Narrating Cultural Heritage: What the Hell is a Schembartlauf?

The fact that carnival customs derive solely from the Saturnalia is strongly contested today. Independent of Roman influence, Celtic and Germanic tribes probably also celebrated the transition from winter to spring with disguises, masks and debauchery. However, the fact that carnival customs continued (almost) uninterrupted from pre-Christian times, through the Middle Ages and into modern times is also controversial today (and was very popular with the National Socialists as a so-called continuity theory). It is possible that the Greeks, Romans and individual Germanic tribes celebrated customs similar to carneval, which then fell into oblivion and took on a new and completely unique form from the late Middle Ages onwards.

On ecclesiastical paths: Lent and fools' festivals

This seems to be the case for the Schembartlauf. The carnival procession is documented from 1449 to 1524/39, i.e. for the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. While the Celtic and Germanic customs solemnly banish winter and the Saturnalia take place in December, carnival and carnival customs are all about the imminent start of the Christian Lent.

The term ‘carnival’ is relatively young, having been around since the end of the 17th century. It is possibly derived from the Latin carnem levare, which translates as ‘to take away meat’ and thus refers to the meatless period of Lent. The German word ‘Fastnacht’ is older. It dates back to the year 1200 and refers (quite clearly) to the night before the beginning of Lent. The German word ‘Fasching’ goes back to the Fastenschank, i.e. the last serving of alcohol before the start of Lent, and has also been in use since the 13th century.

A possible relative of carnival is the Feast of Fools, which was celebrated in many places in medieval Europe on Epiphany, the feast of the Three Kings' Day on 6 January. Similar to the Saturnalia, high and low clergy swap roles. Church rituals are publicly parodied with the so-called Feast of the Ass. Children are elected bishops and criticism of the church can be voiced unpunished. Church texts are frivolously, obscenely and blasphemously rewritten in the ‘fool's mass’ - and parades take place.

So back to the Schembartlauf. The precursor to the Schembartlauf may be the Nuremberg butchers' dance. There were also craftsmen's dances in other cities. The dancers form long chains and hold hands or (as was often the case) are linked together by sausage tails, swords or other objects related to their craft.

In Nuremberg, the butchers were supposedly the only guild to remain loyal to the city council during the craftsmen's revolt of 1348 and were rewarded with the privilege to dance and wear masks. According to another explanation, the butchers were not allowed to sell meat during Lent, had no income and were therefore granted the privilege of masks by the city council. Being able to wear a mask or a disguise literally means being able to conceal one's identity and therefore express oneself in a more rebellious, foul-mouthed and critical manner - mask and dance privileges are therefore quite important in late-mediaval society.

The Schembartlauf adopts dancing and masking, but is not an guild's dance, but an event organised by the patricians - the long-established, well-heeled upper class of the city of Nuremberg. The patricians probably buy the privileges required for the procession and then march through the city in the opposite direction to the guild's dance. 

Costumes and figures

The costumes of the Schembartläufer bear witness to the economic prosperity of those who ear them. They are made from valuable fabrics and are costly to produce.

The Schembart dancers wear tight-fitting clothes divided vertically into different colours. This colour division is also known as ‘Mi-Parti’. The term is French and means half or divided. As a rule, the right and left halves of the body are separated by colour - today this style is only preserved as part of jester's costume. In the Middle Ages, it was all the rage and probably goes back to the Byzantine princess Theophanu, who, as the wife of Otto II around 972, brought a fondness for precious, colourful fabrics from Byzantium to Europe.

The Schembart runners wear bells, beaked shoes, hats and wooden face masks. In addition, some of the costumes are so obscene that the council has to intervene and stop the excessive display of male sexual organs. The Schembart runners are accompanied by individual figures such as the wild man, the old woman and figures of devils, animals and fools - they are all united by their depravity. Here, too, there is a deliberate and joyful reversal of ecclesiastical or God-ordained order, social hierarchies and the Christian world view. The figure of the indulgence seller, for example, bluntly criticises the church and its sale of indulgences.

The figures of the Schembartlauf are similar to carnival figures from other regions. Like the Schembartläufer, the Swabian-Alemannic White Jester or the Donaueschinger Hansel, for example, also wears a wooden mask (or ‘larva’) and bells. Wild men, old women and devils also appear in other carnival processions.

From 1475, the figures and dancers were augmented by magnificently decorated floats, so-called ‘hells’. These also depict devilish and vicious themes. They used the same imagery as the church and preachers and depicted ships of fools, Babylonian towers, Venus traps, dragons and fighting elephants.

Spoilsport Reformation

On 31 October 1517, an Augustinian monk hammered 95 theses on the sale of indulgences on the doors of a Wittenberg Church - or perhaps not, as the historical authenticity of this scene is disputed today. Regardless of whether Martin Luther actually hammered his theses on the castle church, the Reformation was in full swing in the 1520s. In 1526, the Diet of Speyer left it up to the imperial estates to decide in favour of or against Protestantism. Reformation ideas found favour with the bourgeoisie and patricians, particularly in cities. In 1524/25, Nuremberg is one of the first cities and, together with the duchies of Prussia, Köthen-Anhalt, Ansbach and Bayreuth, one of the first areas to introduce the Reformation.

However, this religious-political development does not bode well for the Schembartlauf - it is banned without further ado. The Reformation is sceptical towards carnival celebrations, and to this day the ‘fifth season’ is celebrated less (or not at all) in traditionally Protestant areas of Germany. The reason for this is not necessarily stereotypically strict, humour-hostile moral concepts, but the Protestant emphasis on a personal relationship with God. The principles of solus Christus, sola gratia, sola fide and sola scriptura (through Jesus alone, through grace, through faith and through scripture alone) also mean that many activities, holidays and traditions of the (Catholic) church are declared superfluous.

Martin Luther himself rejects the prescribed fasting period and therefore also carnival - fasting should not entail a promise of salvation, but should be a personal decision of the faithful. At the same time, however, he was also critical of the carnivalesque licentiousness - so morality does play a role.

In 1439, conservative patricians once again initiated a Schembartlauf, which was used as a platform for criticising the Reformation and mocking the Nuremberg preacher Osiander. This put an end to the tradition of the Schembarlauf once and for all. More than 500 years later, in 1974, the Nuremberg Schembart Society was founded, which occasionally organises parades, but above all cultivates medieval and Renaissance culture.

The costumes of the Schembartlauf are well-documented thanks to numerous Schembart manuscripts. These richly illustrated and precious manuscripts were all written after the provisional and the final end of the Schembartlauf - the oldest manuscript is from 1525, the most recent from the 18th century.

So if you still don't have an idea for a carnival or fancy dress costume, why not browse through the digitised Schembart manuscripts? How about a house of cards, for example, or a costume made from chestnuts or pine apples?

With this: Helau, Alaaf, Ahoy or Rucki Zucki Olé (as they say in Angermünde) and a happy carnival!

 

Sources

Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schembartlauf und https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karneval,_Fastnacht_und_Fasching

Jürgen Küster: https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/N%C3%BCrnberger_Schembartlauf 

Mittelalterlexikon: https://www.mittelalter-lexikon.de/wiki/Schembartlauf und https://www.mittelalter-lexikon.de/wiki/Mi-parti

Nürnberger Schembart Gesellschaft: https://www.schembart.de/2024/04/10/schembartlauf-einordnung/ 

BR: https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/lebendiges-faschingsbrauchtum-schembartlaeufer-gesucht,U1nNSkL 

National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.de/geschichte-und-kultur/2023/02/wissen-kultur-fakten-ueber-fasching-fastnacht-karneval

Erzbistum Köln: https://www.erzbistum-koeln.de/presse_und_medien/magazin/Karneval-Ursprung-Bedeutung-und-Brauchtum-des-Karnevals 

Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland: https://www.ekd.de/fastnacht-und-die-christlichen-wurzeln-karneval-luther-43925.htm 

Etymologisches Wörterbuch: https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/Schembart 

Stadtarchive Nürnburg: https://stadtarchive-metropolregion-nuernberg.de/nuernberg-als-fastnachtshochburg-der-schembartlauf/

Blog des Deutschen Historischen Museums: https://www.dhm.de/blog/2018/02/08/karneval/ 

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung: ormation/234691/stationen-der-deutschen-reformationsgeschichte/ 

 

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