Leisure in Germany History and Practice

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Leisure in GermanyHistory and Practice

• Lecture 3 Leisure Practices of the
  Working-Classes in Germany in the late 19th
  century and early 20th century

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The Meaning(s) of pre-industrial Festivals
(Kirmes, Fasching)

• To make the tiresome weight of physical labour
  bearable
• To give meaning to suffering (e.g. wakes)
• Confirm the existing order
• These leisure activities promote the identity of
  the community, and the place of the individual
  within it.
• The physical consumption of pleasurable items
  food, drink, trinkets
• The play of the body dancing, singing, gambling,
  sex...

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Nineteenth-Century Middle-Class forms of Leisure
Romanticism Turnervereine Wandervogel

• Liberating The Romantic Individual
• Liberating The Collective / Community
• Nature and the Body Freedom, but also Training
  and Constraint
• Responses to a world that was increasingly
  regulated and industrialized

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Leisure time for the Workers

• Determined by how long they had to work
• Average Working Hours
• 1830-1860 80-90 hours per week
• 1871-1880 72 hours per week
• 1901-1910 58-61 hours per week

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Other factors

• Six-day week common, although only in 1892 did
  Sunday become legally a day of rest
• No legal entitlement to paid or unpaid holiday
• In 1900 only 1 of manual workers had some kind
  of annual holiday
• Family constraints limited disposable income

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Leisure activities

• Walking
• The survival of festivals but
• The focal point moves from church to market-place
• Increased commercialization

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The response of the authorities
the amusements and stalls have a harmful
effect on young people the irritating noise is
bad for the nerves of the old and infirm
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Different kinds of festivals

• Connected to different socio-economic groups
• Middle-class and working-class carnivals
• Sedan festival to celebrate military victory over
  France in 1870
• Socialist festivals May Day

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Street entertainment

• The origins of street entertainment in wandering
  minstrels
• Organ-grinders
• Cabaret performed in back room taverns
• Tingel-tangels and Polkakneipen
• The changing face of the circus

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Tingel-Tangel

• Trauert nicht, ihr Völkerscharen,
• Ob der schweren Zeit der Not.
• Packt das Leben bei den Haaren.
• Morgen ist schon mancher tot.
• Fürchte nichts, mein süßer Schlingel
• In der schweren Not der Zeit
• Freut der Mensch sich nur im Tingel-
• Tangel seiner Menschlichkeit.
• Bei dem allgemeinen Mangel
• Idealer Seelenglut
• Trefft ihr nur im Tingel-Tangel,
• Was das Herz erheben tut.
• Saht ihr einen süßren Engel
• Je zu eurem Zeitvertreib
• Als ein hübsches Tangel-Tengel-
• Tingel-Tongel-Tungel-Weib?

Tuben schmettern, Pauken dröhnen, Schrille
Pfeifen gellen drein, Spenden dem Gesang der
Schönen Ihre Jubel-Melodein. Wie die Sturmflut,
unermüdlich, Tönt des Konterbaß Gebrumm Und die
Schöne lächelt friedlich Nieder auf das Publikum.
Und nun schwillt das dumpfe Gröhlen Zum Radau
bei Alt und Jung, Und aus tausend
Männerkehlen Wälzt sich die Begeisterung. Doch
das Mädchen ist entschwunden, Hat sich auch
vielleicht derweil Schon mit Schnüren
losgebunden Ihrer Reize größten Teil. Poem by
Frank Wedekind (1864-1918). .
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But Tingel-Tangel declines due to the increase in
custom-made theaters and music-halls
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Dance

• The shift from folk-dancing
• To couple-dancing
• The waltz, the foxtrot, the tango

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Nature in the City or Industrialized Amusement?

• The Volkspark
• Venedig in Wien the Prater in Vienna the
  Riesenrad

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Technological Change

• Cinema
• Kintopp
• Radio
• The beginnings of mass entertainment through mass
  communication

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Conclusions

• What is the relationship between
  industrialization and leisure?
• The more rigid organization of working hours
  means a more rigid organization of leisure time
• The urbanization of the population means leisure
  activities find different spaces
• Modernization and technological development may
  also accelerate commercialization
• But the leisure practices of the working-classes
  still have much in common with those of the
  pre-modern era.
• Question for next weeks lecture who controls
  leisure in an industrialized society?