Pour. Latscho, bye Lowi, Rackelo, Gatsch and ulai: Words that are used by many long-established Giessen residents. These manic terms have now become something of a city signature, gracing mugs, T-shirts, baseball caps, and even the name of a basketball team. The manic has thus transformed itself into pop culture as a specific feature of a local identity.
That was unimaginable just a few decades ago. Because the language served as a code with which the excluded population groups of the Yenish communicated with each other – in order not to be understood. A special exhibition by the Upper Hessian Museum that is as diverse as it is illuminating now tells the story of the manic in the Old Castle – including audio examples.
The opening on Wednesday evening, when numerous visitors in the cabinet of the Old Castle took a first look at the blackboards, photos, models, objects, documents and threw film clips. No wonder: it’s the first museum exhibition ever to deal with a topic that is so important for Giessen’s identity, as museum director Dr. Katharina Weick-Joch explained.
Curator Mario Alves has conducted numerous conversations with people from the parts of the city where the manic was mainly spoken and in parts is still spoken: Eulenkopf, Gummiinsel, Margaretenhütte. And on his search for clues, the cultural scientist has vividly compiled how it came about that a special language developed in these places, the roots of which lie in the Middle Ages and which is composed primarily of Romani, Yiddish and Hebrew, French and Rotwelsch – not to forget the Hessian tongue stroke.
Manic was the language of the Yenish people who had settled in Gießen since the end of the 19th century. They earned their money as showmen, scrap collectors or scissor grinders and lived on the geographical, cultural and economic margins of society. The authorities regarded the Yenish, who had left their mark as a “traveling people” in German-speaking countries for around 300 years, as suspicious because they also passed on messages when traveling from place to place and evaded control, as Mario Alves explained.
After the First World War, the members of this group living in Giessen were initially ghettoized in discarded railway wagons in the Margaretenhütte district and persecuted and murdered like Sinti and Roma during the Nazi era. A chapter that has so far been largely unprocessed, as the curator reported. After the Second World War, the Eulenkopf settlement was built to house the homeless and refugees. For decades, there was just as much poverty there as on the Gummiinsel, the district in Weststadt that was built in the 1930s and is separated from the city by the Lahn.
What these residential areas had in common was that they were largely left to their own devices by the administration and urban society up until the 1970s – while their residents fought unsuccessfully for recognition. From today’s perspective, Alves believes it is “unimaginable” how long this marginalization lasted. In the exhibition, this atmosphere can be sensed from film excerpts from a TV documentary from the 1970s. Giessen passers-by were asked about the residents of the settlements on the street. “Associal” was the first and sometimes the only thing that came to mind.
After the psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter and some of his fellow campaigners brought the residents of the Eulenkopf into the public eye in the 1970s and they were increasingly successful in fighting for their own interests, the tide finally turned. And instead of the car wrecks and corrugated iron shacks that can be seen in the museum on black-and-white photos, the beautifully decorated brick houses were built on the rubber island, two models of which can be seen in the exhibition.
Nevertheless, parts of this unique city and social history are still in the dark. For example, the Lederinsel, a settlement off the Krofdorfer Straße, of whose existence even the expert Alves had no idea until the exhibition. Now the exhibition team is looking for clues and contemporary witnesses who can contribute information or even objects.
In general, it is important to the makers to get into conversation with the visitors in this exhibition, as museum director Weick-Joch emphasized. In addition to a guest book, there are also new formats such as a station where you can hear over headphones what the manic sounds like. A folk song, stories about »Hedgehog Soup« and »Bauernkupfer« and even a version of »Hansel and Gretel« translated by Giessen »Hütt« resident Erwin Pitz can be heard on one soundtrack. Laceo!
The special exhibition “Dig it! The Manic in Gießen« can be seen in the Old Castle on Brandplatz until May 1st. Opening times are Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on various Thursdays until 7 p.m. The supporting program includes a lecture by curator Mario Alves on March 23 at 7 p.m. The museum is also planning guided tours through the districts, which have not yet been scheduled. Further information on the Internet at www.museum.giessen.de. (bj)
A largely unknown chapter in the history of the city: the Lederinsel settlement lay west of the Lahn.
© Red
