounds in bells, and, so bedecked and beladen, caper through the streets of the town. The only answer you will receive is, “Because we always have done it.”
I questioned one massively built Swabian blacksmith whose mask was carved with enormous nose, contorted mouth and sorrowful wooden beads of tears coursing down the cheeks. “Ja,” said he, “is it not like the barnyard beasts and the furry things of the wood? They all shed their hair at one season, and some that have horns get rid of those as well. This Fasching is our moulting season…. And at this time we can say what we want about our neighbours, thus sloughing off the year’s accumulated grudges.”
In every Fasching-season there is one week-end appointed for a mass-gathering of revellers from villages and cities scattered over the entire Schwarzwald. On other Saturdays and Sundays during the period each town has its own separate celebration.
In the spring of 1936 the big meeting took place at Oberndorf, a small manufacturing town in almost the exact centre of the Black Forest area, and famed as being the native place of Mauser guns. Dwellers from twenty-seven different communities assembled there for an entire week-end of carnival. All Saturday night they danced and revelled in the town meeting-hall. At eight o’clock on Sunday morning they held, according to custom, a Probe-Sprung or practice springing, as preparation for the big procession which always takes place at two in the afternoon.
The rest of the forenoon is spent in gossiping, drinking healths in the various inns, and at a luncheon to the accompaniment of much singing and drinking of beer and ‘schnapps’. By two o’clock everyone is in gala mood.
As the town clock strikes two they hurl themselves with a furious din of rattling bells, with Katzen-Musik, laughter and shouting through the main street of the village. The Narros cavort, gracefully springing in a peculiar, traditional step which causes their harness of bronze bells to ring in rhythmic fashion. On long sticks they carry supplies of pretzels which they fling right and left to the crowding spectators.
Witches with heavy brooms raise unsuspecting bystanders high in the air, a-straddle and shrieking shrill protest. Man-horses gallop to the cracking of long whips wielded by hideous masked drivers.
The principal characters to be distinguished among the Narros are the G’schell (Bell-Fool), Federhannes (Feather-John), Hänsel (Tease), Schuddig and Schandle.
The Schuddig—most ferociously masked of all—is the licensed chastiser. He is armed with a stick to which is attached a stout, air-filled bladder, and with this harmless weapon he belabours fools and spectators alike. The Schandle carries over his head a figured white-and-parti-coloured umbrella; under his left arm a large book. This book is the pièce de résistance of the entire sport: in it are written down the petty rascalities, the moral lapses, the chicaneries of all the erring members of the community. And when the parade is ended these titbits of evil gossip are read aloud by the Schandle for the ears of all and sundry! If the butcher has sold doubtful cuts of meat or charged improper prices he is sure to hear of it at the free-for-all Fasching impeachment. And, as there are many Schandles in every group of revellers, each with his schedule of haraveries, it is not to be wondered at that an aftermath of lawsuits and processes follows each year’s Fasching celebration.
The masks are carved in schools of wood-cutting conducted by the Dominican friars. These masks weigh on the average two pounds or more apiece. Many of those in current use were carved as much as two hundred years ago and have been handed down as treasured heirlooms from father to son for generations. Each year they are freshly painted so that all evidence of their antiquity is concealed. For those who do not possess such inherited masks, and have not the wherewithal to buy new ones (at a cost of about £4 apiece), there are masks to be rented from the Narren-Zunft or Carnival Association for a very modest price.
Most of the costumes are made of hand-woven white linen and are painted by hand in brilliant colours with figures of animals, priests, Saracen pirates, mediaeval courtiers and other fascinating designs.
An interesting analogy is noted by one of the German commentators on the history of these customs. In the old English Morris-dances, hobby-horse figures identical with those of the Schwarzwald Rössel or “Horse-fool” appear; also the fox-tails worn by the G’schell are familiar in the Morris-dance.
Another German commentator has drawn attention to the fact that the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district of southern Bavaria, where these Shrovetide festivities have also been celebrated with great vigour from early times, lies on what was once the great trade-route from Italy to Augsburg, capital of the Roman province of Rhaetia, founded by Augustus in 13 B.C. (Imst in the Tyrol, where similar revels are held, lies on the same route.) Traces of the Lupercalia, the yearly festival of purification and fertility held by the Romans on February 15th (cf. Latin februare, to purify) are found by this observer in the fact that, as in the Roman festival, only men may run masked through the streets; in the freshly made birch-brooms offered by the participants to women bystanders; and in the decorated ox-tails carried by the Schellenführer with their jingling bells.
The Black Forest also lay within the boundary of the Roman Empire, and it may well be that elements of Roman origin have there, too, become mingled with the early Germanic rites of devil-exorcism and have contributed to the weird medley of masked characters that throngs the villages at Fasching.
For a limited time, you can explore the original Fasching article for free in Geographical Magazine’s online archive. The March 1938 issue is now available for you to enjoy, featuring all articles and additional images from the Fasching carnival. Click here for full access to the issue.
