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Regimenting Revelry: Rhenish Carnival in the Early Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Elaine Glovka Spencer
Elaine Glovka Spencer
Affiliation:
Northern Ilinois University
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Extract

One consequence of the lively debates in the 1970s and 1980s centering on the concept of a peculiar German path (Sonderweg) to the twentieth century has been a reexamination of the nineteenth-century Bürgertum, the closest Central European counterpart to the French bourgeoisie and the English and American middle and upper middle classes. The study of the educated and propertied urban dwellers who became the core constituents and leading spokesmen of the Bürgertum has flourished, as historians have attempted to identify the consequences for German national development of bourgeois successes and failures.1 Neither an estate (as determined by legal privileges) nor an economic class (as defined by common market position), the nineteenth-century Bürgertum shared at least modest economic security along with overlapping clusters of values, attitudes, and goals and a sense—highly mutable and often ill-defined, to be sure—of who they were. Using moral and behavioral as much as social and economic criteria, a mélange of career and property-owning-groups set itself apart from the aristocracy, the peasantry, urban laborers, and—more belatedly and less clearly—from artisans, tradesmen, and other elements of the Mittelstand and claimed in the process an enhanced social and political role as advocates of a transformed society based upon individual achievement.2

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 457 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1995

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References

1. Particularly noteworthy among recent studies of the nineteenth-century Bürgertum are publications associated with an interdisciplinary project at the University of Bielefeld, October 1986 to August 1987. See especially Kocka, Jürgen, ed., Bürger und Būrgerlichkeit (Göttingen, 1987),Google Scholar and Kocka, , ed., Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert: Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich, 3 vols. (Munich, 1988).Google Scholar Selections from Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert are available in English translation in Kocka, and Mitchell, Allen, eds., Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1993).Google Scholar See also Blackbourn, David and Evans, Richard, eds., The German Bourgeoisie (London, 1991),Google Scholar and Gall, Lothar, ed., Stadt und Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a review of recent works, see Haltern, Utz, “Die Gesellschaft der Bürger,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (1993): 100–34.Google Scholar

2. On defining the Central European Bürgertum as distinct from the French bourgeoisie and the English and American middle and upper middle classes, see especially Kocka, “The European Pattern and the German Case,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Kocka and Mitchell, 3–39.Google Scholar

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4. For the consequences of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars for German cities, see Gall, Lothar, ed., Vom alten zum neuen Bürgertum: Die mitteleuropäische Stadt im Umbruch, 1780–1820 (Munich, 1991).Google Scholar

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7. For reminiscences relating to the journeymen's use of dancing masters, see Johann Peter Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1820, 9–13, Kölner Stadtarchiv 215; Auszug aus den Urschriften des Königlichen Friedens-Gerichts des Bezirks Coblenz, 1 December 1834, Staatsarchiv Koblenz, 403/2616. Ober-Secretär Fuchs, whose chronicle of life in Cologne from 1816 to 1854 will be cited a number of times in these notes, was born in 1782. He served not only as keeper of Cologne's municipal records but also as secretary of the Olympische Gesellschaft, an influential circle of friends who fostered the 1823 reorganization of Carnival in that city.Google Scholar See Ennen, Leonard, Zeitbilder aus der neuern Geschichte der Stadt Köln mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Ferdinand Franz Wallraf (Cologne, 1857), 373.Google Scholar

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9. See, for example, Beschluss der Maire der Stadt Köln, 28ten Pluviose, 13tes Jahr; Polizei-Verordnung, Düsseldorf, 1 February 1807; both in Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/2616.Google Scholar

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11. Landrat, Krefeld, to Regierung Düsseldorf, 26 August 1834, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/2616. The Landrat's report was one of many produced by Rhenish administrators in 1834 in response to the demand of the Prussian government to document earlier Carnival practices.Google Scholar

12. Grosshennrich, Franz-Josef, Die Mainzer Fastnachtsvereine: Geschichte, Funktion, Organisation, und Mitgliederstruktur (Wiesbaden, 1980), 99, 103.Google Scholar Given the size of Rhenish Carnival associations and the attention-seeking nature of their activities, they have not lacked chroniclers. Most histories of Carnival along the Rhine have been the work of local historians. Carnival societies have sponsored numerous volumes detailing the activities of their predecessors. Often lavishly illustrated and radiating municipal and corporate pride and nostalgia, such works yield abundant information about local happenings but frequently ignore broader issues. Among the many works on Carnival in individual Rhenish cities, especially useful are Klersch, Die Kölnische Fastnacht, and Keim, 11 mal politischer Karneval.

13. Statuten der Jocusstädtischen Carnevals-Gesellschaft, 19 October 1828, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 441/17140; Statuten des Aachener Carneval-Vereins, 5 February 1829, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Polizeidirektion Aachen 270; Statuten des Mainzer-Carneval-Vereins, 19 January 1828, Landesarchiv Speyer H 43/114; Statuten für den Aachener Carnevals-Verein, 1840, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Regierung Aachen, Präs, Büro 652.Google Scholar

14. Reis, Eduard, Mainzer Silhouetten und Genrebilder: Ein Panorama des heutigen Mainz (Mainz, 1841), 264.Google Scholar Reis, cited a number of times in these notes, edited the Rheinische Telegraph and was the best-known Jewish publicist of the Middle Rhine. Keim, 11 mal politischer Karneval, 38–40.

15. See, for example, Clobes, Wilhelm, Der Mainzer Narrenspiegel: Eine rheinische Fastnachts Chronik in Bild und Wort, in Spruch und Lied, zur 75 jähr. Jubelfeier des Mainzer Carneval Vereins (Mainz, 1913), 84–85;Google Scholar “Aus der Narrhalla,” Mainzer Unterhaltungsblätter, 14 January 1844.

16. On themes in nineteenth-century Prussian humor, see Townsend, Mary Lee, Forbidden Laughter: Popular Humor and the Limits of Repression in Nineteenth-Century Prussia (Ann Arbor, 1992).Google Scholar

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18. Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1834, 5–10, Stadtarchiv Köln 216.Google Scholar

19. Offizielle Karnevals Zeitung von Köln, 26 January 1826;Google ScholarStahl, Bianka, Formen und Funktionen des Fastnachtsfeierns in Gesthichte und Gegenwart, dagestellt an den wichtigsten Aktivitäten der Mainzer Fastnachtsvereine und -garden (Bielefeld, 1981), 66–67, 382.Google Scholar The Offizielle Karnevals Zeitung von Köln appeared as a supplement to the influential Kölnische Zeitung. That newspaper was founded in 1814 by Marcus Theodor Du Mont, a close associate of the initial supporters of Carnival reform in Cologne.

20. “Mainzer Carnevals-Bilder,” Das Rheinland, 26 February 1839. Compare Alter, Ann Ilan, “Pursuing Pleasure: Masked Balls at the Paris Opera Under the July Monarchy,” Laurels 60 (Fall 1989): 101–18.Google Scholar See also Castle, Terry, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (Stanford, 1986).Google Scholar

21. Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1822, 4, and 1829, 2–5, both in Stadtarchiv Köln 215, and 1844, 1–5, in Stadtarchiv Köln 217.Google Scholar

22. Kölnische Zeitung, 2 March 1840; Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1845, 11–16, Stadrarchiv Köln 218.Google Scholar

23. Kölnische Zeitung, 1 March 1835.Google Scholar

24. Kölnische Zeitung, 26 January 1826 and 11 February 1847; Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1830, 6–19, Stadarchiv Köln 216;Google ScholarPolizei-Director Müller, Cologne, to Regierungspräsident, Cologne, 17 February 1847, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/7061.Google Scholar

25. Stallybrass, Peter and White's, AllenThe Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London, 1986)Google Scholar provides a useful overview of literature from a variety of disciplines on the relationship of the bourgeoisie and the carnivalesque.

26. Offizielle Karnevals Zeilung von Köln, 22 January 1826.Google Scholar

27. See, for example, Comité des Mainzer Carneval-Vereins to Regierungspräsident, Rheinhessen, 30 January 1842, Landesarchiv Speyer H 53/114; “Ein Fremder über den Mainzer Carneval,” Mainzer Unterhaltungsblätter, 12 February 1842.Google Scholar

28. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche, vol. 13: Schriften zur Kunst, 2nd ed. (Zürich, 1965), 979–81;Google ScholarKölnische Karnevals-Lieder von den Jahren 1829–1832, vol. 2 (Cologne, 1831), iii.Google Scholar

29. Reis, Mainzer Silhouetten, 259. See also Das Rheinland, 1 February 1838.Google Scholar

30. On the development of bourgeois tounsm, see Buzard, James, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to “Culture,” 1800–1918 (Oxford, 1993), 6–9, 102–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. As suggested in editorials in Kölnische Zeitung, 18 February 1838, and Das Rheinland, 24 February 1839.Google Scholar

32. Oberbürgermeister, Düsseldorf, to Regierung Düsseldorf Abteilung des Innern, 30 December 1834, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/2616; Bürgermeister, Mainz, to Regierungspräsident, 27 February 1840, Landesarchiv Speyer H 53/114.Google Scholar

33. See, for example, Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1816–1847, Stadtarchiv Köln 215–18, for reports on the income, disbursements, and surplus of the Cologne Carnival Association. On the distnbution to a combination of schools and needy families of the surplus from the “innocent amusements” sponsored by the organization, see Kölnische Zeitung, 9 January 1830.Google Scholar

34. Das Rheinland, 24 February 1839.Google Scholar

35. Mainzer Zeitung, 4 December 1846; Keim, 11 mal politischer Karneval, 53.Google Scholar

36. Kölnische Karnevals-Lieder, vol. 2, iii.Google Scholar

37. Bamberger, Ludwig, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1899), 29;Google ScholarFuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1820, 9–13, Stadtarchiv Köln 215; “Mainzer Carnevals-Bilder,” Das Rheinland, 14 February 1839.Google Scholar

38. Reis, Mainzer Silhouetten, 260.Google Scholar

39. [Christian Samuel] Schier, “Über Volksfeste, mit Rücksicht auf das Cameval,” Kölnische Zeitung, 15 February 1824.Google Scholar

40. Das Rheinland, 6 March 1838.Google Scholar

41. For a discussion of aesthetics as class disciplinary power and of bourgeois appropriation and disciplining of the grotesque pleasures of the “vulgar,” see Fiske, John, Understanding Popular Culture (Boston, 1989), 69–102.Google Scholar

42. Das Rheinland, 14 February 1839.Google Scholar

43. Ennern, Zeitbilder, 296–97.Google Scholar

44. Comité der Florresei to Regierungspräsident, Aachen, 14 February 1838, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Regierung Aachen, Präs. Büro 652.Google Scholar

45. Kölnische Zeitung, 17 February 1838; 5 January 1842; 15 January 1842 (Supplement); 16 January 1842 (Supplement).Google Scholar

46. Compare Thompson, John, “Editor's Introduction,” in Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. Thompson, John (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 19.Google Scholar

47. “Die Rheinländer,” Das Rheinland, 31 January 1839. On constructing regional identity in nineteenth-century German Central Europe, see Applegate, Celia, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990).Google Scholar

48. Mainzer Unterhaltungsblätter, 10 February 1842.Google Scholar

49. On different kinds of capital, see Bourdieu, “Social Space and the Genesis of Classes,” in his Language and Symbolic Power, 229–51. For a discussion of the use of public spectacle to legitimate class and cultural hierarchy, see Scobey, David, “Anatomy of the Promenade: The Politics of Bourgeois Sociability in Nineteenth-Century New York,” Social History 17 (1992): 203–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. Mainzer Unterhaltungsblätter, 10 February 1842.Google Scholar

51. See, for example, Kölnische Zeitung, 31 January 1826 and 25 February 1832.Google Scholar

52. Reis, Mainzer Silhouetten, 198.Google Scholar

53. For examples of particularly enterprising Carnival ads in the Kölnische Zeitung, see “Niederlage des Kölner Karnevals-Tabaks,” 5 February 1826; “Carnevals-Comité's Canaster 1829,” 26 February 1829; and “Carnevals-Taschentücher,” 30 January 1834.Google Scholar

54. Klersch, Die Kölnische Fastnacht, 110–11.Google Scholar

55. Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1838, 2, Stadtarchiv Köln 217, and 1847, 5, Stadtarchiv Köln 218; Kölnische Zeitung, 3 March 1848.Google Scholar

56. Petition of Bonn residents, 1842, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/2616; Vorstand der diesjährigen Carnevals-Gesellschaft in Bonn to Oberpräsident der Rheinprovinz, 27 November 1843, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/7061.Google Scholar

57. Schütz, Friedrich, “Das Verhältnis der Behörden zur Mainzer Fastnacht im Vormärz (1838–1846),” Jahrbücher für Westdeutsche Landesgeschichte 6 (1980): 291–318.Google Scholar

58. Komité to Polizei-Commissar Cyré, Mainz, 19 January 1838, Landesarchiv Speyer H 53/114; Comité der Florresei to Regierungspräsident, Aachen, 14 February 1838, and Statuten für den Aachener Carneval-Verein, 1840, both in Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Regierung Aachen, Präs. Büro 652.Google Scholar

59. Much has been written about the social and political implications of carnivalesque celebrations. See, for example, Babcock, Barbara, “Introduction,” in The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, ed. Babcock, Barbara (Ithaca, 1978), 13–36;Google ScholarFiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 69–102;Google ScholarCapra, Dominick La, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (Ithaca, 1983), 291–324;Google ScholarMatta, Roberto Da, “Carnival in Multiple Planes,” in Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Peformance, ed. MacAloon, John J. (Philadelphia, 1984), 208–40;Google ScholarStallybrass and White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression;Google ScholarTurner, Victor, “Introduction,” in Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual, ed. Turner, Victor (London, 1982), 11–30.Google Scholar

60. Wilhelm, Friedrich to von Schuckmann, Staatsminister, 22 November 1827, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Regierung Düsseldorf 8953;Google ScholarMüller, Michael, “Karneval als Politikum: Zum Verhältnis zwischen Preussen und dem Rheinland im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Rheinland-Westfalen im Indusiriezeitalter, ed. Düwell, Kurt and Köllmann, Wolfgang, vol. 1: Von der Entstehung der Provinzen his zur Reichsgründung (Wuppertal, 1983), 207–23.Google Scholar

61. Oberbürgermeister, Düsseldorf, to Landrat, 1 August 1834, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Regierung Düsseldorf 8953; Coblenzer Carnevalsgesellschaft to Oberbürgermeister, 4 December 1834, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/2616.Google Scholar

62. Trier, Regierung, Innern, Abteilung des, to Rheinprovinz, Oberpräsident der, 27 June 1834; Regierung Aachen, Abteilung des Innern, to Oberpräsident der Rheinprovinz, 26 August 1834; Regiening Düsseldorf to Oberpräsident der Rheinprovinz, 15 December 1834; Regierung Düsseldorf Abteilung des lnnern, to Oberpräsident der Rheinprovinz, 30 December 1834; all in Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/2616.Google Scholar

63. For routine police requests for military help dunng Carnival, see, for example, Direktor, Polizei, Aachen, to Stadt-Commandant, 15 February 1836, 20 February 1843, and 17 February 1847, all in Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Polizeidirektion Aachen 49.Google Scholar

64. Reis, Mainzer Silhouetten, 266, 268.Google Scholar

65. Mainzer Zeitung, 27 February 1838.Google Scholar

66. See von Corvin, Otto, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1880), 221–24,Google Scholar for a description of a Prussian lieutenant's experience of Mainz Carnival in the 1830s.

67. Statuten des Aachener Carneval-Vereins, 5 February 1829, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Polizeidirektion Aachen 270.Google Scholar

68. “Der Mainzer Carneval und Langenschwarz oder Köln du bist Todt!” Das Rheinland, 11 February 1838.Google ScholarCompare Bausinger, Hermann, “Bürgerlichkeit und Kultur,” in Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Kocka, , 124.Google Scholar

69. For acceptance of the legitimacy of such barriers to full popular participation, see Kölnische Zeitung, 14 January 1842 (Supplement).Google Scholar

70. On craftsmen's incomes, see Lenger, Friedrich, “Zur Sozialgeschichte des Rheinischen Stadthandwerks im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert,” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 52 (1988): 171–89.Google Scholar

71. See the Statutes cited in note 12.Google Scholar

72. Fuchs, Chronik- und Darstellungen, 1841, 2–3, Stadtarchiv Köln 217.Google Scholar

73. Regierungspräsident, Düsseldorf, to Oberpräsident der Rheinprovinz, 24 February 1844, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/7061.Google Scholar

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77. Kölnische Zeitung, 16 January 1842 (Supplement).Google Scholar

78. Bamberger, Erinnerungen, 29.Google Scholar

79. Kölnische Zeitung, 19 February 1841. On the nineteenth-century Bürgertum and historical parades (some staged during Carnival), see Hartmann, Wolfgang, Der historische Festzug: Seine Entstehung und Entwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1976).Google Scholar

80. Landrat, Düsseldorf, to Regierungspräsident, 2 February 1844, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/7061; Minister des Innern to Regierungspräsident, Düsseldorf, 27 November 1847, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Regierung Düsseldorf, Präs. Büro 810.Google Scholar

81. See, for example, reports of Landrat, Düsseldorf, to Regierungspräsident, 22 and 26 January and 2, 6, and 12 February 1844, Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Regierung Düsseldorf, Präs. Büro 810; Regierungspräsident, Cologne, to Oberpräsident der Rheinprovinz, 2 February 1847, Staatsarchiv Koblenz 403/7061. See also Müller, “Kameval als Politikum,” in Rheinland Westfalen im Industriezeitalter, 207–23. (See n. 60).Google Scholar

82. Compare Hardtwig, Wolfgang, “Strukturmerkmale und Entwicklungstendenzen des Vereinswesens in Deutschland 1789–1848,” in Vereinwesen und bürgerliche Gesellschaft in Deutschland, ed. Dann, Otto (Munich, 1984), 39.Google Scholar

83. Crous, Karneval in Aachen, 53.Google Scholar

84. Sperber, Jonathan, Rhineland Radicals: The Deomocratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848–1849 (Princeton, 1991), 98–101.Google Scholar

85. Wedel, Wittgenstein, 86–90, 99.Google Scholar

86. For a democrat's perspective on Carnival, see Sander, Richard, ed., Gottfried Kinkels Selbstbiographie, 1838–1848 (Bonn, 1931).Google Scholar

87. Keim, 11 mal politischer Karneval, 55, 57.Google Scholar

88. Mainzer Wochenblatt, 11, 13, 15, and 18 December 1849.Google Scholar

89. On tensions manifested in such celebrations, see, for example, Schlossmacher, Norbert, Düsseldorf im Bismarckreich: Politik und Wahlen, Parteien und Vereine (Düsseldorf, 1985), 110–11.Google Scholar