A humorous reflection on Mölm’s Vogelsche song
along with a call for a Vogelsche monument
The most interesting thing about Mülheim an der Ruhr is the song: “Ssinter Mätes Vogelsche”.
1968 I was drawn to Mülheim because of these songs. In Bonn there were only such general Mundart-Martin songs as “The hillige Sinte Mätes, that was a Jewish man, who gave the Children a Cow a stick and himself. Bozz, bozz, wider bozz, that was no Jew Ma-a-aan!“
But what baroque splendor of images and what cultural-historical depth opens up to us in the Mülheimer Lied with the Vogelsche!
I was all the more disappointed when I found out that the song was still sung occasionally, but hardly anyone had taken the song seriously, not in 1968 and still not in 2024, despite my numerous and multi-pronged efforts to get the song into to place a larger, even European context.
Instead, I keep hearing the same phrases about Mülheim’s own plant and the goose that is meant by the bird. Details remain silent. Especially because the song cannot be explained with logic and Mülheim sources are not sufficient to explain it in a somewhat satisfactory way. It invites you to study Germanic mythology, German and Dutch customs and traditions. Traditional song research, dialect research, the study of Dutch colonization in Northern Germany and, last but not least, church history and veneration of saints and much more.
And after you’ve done all that, you have to be content with what you’ve done, without having found a clear explanation for the singsong that you probably spontaneously invented at some point.
But that is also the greatness of this song. The inexplicable as well as the ambiguous. I have now understood that and have gradually realized what great wisdom lies in the fact that old Mülheimers don’t ask any questions about the song. From that point on, but only since then, I can probably call myself a “real Mölmsche”.
But the greatest thing about the Vogelschelied song is that it has transported the Mölmsch Platt to the lips of the Mölm people right up to our days. I personally experienced how a group of 90-year-olds in wheelchairs sang, even belted out, this song without any lyrics in a senior citizens’ facility. That’s why I dedicate a third of my Rheinlandtaler to this song. And of course Ernst Buchloh and Wilhelm Klewer, whose explanations were the first to come into my hands and who immediately fascinated me so much that to this day I believe I was the first person to change his place of residence because of a song, because of all the other reasons seem less and less plausible to me as I get older.
By the way, the second third goes to Chird Hardering, who I only got to know later and with whom I realized, as with the Vogelsche song, that they didn’t dig deep enough here. How else can one explain that someone had to come from Bonn in order to bring his wonderful dictionary manuscript and the audio recordings of his poetry readings from a cellar in Mülheim to the light of day. Unfortunately, he had nothing to do with Vogel and his Kapögel.
To complete this, I of course dedicate the third third to my wife, who I met here in the Vogelschen town, but who comes from Rheydt, where the Ssinter Mätes Vogelsche is also unknown, but who, regardless, knows a lot about the song had to learn because she lives with another strange bird that doesn’t talk about anything else every year from October to November.
From all of this it is clear that a memory of Mölmsch Platt is not possible without the Vogelsche song. And no matter how wonderful the verses of our hometown poets may sound, none of their lines come close to the archaic verses that were once spontaneously invented and strung together.
And if we want to create a visible monument to our dialect, then we would have to give shape and space to this text and the Vogelsche with the roat Kapögelsche somewhere in the old town.
This is a call to think about such a monument!!!
Scenes from the SMV song (with help from van Dyck/KI):
The eight scenes described in the text:
Flight over Rhine fat pigs
Farmer’s wife puts eggs from the chickens into the children’s baskets
Long and short sausages hang under the roof,
The reference to food, livestock market
The rich man gives a lot,
Maid in the attic. Nutsack
Knecht throws apples out of the roof hatch at children who are probably standing by the pond,
Children chase away devils (text interpretation)
