Deutscher Michel

The German Michel is a formed in the early modern national personification of the Germans, which today is used almost exclusively in the cartoon.

Representation

His most striking attribute is its sleep or stocking cap. The earliest pictorial representations of Michels dated to the first half of the 19th century. His pictorial shaping refers to literary precursor or a popular understanding of the figure. The actual height of his popularity reached the Michel already in the 1840s.

Characteristics and nature of the figure are still a political issue. The view of Michel would the Archangel Michael or the tab General Hans Michael Elias back of Obentraut, is widely used today. It can be found for both claims no compelling evidence. With regard to the influences by the figure of St. Michael exist at least interesting hypotheses (keyword: pilgrimage to Mont -Saint -Michel and the role of the patron in the Christianization of northern Germany ). The earliest documented tradition is found in one of Sebastian Franck in 1541 issued Proverbs Book - So few decades before the top Traut's birth. The German Michel referred to a fool, boobies and fantasist. Is also found in other contemporary sources, a similar understanding.

Origin of the phrase

In science today, the view has generally prevailed that it was " a German Michel " is a birth of the Renaissance in the idiom. Humanism in Germany had chosen for the Latin language. This created between the language of education and that of the people is a gap. This led to a spiritual culture that sought to connect to a foreign country. In this context, the phrase of " Teutonic Michel " probably originated in an interplay of foreign stereotypes of the Renaissance from völlernden, swigging and sleepy Germans with the equally negatively occupied German Peasants' image of the late Middle Ages.

Contrary to the earliest, purely pejorative uses the figure was - simple, uneducated and ignorant in foreign languages ​​- in the Thirty Years' War to the emancipatory cultural symbol of a pure, native German language - as illustrated by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausenmuseum. The term was mobilized as early as 1630 in the fight against the foreign words, as a title of a satirical pamphlet, Teutscher Michel, which is one of the most remarkable phenomena of the German linguistic purism: I Teutonic Michel / Understanding / In my fatherland / It is almost nichel a schand. Even in the mid -18th century related Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener the term to lament the general contempt for the German seal. In parallel, won the character of Cousin Michel popularity. The properties were attributed to her comfort, respectability and private as public need for rest. From the first half of the 19th century can be found in humoristic periodicals and in the literature various interpretations.

The Michel in Vormarz

Most commonly, there are undoubtedly Michel representations, alluding to the naive farm boy or the cozy Biedermann. In Josep Eisel One Dictionary of German proverbs and meaning speeches of 1840, the term " the whole schwerleibige German people"; the General German Real - Encyclopedia of 1846 sees Michel the personification of the " follies and absurdities " of the German nation. Basically the shape by this time the collective symbol for the German people and its nature in the modern sense.

Ernst Moritz Arndt tried to convert the traditional Michel image in a new context of tradition as some other of his contemporaries. From the assumption that there is a synonymous relationship between the Michel - term and the German mentality, he concluded that the properties of Michels, depending on the political situation and historical development are what was quite right for the Michel pictures of his era. Its adjoining, mythological transfigured and polemical return of the characteristics of the Michels on the type of a medieval defense farmers overused the etymology of the German Michel far above fee. Similarly misleading approaches, such as speculation about the General tab Obentraut as a name are - although refuted in science for over a hundred years - until today still widespread.