Surgery

Wooden leg (1)

The topic of the Wooden leg was popular with romantic authors, the crippling inevitably brought the social descent with it. For example, Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) described an impoverished cripple in his 1847 narrative "The Poor Minstrel."
"An old, invalid foot, who wanted to make the pain of his wounding touch the general compassion in an analogous way on a terrible, apparently made by himself instruments, half dulcimer and half barrel organ."

One thinks of the fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen "The swineherd", and of the cheerful opera by Bernhard Sekles "Die ten Kisses" (staging: Christian Schuller): the opera of the composition teacher Paul Hindemith, which premiered in 1926, deals with the fable of a spoiled , vain and ultimately impressive princess in a very headstrong way.

The theme appears only casually on postcards from the "Belle Epoque".

Presented is a postcard showing the swineherd of Mondorf, as he drives around 1907 his flock through the "Önneschtgaas" to "Schwéngsbaam", an old oak, where the animals were allowed to graze. Pierre HIPPERT was not joking about his name - he "hipped", i. limped because he was wearing a wooden leg on the right side. People called him "Hasky's Pitt" ...

ahd and mdh. swein, ndd. sween, meaning "swineherd". "Sweene" [swineherd], who are to guard the "swyn", [the swine] "hoeden soelen". In the Carolingian period, there is talk of an "apscua porcorum", a grazing pasture for pigs. Also one of my ancestors was around 1770 "custos pecorum" Viehirte resp. "custos porcorum" - swineherd ...

The shepherd belongs to a bygone world, when in summer the cows were guarded by the cow-boys for a often miserable pay, the shepherd drove his herd of 200-300 sheep across the corridor, the village herder drove his pig herds along the ways to the edge of the forest, where she was chewing beechnuts and acorns ... He made, without explicitly knowing what he was doing, for keeping open the heath land and removing the unwelcome woody plants.

Map N. Schumacher / Mondorf n ° 64; the map n ° 63 is the same shepherd, but is a photo montage, in which the stalk leg is unfortunately not visible ...