When I looked through my old scanned slides I found this really bad out-of-focus picture of the "Pauper-singen" in Tübingen, the little medieval University town in Southwest Germany I had lived in for twenty years before I moved to the States.
The Paupersingen (paupers singing) is a tradition that originated in the Middle Ages. "pauper" is a Latin word and means poor, and in this case it refers to poor students of Latin who paid part of their school fee by singing during church services and at funerals. During Advent they wandered through the narrow lanes of the town, wearing their black scholar cloaks and singing in front of every house, hoping for some donations.
Today it's the children choirs who start out at different parts of Tübingen and slowly, with several stops in between, walk to the market square, all the way singing the old Christmas carols. They all meet at the huge Christmas tree where all of them together sing for another half hour or so. The donations today go to some charity of their choice.
If you want to know what other bloggers wrote for "Christmas" you can find a list over at Allie's blog.
I would love to experience this, it must be wonderful to hear and in such a lovely city - I googled it as I wanted to know where Tubingen is in relation to Ulm where my son lived and worked for several months. I love the old buildings; NZ is such a new country that we don't have the history that Europe has.
ReplyDeleteCaroling isn't something that happens in my area like it did when I was little. Thanks for the jog down memory lane. Happy holidays to you and yours. :-)
ReplyDeletewhat an adorable slide. thanks for sharing the details of this tradition. great blog by the way (my first time stopping in)!
ReplyDeletei got in on weekword last minute.
What a lovely tradition! Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteHow glorious and how beautiful it must have been...what a lovely memory.
ReplyDeleteVon dieser Tradition habe ich bislang noch gar nichts gehört.
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