(a) A group of schö-wüeschti Chläus singing Zäuerli in front of an audience composed of their hosts and other Dorf inhabitants. Each Groscht represents a different kind of tree.

(b) Two finished Huube; the theme in the front Huube is Appenzell string music. Note the careful cushioning of foam rubber in the cowl to protect the head of the custom bearer (1974).

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS:
FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY STUDIES

Editorial Board: Eugene Anderson, Roger Abrahams, Daniel Crowley, Patrick Ford, Daniel Melia

Volume 33

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES
CALIFORNIA

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD.
LONDON, ENGLAND

ISBN 0-520-09959-1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 84-28128

© 1985 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Bendix, Regina.

Progress and nostalgia.

(University of California publications. Folklore and mythology studies; vol. 22)

Bibliography: p.

1. New Year—Switzerland—Urnäsch. 2. Urnäsch

(Switzerland)—Festivals, etc. 3. Urnäsch (Switzerland)—Social life and customs. 4. Folklore—Switzerland—Urnäsch. I. Title. II. Series: Folklore and mythology studies (Berkeley, Calif.); 33.

GT4905.B46    1985       394.2’ 683          84-28128

ISBN 0-520-09959-1 (pbk.)

ACLS Humanities E-Book edition 2017
© Regina Bendix
Some Rights Reserved

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It is permissible to download this work and share it with others, as long as the copyright owner and ACLS Humanities E-Book are credited. The work can not be changed in any way or used commercially. For additional information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0.

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The online edition of this work can be found at http://www.humanitiesebook.org.

To my parents
Peter and Gertrud Flückiger-Scheidegger

Contents

Acknowledgements

Note on the Language

Introduction

1.   Urnäsch in Its Context

2.   The World of the Chläus

Preparations

Chlause

The Music: Zäuerli, Schellä, and Rolle

Visitors and the Visited

3.   Oral and Written History

4.   The World and the Chläus

Chlause and Economic Networks

Chläus and Social Networks

Chlause and World View

Appendix A

Appendix B

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Plates

Acknowledgments

Without the patience and cooperation of former and present custom bearers, passive participants, and their families, this study would not have been possible, and I wish to thank all of them for their help, memories, and time. Without the continuous financial support of my parents in Switzerland and without a fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley, the research would not have started at all.

Further thanks go to Regula and Walter Irniger and their children, whose hospitality I enjoyed throughout my entire fieldwork and who stimulated me in times of “custom agony.” Hans Hürlemann in Urnäsch helped greatly with initial contacts and corrected my rendering of dialect terms. Brigitte Bachmann-Geiser introduced me to the custom, and Hugo Zemp in Paris, Werner Röllin in Zürich, and Pater Ferdinand Fuchs in Appenzell were all kind enough to discuss the custom with me from their perspective. Over the years, Alan Dundes’s stimulating teaching helped me to develop my intellectual curiosity in the field of folklore.

For help in my research and writing, my thanks go to Alessandro Falassi, who read the first draft of the manuscript and provided me with further insights of both a technical and theoretical nature. My friends Claire Bonney, Rolf Furrer, and Colette Rogivue took part in the observation of the custom during the New and Old Silvester 1981-82 and helped with the photography. Thanks also go to Jane Bendix and Brent Cantrell who prepared the maps (Map 1 and Maps 2, 3, and 4 respectively) for publication. I am grateful to the editors of the University of California Press for their patience and diligence, and to Deneise Hueston who typed the camera ready copy. Special thanks go finally to my husband, John, who has participated in the Urnäsch adventure both physically and mentally, who never grows tired of straightening out my English, and who rescued me from theoretical dead ends and procrastination in front of the typewriter.

Note on the Language

I have tried to keep the complex dialect terminology as close to the spoken word as possible, except for the term Silvesterklausen. This standard German name for the custom may appear in reference works and is therefore kept for the sake of convention, however, informants use this term rarely if ever. Similarly, Klausen occasionally replaces the dialect term Chlause, especially when historical documents are quoted.

This is certainly not the place to provide a comprehensive introduction to Swiss-German dialects. The interested reader is referred to Dieth (1938), Schläpfer (1982), and Schwarzenbach (1969). Some phonetic characteristics of Appenzell dialect are a tendency toward high, frontal vowels and the hardly audible guttural r. The following rules apply throughout this text: nouns are capitalized, adjectives and verbs are not. Various terms may be used both as nouns and verbs, and the term chlause/Chlause can denote a verb, an adjective, or a noun. Dialect terms are underlined and explained when first introduced, and endings are declined as they would be in dialect. The following examples illustrate the most frequent usages:

DEFINITE

INDEFINITE

singular

(the) wüescht Chlaus

(an) wüeschte Chlaus

plural

(the) wüeschte Chläus

(some) wüeschti Chläus

Unlike English, noun plurals do not take an s; for example, the plural of “one Urnäscher” is “two Urnäscher,” of “one Rolle” “two Rolle.” An umlaut, as in Chläus, may also indicate a plural. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations are my own.

Throughout, New Silvester is used instead of New Year’s Eve or December 31 and Old Silvester instead of January 13. The reader is also referred to the Glossary.

Introduction

Twice a year, the male inhabitants of the small village of Urnäsch in eastern Switzerland disguise themselves in various costumes. Thus decorated and supporting harnesses with heavy bells, they walk in groups from house to house, and at each house where they are received, they sing three wordless yodels. This custom is called Silvesterklausen (or just Chlause), and the men themselves–bearers of this custom–Silvesterchläus (or just Chläus). They perform on New Year’s Eve (Silvester in German-speaking Switzerland) and on January 13, but to connect the name Chläus to St. Nicholas would be doing the custom and the men who perform it an injustice.

I had my first opportunity to witness Silvesterklausen in Urnäsch, located in the canton of Appenzell, during a brief field excursion with a folklore seminar on January 13, 1980. An hour before dawn we were guided to a farmhouse where nine men were in the process of getting dressed for a strenuous day as active participants in this winter custom. Intense excitement emanated from them as they put on their heavy costumes and even heavier bells and headdresses. At the crack of dawn they marched off in single file to another farmhouse a quarter of a mile away. Shaking their bells rhythmically, they announced their arrival. The inhabitants seemed to be expecting them; a man stepped out of the door, followed by his wife carrying a tray with a bottle and glasses. The group of disguised men gathered in a circle and sang several wordless, polyphonic yodels, which was received with great favor by the couple. Each visitor was offered a drink; then each disguised man shook hands with their hosts and marched off, heading for the next house.

My field group had to leave Urnäsch by mid-morning, yet by then we had noticed a good number of differently disguised Schuppel, as the locals called a group or groups of these custom bearers. We were informed by various local spectators that we had been witnessing a pagan fertility rite. The same was affirmed on the evening news on Swiss television when a short report on Silvesterklausen was shown to round off the news on a pleasant note.

This all-male New Year’s custom offered spectacular visual and acoustic effects. Even with the little information I had at the time, the custom seemed to have more significance to the community of Urnäsch than merely a mechanical reenactment of a pagan survival. I was determined to come back and found a chance to do so during the summer of 1981 and for the New Year’s celebrations of 1981-82.

In the course of my preparatory research of custom-related literature, I was disappointed to find little analytical material on the motivation and reasons for continuing such customs in Europe. There were extensive descriptions and interpretations by anthropologists on rituals in many non-Western societies, but contemporary studies of customs in Europe were sparse. [1] Detached descriptions and a preoccupation with origins dominated the bulk of material available on such customs, much of which was heavily influenced by the extensive–though speculative–rese arch of Mannhardt (1904) and Frazer (1918-22). Until very recently, this type of research bias is evident in much of Swiss custom scholarship.[2]

Swiss folklorists, both professionals and amateurs, certainly cannot complain about a lack of material to study. Switzerland, though small, abounds in customs: there is hardly a community that does not have one or more customs or festivals it considers its own.[3] Not only the secluded alpine regions–generally thought to have preserved a rich store of traditions–but also the heavily industrialized Mittelland show a surprising number of calendar customs. In recent decades, many villages have revived or created new festivities to enrich the cycle of the year.[4] Customs offer a change from everyday life, and the more formalized everyday work becomes, the more outlets are sought.[5]

Because of the photogenic appeal of Silvesterklausen for the mass media, the custom is one of the better known in Switzerland. Countless pictures have appeared of Chläus in magazines and popular books on customs and festivals. The captions, however, mistakenly reiterate the supposed mysterious pagan origin of Silvesterklausen without attempting to explain the far more puzzling question of why the custom continues to be performed in a modern, industrialized society.

My primary aim in studying Silvesterklausen was to explore the social and economic network in which the custom is embedded and to try to understand the values embraced in Urnäsch that led to its continuation. I concentrated my research, both present and historical, on Urnäsch, though the same custom can also be found in a few neighboring villages.[6]

Instead of offering the reader a condensed or abstract description of the custom, I chose to let the informants speak in their own words as much as possible.[7] There is no single way of capturing Silvesterklausen “correctly”: its many elements are explained and integrated differently by every Urnäscher. I feel it appropriate to let the reader share how I came to comprehend this many-faceted custom: from many sources and in many disjointed pieces.

Since I was referred almost exclusively to active rather than passive participants in the custom, the concept of Silvesterklausen presented here is predominantly an active one. Passive participants include the wives of Chläus, the persons visited at their homes, and all those who have observed the active participants throughout their lives. In my interviews with Chläus about Chlause, most wives, as a matter of course, decided not to participate, regarding it from the outset a man’s topic. Among the few women who chose to stay during the interview, even fewer actually voiced their opinions. In addition, my research concentrated on those who love the custom. Through them I was able to learn and understand many of the different facets of Chlause. There are those in Urnäsch, however, who dislike the custom and all the other traditional events in the village. They cannot be ignored in the final analysis of Chlause. However, this study focuses on what the custom is and what it may represent. A compilation of all the opinions about Chlause held in Urnäsch would yield very little insight into the dynamics of the custom itself.

Chapter 1 familiarizes the reader with the locale, though the brief ethnographic portrait is by no means exhaustive.[8] Chapter 2 describes Chlause in all its elements, while the third chapter, relying to a great extent on oral sources, explores the history of the custom. By using the informants’ own words, I hope to avoid producing another custom description as seen by an outsider. In Chapter 4 I present various frameworks into which Chlause may be fitted. As will be seen, Chlause is a custom that has altered its appearance considerably because of the impact of one particular folkloristic interest, namely, the search for origins. This makes it an interesting case to study,[9] yet it also makes me wary of trying to find the one theory that will do Chlause justice. A combination of different ideas, both past and present, can offer more interpretative insights than strict adherence to one theoretical paradigm.

As far as possible, I tried to keep the theoretical discussion of custom and ritual scholarship limited to the back-notes to make the text readable for an audience less interested in the debates of scholars. I hope to communicate some of the fascination inherent in Silvesterklausen and to stimulate interest in an area of study that is far from exhausted.

1

URNÄSCH IN ITS CONTEXT

Urnäsch lies in the canton of Appenzell, in the Protestant half-canton called Ausserrhoden, in the German-Swiss eastern part of the country near the Austrian border. It is the largest community in the canton in terms of area and is quite hilly and very conducive to dairy farming. The settlement itself is divided into three parts. The Dorf is the area around the church, the community house (administrative center), and the railroad station. Many shops and other services such as the bank, a garage, and the doctor’s office are found here, as well as several restaurants. The main road runs through the village square, the center of the Dorf, with the church on one side and a row of nineteenth-century “bourgeois” houses on the other.

The area stretching from the Dorf boundary south toward the Säntis mountain is called the Tal, though individual farmhouses not near the main road tend to have their own names (such as “Bode,” “Bindli,” or “Waisehuus”) and are not counted as a part of the Tal. Dorf and Tal rivalries are longstanding in part because Tal inhabitants belonged more to a peasant or farmer class whereas Dorf inhabitants tended to be more bourgeois.[1] The third part of the settlement is called Zürchersmühle, which is approximately one and one-quarter miles north of the Dorf; it is sufficiently separate from the Dorf to have its own train station and is surrounded by further farmhouses.

Map I

Top: Map of Switzerland showing location of cantons

Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Appenzell Innerrhoden

Bottom: The Appenzell communities and the area of Urnäsch

The half-canton of Ausserrhoden is divided into three areas: Vorderland, Mittelland and Hinterland. Urnäsch is a Hinterland community, and along with other Hinterland communities, it is accorded special tradition-consciousness and thickheadedness or backwardness. Though Urnäsch is not cut off, there is only one main road leading toward the north. A secondary road leads to the east and the southern road through the Tal leads to summer pastures. The village is situated at the end of a valley in the Hinterland, and its economic situation reflects its geographic location.

Dairy farming and forestry are still very important to Urnäsch’s 2,300 inhabitants, 25 percent of whom work in this sector, four times the Swiss average. A number of small- and moderate-sized industries provide work for another 50 percent of the population, and the remaining 25 percent are in various service occupations.[2] The community is unusual in its agricultural emphasis since the Swiss trend is away from farming and into services. However, the size of the industrial workforce is misleading because many of the workers are foreigners: locals often leave to work in industry in larger Swiss cities such as St. Gallen and Zürich.

Emigration, as in many mountain villages, is a perennial problem. The population has been declining steadily since 1920, and despite the influx of foreign workers, Urnäsch is now smaller than it was in 1850. Emigration is nothing new, however. Swiss mercenaries were famous in Europe from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, often leaving their villages to earn money abroad and to escape epidemics.[3] Other outmigration–and eventual return–occurred in reaction to changes in the world textile market, a major industrial employer in eastern Switzerland. Market fluctuations and crises often had a severe impact on the local inhabitants because one form of secondary income consisted in weaving and stitchery, which was done at home by both women and men. Since the sixteenth century this has been a way for large farming families to survive, though periodic crises have made this income source uncertain.

Though Appenzell is one of the smallest cantons in Switzerland, it was divided after the Reformation into two half-cantons: the Catholic Innerrhoden and the Protestant Ausserrhoden, with Urnäsch in the latter. This seemed the most peaceful way to resolve the problems of the new religious belief because the Protestants stubbornly wanted to keep their ways. As one informant said:

The pope had put a ban on Ausserrhoden because the people did not want to stay Catholic. He forbade them to baptize their children or to get married in a church. And the Ausserrhodner really did not like that, and they replied to this ban with the words “we do not want to be in this thing” and continued to baptize and get married in the church.[4]

Rivalries between the two half-cantons are still alive, but in a joking fashion, though economically and geographically they are quite similar.

Along with many other Protestant areas, Ausserrhoden refused to accept the calendar revision introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582, clinging instead to the Julian calendar and celebrating the Old Silvester on January 13. It was only with the French occupation of Switzerland that the Ausserrhodner were forced to accept the new calendar, but in the farmer’s almanac they faithfully continued printing both calendars. It is due to this religious and calendar controversy that Silvesterklausen now takes place twice in Urnäsch, once on the New Silvester (December 31) and once on the Old Silvester (January 13).

Today, one of Urnäsch’s hopes lies in tourism. The town has ski lifts and hiking paths, but, most importantly, it has living customs. Urnäsch has preserved customs that are no longer seen elsewhere, and one main attraction is the Museum for Appenzeller Customs, opened in 1976.[5] Locals know they depend to some degree on “customs tourism” and would have little to replace it, even though they have found that customs are a difficult and unreliable article to promote.

Traditional religious festivities such as Christmas and Easter are celebrated during the year, but others belonging to the farmer’s life are accorded considerably more weight. Transhumance to the alps in the summer (called Alpfahrt, öberefahre, or inefahre) provides one occasion: farmers and cowherds dress in traditional clothing, the animals are well groomed and decorated, and the lead cows carry special bells (Senntumgschäll, a tritone of deeply pitched bells) as they climb to the pastures. In July there are “cowherds’ dances” (such as the Senneball and various Stobete) for those who spend the summer on the alp with their friends, and they wear traditional clothing and local musicians perform.[6] In August there is a fair (Chilbi), and in October there is “cowviewing” (Vechschau). Aside from the Silvesterklausen at New Year’s, there is also the Bloch, another winter custom in which a log is paraded through the village.[7]

The dominance of men is particularly striking in the customs to be found in the Appenzell. The festivities associated with cowherding naturally focus on the men since they are the traditional cowherds (women help in driving the cows up the alp, however). The cowherds’ dress is quite colorful and costly.[8] The women’s costume was “recreated” in 1927, and it is considerably plainer than the men’s.[9] Farmers in Urnäsch tend quite naturally to wear their costume, and the broad suspenders seem to be a status symbol. Women, on the other hand, rarely wear their costumes, and it is apparently not as important to them to own one since it would be worn only during the transhumance procession and the cowherds’ dances or on festive family occasions. Since it is possible to rent costumes in a local store, young women are reluctant to acquire such outfits.

Politically, Appenzell is one of the last cantons in Switzerland to deny suffrage to women. Though granted the right to vote in national elections in 1971, the Appenzeller have not allowed women to vote in cantonal elections.[10] Communally, however, women may vote. The men partly justify their decision by referring to the Landsgmänd (lit. community of the land), a direct participatory meeting of all eligible men held once a year in a particular square either in Hundwil or Trogen. If the women were to vote as well, the argument goes, the square would be too small to hold everyone.[11]

A national equal rights law was passed in 1981, but lack of will on the part of the women seems quite obvious. One might expect that the Appenzell women would be outraged in view of this injustice, but they defer, at least publicly, to the men. Women in Appenzell society are strongly role-defined. They are appreciated in their roles as wives and mothers, but they get little recognition for their other achievements. Of the 95 students who answered a questionnaire in Urnäsch (see Appendix B), for example, 68 (72%) called their mothers “housekeeper,” 12 (13%) mentioned a profession, 8 (8%). gave a profession and “housekeeper,” 3 (3%) wrote nothing, 2 (2%) mentioned an earlier profession, and 2 (2%) indicated “farmer’s wife.” This is remarkable since many fathers are farmers, and it is unavoidable that the mothers also do farmwork. Children are socialized to see their mothers in the categories society puts them in, even though Appenzell women may do other work for which they receive no recognition.

This male dominance is carried over to the nonfarming households as well, perhaps because such dominance–having grown out of a herder’s culture–seems natural to the people. The woman as mother–at least in the public conception of the family–puts herself in a lower rank relative to her husband. Only in foreign workers’ families, lower-class families, and “progressive” families are the women working or is the child aware of the mother’s prepregnancy profession.

During the summer festivities, therefore, it is not surprising to find women as extras or props: the men form the center, emphasized by their outfits and by a traditional dance (s’Mölirad) performed only by the cowherds while the women watch.[12] Naturally, the men are also central to the selling of the livestock on market days since they are nominally responsible for the farms.

It will come as no surprise to the reader, then, that Silvesterklausen is an exclusively male custom. Though schoolgirls up to puberty can be tolerated today and little girl Chläusli (diminutive of Chlaus) are often considered cute, it is clear to everyone, men and women alike, that Chlause is a privilege for men only. An adult woman as a Chlaus would be considered a disgrace, aside from the fact that “it would not be physically possible for women,” as many informants put it.[13] Only once, during a pleasant interview with a farming family, did the farmer and his wife strongly disagree on the question of strength: “Of course a woman could do it,” the woman said after some thought, but her husband vehemently countered that “under no circumstances would we take along a woman; it’s men’s business!”[14] She thought the question was whether a woman would be physically able to do it whereas he thought she was making the moral point of whether a woman would be allowed to come along. This farmer’s wife had gone chlause as a girl and once even joined her husband during Früechlause (early Chlause, discussed later), and both had cheerful memories of that occasion. But this was an exceptional case. Women may be allowed to help make the outfits of the Chläus and may even have to help: they are not, however, allowed to perform and are reduced to mere spectators or hosts during the actual Silvester.

2

THE WORLD OF THE CHLÄUS

It is necessary to disentangle the various elements in a custom if only to understand it more clearly. Indeed, the participants themselves make distinctions between elements. Each participant makes a clear break between preparation for the custom and actually going chlause, in part also because the preparations for each type of disguise puts different demands upon custom bearers and their families. Each of the two days during which the custom is performed stand out as a unit, which in turn can be subdivided into different sequences of actions. Within this, the singing and the handling of the bells emerge as one of the most cherished aspects of the custom to both active and passive participants. The following description of Silvesterklausen, therefore, approaches each of these segments successively. This chapter concludes with an examination of the patterns of community interaction taking place during Chlause. The Chläus, grouped in clearly recognizable Schuppel through their type of disguise, visit the passive participants in their homes. The nature of the visiting patterns as well as the dynamics within each Schuppel form the last though less easily grasped element of Silvesterklausen.

PREPARATIONS

“No, Christmas does not count for much up here,” said the wife of a former Chlaus and mother of three active Chläus. “Maybe they enjoy Christmas Eve, but sometimes they start sewing already on the twenty-fifth.”[1] Another chlause wife and mother confirmed this, saying: “Yes, they’re always soon done with solemnity. And then I always have to scold a little because they bring in all that mess.”[2] The children of the two women are wüeschti Chläus. Wüescht (ugly) in the chlause custom designates Chläus disguised in natural materials, such as pine twigs, various mosses, juniper, holly, leaves, bark, snail shells, pinecones, and beechnuts. Since it tends to be cold around Christmas, the costume preparations take place in kitchens, basements, workshops, or special chlause rooms. So the second woman’s complaint can be easily understood: until after January 13, the Old Silvester, her kitchen will be littered with these materials.

The holiday season is spent in feverish work. The materials are sewn, wired, and glued on old jackets, coats, and pants, and depending on the Chlaus’s talent and perseverance, the fabric is loosely or tightly covered. A mask, either of canvas or of wax, is also covered with materials from nature as is an old hat or a small basket for a head covering. Some Wüeschti make colorful masks out of papier-mâché, often with hideous expressions, grim teeth, and wild eyes. Such Chläus in particular are called Wüeschti.[3] Mothers may help young children to make their Groscht (chlause costume), and adult men do not mind women’s help either: “If it pricks, the wives have to do it,” said one informant.[4] Given the materials used, it probably pricks quite often.

Some years ago, a clever woman had the idea to sew rows of elastic thread into the jacket and the pants of the Groscht; then the natural materials can be pulled through the loops. The advantages of this technique are reusability–each year one has only to replace the dried natural material with fresh twigs–and reliability, since elastic thread does not break easily.

If the prospective wüescht Chlaus has gathered his materials before snowfall, he can finish his Groscht in a few days. “I once made one in four hours, but that was sure intensive work,” giggled one former Chlaus. “I had started a little late, but I got it done!”[5] Wüeschti Chläus tend to delay work on their costumes until they are infected with Chlausefieber, a “fever” that usually hits them with the first snowfall. “Sometimes one just gets in the mood a little late. This year I had to drive down to Gossau [ca. 12.4 miles north of Urnäsch] to gather some leaves, I just didn’t feel like it before. Then all of a sudden we had so much snow up here,” said one Chlaus, while sewing away, eyes shining, on his Groscht.[6]

Chläus are not individualists–they form groups called Schuppel or Tschuppel. In 1981, there were eleven adult and adolescent Schuppel and several children’s Schüppeli (diminutive) in Urnäsch. Each Schuppel consists of six to ten men, though one men’s Schuppel has fourteen members and is considered unusually large. Children’s Schuppel tend to be smaller, and one sometimes sees individual little Chläus.

The men of a given Schuppel are generally the same age and are often schoolfriends or work colleagues, though this is not a requirement. It is common that brothers start a Schuppel and age mates join in, though it occasionally happens that father and son are in the same Schuppel because of the rather fluid composition of the groups. Stabilization of Schuppel membership occurs only in early manhood (ages sixteen to twenty-eight), reflected in the comment of one twenty-three-year-old Chlaus: “I think we’ll stay together for a while, though one never knows whether one of us won’t get married and move away or whether something else might happen.”[7] Schuppel are generally seen as quite stable groups of friends who understand one another well enough to share Chlause every year and who have gone chlause (though not necessarily with one another) since they were young children (aged four to eight).[8] Shortly before the Silvester in 1981, a young Schuppel had dissolved, which met with much criticism from older Chläus. Apparently, the core members of the group engaged in in-fighting with one another over old family differences, and some of the other members had time conflicts. “The younger people have not been drilled enough; they are not persisting. I would hope they think about it again, the custom depends on the young, after all,” commented an older Chlaus.[9]

Each Schuppel decides which type of Groscht to make. Besides the Wüeschte, Urnäsch also has Schöni (pretty ones) and Schö-wüeschti (pretty ugly ones). While the Wüeschte are only about thirty-five years old, the Schöne are much older (see Chapter 3). A schöne Schuppel ideally has six Chläus. Four of them, the Mannevölker (menfolk), are dressed in velvet knee-length pants and jackets, white hand-knitted socks, and a pair of clean, sturdy, hiking boots. Faces are covered by pinkish wax masks with an artificial beard. A Lendauerli (black pipe) hangs out of the mouth, and in their right hands they carry a hazel walking stick. Each carries a pair of gigantic cowbells resting in front and back and held by leather shoulder straps that balance their weight.

The two remaining Chläus, the Wiibervölker (womenfolk–men dressed as women), wear velvet skirts, a velvet vest over a white puffy blouse, long hand-knit gloves, stockings, and the same kind of hiking boots as the Mannevölker. A similar wax mask showing an artificially smiling doll face with rosy cheeks and a little flower in the corner of the mouth is also worn by the would-be women. A proper Wiibervolk also needs a white apron decorated with two small red bows at the bottom corners, and similar bows have to be fixed on the sleeves of the blouse and at the top of the hazel stick. Instead of Schellä (cowbells) they each wear a Rolleträger, a harness with thirteen Rolle (round bells, previously used on horse harnesses). Schöni tie white handkerchiefs around the neck rather than the red one worn by all other Chläus.

Minute details and cleanliness of the outfits are of incredible importance both to the Urnäsch schöne Chläus and to their audience. Every interviewee mentioned their precision and propriety and made unfavorable comparisons with Chläus of neighboring communities, especially those of Herisau (see Map 1, p. 6): “The Herisauers often just have some kind of Flade [a word used for both pie and cowpie, that is, excrement] instead of a nicely ironed blouse sleeve,” said one Chlaus. Another said: “The Herisauers are terrible. They don’t straighten out the fringes on the pants, the pants are different lengths, their socks are yellowish instead of white, and their shoes are covered with last year’s dirt.”[10]

The most important part of the schöne Groscht is the headdress. The Schellächläus (those who carry one or two large cowbells) wear flat headdresses called Huet (hat), and the Rollechläus (those who carry a harness with thirteen small round bells) have high headdresses called Huube (a stiff, semicircular cowl, 2 to 3 feet high and 4 to 5 feet wide). Nowadays, miniature representations of the farmers’ everyday life can often be seen on the Huet or inside the Huube. The sides of the headdresses are ornamented with colored foil, little mirrors, and thousands of glass pearls. Each headdress requires several hundred hours of work, and though the velvet part of the Groscht can be worn for ten or more years, Hüet and Huube are made more frequently and demand two or three years’ planning time: in the summer of 1981 the leader of a schöne group was designing the headdresses for Silvester 1982-83.

A young Schöne describes the work process on the headdresses as follows:

First you have to cut out the basic shape in plywood, and you have to decide how many layers you want. We made only two sets of headdresses so far, and so we don’t have that many layers. Older groups have four or five; really crazy. Then you fix the space between the layers with little wooden blocks. Then you need to cut pliant strips of thinner plywood to form the rims of the layers, which are often quite curved. On top of the wood, you glue cardboard and on top of that the colored foil. We usually choose foil that matches with our velvet dresses: red, blue, green, and brown, though it is hard to find brown foil; we had to use a dark purple last time. Then you have to start sewing the ornaments with the glass pearls. We get the Chügeli [small glass pearls or little round balls] from a man in Herisau who orders them from Czechoslovakia–they’re awfully expensive, and we don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to get them from there. You can sew a couple of pearls in a row first, but when you get to these motifs, you have to sew them one by one. We usually work in twos. K. and I then sit here in the basement and chügele [verb describing the sewing of pearls]. We have a good time; the last time we did it, we were learning foreign languages since K. was about to go off to South America. And we sang too.[11]

Older Chläus remember how much heavier the headdresses were before they started making them with plywood: “We made everything with strong wire, including the shape, and that was very heavy,” said one Chlaus.[12] Another one showed me a scar on his balding head:

That’s still left from that heavy one I had, so many years ago. You know, when I first put it on, I just felt a slight pressure, but after an hour that Soucheib [lit. pig pain] had rubbed my skin off. I only noticed it at lunch time when I took it off and the blood came gushing out. The innkeeper gave me a bandage and I continued until midnight. I couldn’t have stopped.[13]

The ornamentation is similar to stitchery motifs found in the Appenzell, and one former Chlaus said he often used a piece of embroidery as an inspiration.[14] Colored foil and little mirrors were not available in his day, and glass pearls were expensive, so Christmas tree decorations were used instead.

We couldn’t save the old headdresses back then. We’d take them apart and use the old material for the new one, though we usually had to throw a lot of it out. The glass pearls in those days were not color-fast, and in bad weather they would just lose all their color. But today, those headdresses are real pieces of art, and I wouldn’t take them apart![15]

The scenes on top of the headdresses are devoted to a theme, a Sujet, and today, the farmer’s everyday life, his customs and crafts, or representations of the woodworker’s life are popular themes. Though old photographs show that the choice of Sujet used to be much larger and more oriented toward the outside world (see Figure and Chapter 3), informants are uniform in their judgment that the themes now ought to be chosen from “things from back here” or that represent “something native.” The unspoken requirement that the scenes should be hand-carved is no older than thirty years. Before then, plastic dolls, animals, and postcards or pictures were used and appreciated. Here, again, Herisau is criticized. It is well known that Herisauer Schuppel tend to rent matching sets of headdresses, thus cheating by not making them themselves, and the rented pieces can be seen for decades.

The final type of Chlaus, the Schö-wüeschte, are a mixture of Schöne and Wüeschte. Though they use natural materials like the Wüeschte for their Groscht, they arrange them ornamentally like the Schöne. One group of Schö-wüeschte even started to fashion niches in their coats for carved scenes devoted to a Sujet. In their twenty years of existence, the Schö-wüeschte have found much praise in the press, appreciation from some locals, and criticism from others who think such outfits take things too far: “One should be either schö or wüescht and this is too great a display for two days of the year. They work almost as much as the Schöne, and originally there were only Schöni and Wüeschti,” is one of the harsher judgments one can hear.[16]

Since there has been development and variation in the past, it is not surprising that new combinations arise. The wüeschti and schö-wüeschti categories seemed insufficient in 1981-82: one group had wüeschti Groschte but wore schöni wax masks whereas another wüeschti group had such carefully fashioned natural masks that they could be called schö-wüescht. One group appeared in Groschte resembling whole tree trunks and seemed to constitute an entirely new category, though locals called them schö-wüescht. The descriptive terms create confusion: each person defines them differently, and both schö (pretty) and wüescht (ugly) are used in ordinary speech. If one asks Chläus about their wüeschti Groscht, they may interpret this in the ordinary sense and may say defensively: “Well, but they are actually quite pretty; they’re just called ugly!”

The leader of the most prominent schö-wüeschte group stated that his Schuppel spent much time in preparation:

Sometimes my wife asks me if we can go for a walk on one of these Sundays, and I usually have to turn her down. I really spend almost all my free time with carving and knickknack work. I make most of the ornaments myself, and it is only shortly before the Silvester that the other members will come and help to glue and sew on the green, fresh materials.[17]

For this Chlaus, the competitive element is very evident, and it is not surprising that his group was the innovative one in the 1960s. The fame of making the fanciest outfits is what he would like, though he would not word it this way. There was little possibility for rivalries among the Wüeschte earlier, but the new style of the Schö-wüeschte has created a new escalation.

CHLAUSE

Ideally, the Groschte are finished on December 30, and the Schellä and Rolle wait, neatly polished, for the day to begin. Young and old Chläus spend sleepless hours in bed, hoping for daybreak and yet wishing to sleep. The Chlausefieber keeps them awake: “Oh, I couldn’t sleep again, I was wide awake already at midnight, and at first I thought of going out at 3, but I didn’t, and finally I just had to go out at 4:30; so I took one of my Schellä and went out, only about five houses,” related an old farmer, who recently moved out of his farmhouse and now lives in the Tal.[18]

He was describing a form of früechlause (early chlause) when one gets up, wakes a few neighbors with one’s bells, and disappears as soon as one sees signs of life in the house. This prank was described by only a few farmers, though they all seemed thoroughly to enjoy it. Some Schuppel go früechlause at the house of one of their members and then go in for a hearty breakfast, though the family is notified beforehand. One Chlaus who does not like früechlause–“I find it a bit hard to eat pork and greasy potatoes at 3 or 4 in the morning and then go chlause until midnight”–recounts the one time his group did go früechlause:

An acquaintance of mine who had moved away from Urnäsch later bought a little house up here and would always come for Silvester. That is his day, he just loves it. Once he mentioned that he would not mind if someone would come früechlause at his house. So we secretly decided to surprise him and went there at 4 A.M. And he stood at the window and had obviously been standing there before, sleepless, eagerly listening for the sound of bells. He was overjoyed to see us and tears ran down his face. Then we ate something small and sang, and it was really very pleasant.[19]

A fairly new form of früechlause takes place in the Dorf square. Chläus from various Schuppel gather in a small alley leading to the square at 5 A.M., and one Chlaus who works for the electric company turns off the lights. The Chläus, undisguised, then come out of the alley, properly swinging the Schellä and Rolle that they have brought along. They gather in the middle of the square and start singing Zäuerli, the typical wordless yodels of the Appenzell. Fifteen minutes later, the lights go back on, and one can see a dozen or more men in warm clothing wearing black knitted caps looking around and chatting. They then disperse in small groups.[20] This kind of früechlause was introduced by a Schuppel with a flair for showmanship:

We were the first ones to do this, but we would go with our Groscht on, and as soon as our friend from the electric company turned off the lights, we turned on the batteries inside our coats and that would look quite magnificent, Chläus standing there in the dark, barely illuminated and singing Zäuerli. We then asked another group whether they would like to take part in this, and they said they would. But that was a little unfortunate because the others came first, and they were already singing when we arrived. I thought that was unfair, I mean, I was not angry, but you know, it somehow spoiled it for us. Since then we have not gone back. We now go früechlause at a musician’s house.[21]

Many informants said that they did not go früechlause in view of the strenuous day to come. Chläus who professionally follow a trade often said they preferred starting later since they had farmers in their Schuppel who had early morning duties–ironic in that farmer Chläus often mentioned their pleasure in going fruechlause.

Chlause itself comprises the following elements: a Schuppel moves from house to house in single file, a Rolli (short for Rollechlaus) in front and at the end, the Schelli (short for Schellächlaus) in between. In front of each house where they choose to stop, they start to swing the Schellä rhythmically, the Rolli hop and dance around in a lively fashion, and if someone comes out of the house, they slowly stop the chiide (the sounds of the bells), and when the bells are quiet, they start a Zäuerli. A Schuppel usually sings three or four Zäuerli, depending on their length, the pleasure taken in singing, and the house inhabitants’ enjoyment. Those visited will often offer a drink–red, white, or hot wine (Glüewii) ‘for adults and hot cider or mineral water for children, depending on the weather and knowledge of the Schuppel’s preference.[22] The Chläus need a bent plastic straw called Schluuch (hose) in order to be able to drink through their masks, and they carry such a straw in their pocket in case the hosts do not have one. In between the Zäuerli, the bells are swung again. The Vorrolli (first Rolli) then goes forward, shakes the hands of the house inhabitants, and wishes them a happy New Year. Sometimes hosts probe and ask who the disguised men are, and brief conversations may take place with some of the well-wishing and departing Chläus. The host then gives a money gift (which varies from 2 to 100 Swiss Francs [SFr], depending on the age of the Chläus and the profession of the host) to one of the last Chläus in the row, usually the last Schelli.

The term chlause is also used specifically to describe the rhythmic swinging of the Schellä, as in dreechlause (to start chlause on the offbeat) and aachlause (begin to swing the bells). Uuschlause (the ending of the Silvester celebration), for passive participants, denotes the whole evening spent in a restaurant, watching the various Schuppel who visit each restaurant; for the Chläus, uuschlause may also mean going to a restaurant to eat after finishing the performance in the restaurant. They take off the Groscht, change into fresh clothes; after a shower, and take part as “normal” men in a last round of greeting the New Year: “Only the pressure marks of the headdress will then give a Chlaus away to the others.”[23]

THE MUSIC: ZÄUERLI, SCHELLÄ, AND ROLLE

“When the dumbfounding clanging of bells, the erotic swinging, the jingling tone down, when the terrifying masqueraders become still and regroup themselves in a circle before the farms … then in a religious silence resound the Zäuerli,” writes Marcel Cellier on the jacket of his Appenzeller Zäuerli, a recording of Appenzell yodels, which has been mixed and altered by the studio.[24] The Schuppel do stand in a circle before they start zäuerle because they can hear one another best this way, but the rest of the description is Cellier’s interpretation.

Hugo Zemp provides a more sober description:

In general, yodelling is understood as singing without text (yodel syllables) with continuous changes from chest to head voice and with frequent wide intervals…. But for the people of Appenzell it seems to make little difference whether a given Zäuerli is sung with changes of register or pitched rather low entirely in the chest voice. With or without leaps into the head-voice register, the Zäuerli nevertheless have the same essential characteristics: relatively deep voice range, relaxed voice, mostly in slow tempo, free rhythmic character with extreme drawing out of notes, “dragging” from one tone to the next and rising intonation. All of this is in great contrast to the yodel of central Switzerland with its high vocal register, extremely tense voice, frequent rapid tempi, pulsating rhythm, and mostly constant or even descending intonation…. Both styles, however, also share certain characteristics often regarded as particularly “archaic”: namely, the descending glissando at the end of lines used by certain singers especially faithful to tradition and the use of the Alphorn-fa in certain pieces. In the case of the latter the fourth step of the scale is raised by approximately a quarter of a tone (between F and F-sharp in C major), as the 11th harmonic of the natural tone scale, often played on the Alphorn.[25]

In a personal communication, Zemp stated:

When you measure the frequency of a Zäurli, especially of the Vorzaurer [the man who starts the Zäuerli], you will find that he often sings an interval exactly between the “accepted” intervals, and this is why the listener is never quite sure whether the Zäuerli is in major or minor–if the listener cares about such things as major and minor.[26]

According to Zemp a Zäuerli is not only a melody given by the Vorzaurer (called “taking a Zäuerli”):

Characteristic of the Appenzell yodel is the polyphonic accompaniment. Zäuerli are started alternately by different lead-singers (Vorzaurer). The lead-singer sings the yodel melody in the same manner as it is sung without accompaniment. The accompanying voices enter after the opening tones, as soon as the piece is recognized. The singing of the accompanying voices is called to hold straight (gradhäbe): in actual fact, the long holding of chords reminds one of drone-like ground tones.[27] In Appenzell … as [elsewhere] in … Switzerland, the yodels are mostly structured in 2 or 3 parts (Tääli) whereby each part is repeated (aabb, aabbcc). Just as there are variants in the performance of a given melody by different singers, so there are differences in the placing together of the parts…. Even a single singer sometimes makes melodic and rhythmic variants and puts the parts together in different ways. Nevertheless, the parts cannot be combined in just any fashion, they must fit together (zemmepasse).

From the above description one can easily understand that it is difficult to identify a yodel simply by a name. According to tradition, furthermore, the yodels do not bear precise titles; sometimes, one or another yodel is named after a singer who was especially fond of singing it, or perhaps it is known by the name of a place. The performers on this record, therefore, did not wish to give names to the yodel pieces as the yodel clubs often do following radio and record practice.[28]

For gradhäbe, several voices hold the tonic and dominant, and one or several basses are needed. The transmission of Zäuerli is entirely oral although musicologists have continually tried to put them in notes for the sake of analysis.[29] Though vorzaure and a good Vorzaurer are considered very important, most informants emphasized how difficult it was to gradhäbe and how a Zäuerli needed a nice, strong bass to sound complete.

One can gradhäbe in two ways: onenie gradhäbe is heard more frequently, occurring when the lead singer uses his head voice. Obenie gradhäbe, singing in higher intervals than the melody, is considered fancier and more difficult, and it is probably heard more frequently when the Zaurer have had much singing practice.[30]

Nearly everyone learns Zäuerli, and zaure belongs to the farmer’s everyday life: “While milking the cows, we might take a Zäuerli, or sometimes in the evening, we might just feel like taking one. The children will get it that way quite automatically. A real Urnäscher just acquires it while growing up, men and women,” explained a farmer.[31] Zauere and juuchze (“yell for joy,” calling in head voice) belong very much to the alpine pastures, and cowherds sing while milking or doing other work since Zäuerli can be sung without accompaniment. But Zäuerli is not only for farmers; when people sit around in restaurants and talk, drink and tell jokes, zaure is the favorite entertainment.

Informants were unable to estimate the number of Zäuerli they knew: “Many, oh many, maybe fifty, oh, I don’t know, it could be more than a hundred!” said one man who considered himself a pretty lousy Zaurer.[32] Some made a distinction between Chlausezäuerli and other Zäuerli: “It is possible that you hear someone sing a Chlausezäuerli during the year, but that’s only if they don’t know that it is one,” laughed one young farmer’s wife.[33] An old farmer, when asked about Chlausezäuerli immediately started singing, then giggled: “Those were two really old ones, you know, you don’t hear them anymore. Almost no one ever takes them.”[34] Several informants confirmed that old Zäuerli should be sung during chlause, but what this meant was impossible to determine. Zäuerli have no names or dates, just as Zemp noted, and at most a Zäuerli was referred to by young informants by its commonly used syllables (such as “s’Pü-alla” or “s’Trullalla”).

Urnäsch has a yodel club, the Jodelchörli, and many Chläus take pride in being members, though they admit that they often sing composed and arranged yodel songs there. Zäuerli are very rarely performed and, at most, are sung before or after the rehearsal. The Jodelchörli has produced records and often performs yodel songs at Häämetoobed (lit. “home evening,” presentations of local culture by locals), a mixture of nostalgia and promoted folklore, attended by locals as enthusiastically as by tourists.[35] The Appenzell men enjoy zaure and public singing to an extent rare among German-Swiss men, and it is probably due to this pleasure that Chläus join the Jodelchörli (or other local yodeling clubs). However, one Chlaus, a Jodelchörli member, said in a thoughtful moment:

The kinds of Zäuerli you sing in the Chörli would never do for chlause. In the Chörli, we cultivate our music, we try to school our voices, we have a director. Maybe, in this respect, the Chörli almost acts as a brake. We may be losing the variety of the traditional Zäuerli through the cultivation of individual ones. If you listen during Chlause, you’ll see that it is often only the farmers who take really old Zäuerli. But actually, those old Zäuerli would be the most fitting with the custom.[36]

The role of “schooled” voices and the problems with gradhäbe were evident in the 1981-82 Silvesters. Adolescent Schuppel generally had difficulties with gradhäbe and lacked basses because of voice changes, resulting in a rather mumbling accompaniment to the Vorzaurer. Adult groups, on the other hand, had some excellent voice combinations, especially in those groups composed largely of Jodelchörli members. The adult group repertoire was much larger since it increases with age whereas adolescent groups were heard to repeat the same Zäuerli at nearly every house. Children’s groups may sing in unison, as the polyphonic techniques require a ripened musical sensibility, though the schoolchildren who answered the questionnaire (see Appendix B) reiterated that good zaure was one of the most important parts of the performance.[37] Passive participants or former Chläus, when asked what was most important when a Schuppel visited, always mentioned the singing.

Given such an emphasis, some Schuppel are now said to select their members solely on the basis of their voices:

He has members from Toggenburg and St. Gallen and even Liechtenstein, just because of their voices. That’s really taking it too far, that should not happen. Chläus should be Urnäschers or at least have grown up back here so they have a real connection to the whole custom cycle,[38]

said one woman who otherwise likes the criticized group. The leader of the accused group admits to this “sin,” though with reservations:

The zaure is very important to us and to our audience[!]. They expect us to sing well and we don’t want to disappoint them. There was only one time when I chose a member because of his voice–it happened one night in a restaurant, and we were all singing Zäuerli. It might have been around 2 A.M. when I suddenly heard this voice and I had been thinking before that we could really do with another voice in our Schuppel. He sounded just right, and after a while I went up to this guy and told him that I could use a voice like his and he should think about coming chlause with us. When I woke up the next morning, I was alarmed since I didn’t know this guy, and he might not have fit into our group at all. But it worked out just fine, we really fit together well and enjoy chlause together, and that’s certainly important if you want to do this right.[39]

Criticism from the musically spoiled passive bearers pushes groups into such choices of members, though it is as much the Schuppel’s own interpretation of their audience that influences them. Two group leaders mentioned that they liked their groups to be large (nine or ten men) because “just one or two more voices make for so much nicer zaure.”[40] The leader of the largest group (fourteen men) commented that his Schuppel was almost too big: the circle got too large and one could not hear the others well.[41]

Hearing is indeed a problem. Since the Chläus wear masks, their voices are muffled; a scarf usually covers the ears, and the headdress might reach over the ears. One passive bearer illustrated this with an anecdote:

This Schuppel usually sings extremely well, but this year something seemed to be wrong with them. As usual, they came first to our house, since we live practically at the Dorf borderline. But when they started singing, it just sounded terrible. I of course tried not to show that I found it strange, but when they were done with zaure, they wished us a good year–and then seemed to return back home. Later in the day I met the Schuppel, and one of them came up to me and excused himself for the terrible performance in the morning. They had worn fur Groschte because the weather was too bad for them to wear the fancy outfits they had prepared–and they had forgotten to cut ear openings in the fur hoods![42]

Today the voices can often serve to identify the visiting Chläus: “By their voices you can maybe guess, you might know them by their voice,” said a shy farmer’s wife who had sat quietly throughout a lengthy interview with her husband. Voices and faces become associated through Jodelchörli performances, though this was not true earlier. One Chlaus remembers the anonymity as the nicest part of the whole custom:

You know, you would maybe ask someone whether he’d come along chlause with you, you didn’t have such fixed Schuppel as you do today. And then you would start just with this friend and after a while you might meet another pair or even a single Chlaus and they would ask whether we should all go together. Without any planning, you might be a group of nine, ten men and you would have a great time together. All through the morning you wouldn’t know who is with you until you’d take off the Groscht to go to lunch. And that was always a big hello to find out who the others were.[43]

His wife added:

Today, you pretty much know all the Schuppel, there is not much secrecy about it–they even have their Chlauseversammlig [meeting of the Schuppel to discuss the Groschte and to zaure together] in the restaurants, and so you also know who goes with whom. There really isn’t much to guess.[44]

The son, who now goes chlause, protested, saying that one could try to puzzle spectators by switching positions while walking so that not absolutely everything was known.

Anecdotes about switches are cherished by Chläus since this is presently the only way they can mislead connoisseurs. One Chlaus remembered:

Once a member of our group was sick and we had to find someone else, and fortunately there was another schöne Schuppel that just couldn’t go that year because one of its members was in the hospital. So we got someone to come along with us, and we had to switch around the velvet dresses, I don’t quite remember who ended up wearing what color, but that’s not so important. When we finally came to the “Sonne” [most important restaurant in the Tal; former Chläus usually gather there and critically watch the performing Schuppel], there was this farmer who thought he knew each Chlaus by name. We started zaure, and this poor man was obviously puzzled; he thought he knew each of us, but something was wrong. We sure got him there. But such little variations are fun.[45]

Schuppel relationships prove to be very friendly when there are problems like this one; schöni groups need six positions to be filled, partly because of the Sujet on the headdresses but mostly because of the harmony of the bells. Other Schuppel are willing to send one of their members as a substitute, recognizing the limitations of the Schöne and eager to “preserve” the few schöni Schuppel that presently exist. A wüeschte or schö-wüeschte Schuppel is much less dependent on having a certain number of Chläus unless they have made bells into an important characteristic of their Schuppel.

Custom scholars have coined the generic term noise custom (Lärmbrauch) for customs where bells, sticks, or other instruments are used, supposedly to chase away evil spirits (or perhaps simply to make noise?).[46] In Urnäsch, bells are perceived as harmonically tuned instruments and not as noise. Schuppel use Rolle, set on a Rolleträger (a harness with thirteen Rolle) carried by the two Rolli, and one current variation has three Rolli with different sizes of Rolle, which creates a tritone. Schellä, carried by the Schelli, are tuned in sets of three, namely, a Senntumgschäll or Senntum, and a more recent addition has been the Oberschlagschellä (a larger, deeper bell tuned harmoniously to fit the Senntum). Some Schuppel, such as the Schöne, use two Schellä per Schelli, and the two need to be identically tuned.

Chlause (in its specific sense) begins when the Rolli sets the little rocks inside the Rolle in circular motion, done with fast rhythmic movements of the whole torso. Then the Schelli with the highest pitched Schellä starts chlause, thereby setting the rhythm. The next higher pitched Schellä follows, whereby the second Schelli should dreechlause. The third Schelli follows the beat of the first one, and the last Schelli with the deep-pitched Öberschlagschellä follows the second one. “That’s how the father of one guy from our group suggested we learn it,” said a young Chlaus whose Schuppel apparently spent long hours getting the Chlause right:

It has to go tam-tam-tam-tam. We practiced on the little street over there, behind that house. We first tried it in place and then we would walk up and down the path, without any motion, then with aachlause, then the same thing when running until we felt comfortable with it. By now I think we are almost the best at it, I dare say.[47]

A Chlaus of another group describes the right way to chlause somewhat differently. Though his basic explanation stays the same, he arrives at the syllables “dä-dän-däng–dä-dän-däng,” and he too is very fond of the achieved rhythm.[48] The rhythm is created by swinging the upper torso from left to right while keeping the neck and head straight (jerky movements are to be avoided partly because the Chlause does not sound good then and partly because one risks pulling muscles with the heavy weight of the bells and the headdresses). The schöne Mannevölker who use the above technique want to present a clean Chlause “because that is important for the Schöne.”[49] The clapper should go rhythmically back and forth, you should avoid letting the clapper slide,” said a schöne Chlaus, “though you can’t avoid the sliding completely.”[50]

An anecdote illustrates the importance of good Schellä. An old Chlaus remembers a Silvester when they had gone spasschlause (to go chlause for fun, see later discussion):

On the road we met this one Chlaus who had a really miserable bell, and we said we would not take him along with such a lousy Schellä. This thing was really worn out, it did not chiide, just terrible. We threatened that we would take out the clapper of his Schellä if he really wanted to come along and that’s what we did.

He laughed: “We took out his clapper and he came chlause all day long that way, without a clapper!”[51]

Wüeschti do not stress precise chlause, though Schö-wüeschti seem to find it more important.[52] The single Schellä carried by these groups is held in both hands and supported by a rope slung over one shoulder. Much of the swinging from left to right can be done rhythmically from the hips rather than by twisting from the torso. The acoustic effect to a nonconnoisseur does not seem much different, though the visual impression is much clumsier and more “male” than the more elegant movements of the Schöne.

The Rolli who have begun Chlause continue to jump around, run and hop in small fast steps forward and backward, jump in place and turn while jumping, stand still again and shake themselves; in short, they should be lively, agile, and energetic. “A Rolli should jump around a little,” said one Schelli, claiming that he had never really been strong enough for the role, and he had only done it once for the fun of it.[53] A schöne Rolli is also expected to behave like a woman (as the name Wiibervolk implies): “The schöne Rolli have to really trip along just like women, you see, and they should be like women. I’m more of the wild kind, you know,” said the Vorroli of a wüeschte Schuppel. “I’d rather jump around and run and nothing of this refined stuff.”[54]

Both Schellä and Rolle are heavy. One Senntumschellä weighs 18 to 22 pounds, the Öberschlagschellä can be 31 pounds, and if one carries two, the total weight is 62 pounds. A Rolleträger weighs around 44 pounds, and if the Groscht and the headdress is added, a Chlaus may carry anywhere from 53 to 88 pounds. The farther back in the file the Chlaus is, the heavier his outfit. Positions in the back are apparently also associated with higher status in the Schuppel, though this is difficult to establish. A younger, less experienced Chlaus would probably carry a lighter Schellä and be farther forward in the line. The decision to be a Rolli or a Schelli does not pose great problems: “It resolves itself,” most Chläus said. If one has always been a Rolli, one stays a Rolli, and the same is true for the Schelli. One Schelli remembered that when their Schuppel began, no one had preferences. The roles were finally decided somehow, and ever since then the Schelli have wondered why they didn’t become Rolli: “The Rolli do kind of make too much of themselves and think that without them, the Schelli wouldn’t be anything, but this is all said jokingly.”[55]

Schellä and Rolle are also expensive. Most Schuppel now use at least one good (new) Senntum, and some groups have gone to the expense of getting new Schellä and Rolle for each member. They do that only when the group membership is fairly fixed and when they expect to spend many more years of Chlause together. Younger groups rent bells from former Chläus or borrow them from the museum. There are also a few families who have a good stock of bells that they rent. Schuppel leaders are usually responsible for getting the bells in time. One old Chlaus said:

Earlier, of course, then we would just take the Schellä we used in summer for the cows, then one did not care so much about it, though those bells sounded pretty well too. And we would naturally take those that fit together, you can hear that, if someone has the ear for it, he can put them together quite nicely.[56]

In 1981, the bell rental cost for one Schuppel of nine men was estimated at SFr 20 to SFr 40 for both Silvesters. Compared with the price of a Senntum, this is low, especially because a Schuppel needs more than one Senntum and the Schellä and Rolle have to be attached by a saddler. A group of six Schöni acquiring a complete set of new bells would pay approximately SFr 6,500, and this high price has resulted from the increased acquisition of Senntum as capital investments. Aside from this, they are handmade by only two bellsmiths in Strengen in the Tyrol, Austria (ca. 50 miles east of Urnäsch).

Josef Mattle, one of the few remaining bellsmiths, thought Appenzellers had been buying the bells in Austria for at least the last one hundred years. The smithy has been run for four generations, but its future is in doubt because his sons are not interested in taking over the shop. “It’s hard work, it’s very hard work, and of course you’re always black. They can earn better money more easily elsewhere,” Mattle said in his pleasant mixture of Austrian and Swiss dialects. “I myself have it up to here,” he added, raising his hand to his chin. But he repeated several times that “it is still a golden craft.[57]

Two decades ago, Josef Mattle would never have thought his craft would be so sought after: “I used to sell a Senntum for SFr 450 to SFr 500,” he mused. With the increased cost of wood and electricity and the increased scarcity of the red clay he uses in the bell-forging process, he has raised the price. “Actually, I always tried to keep the price down, in order to harm the other one,” by which he means his only rival, who also lives in Strengen.

Today it is a seller’s market and customers are bidding fantastic prices for a simple Senntum. In the best case, it would take me ten days to finish a Senntum, but I rarely do this. I don’t like to work all day in the smithy, and there is other work that needs to be done as well. Today I sell a Senntum for SFr 2,000—it has become a capital investment, and I have to be careful since there are a number of sly characters who try to make a business out of this by acting as middlemen and dealers. I lost a lot of money when some guy bought a good hundred bells from me and then auctioned them off at a much higher price in Berlin. Yes, you would not believe where one buys my bells these days! Some innkeepers want them to decorate their restaurants; I even sold some to Colorado, and the customer wanted me to add a U.S. star in the corner!

Mattle was, to his shock and dismay, audited one year by a tax official, and he found this experience so unpleasant that he has tried to keep his income down ever since. He never expected to become so wealthy selling his bells: “It is mostly the Swiss with their celebrations; I produce bells practically only for customs. The Austrian farmers couldn’t afford such nice bells, they have much lousier ones. But the Swiss and especially those Chläus are really keen on good, big bells.” He remembers that it was about 1960-61 when he began getting requests for bigger, deeper sounding bells than he made for the Senntum: “I started making those exclusively for that custom. And they are heavy. That’s really what makes the craft so arduous: to lift those hot, heavy bells and to turn them over the fire.”

While chatting, Mattle was working on a Senntum, closing the seams of the bells, heating the metal, and hammering it into shape.

Rolle, too, I make only for customs. Who would buy Rolle today for a horse harness, I ask you? But the Urnäscher are ordering bigger and bigger ones. Look here, the last order I got was for Rolle with 22 centimeter diameters. That’s much bigger than a baby’s head, which was about the biggest kind I made. But I’ll do it: they’ll pay for it, and I’ll do it.

Mattle is especially proud of his tuning ability, a procedure that can be done only with bells that are forged. He is fond of making very low-tuned sets of Schellä and knows that the Chläus are eager to get them: “They seem to have some kind of competition out there as to who has the lowest ones,” he smirked, blue eyes devilishly gleaming in his sooty face.

He is basically right, though it is more a competition over who has the best set of Chlause Schellä than over who has the lowest bell. With increased affluence, more and more people are able to afford a Senntum, even though they may have no association with cows or Chlause at all. Various informants decided after an hour’s interview to show the “holy of holies” in their houses, namely, their Senntum. With a grand gesture, the bells would be unveiled, and after admiring the shiny bell bodies for a few moments, the host would make them resound, and then he would beam. A Senntum hangs in the entrance to the office of the doctor in Urnäsch, and passing male patients never fail to tap and listen to the sound.

The only complaint about “noise” occurs when the bells are brought to resound inside. This happens during the Silvester nights when the Chläus visit the restaurants and perform inside, which one Chlaus described as verschloh (lit. to break; muffle, dampen). Outside, a good Schellä träät (carries far), and in cold weather it can be heard at a considerable distance.

VISITORS AND THE VISITED

In the morning of the New Silvester there is Chlause in the Dorf, as this is the only time it is allowed there.[58] Though some Chläus appreciate the acoustics of the Dorf square, most find these morning hours unpleasant. “There are too many people, too many Chläus, and one has to wait in front of houses until the Schuppel ahead of you has finished,” is a common complaint.[59] On the other hand, certain spectators, such as farmers’ wives who live in very isolated farmhouses, appreciate the chance to see more Chläus than would ever come to visit them.

In 1981, all the Schuppel in the Dorf were careful to visit certain shops and restaurants and certain private homes. The choice of houses visited revealed the difference in experience between the adult Schuppel and the children and adolescents. While the latter tried almost every house (often without giving enough time for the inhabitants to come out), the adults knew exactly which houses to go to and which houses to avoid. The visiting pattern seems to reflect those who appreciate village tradition or, at least, appear to. Though Chläus claim they don’t have time to visit everyone in the Dorf, there are other factors that determine the selection of houses, including family ties, prominence of the hosts (the doctor, the insurance salesman, tradesmen), or the importance of an employer (members of a family construction firm, a yarn factory). Clearly left out are “alien” establishments such as the bank, the hotel that caters to Dutch tourists, and a restaurant sold to a nonnative.

On the afternoon of the New Silvester and all day during Old Silvester, Chlause takes place in the Tal, along the road to Zürchersmühle, at the edges of the community (for example, Schönau) or along the borders of the Dorf, with each Schuppel taking its own path. It is not possible to visit every area even in the course of both Silvesters, and given the scattered settlement pattern, certain farmhouses are practically never visited because they are too far from convenient paths.

Some Chläus drew the path(s) they often took on a map (see Maps 2, 3, 4) and this illustrated, if nothing else, how far a Schuppel was willing to walk even with their heavy loads. A route is commonly called a Strech (lit. stretch or line), and Chläus say me nennt en Strech (one takes a route).[60] Only one route, the Zürchersmühle Strech, follows the road, and most Schuppel seem to take it only in bad weather. S’Tal, the route where one visits houses in the Tal, is only partly on the main road, but Chläus generally don’t give a bad weather explanation for taking this route. The Tal is regarded as something like the cradle of the custom; the Dorf inhabitants were hostile toward the custom until after World War I. The other Strech are nebedosse (“next to the outside”), and the Chläus almost uniformly prefer these more strenuous routes.

Most of these “outside” routes can be taken only if there is no ice, the paths have been cleared, and it is not snowing too hard. The most frequently indicated routes were d’Schönau, de Sölzer, s’Steinemoos, s’Bürgerheim, and über d’Bueche, where each name indicates a geographic area. Among those informants who drew maps subtle differences were shown even for the same route, possibly because of the large scale of the map used but more likely indicating differences in the houses visited. For some routes (d’Schönau, and one starting at Rossfall, south of the Tal), the Schuppel need a ride to the starting place. From there they chlause their way back to the center of the village. The reverse is also possible: starting in the center and getting picked up by car in the evening. For these few routes, a straight line is followed, but the other routes are all circular: the Chläus start and end at the same point and cover the entire distance on foot.[61]

Map 2

Map 3

Map 4

The reasons for preferring the nebedosse (“outside”) routes varied, but one was mentioned by everyone: “It is much more rewarding to go chlause at an individual farmhouse. There you can really see the people’s joy. The farmer might even sing along with you, the children marvel at your Huet and Huube, and you end up singing more Zäuerli than usual because it just feels so right,” said a schöne Chlaus.[62] An older Chlaus, himself a farmer, said: “Good chlause is always nebedosse. We once visited a farmer who usually doesn’t get Chläus, and his hands were shaking hard when he poured the wine because he was so moved.”[63] Others mentioned the romantic aspects of walking along in the midst of snowy hills, far from the road, and seeing the farmhouses nestled among them. Avoiding the crowds also makes nebedosse routes attractive: “On the Old Silvester, there are sometimes so many people that you barely have room to chlause if you stay in the Tal.”[64]

Chläus in 1981-82 rarely left out houses on the nebedosse Strech, and when asked about this, one Chlaus said:

In the Dorf or even in the Tal you cannot possibly get to all the houses, and you have to be selective. But nebedosse, there are fewer houses, and if you choose this or that Strech, you might just as well include all the houses. We don’t only take the houses where we know the people, certainly not. It can happen that you skip a house if it is situated awfully high and the path that leads up to it is not cleared.[65]

Other informants stated that they would not visit a house where someone had recently died or where they knew that the inhabitants were at work. The “work” reason may obscure what Chlaus encounter on any Strech: people (or households) who do not like or appreciate Chlaus. “With time you know that the people in the vacation houses don’t care much for Chlaus,” said one Chlaus. “Honestly, he continued, “I’ve never tried there, but the people there usually come from towns, and they don’t know much about customs anyway.” He put it another way: “With time you know who the Chlausefründe [friends of Chläus] are. You remember–if no one has come out of a house two or three years in a row, they won’t like you any better next year–so you won’t even try.”[66]

If someone is fond of Chläus and expects them to visit his house, he will prepare drinks and have money ready. On the New Silvester, 1981, many people in the Dorf did not serve drinks, and when asked why not, they said that the houses were awfully close together in the Dorf, and they did not want to encourage drunkenness among the Chläus.[67] However, the hosts were quite willing to give information on the amount of money they gave. A woman at a private home said:

It depends on what kind of Schuppel it is. I usually give a little more to a schöne Schuppel than to a wüeschte, and I also count how many Chläus there are in the group. If there is a bigger number I give more. And children of course don’t get much, maybe 2 or 5 SFr for the older ones.[68]

The amount given for an adult Schuppel ranged from SFr 20 to SFr 50. One shopkeeper gave about SFr 40, saying: “You know, one might almost call this a business transaction. I don’t begrudge paying forty or fifty francs to them when they come around, because, you know, they have been customers all year!”[69] Restaurant owners may give as much as SFr 80 to SFr 100, and it is customary for hosts to slip the money as unobtrusively as possible into the hand of one of the last Chläus.

Chlause is different nebedosse. These isolated inhabitants almost always offer a drink, though not every farmer had a bent straw (Schluuch), and Chläus often had to produce their own (in the Dorf and Tal, those who offered a drink had a Schluuch ready as well as a special mug for the occasion). Chläus would sometimes be asked what they wanted, and at other times a steaming pitcher of hot wine (Glüewii) would appear. One farmer’s wife said:

Usually you choose the drink according to the weather. If it is really cold and windy, those Chläus are glad to get something warm in their stomachs, but if it’s warm because of a Föh [warm wind], you want to be sure to offer something cold. They like white wine best, and some will ask you for it, and then of course you go in and fetch some–they sing nicer with white wine anyway.[70]

If a man was at home, he would offer the drink, though his wife might pour it. Women also seem to prepare the hot wine or cider, and if their husbands go chlause, they have to serve it. This was frequently used as an explanation for why women cannot go chlause–“After all, someone has to be at home!”

One old farmer said: “Oh, we usually give them some wine and some Flade or a cookie. Sometimes they put it in their pants pocket, and when they are around the corner, they lift the masks and quickly eat it.”[71] This household seems to be one of the last to offer food, though many older Chläus remember having gotten cookies and Flade earlier. “But then the costumes got fancier, and now they can’t really afford to have greasy spots on their masks. They go and eat heartily in restaurants anyway. We didn’t do that earlier and were glad to get a taste of something every now and then,” said a former Chlaus.[72] Among interviewee’s wives, there was only one who had ever made Flade, and she was not even sure whether she had done it right.

An old Chlaus who had been a baker rememberd that Flade had been an important food on Silvester and at Christmas: “We baked around 250 Romflade [Flade made with cream] for Christmas and up to 500 for Silvester. That was always a very busy time. Usually the customer brought his own Schloorzi [cream mixture] and you just baked it on a white bread crust.”[73] There are still bakeries in Urnäsch where Flade is made, though it is now considered too greasy and heavy. Some people admitted that they would like a slice of Flade, just for memory’s sake.

As for the money gift, farmers are less discreet in the transaction. One woman was seen searching her wallet until she found something appropriate. According to Chlaus, less money was given at isolated farmhouses (about SFr 10): “If we went because of the money, we wouldn’t take the routes we do,” said one young Chlaus. The same point was stressed by others:

Certainly, you appreciate the money if you invested a lot in your outfit, but as a Schöne you’d never get back as much as you spent on your Groscht, not to mention the hours of labor! If we did it for the money, we’d be better off if we went to work that day because we’d earn more.[74]

There was only one older Chlaus, significantly a member of a lower social class, who remembered that in his time, Chlaus had preferred good, warm weather because they could then walk farther and make more money. He was also the only Chlaus to use the term Battelchlause (begging Chlause) to describe the activities of his former Schuppel. They had done this only on the New Silvester, and on the Old Silvester they had gone chlause for fun (Spasschlause), which implied not accepting any money (see Chapter 3).

The evenings of both Silvesters are devoted to visiting restaurants. The most important ones are the Sonne and the Sternen in the Tal, both of which have large dance halls and smaller rooms where guests sit and drink and wait for the Chlaus to appear.[75] The guests are entertained by local musicians who play Appezeller Striichmusig (Appenzell string music).[76] Three or four other Tal restaurants are also visited on both Silvester evenings. Dorf restaurants are visited only during the evening of the Old Silvester.

The tourist aspects of the custom are most obvious in restaurants. During the day, buses arrive from Swiss cities or from Germany or Austria. In 1981 an entire “costume club” from Germany arrived, wearing their leather pants to mark the occasion (and themselves), and they busily filmed the Chläus with a gigantic movie camera, though for what purpose remained unclear. The Swiss National Railroads usually organize a special excursion to Urnäsch on the Old Silvester. Groups usually arrive in the afternoon, and after an hour or two in the cold, the tourists have seen enough and go into a restaurant for coffee. They stay, perhaps to ensure they will have seats, and are assured that Chlaus will show up later. A meal is consumed, and by 7 or 8 P.M., the first Schuppel arrive.[77]

The Chläus do inside what they do outside, chlause and zäuerle, though there is much less room. The restaurant ceilings are very low, and just to get through the door, schöni Chläus often have to squat or enter on their knees because of their large headdresses. Chläus had many negative things to say about the restaurants, though they always added that they would never consider not going. One Chlaus said:

It’s very nice on the New Silvester because then your audience consists almost only of locals. But on the Old Silvester, unless you go early and are one of the first Schuppel to arrive, your audience is bored and won’t listen–they’ll go on chatting and drinking and you can barely hear one another while singing.

Another added: “I would be bored too, if I sat all day in a restaurant, waiting. You know, if I went to the restaurant with my wife, I might prefer to dance than to see more Chläus and listen to more Zäuerli!”[78] One Schuppel had a more radical solution: “The last few years we decided to go to the restaurants very late. By then, the tourists have left, and your audience is reduced to locals, and that makes it much more agreeable.”[79] The smoky, stuffy, hot rooms add to the heat of the Groscht, and the Chläus quickly get hoarse. Though the audience may notice neither the heat nor the zäuerle, the Chlaus complain about the conditions.

It is fascinating to watch the various Schuppel awaiting their turn outside the restaurants late at night. A group of Schö-wüeschti stands between the parked cars, most of them smoking: “Now it doesn’t matter anymore,” said one, pointing at his mask. “I gotta make a new one next year anyway!” Some lean against the cars, others lean backward to support the bells with their hips rather than their arms. They begin to look more like tired, disguised men as the aura slowly leaves them. The pitch of excitement reduces as the night progresses, and their thoughts turn to the next day.

This Schuppel, called “Waisehuus” after the leader’s home, is still mostly composed of farmers. They have been making schö-wüeschti Groschte for about ten years, and the founding members are all brothers from an old Urnäsch farming family. “Waisehuus” waits for “Bindlischuppel,” which soon emerges from the Sternen restaurant, nine men relieved to breath the fresh air again. “Bindli” begins to move to the next restaurant, only 50 meters away. Just two weeks before, the group could be seen in the basement of the pretty “Bindli” farmhouse, gathered in front of their newly finished Groschte, pacing up and down between the costumes, picking up a hat here and examining a coat there. The leader’s father, a recent retiree from Chlause, carried a giant glass goblet filled with white wine with the name of the Schuppel engraved on it. He passed it around, and everyone solemnly took a swallow of the white wine: “This is our way of celebrating finishing the work,” they offered as an explanation.[80]

Another group, “Möllelli,” comes down the street, seemingly on its way home. The nine young men who form this group chose to dress almost wüescht this year, though their masks are of the schö-wüescht type. They are one of the more silent Schuppel, modest and a little insecure in their attire, proper though not outstanding singers. They seem to be bound together by strong ties of friendship of a taciturn character.

The “Schöne Dörfler” walk by, with long steps, almost running; they are still in high spirits. A yell for joy (Juuchzer) breaks through one of the masks, and the Chläus of the waiting Schuppel turn, surprised, watching the group that seems to sail past them elegantly. The “Skiclub” (as some people call this group), now wearing the same headdresses for the fourth year, displays a Sujet called “work with wood,” and the seven headdresses show various stages of woodcutting and woodwork. The leader of the group frankly admitted:

You know, this is a kind of nostalgia, you show something on your hats which one might not see here anymore. After all, tractors can be found here too, but one tends to show old things. One of our other Sujets was “dying crafts,” things like weaving and cooperage.[81]

The only other adult schöne Schuppel currently active in Urnäsch showed “dying crafts” this year. They had not been seen in Urnäsch for a while and people had thought that the group had been dissolved because of disagreements, but there they were, and in good shape too, though the members are probably the oldest active Chläus (somewhere in their early fifties).

An adolescent group comes out of the Sonne restaurant; they’re wearing schö-wüeschte Groschte, and their hats show considerable work. They have lasted through both Silvesters and fulfilled all the parts of the custom, but the other adolescent Schuppel seem to have stopped earlier. “We don’t have a name yet,” says one of the members when asked for their Schuppel name.

Just before going home, one catches a glimpse of “Dörflischuppel,” the only “truly” wüeschte group; they have papier-mâché masks showing frightening faces. It must be late since even they are tired. “We want to have fun” is probably the leitmotif of this group, and they certainly do and infect those who watch them.

It is difficult to convey one’s feelings when standing next to the “Dörflischuppel,” hearing their zaure with the large bass voice as foundation while the Chläus noisily turn their heads and shuffle their feet. Sometimes a bushel of straw will fall on the ground, or a pair of Groscht pants threaten to fall apart, for these Chläus like to be wild. As they go home, a bell will sound, but it is no longer the pitch and tension of the day, but the satisfied tiredness of the end of another Silvester.[82]

3

ORAL AND WRITTEN HISTORY

The name of the custom–Silvesterklausen–suggests an original connection with the cult of St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. Though the custom occurs on New Year’s Eve and on January 13, there is evidence that St. Nicholas Day, now celebrated on December 6, used to take place around December 28.[1] However, the thrust of Chlause is very different from that of St. Nicholas, for the Chläus receive presents while St. Nicholas gives them, and several informants strongly denied any connection between the two customs.[2] Nevertheless, various photgraphs exist from the beginning of the twentieth century showing St. Nicholas together with Silvesterchläus,[3] and in 1663 the clergy criticized the “walking around at night with bells and making noise in the manner of St. Nicholas,” calling it superstitious and stating that the custom of leaving presents for children was harmful to their beliefs.[4]

One old Urnäsch teacher speculated that Silvesterklausen might be a remnant of Catholic Fasnacht (Shrovetide): “When I first came here, the Chläus were disguised very much like Fasnacht revelers, and I always suspected that Chlause might have grown out of Fasnacht though I would not have mentioned that in public.”[5] Urnäschers are very sensitive to comparisons of Chlause with other customs because such attempts generalize something that they feel is unique.[6]

There is no proof of any connection to St. Nicholas. There is even less evidence for the theory of a Chlause origin in pagan times when Chlause supposedly functioned as a vegetation and fertility rite or even as a cult of the dead.[7] Yet this hypothesis is cherished by journalists and the authors of a growing of a growing number of glossy custom picture books who consider this nineteenth-century theory ideal and concordant with the current nostalgia for customs in Western Europe. It is obviously not possible to elicit sources from pagan times, which the journalists often refer to, and it is made more difficult by a lack of proof that there ever was a “pagan” settlement in Urnäsch. The name Urnäsch (the river) was first mentioned in 1214, and the settlement itself was first named in 1344, though several names of Urnäsch pastures were mentioned earlier. It was under the protection of the nonpagan monastery of St. Gallen that settlement and cultivation were promoted in Urnäsch.

Documents on Chlause are sparse.[8] The first documents are, as with many customs, official decrees reprimanding the custom bearers, for example, the 1744 state council’s decree that the “obscene and aggravating disguisement on the occasion of the so-called Klausen at Christmas and New Year will be forbidden and punished.”[9] From 1776 to 1808, the “Book of Mandates” listed Chlause as a punishable custom.[10] A chronicle written by Johannes Meier of Urnäsch states that in 1817 “already by the evening before New Year, 100 so-called Kläuse appeared and double that number of beggars.”[11] It is reported elsewhere that the years 1816-17 were famine years,[12] and it is also known that there was Chlause the night before the famous 1812 Herisau fire.[13]

Chlause is not confined to Urnäsch. One can assume that it was once widespread throughout the Hinterland and perhaps in all of Appenzell. There is evidence that neighboring town of Toggenburg (in the canton of St. Gallen) also enjoyed Chlause.[14] An 1851 almanac, for example, described mummed Chläus appearing in all of Appenzell, carrying Rolle around their chests and a crown of gold paper on their heads, and wearing a white nightshirt with red ribbons around their arms and chest.[15]

During the last decades, however, Urnäsch seems to have claimed “authorship” for the custom. Though other communities have revived or introduced Chlause, it is claimed that it is in Urnäsch where one finds the custom in its “purest” form. Communities like Herisau just feature Bättelchlause–or so a museum attendant in Herisau put it! How serious this authenticity issue is was revealed when the Swiss Postal Service issued a stamp series showing Swiss customs, and Silvesterklausen was attributed to Herisau. The Urnäscher considered this not only a marketing trick on the part of the Herisauer, but also an “incorrect picture” presented to Swiss stamp buyers and friends of customs. Their anger finally resulted in a letter to the Swiss Federal Council, which in turn replied with an apologetic note. The stamp could naturally not be changed, but Urnäscher appreciated the response, acknowledgment, and correction.[16]

The Ausserrhoden newspaper Appenzeller Zeitung (APZ) has proved a valuable source of information and opinion on the custom over time. Founded in 1828, the paper was at first a very liberal, outspoken publication of considerable importance in Switzerland, but today it serves mostly regional purposes.

The APZ’s first mention of Chlause, in 1836, held that “the Klausen custom deserves to be condemned as a remnant of a barbaric age, but, fortunately, the custom is not as popular as one might think.”[17] Twelve years later, a sharp critique appeared in another newspaper, the Freie Appenzeller: “How is it that when beggary is prohibited in our country, one goes begging in such a base, mummed fashion, and why are the respectable cowbells abused in such a shameful manner?” The writer described the Chläus as “unbecomingly mummed and armed with sticks.” Furthermore, he fears the custom is a bad influence on children, that older people are disturbed by it, and that the elderly would like to celebrate the last day of the year in a more decent fashion.[18] In 1898, the APZ printed a letter entitled “An Old and Superfluous Custom,” in which the author criticized Urnäsch and Hundwil for clinging to the Julian calendar and celebrating it with Chlause. Though the police apparently prohibited the Chlause dances that were held, they still took place, and the author is surprised at how hardy these outdated, old customs are and how difficult it is to eradicate them.[19] Begging was often stressed in early reports, and it was vexing to various authors because begging might give the onlooker an unfavorable impression of the Appenzell. Progressive journalists, politicians, and letter writers wanted to stress the economic and social mobility of their canton and be rid of the stigma of poverty.

To fight Chlause and its associations, bans against the custom were proclaimed and publicized in the APZ.[20] The first were promulgated in Schwellbrunn in 1897, and the first ban issued in Urnäsch was in 1899. Urnäsch was the only community that set limits on (in 1915) when and where Chlause was allowed. On December 31, one may chlause in the Dorf until 10 A.M. and until 6 P.M. in the other parts of the community. On January 13, Chläus may appear only at night. In 1918, officials tried to ban the custom again, and this time the flu served as an excuse. Paul Tinner, a local chronicler who died in 1981, recalled the occasion very well:

From 1914 to 1918 Klausen was prohibited completely because of the war and the flu. We boys from the Tal went to Dr. H. Moesch who was a Chlausefründ and who was also a member of the community council and president of the school and asked him whether we really couldn’t go Klausen. He appealed to our better impulses, saying that the brawling really ought to stop and that we should perform the custom in peace. Instead of hitting each other we should compete to see who could be the prettiest Chlaus.[21]

Only a few interviewees remembered violence as a part of the custom, and specifically the battles between Tal and Dorf residents.

What is remembered–and cherished–are anecdotes about policemen:

I heard this from my father. There were once these two men who had decided to go chlause even though there was a ban because of the war or the flu, I don’t remember. And then one of them stationed himself up in the Grund and started chlause, and the policeman started going up toward Grund, and when he was almost there, the man up there stopped chlause, and the other man who was stationed on the other side of the valley started chlause, and the policeman did not know what was going on. But he decided to go over there, and so they chased him back and forth until he thought that he was being made a fool of. And another time, there were also two or three men who went chlause despite a ban, and the policeman came running behind them and they ran as fast as they could right through the Urnäsch [river], and then he could not follow them either. But that happened many years ago.[22]

Other informants remembered similar stories. The wildest of them had the policeman captured in a bag and dragged through the village.[23] Almost all informants preferred to see the past more peacefully, however, and denied that any battles had taken place between Tal and Dorf inhabitants or that policemen suffered at the hands of Chläus.

The first description of Chlause in a folkloristic journal appeared in 1906, written by an Urnäsch physician, H. Moesch. Not only does he give us a clear picture of what Chläus wore at the time, he also noted the following:

Each Klaus carries a stick with him on which there is fixed a box or half a tin to collect the money donations…. During the day, the Klause were Bettelkläuse [sic]; … there are weavers and day-laborers who never earn as much money during a single day as on Silvester. For some people, Klausen is almost a profession…. There are some from other communities of the canton who come up to the Hinterland in order to fill their purses.[24]

Among older inhabitants, there is unanimity as to what Chläus looked like in Moesch’s time, though the attitudes toward them vary from disgust to high praise. “Oh, they looked ghastly, with rags and women’s clothing, and often they had fake breasts and tried to stuff their behinds so they’d look like women,” said one informant. Another stressed their dirtiness: “It was unappetizing and unaesthetic. They’d wear women’s long underwear and sometimes they’d drag a chamberpot behind themselves or put one on their heads.”[25] Yet others defended the spirit of these Chlaus: “Sometimes they came, just wearing rags–I saw that on very old photographs, maybe 100, 200 years old; and they would not take money. I’d like to do it that way again, but not all the men in my group would want to,” said a young group leader.[26] An old Chlaus said: “Those were the real Chlaus, the Spasschläus. We would just wear some old things, then put them away during the year. Then we’d see what we had before the Silvester. It would be clean, but nothing like the stuff they are wearing today. Just Spasschläus.”[27]

Spasschlause has become an ambiguous term. At the turn of the century, it meant to go chlause without accepting any money, a notion still confirmed by old Chlaus. Younger people or passive participants, however, see the tattered outfit as the main characteristic of Spasschlause, and for them, the term can carry a slightly negative connotation. Spasschlause was probably not helped by the post-World War II appearance of “advertising” Chläus, who used boxes from cheese, detergent, or Maggi bouillon cubes as Rolle!

The Schöne Chläus seem to have started around the middle of the nineteenth century; and from very modest beginnings, Schöne outfits went through rapid development. In an 1870 publication, Toggenburger Chläus are described as wearing long, pointed hats (up to 5 feet high), decorated with colored ribbons, holly leaves, and fir twigs, with their bodies covered by bells of all sizes.[28] Fifty years later, Hartmann, writing in Heimatschutz (a magazine devoted to the protection of the native land), could assert:

Earlier, the Klause wore high paper headdresses, decorated with colorful pictures, and they were in general quite primitively dressed, sometimes only with a long white dress. Today, there seems to be a competition as to who can produce the most extraordinary and not really aesthetically pleasing outfit…. The headdresses are especially important for anyone who wants to be a correct and pretty Klaus. So they come, one with a steamboat on his head–built during long winter nights–another with a carousel, a third with a castle including a wall, cannons and tin soldiers, a fourth with a model of a bridge, a fifth with a whole horse stable including coaches and so on. Those Huube-makers who are proud of their art seem constantly to search for new surprises to be presented. The prettiest Klause are the most marveled at and they often get more than just the minimum. They get up to SFr 20 and Flade and drink.

Lately, the velvet costumes have been made in more lively colors such as red, blue, and green. The jacket is short, the pants reach the knees, and the never-tired legs are covered with white stockings, and even white gloves are customary…. Older people are very fond of “Hinderschi Chlause,” a backward move or jumping of the Klause; it is especially well liked with the “womenfolk.” Aside from the so-called Bättelkläuse, there are also Spassor Night-Kläuse who go Klausen only for the fun of it. There is a secret magic over the activities of the Silvesterkläuse, and they are well liked and greeted with joy by the communities in the Hinterland (Urnäsch, Herisau, Schwellbrunn, Hundwil, Stein, Schönengrund, Waldstatt).[29]

On old postcards, one can still see some of these headdresses. According to one informant, the most gigantic Hüet were made of cardboard. The Wiibervölker on these old photographs often have much smaller headdresses.

The public had also grown fonder of customs and of things old, quaint, and Swiss, probably partly because of the Heimatschutz movement.[30] In 1920, the APZ printed its first positive account of Chlause:

The local custom of Klausen has been revived anew, now that the war has passed…. There are modern people, not many, who are upset about it; some find it ridiculous and yet others, probably most people, truly enjoy it. We belong to the latter and find the Klausen as worthy of Heimatschutz as anything else.[31]

In 1921 an APZ journalist describes the custom for the first time. He particularly enjoyed the acoustic aspects–the bells, the Zaure, and the Juuchzer cutting through the air. He mentions the various bans on the custom and smilingly adds that he did not really care whether those Chlause laws were broken, and most certainly he would not report anyone.[32] A 1922 description of Old Silvester in the community of Hundwil mentions various Sujets: “A bridge, a house, a ship, a hot-air balloon, and other extraordinary things.”[33] In 1928 the “Heimatschutzkläuse” appeared for the first time in Herisau. They were a group of eighth-graders (males, of course), wearing long white shirts, long pointed hats, and small bells on crossed leather bands over their chests: the Heimatschutz club had deemed these to be original costumes. The money they collected was given to a good cause–which the author mentions–and then the author criticized the Schöne for their pompous headdresses.[34] The Chläus were required to register with the police for the first time in 1933, and the correspondent is now happy to be able to give the reader an exact idea of the number of adult Chläus participating. Among the themes he mentions for this year are bridges, farmhouses, church towers, and airplanes.[35]

Three years later, the first Urnäsch correspondent emphasized the clean appearance of the Chläus. The most popular theme for that year was a Säntis mountain aerial cableway model (the real cableway had been built a few years earlier), and the group presenting this hat was honored with free tickets to ride the cableway.[36] In the following year, the same correspondent lauds a hat showing the Rütlischwur, the legendary oath swearing that founded the Swiss Confederation. He thought this an especially appropriate theme because it added “thoughtfulness” to the custom and showed intense labor on the part of the Chlaus, who used 30,000 little glass pearls to make it. Another innovation was the introduction of electric lights on the headdresses to replace the tallow candles used previously.[37] One informant had even heard that a Chlaus once started to burn in one of the restaurants because of these candles.[38] The correspondent also makes a distinction between three kinds of Chläus: Schöni, Spasschläus, and Rollenchläus. The last were wearing very light hats in order to be as mobile as possible: “They have to be like mercury, lively as the devil.”[39]

In 1939 Chlause was banned because of the impending war. Informants did not perceive it quite this way: “Well, during the war one might go chlause as well, but then we were usually on active duty.”[40] Chlause was also banned because of epidemics, not only the flu but also hoof and mouth disease. This was a serious threat to any farmer, and every interviewee mentioned it as a reason for not going chlause. “Once, there was the disease and one could not go chlause, and I was sitting in the classroom,” related one Chlaus. “I was a small boy then. Suddenly I heard Schellä, and I looked out the window. And there I saw a Schuppel coming out of a farmhouse and quickly cross the community boundary, because in Hundwil they did not have the disease, and so they must have gone chlause in Hundwil.”[41]

In the 1960s, there was another such epidemic, and the men had to refrain from going chlause. This time they seemed to respect the ban:

I was not there, but I’m really sorry I wasn’t, it must have been great. No one went chlause. Instead, all the Chläus had gathered in the Sternen restaurant, and everyone felt miserable. It looked as if it was going to be a really sad Silvester. And then all of a sudden, old Mrs. Zuberbühler went out and fetched a Schellä and came back and started chlause and that saved the evening. Everybody pulled themselves together and started zaure–one Zäuerli after another all night and until the early morning. I’m sorry I was not there.[42]

After World War II, the APZ noted with great relief that the Chläus were back, and the Urnäsch correspondent reported that many visitors came to see the custom.[43] Though there had been visitors before the war, the numbers increased significantly after the war. The tourist aspect is emphasized more and more in the chlause reports as time goes by. At first, the natives were glad to welcome outsiders and to present their customs to them. But then problems arose, and now the cars clogging the streets are clearly seen as a hindrance to the “magical effect” of the Chläus.[44]

Today tourism threatens the continuation of the custom. The Chläus themselves, however, seem quite fond of the interest that the outside world shows: “No, I don’t mind the tourists, on the contrary, I always felt they were a great stimulus to us Chläus to do the best we could. It is nice to see their pleasure and their joy about us.”[45] The informant’s wife adds: “Well, it is a little unfortunate that the locals barely find room in the restaurants.” A letter written in 1949 to the APZ complains energetically about the business attitude that the innkeepers take toward the custom. The writer is outraged because he had to pay SFr 1 in order to get a seat in one of the restaurants.[46]

Not only did the end of the war bring tourists; it also brought changes in the custom. In 1947, the APZ reporter ventured to give an explanation for the existence of the custom. This was done in a matter-of-fact style:

If the Klause were originally mummed figures, in rather simple costumes who were chasing away the evil spirits of the past year and who wanted to make the fields fertile with the sound of their bells, we barely find anyone conscious of this original meaning of the custom any longer. The custom found a right to exist simply through its creative form and out of an attachment to an old tradition.[47]

The author reported that scenes of the farmer’s everyday life seemed most popular with the custom bearers.

The next year’s report takes a much more involved and assertive tone:

Another group showed up in baggy outfits made with wood shavings, and, in addition, one member wore an apron out of fir twigs. This staging fits especially well with the original Silvesterklaus, except for the masks. The featureless masks generally used are a whole separate chapter. A satisfying solution would consist in the choice of artistically fashioned demon masks; only these correspond with the meaning of the custom, and they would at the same time enrich the presentation of the custom.[48]

One might wonder about the source of this new interest, which continued throughout the next decade. The Urnäsch correspondent of the 1950s seemed to wage a running battle against one kind of Chlaus, the “tattered” Chlaus whom he criticized year after year:

It is good that the untidy Lompechläus [“raggedies”], who threw together their Groscht the evening before, are decreasing. Anything sound and enduring needs time and work. It is also fortunate that the “advertising” Klause seem to have died out; they had nothing to do with the custom. (1950)

And something else, which I’11 only whisper, so the shame won’t spread so much: underpants, underskirts, and certain containers [that is, chamberpots] should in the future stay where they belong! (1951)

There is hope that the manifestations of degeneration that have occurred since the turn of the century in many folk customs are slowly disappearing … the audience, appropriately, did not appreciate those Kläuse who showed up in rags because of their lack of imagination. They used boxes, women’s hats, military knapsacks, and similar things as headdresses. Even the Groschte of the so-called Wüeschte need thought and meticulous work.[49] (1952)

The correspondent in those years was a young schoolteacher who had his first job in Urnäsch. He appreciated traditional things and was very concerned about Ghiause as he found it.

During a lengthy interview in 1981 when he was sixty years old, he related the story of his involvement in the custom:

The Chlaus up to that time, 1945, was in really bad shape–well, yes, they enjoyed it. But mainly they did not have masks. They wore women’s stockings over their heads. And then they made holes in them. When they got food and drink, those stockings got full of food and saliva, really unappetizing, ugly-and they really did not understand the meaning of Chlause and didn’t think about it. Those who saw it as Spasschlause, yes, there were those, but such fun did not have anything to do with the custom.

At that time I knew Mrs. W.; she was president of the Swiss costume association. And she knew Dr. E., who lectured in folklore at the university in Zürich. So I asked those two whether they wouldn’t come and look at the custom and see what shape it was in. They came and they thought it really a shame that the custom was going downhill, and they encouraged and pressured me to do something about it. They showed me pictures of the “Perchten” [Shrovetide custom in Austria] and told me how carefully those custom bearers made their outfits. So I thought, all right, let’s do that. Dr. E. referred me to a custom in Kanton Aargau [a canton west of Appenzell] where they made papier-mâché masks, and so I wrote there immediately, and a man sent me directions on how to make those masks. And so I started making these masks with my students [ca. eighth-graders]. They wore them–with the result that all hell broke loose. People said that the masks were Fasnacht masks.

I was disappointed. I was of course young and one has big hopes…. But the next year there was an adult group wearing those masks, and I don’t know how they learned to make them. Maybe from a student of mine, but from then on I didn’t have to do much.

I was a newspaper correspondent at the time, and so I used that position. You know, I felt more and more like an apostle–sometimes one does silly things…. There was also a pastor in the community who asked me to give a talk to our community about the roots of our customs. I had gotten much literature from Dr. E. I also scolded the Chläus who dressed up so disgustingly, with the result that they got very mad at me [laughs]. There were incidents, I tell you…. One year, they had Sputniks on their headdresses, and I wrote that it was too bad that those Chläus had spent their time making this because it didn’t have anything to do with our custom. That made big waves. It went all the way to the Migros newsletter,[50] and some angry man wrote: one should put this teacher in a rocket and send him to the moon! [laughs].

I asked Dr. E. how one could get those people to refrain from aberrations, and he told me to emphasize that only materials from field, forest, and farm should be used because that would be the material they used to use earlier. And the masks should be like demons. With time, it automatically clicked in people’s heads, and slowly it came.

One had to pay attention to the Schöne as well. Though they were always “better groomed,” I still emphasized that they should work more with the ornamentation and that the ornamentation should represent the sun and the stars. I also encouraged them to carve their themes instead of buying the little plastic figures and houses in the stores.

By now, the Chläus know their stuff. But the danger now is in the tourists–what should one do about them? Ban them! [laughs].[51]

Indeed, a revealing interview. The teacher obviously feels he did the right thing, and the locals regard him highly, though older people remember the years of innovation very well: “Well, yes, those new masks, we got rather sharp-tongued about them and would say that those masks were not really from here either.”[52] From today’s perspective, this man’s work certainly stimulated the custom bearers. Though there had been Chläus mummed with fir branches or with ivy Groschte earlier, the tattered variants were definitely preferred until his “purge.”

The Chläus themselves began experimenting: “We tried then to think of a theme as ugly Chläus. One year we each represented some thing–one was a sheaf, one was a haystack, and so on; and another year we went as blacks. But that did not meet with favor. Another year we wore Appenzell costumes,” said one older Chlaus.[53] The use of natural material, pushed by the teacher, finally dominated the scene. Previously, there had occasionally been a Schuppel of farmers who had appeared clad in natural materials, but now it became “in” to come as demons. The Chläus of the younger generation who currently go chlause, as well as the schoolchildren questioned, uniformly see the origin of the custom in the Wüeschte. Even members of the older generation defend the vegetation rite hypothesis as the only truth. The existence of the Schöne has been additionally justified as follows: “The Wüeschte are to chase away the evil spirits. They originate from a pagan religion. And the Schöne are then good spirits.”[54]

The Schö-wüeschte were created in the early 1960s, and everyone is aware of that. Everyone knows who the initiators of this type were, and the commentary varies from eulogy to harsh criticism. APZ, which started in 1967 to illustrate its coverage of Silvesterklausen with pictures, soon focused on this type, and when one looks at those issues, one finds that the Schö-wüeschte are regarded as the most photogenic. With the increased use of photographs, one also observes a decrease in the text, and the treatment of the custom is more sloppy and disinterested. The vegetation rite theory is repeated periodically, with a growing tendency to treat it ironically. The reporters seem to prefer letting the pictures speak for themselves.

Sparse documents, newspaper reports, and oral testimonies can be put together to establish the history of Silvesterklausen. Yet the historical picture is not complete and never will be. A mandate from the eighteenth century does not reveal what the custom was like at the time; it only reveals that the government considered it undesirable. One may draw certain conclusions from this brief document, but such interpretations vary according to who is making them. During the postwar period there was a strong desire to locate the roots of Chlause in pagan times, thus fulfilling a strong need for a long tradition, which provided some stability during that time.

In a few decades Chlause as it is practiced today may take on different characteristics in the memories of those who experience it now, just as the story about the teased policeman took on a more dramatic shape through the years. The history of Chlause, then, is anything but fixed: new generations will find new aspects worth remembering.

4

THE WORLD AND THE CHLÄUS

As an outsider, one cannot help but wonder about the rationale for continuing a custom such as Silvesterklausen. It requires enormous amounts of time, work, energy, money, and cooperation for an event that occurs only twice a year. Particularly in an age dominated by individual economic interests and markets as shapers or motivators of behavior, one would expect some quid pro quo for this investment. Yet it is manifestly the case that financial or economic motivations do not provide an explanatory rationale. Instead, the purpose of the activity is to be found in culturally engrained values. While values are powerful motivators of behavior, they are rarely articulated and must be interpreted from actions or observable institutions. Thus, an analysis must strive to make the implicit explicit, try to reveal what is inherent in a type of behavior that is of special importance within the cycle of the year.[1]

One indication that such an analysis is necessary arises from the responses that custom bearers themselves give. When informants who were otherwise quite able to supply extensive information on how the custom was celebrated were then asked why, they would invariably reply: “It’s been said that this was to drive away evil spirits.”[2] This answer was adapted from the interpretation offered by early twentieth-century folklorists, and the evasiveness of the “it’s been said” formulation shows that the answer does not lie on the surface. Indeed, the question itself may force custom bearers to step outside their framework to look at what they do, and such a procedure may be a source of annoyance. “What do you mean why?” one old man said, “because it’s customary!”[3] It is this conglomeration of motivations and values, the normative processes involved in Chlause, for which I will try to offer an interpretation.[4]

“There is no such thing as the correct interpretation … in itself.”[5] Few theories are made to last, and an event as many-faceted as a custom is complex and requires more than one level of explanation or interpretation. Therefore, the following discussion makes no claim to provide a complete answer to the motivations that have kept Chlause a vital custom in Urnäsch. To illustrate Urnäsch values crucial to Silvesterklausen, I have singled out connections to the economy, social structure, and world view, placing each in its historical framework.

CHLAUSE AND ECONOMIC NETWORKS

Urnäsch’s economy was heavily influenced by the fate of the eastern Swiss textile industry. Much textile work was done at home as piecework, work that was partially, though never fully, displaced by industrialization. By the turn of this century, the textile industry was no longer competitive in the world market. Even when the textile industry flourished, there were frequent depressions, which created periodic high unemployment and a large poor class.[6]

This poor class was a subject of great concern. Many communities found themselves torn between trying to provide for the poor and trying to restrict begging.[7] Chlause was an occasion for the poor to receive alms (food, drink, money) at the time of the year when financial strains were at their worst. While not always officially welcomed, Chlause was tolerated as a means for the well-to-do to exercise charity toward those who were less fortunate. Urnäsch seems to have served as an attraction for the poor of surrounding communities who would come for Silvesterklausen in the hope of substantial financial gain. This begging aspect of early Chlause, while clearly not fitting into the romanticized and nostalgic view of Chlause held currently, can be seen both in the historic documents and in the oral testimony of older inhabitants.

With increasing industrialization, the poor class began to disappear. There were fewer and fewer day laborers as the structure of the economy changed, in part because emigration began to replace begging as a way to escape poverty.[8] One way this change has manifested itself has been in the disappearance of food from the custom. In 1957, the APZ printed a lengthy article containing a legend about Chlause during the time of the 1816-17 famine as a reminder to people of their present wealth and of the misery of only 150 years ago.[9]

Urnäsch has steadily become a wealthier community. Before World War I, Chlause was an occasion for the better-off to give to the poor,[10] but as the poor disappeared and Chlause did not, new patterns of participation began to emerge. Chläus started investing more in their outfits in both time and money, and the custom bearers became those who could afford it and wanted to see the tradition continue. Passive participants are willing to give gifts of money, in part because the costumes are now often very expensive and in part because their money is now distributed among a few people–a small group of deserving custom bearers–rather than spread among a large group of needy poor.

The outfits of the Chläus also changed from costumes requiring little time or effort to cleaner and more careful artistic efforts. Indeed, the ostensible reason for the disappearance of food from the custom was not, as one might expect, because the Chläus did not need or want food, but because it might get the masks dirty. In fact, the removal of food gifts from the custom represents a shift in the function of Chlause away from its distributional aspect of the rich giving to the poor and toward rewarding individuals for adhering to a certain aesthetic.

If one expands the monetary aspect into a framework of the general exchange of goods, one can recognize reciprocal actions. The Chläus offer a visual and acoustic gift to those villagers they visit, and, in return, those visited offer gifts of money and drink (and food, earlier).[11] Previously, the gifts that Chläus gave (Zäuerli, disguise, chlause with bells) were not as valuable to those they visited as was the food and money the Chläus received. Chläus now bring the same gifts, though aesthetically more refined, but the honor of being visited is much more valuable (and valued) to those who are visited–and to the Chläus–than any money or drink the Chläus receive.

One can see the visits to businesses as an extension of this practice. Businessmen, who have the Chläus as customers during the year, reverse the relationship by paying the Chläus when they come chlause at their stores. The honor of being visited also honors the commercial relationship that exists between businessman and customer, sealed by the largely symbolic money gift back to the Chläus. The gift in monetary terms can never equal the amount that the Chläus in “normal” life spend in the shops. Instead, the value of the commercial relationship is honored through what the businessmen present to the Chläus.

The exchange with restaurants is not as clear. The visit is similar to that paid to businesses, except that the restaurants use the occasion to pack enormous numbers of tourists into their rooms for the show. In a sense, this strains the relationship because the restaurants are converting the value of the visit into hard cash by charging both tourists and locals to come and watch. It is questionable what the Chläus get out of these final visits during both Silvesters, but when one asks them if they would like to omit the restaurants, most Chläus reject the idea as unthinkable. In a sense, visiting the restaurants is a form of cooperation or perhaps complicity (especially since the restaurants are the only establishments that are being visited on both Silvesters). Restaurants will then be able to survive since it may be hard for them to do so throughout the year solely based on the visits of Urnäscher. Certainly tax revenues from the restaurants and businesses do flow back to Urnäsch, and in a community as closely knit as Urnäsch, the economic viability of individual restaurants is a matter of personal concern for many residents. To be sure, visits at restaurants and businesses also mean considerably more cash income than Chläus can obtain at private homes, but to the Chläus that is not the issue. Given the cost of bells, the saddler’s work, the headdress material, the Groscht, and the hundreds of working hours, no Schuppel can ever collect as much money as they spend. At most, their meals for the day may be covered by the contributions.

One can also see another aspect of the importance of commercial relationships when one looks at the way going chlause outside of Urnäsch and out of season is viewed. Several groups have performed elsewhere and have come in for fairly widespread criticism.[12] The problem here is that performing elsewhere does not affirm internal Urnäsch relationships; it creates only an ambiguous, temporary connection among a promoter, money, and the Chläus. The crucial difference within Urnäsch is that it is a businessman or family that runs a restaurant that one knows and that belongs to Urnäsch. Indeed, Chläus avoid those restaurants where nothing can be gained in terms of relationships, such as the hotel and restaurant that caters to Dutch tourists or businesses such as the local bank, which are run by outsiders.

Those Schuppel that have performed for television crews are in a slightly different position. It is possible that the more people that know about Urnäsch, the more will visit it and bring income to it, especially when Urnäsch stresses how much it has to offer in terms of customs for tourists to watch. Obviously, there are also diverging opinions about how beneficial such exposure really is for Urnäsch or for Chlause.[13]

Past and present economic circumstances have had a strong influence on Chlause in terms of values. The long history of work with textiles for both women and men, and in particular the prevalence of piecework done at home, has had a direct influence: Chläus make their Groscht at home, and emphasis is placed on relying almost exclusively on one’s own handiwork and avoiding buying finished elements. Since men participate in the textile industry, no shame is involved in performing what is otherwise considered woman’s work (such as working with glass pearls or sewing in general). There is a strong tendency to insist upon a certain exactitude and aesthetic in Chlause today, influenced by the design of the glass pearl patterns on the headdresses. Such exactitude extends particularly to the Schöne (but has also been taken over to some extent by the schö-wüeschte) and is clearly expressed by those Chläus who worry about exactly how to sound the bells or sing “nicely.”

Cleanliness, as the history of the development of chlause Groschte shows, is also a value. This is probably due to the economic changes that Urnäsch has seen: wealth usually brings with it a concern for aesthetics.[14] Social pressure can be exerted upon custom bearers to present a “clean” appearance, perhaps in order not to remind the community of the previous prevalence of begging or to show to neighboring communities or the watching outside world that one has risen in affluence.

The most important value, however, is one that stresses a certain kind of self-sufficiency (“us back here”) as well as a support for fellow inhabitants. This can be seen in the desire of the Chlaus to make by hand every part of their outfits, though this may be a nostalgic view of what piecework at home was like. The clearest expression is the high value put upon commercial and personal relationships as manifested in the visiting patterns. The ultimate motivation for providing the “gift” of going chlause at someone’s door is one that even for a moment, puts a value on the mere existence of social relationships.

CHLÄUS AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

For Chläus, the most rewarding part of going chlause is visiting isolated farms on the nebedosse Strech. Chläus may complain occasionally about visiting houses in the Dorf or about performing in restaurants but never about the difficulty of getting to isolated houses in deep snow or ice. Chläus value these visits far more highly than visits to more accessible houses because of the interplay between social groups.

Urnäsch is a farming village, even if only 25 percent of the population (which is high by Swiss standards) still farms full time. The community, with its three scattered nuclei–Dorf, Tal, and Zürchersmühle–surrounded by isolated farmhouses and grazing land dotted with countless cows, provides an instant visual image of a dairy farming village. The image that Urnäsch provides for outsiders is that of farming and farmers, and artwork and artifacts sold to tourists frequently depict cows or agricultural scenes. This tourist image ties into the more subtle vision held by Urnäscher themselves. Among nonfarmers there is clearly a desire to have objects in their homes that represent farming, such as cowbells, carvings of Alpfahrt, or even entire rooms decorated as alpine huts with authentic cheese-making utensils. Farmers themselves obviously have no need for such displays since their everyday life suffices.

The tourist image is correct, even if wildly exaggerated. Farmers constitute a very important social group simply by virtue of what they represent, not by what they do. They embody the identity of the village, particularly to other nonfarming Urnäscher. In an age when commercial and service enterprises keep Urnäsch’s economy alive, farmers are relegated to economic marginality, and this seems to be a reason to place them in the role of social image givers.[15] Much that is done in Chlause contributes to the romanticized image of Urnäsch as a farming community.

Farmers are the principal active bearers of Urnäsch’s calendar customs. The traditions related to summer transhumance–Öberefahre, Senneball, and various Stubete–and the Vechschau in the fall are all performed by farmers, their families, and their employees. Indeed, Chlause is the only yearly calendar custom that does not stand in direct relation to some aspect of farming life. Obviously, Chlause incorporates elements derived from farming–the bells and the Zäuerli are the most evident–but the custom does not fulfill a function crucial to the farmers’ livelihood, as does the transhumance procession or the Vechschau. Visits by Chläus are of special importance to farmers, who tend to value traditions as an integral part of the their lives. In return, Chläus receive greater emotional gratification when they visit nebedosse farms because their visits are more genuinely appreciated here than they are in the Dorf.

As image givers, farmers form a lasting social group in the community, united through their profession, their lifestyle, and the customs related to it. Chläus, on the other hand, form a recognizable group only during the performance of Silvesterklausen, and their professional and personal lives show no such coherence. However, Chläus do share common goals and interests related to the custom. Overtly, Chläus bond in Schuppel to accomplish the preparations necessary for chlause as a group and to experience together the exhausting enjoyment inherent in the performance. But there is also a sense of obligation to uphold the tradition, a function the custom bearers sense themselves to be fulfilling in their role as Chläus. It is this custom-specific role that makes the Chläus, at least symbolically, an important, lasting social group within Urnäsch, even though they may make little impact as year-round undisguised residents.

Chläus are men who are physically in their prime. They exert their energy fully during the two days in which they visit those in the community who do not actively participate. In their role as Chläus, they literally outline the boundaries of community membership by emphasizing visits to remote farms. Furthermore, the visiting patterns show who belongs to the community and who does not.[16] The Chläus do not visit certain industries and services and generally exclude vacationers’ houses. Vacationers are often not Chlausefründ, and several Chläus uttered the same sentiment: “We know who likes Chläus, the people who are not from here wouldn’t appreciate it, and so why should we bother with them?”[17] Appreciation of Chläus is thus essentially an Urnäsch value: outsiders can acquire it but often do not. Vacationers do not participate in Urnäsch’s yearly cycle but generally spend only a few weeks skiing and hiking in the area. For them, Silvesterklausen is a colorful, entertaining show, not a social event of fundamental importance. Most new résidents have been southern Europeans, who are linguistically and culturally separated from Urnäsch’s “old stock.”

A Schuppel includes certain households in its visits, households that look favorably upon the custom and all it represents. Aside from farmers, households of active, former, or sick Chlaus (who would otherwise go chlause) are obvious candidates, but so are households of local notables. An altruistic motivation is also sometimes present, as seen in the inclusion of institutions such as the village old-age home or visiting the friend of a Schuppel member.[18]

In visits to households, social and political relationships are reaffirmed, unlike the customer or client relationship that is strengthened by visiting businesses and restaurants. Friendship ties to Chläus as fellow residents of Urnäsch are reinforced through visiting some households, even though a clear or immediate quid pro quo may not be evident. Local notables concern themselves year-round with the political welfare of Urnäsch. By visiting them, Chläus pay tribute to the role these notables play–unacknowledged though this often may be–and the Chläus symbolically adopt the persona of citizens. Visiting households of chlause families permit custom bearers to take the persona they are most comfortable with, namely, family members or providers. Their visits then honor the family support system that confirms them year-round in their position. The visits to friends, neighbors, and fellow residents is seen as honoring a social support system in which the family support system is embedded.

The social persona symbolized by the Chläus differs slightly for each visit: customer, client, citizen, kin, and resident. Chläus fulfill obligations toward each relationship according to the role each embodies. Yet if obligation were the only motivating factor in this custom, it is doubtful the custom would take the form that it does. There is also personal satisfaction that participants derive from the activity that cannot be underestimated.

Chlause is the only occasion in Urnäsch when one can disguise oneself.[19] This disguise brings with it a freedom from certain conventions since (at least until recently) onlookers did not know who hid behind the anonymity of mask and costume. It is a time to do things in a manner one might rarely do during the rest of the year–singing with a particular group for two entire days, ringing bells, eating well in restaurants, walking to outlying houses, and generally having a good time. For those who are not involved in any other groups that perform (such as choruses, theater, music, and ensembles), there is also the excitement of performance, one element of Chlausefieber.

The disguise itself has changed, revealing a shift in emphasis both in what Chläus thought they were doing and what the community as a whole was willing to tolerate. Several separate costume developments occurred at different times, but the one that concerns us here is that part of the tradition that emphasized having a good time. Certainly Chläus who went in tatters were not as interested in having a good time as they were in obtaining food, drink, and money. But as the wealth of Urnäsch increased, Chläus began to convert such outfits into ones that emphasized the celebratory aspects of Chlause. In the sanctioned framework of disguise, men were free to indulge in the frivolity of a role reversal where their costumes would overemphasize the female form by massively enlarging bosom and posterior. As early photographs show, there were Schuppel that were composed entirely of these female figures, and their actions or gait when they went chlause apparently mimicked women in a rather boisterous fashion.

The female disguise accented the fanciful or the fantastic or the topsy-turvey world that would result if everything were different, but it also served to disguise the lack of women in the custom. Other customs, particularly carnival-type celebrations, where there is both disguise and role reversal, put no such restrictions on the participation of both sexes. Thus, while it may have been liberating for males to dress up as women, it was also a symbolic confirmation that while men were sanctioned to dress up as women, no such avenue was open for women.[20]

Today, one may still see children’s Schuppel composed entirely of Wiibervölker. Adult groups, however, now no longer follow this pattern; most Schuppel content themselves with two (or at most three) Chläus wearing Rolle.[21] Rather than maintaining the possibility of sex role reversal, Chläus now strongly affirm defined, masculine roles by incorporating more Schelli than Rolli in a Schuppel. The custom changed from an occasion for men to brag boisterously with their own female potential to one where the male potential is accented in an almost solemn fashion. Custom bearers emphasize the perseverance and strength needed to last through twelve to eighteen hours of carrying heavy weights over long distances, and a strong whiff of virility is evidenced here.

These are essentially male values. Though Wiibervölker are still given the license to continue exhibiting female-type behavior, a preference for stressing the virile is evident in the greater number of Mannevölker. While the performers used to relish being like women for two days during the year, today they choose to demonstrate their maleness. The public boundaries between the male and female domain existing throughout the year are then no longer reversed but reinforced.[22] Women are reduced to a passive, receptive background role. Their help in putting together chlause Groschte is not publicly recognized, and credit is taken by the men. Women may take pictures, be visited, and show pride in their men, but they may not be more actively involved in the custom.

Schuppel members value male bonding. For many Chläus, at least for the duration of the custom, the Schuppel bond is more important than their marriage or family bonds. Christmas and New Year’s, otherwise family occasions, tend to be slighted by Chläus. Wives and mothers hardly complain but state in resignation that “once the Chlausefieber has got him, I can’t talk to him anymore.”[23] The family is central to the lives of married Chläus for the rest of the year, but during the custom performance Chläus indulge in the close bond the Schuppel provides. Chlausefieber, as a matter of fact, appears to be a combination of intense emotions, ranging from excitement to stage fright, where everything else in a Chlaus’s life becomes subordinate to the experience of going chlause. Both the male bond and Chlausefieber are reasons why Chläus are almost invariably drawn back to Urnäsch at New Year’s, even if they left the community for professional or personal reasons years before.

Even mumps, pain, tiredness, or civic duties (such as military service) will not prevent a man from going chlause.[24] An old Chlaus remembered: “When I’d come home, I’d have to climb the stairs on all fours, but that didn’t matter, nor the muscle ache I’d have the following days.”[25] The local doctor had to treat a young Chlaus, a butcher’s apprentice who had stuck a meat hook through his hand the previous day, early in the morning of the Old Silvester 1982. He just had to go chlause, even though his injured hand had to carry a Schellä all day. The doctor remembers another case of a man who had a badly sprained ankle and needed shots throughout the day; the doctor practically had to follow the Schuppel, and every time the men took a break, this Chlaus got another shot against pain.[26]

The persistence of the desire to go chlause and the long years of “disaccustoming” when one has grown too weak to hold out for a whole day illustrate the value placed on participation. The existence of social networks means that the different persona that Chlaus take outside the custom (which involve them in various obligations) are also honored and valued within the custom. The farmers are particularly important because of who they are and what they represent, but also because they provide the closest link to the image of Urnäsch as a tradition-minded village that still does things the old way. This is an important value for many Chlaus, who themselves have no direct connection to farm life anymore.

Rather than emphasizing the value of having a good time and not worrying too much about appearance, Chlaus now value role-related concerns connected to the public place of men within Urnäsch society. As a result, values such as perseverance and endurance matter, making those Chlaus who can no longer physically participate even more aware how important such values are.

The custom is a yearly renewal, and missing it would be tragic. The community ties are renewed, and the Schuppel with their circular routes seem to sew a new thread from house to house, binding the community together again.[27]

CHLAUSE AND WORLD VIEW

Values do not arise in a vacuum, and it is not enough to ascribe various values merely to economic developments or social role relationships. Instead, one must try to understand the pattern formed when all the various values interlock and interrelate. Values shape identity, but, more importantly, they shape how one views the world, and one’s world view exists by virtue of those values one received as a part of one’s education in a particular culture.

A world view itself is thus how one sees everything outside of Urnäsch through Urnäsch eyes. As one looks out, metaphorically, one sees Urnäsch, surrounded by Appenzell Ausserrhoden, embedded in Switzerland, and Switzerland as a small democracy among other European nations. This superficial geopolitical view is colored by how much identification there is with each sphere and to what extent one makes a distinction between, for example, Swiss society and the Urnäsch community.[28] Past history and economics add yet other dimensions, as do the personal idiosyncracies of each Urnäscher, and one soon has a differentiated and changing world view that is quite complex. The world view used for the outside may also come full circle and be used to reexamine Urnäsch, making world view then refer to both external and internal life.

In a custom, one cannot hope to see more than a small part of a world view. Indeed, what one sees tells one little because the visible elements are only the expression of the world view, and outsiders cannot, by definition, see things through the eyes of Urnäscher. Nevertheless, one can make some conjectures, based upon what is said about a custom, and put these in relation to the social and historical context in which the custom occurs. Such an approach provides some understanding of the world view, often in terms other outsiders might find congenial, however incomplete this understanding may be.

In Chlause, one often sees not a world view but an expression of values. The more recent developments of Groschte, such as the Wüeschte, reveal a certain ecological awareness and valuation of nature and the use of natural materials; over time, this valuation has increased in importance. At best, however, this only reveals that Urnäscher find themselves in a different relationship with their immediate natural surroundings than they used to: nature has been added as a context, but nothing has been said about the Urnäsch community. The more recent emergence of Schö-wüeschte adds the valuation of an aesthetic arrangement of natural materials on the costume, but–at least on the level of material used–this does not change the costume from one expressing values to one expressing a world view.

But among the oldest type, the Schöne, one can see variances in world view expressed through changes in the Sujets used on the headdresses. Over time, Sujets change both in how they are made and in what they depict, and while the historical record is incomplete, one can see certain commonalities among headdresses from the same historical period.

Those schöne Sujets for which there are photographic records fall into three distinct periods. During the earliest period rather fanciful headdresses displayed zeppelins and iron bridges. This was followed by Sujets that showed more patriotic themes, such as the founding of the Swiss Confederacy (Rütlischwur) in 1291. More recently, Sujets have showed a nostalgia for an earlier time by displaying woodwork and farmwork. This can be schematically and historically arranged as in Table 1.

TABLE 1

Date

1900-30

1931-39

1945-81

Sujet

Zeppelins

Rütlischwur

Woodwork

Battleships

Kursaal in Interlaken

Farmwork

Airplanes

“Dying Crafts”

Iron bridges

Aerial cableways

The early period is striking in that the identification seems to be with technological marvels that were new at the time. Some of them–iron bridges and aerial cableways–were seen near Urnäsch, visible local signs of progress in engineering and the dissemination of new technologies down to the most local level. Others–zeppelins, battleships, and airplanes-represented more distant phenomena that were honored as marvelous inventions, regardless of where they came from or whether they would ever be seen in Urnäsch. At this time, Urnäsch seemed to feel very much a part of a world that was, objectively speaking, physically, socially, and economically rather far from it. Yet Urnäscher felt its enthusiasms and dreams, and there was no disjunction between an external technological civilization that could create zeppelins and airplanes and an Urnäsch life of dairy farming and textile piecework. Indeed, one aspect of a lack of disjunction in the booming 1920s was the competition among Chlaus to see who could create the most gigantic headdress. Iron bridges and battleships admirably served such a purpose while also showing that these external developments meant something to Urnäscher.

The second period occurred under the lengthening shadow cast by Nazi Germany and within the context of the efforts by the Swiss to disassociate themselves from their northern neighbor. A large part of the disassociation involved promoting that which was uniquely Swiss: its dialects and history. What better image to invoke during the 1930s than one that asserted Switzerland’s historic independence from the yoke of the Hapsburgs in 1291? General Henri Guisan, the commanding Swiss general during the war, did this in 1940 by meeting with senior army officers on the Rütli meadow and exhorting them to continued vigilance and defense; but the Rütli image was quite alive long before this, judging by the Chlause Sujet. The Kursaal in Interlaken is a more ambiguous image. True, today “folklorismic” performances are given in Interlaken that emphasize prototypical Swiss folklore to outside visitors, but it is more significant that Urnäscher should have chosen to honor a well-known building in another part of the Swiss nation. The choice is one that emphasizes links between different areas of one nation, areas that were not otherwise in accordance or agreement on political issues. This was a far cry from showing an airplane or a Sujet specifically related to Urnäsch.

When the war was over–there had been a hiatus in the custom for its duration–the Sujets continued to reflect an interest in history, but now it was communally rather than nationally focused. Urnäsch had survived the war, but it was no longer entirely the same Urnäsch. If the war had disillusioned the Swiss, it had also brought home the awful power of a technology that had been welcomed just a few years before. Urnäsch could no longer be an innocent farming village untouched by technology–but it wanted to be. Manufacturing and service occupations had displaced farmwork in importance-and, indeed, industrial activity had played a significant role in Urnäsch since the late nineteenth century–but Urnäscher wanted to honor and cherish the community as it had been. That this image of a tradition-bound community is nostalgic and rosy (and is selectively blind to unpleasant features such as poverty) has done little to reduce its power. Indeed, the clearest expression of the disjunction between the current reality of Urnäsch and the nostalgia for a current image of the past can be seen in the Sujet called “Dying Crafts.” It was as though Urnäscher were saying that they knew that Urnäsch was not the same as it used to be but that the old crafts were nevertheless an important part of its identity even if hardly anyone still practiced them. “Dying Crafts” is very much a perspective an outsider might take and is unusually self-reflective for Urnäscher.

In general, the Schöne have not continued in this vein, but one schö-wüeschte Schuppel has. Their jackets this year carried the theme “Recreation in the Forest” and showed Urnäscher walking in the forest, grilling sausages, hunting, gathering blueberries and pinecones (for Groscht!), and exercising on the local Vita Parcours (fitness course). Self-reflection has here been taken a step further: the Sujet shows Urnäscher as they are today in their everyday lives, not Urnäscher as they were imagined to have been while doing woodwork (though many of these activities could have been done in the past). There is even self-reflection in the custom bearers’ own activities. It will be interesting to see whether future Groscht continue this tradition and show Urnäscher running hotels or giving skiing lessons to tourists (see Table 2).

TABLE 2

Date

1900-30

1931-39

1945-81

Future?

Sujet

Zeppelins

Rütlischwur

Woodwork

“Recreation in the Forest”

Battleships

Kursaal in Interlaken

Farmwork

Airplanes

“Dying Crafts”

Iron bridges

Aerial cableways

Type

Technological (fanciful?)

Patriotic

Nostalgic

Self-reflective (self-reliant?)

World

International

National

Community

Individual

One can see this development as exactly the opposite of what one might expect in an industrial society. After all, as the communal ties of family or guild are weakened by increasing industrialization and replaced by the impersonal and mechanical relationships of a wider society, communities will probably lose more and more of the social bonds that tie them together. Certainly one can see this in former villages that have become industrial, urbanized centers. But Urnäsch never became much of an industrial center. Precisely because its involvement with the textile industry was so intense so early, in a sense Urnäsch began with impersonal and mechanistic relationships as it entered the twentieth century–and rejected them in favor of community. Industrialization appears to have had the (paradoxical) effect of unifying the community, particularly after World War II.

The development from first feeling oneself a part of the international world to finding oneself reflecting the self can also be seen as a narrowing circle. At a time when the majority of the population was engaged in farming, technology was writ large, and the custom bearers took part in the euphoria of progress. With the disillusionment brought by the war, the circle was narrowed to a nostalgic “us back here” view, a negation of technology and an affirmation of a more locally based set of values. By choosing farmwork and old craft themes, a vision of the old or traditional community was enacted and continues to be glorified as the correct and true picture of the community in the past.

The narrowing of the circle is also reflected in the visiting patterns–the circle is confined to those community members who affirm the custom and the current world view. Circularity is an important structural element of the custom: many routes start and end in the same place, particularly the well-loved nebedosse routes. The Chläus zaure in a circle because this allows for “well-rounded” harmonies and reflects the reliance on one another–one needs everyone to make the circle complete. The circle is confined to the men who form the center of community life, and other community members can at most be grouped around this circle.[29]

Questionnaires filled out by local adolescents showed their insecurity about whether or not they would choose to become a part of this inner circle. Criticism of this nostalgic custom, which does not leave much room for adolescents, reflects their insecurity in finding a place in this world. In their last year in school they must decide whether they want to belong to the circle of the community or whether they will choose to start their professional lives elsewhere. It is not surprising that Schuppel formations are fixed when the members are in their thirties: those who affirm the custom have also adopted the Urnäsch world view. Even though there may have been earlier misgivings about the custom, active participation later serves as an affirmation of both Urnäsch and the custom.[30] The number of former community members who return just for the custom expresses a certain wish to partake of and reaffirm a world view that has been left behind.

The older generation values the solidarity expressed in the “us back here” mentality. But the wartime national solidarity has been superseded by an increased awareness of particularistic local concerns and an increased emphasis on an individual’s development and fulfillment. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the self was part of the community, which was part of the world, and this relationship was not questioned. The tightening of the circle, or the explicit assertion of values, or the affirmation of the community, or the reliance on the self–each one puts this relationship into question today. The individualism that modern Swiss society accentuates affects young Urnäscher as it affects all Swiss. An individual must make a conscious choice between his personal life (which may mean moving away from Urnäsch) and the community. The community, in turn, feels itself no longer as much a part of the world as it used to, thereby changing another part of the relationship.

The reflective self now has to decide whether or not it will be part of a community that is part of the external world only in some respects. The bonds are no longer as sure, the values and relations no longer as unquestioned, and the Chläus who continue the custom embody the ambivalence of a changing and changed world view that is now caught between solidarity and individualism.

Appendix A

List of Informants

All interviews took place in Urnäsch, with the exception of the one with Josef Mattle, 59, bellsmith, who was interviewed in Strengen, Tyrol, Austria.

NAME

AGE

PROFESSION

Alder, Hans

48

Carpenter

Alder, Jakob

63

Street sweeper

Alder, Jakob

74

Farmer/construction worker (retired)

Alder, Ruedi

ca. 35

Self-employed, shopkeeper

Biasotto, Adolf

20

Student

Blaas, Hanspeter

38

Auto mechanic

Ehrbar, Ulrich

74

Postman (retired)

Fässler, Armin

ca. 35

Cook

Fässler, Emil

61

Sawmill owner

Frick, Ernst

48

Farmer

Frick, Mrs. E.

ca. 45

Farmer’s wife, housewife

Frick, Sami

ca. 30

Farmer

Frick, Mrs. S.

ca. 28

Farmer’s wife, housewife

Frischknecht, Jok

ca. 75

Farmer (retired)

Frischknecht, Mrs. J.

72

Farmer’s wife, housewife

Huber, Franz

ca. 40

Farmer

Huber, Rosemarie

ca. 35

Farmer’s wife, housewife

Hurlemann, Hans

ca. 40

Teacher

Irniger, Regula

38

Teacher, Housewife

Irniger, Walter

48

Doctor

Knoepfel, Werner, Jr.

23

Sawmill operator

Knoepfel, Werner, Sr.

48

Sawmill owner

Knoepfel, Sr., Mrs. W.

ca. 45

Housewife

Nef, Albert

78

Retired

Nef, Mrs. A.

ca. 70

Housewife

Nef, Hans

75

Sheep farmer

Nef, Mrs. H.

ca. 70

Farmer’s wife, housewife

Nef, Walter

74

Farmer (retired)

Roos, Berta

ca. 73

Museum attendant

Schläpfer, Hans

ca. 60

Teacher

Spross, Hermann

ca. 80

Teacher

Thöny, J.

ca. 45

Teacher

Tinner, Paul

79

Baker (d. 1981)

Various disguised Chläus were also overheard and interviewed during the Old and New Silvester, as were passive and active custom bearers in restaurants. A farmer’s family was also interviewed during the Old Silvester while they were waiting for Chläus to arrive at their house.

Appendix B

Sample Questionnaire with Evaluation of Answers

During my fieldwork, I interviewed only adult participants of Chlause. In order to get at least some idea of children’s knowledge and opinions of the custom, I designed the following questionnaire. It was given to those teachers in the Urnäsch schools who were willing to take the time to administer it. As a result, it is not a representative sample but a reflection of the sentiment of adolescent Urnäscher. Percentages of answers are reported rather than absolute numbers in order to convey this sentiment, and only the answers most relevant to this study are calculated. The questionnaires are now in the possession of the Urnäsch Museum.

SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE WITH EVALUATION OF ANSWERS

Total number of students: 95

Age range: 12 to 16

Question 1

What is the most important event for you during the year?

Christmas

1 (50%)

Alpfahrt (transhumance)

Easter

Old Silvester

2 (20%)

My birthday

2 (27%)

New Year’s Day

New Year’s Eve

Other (which?)

Why? Presents; family is together

Question 2

What are the Chläus doing during Silvester? Most frequently mentioned:

Zäuerle

82%

Go from house to house

50%

Earn money

26%

Schellä, Rolle

25%

Jump around

15%

Chase away spirits or winter

15%

What else happens in Urnäsch during Silvester? Most frequently mentioned:

A lot of people visit (foreigners, tourists, others)

The restaurants are very full (and people drink)

Question 3

Is there a difference between the New and the Old Silvester?

Yes

84%

No

16%

If yes, which? Very varied answers:

On the Old Silvester one does not chlause in the Dorf

There are more people on January 13; a lot of previous inhabitants return for the day

The Old Silvester is the real one

Question 4

Why is there an Old Silvester? Calendar situation known:

Precisely

17%

Approximately

26%

Other explanations

32%

Blank

25%

Question 5

What is a Silvesterchlaus?

“Average” answer: “A mummed man (who chases away spirits).”

Question 6

What types of Chläus are there?

Schöni and Wüeschti

38%

Schöni, Wüeschti, and Schö-wüeschti

34%

Other formulations

24%

Blank or “I don’t know”

4%

Question 7

Describe one type of Chlaus. You may also make a drawing (use back of the page).

Less than 50% provided a drawing

Question 8

What is a Schuppel?

“A group of men”

88%

Various other precise definitions were given: a group that sings, a group that goes from house to house, etc.

Question 9

How many people are needed to form a Schuppel?

Average: 7-8 range: 2-20

How many Schuppel are there in Urnäsch?

Average: 15 range: 7-100

Do you know some by name?

Blaaseschuppel

70%

Bindlischuppel

60%

Mölleli

53%

Saiebrugg

40%

Eggli

28%

Alder or Schöni

19%

Waisehuus

14%

Various adolescent groups were rarely mentioned

Question 10

From the following list, explain as many terms as you know. If two words mean the same thing, write them next to each other and explain. If you know connections between certain terms, describe the connection.

Zäuerli

61%

Wiibervolk

43%

Chlausehuet

50%

Groscht

54%

Rolleträger

20%

Senntumschellä

35%

Mannevolk

43%

Bättelchlause

30%

Schellächlaus

29%

Vorroli

52%

Öberschlagschellä

4%

Rugguusserli

5%

Chlausehuube

57%

Norolli

48%

Spasschlause

23%

This question seemed the most difficult, many left it incomplete. The percentages here indicate how many students defined the respective terms in a “traditional” sense.

Question 11

Do you chlause yourself or did you go chlause earlier?

Yes

37%

No

63%

If no, please answer questions 12-17 and 26-30; if yes, please answer questions 18-30.

Most students answered the following five questions, despite the instructions. Therefore, the percentages are taken from the total sample.

Question 12

Are there other members of your family who go chlause?

Father

14%

Brother(s)

31%

Uncle

20%

Cousin(s)

20%

Sister

4%

Others

23%

Blank

42%

Question 15

Do the Chläus visit your house?

Yes

75 %

No

6%

Sometimes

7%

Blank

12%

Question 14

What do you like best when the Chläus come?

Schellä and Rolle

The singing

1 (28%)

The clothes

1 (33%)

The headdresses

The jumping around

The drinking

I don’t like anything

Question 15

Which type of Chlaus do you like best?

Wüeschti

19%

Schöni

31%

Schö-wüeschti

21%

All

4%

None

1%

Spasschläus

1%

Blank

23%

No answers were given to justify these preferences.

Question 16

Do your parents offer drink to the Chlaus?

Yes

54%

No

33%

Blank

7%

The following drinks were mentioned: red wine, white wine, hot wine, hot cider, mineral water, flavored mineral water, coffee, coffee with liquor, tea.

Question 17

What do you think about Chlause (you may mark more than one answer).

I like it

40%

I’d like to take part myself

16%

It’s old-fashioned

13%

It belongs to Urnäsch

63%

There are too many visitors (tourists)

29%

There are too many non-Urnäsch Chläus

15%

It belongs to the Silvester

57%

I don’t care for it

7%

Blank

15%

The percentages in the following eight questions were taken only from the thirty-two students who answered yes in question 11.

Question 18

How old were you when you went chlause for the first time?

Youngest:

4

Oldest:

12

Question 19

With whom did you go?

Alone

13%

With siblings

28%

Children’s Schuppel

11%

With school friends

48%

Question 20

Why did you go chlause?

I thought it would be fun

56%

My parents sent me

-

In my family, we always went chlause

15%

I wanted to earn some money

2%

My friends asked me to come along

27%

Question 21

What kind of Groscht did you wear? Describe precisely what kinds of materials were used. You may also draw a picture.

Wüescht or Schö-wüescht

70%

Schö

12%

Spasschlaus

3%

Forgotten/blank

15%

Question 22

Who made your Groscht?

I did

39%

My parents helped me

17%

My mother

14%

We made them together (friends/siblings)

22%

I rented it

8%

Question 23

Where did you get Schellä or Rolle?

Rented

45%

My parents bought them

3%

We had some at home

26%

Other relatives had some

26%

Question 24

Did you save your old Groschte?

Yes

28%

No

72%

Question 25

What do you like best about Chlause?

To be with friends

28%

To earn money

9%

To bring joy to certain people

59%

To make some noise

28%

To stay up late

28%

To be a Chlaus

25%

Not to be recognized by my parents (or other people)

3%

To wake up people and run away

9%

Question 26

How old are you?

Range: 11-16

Question 27

Have you always lived in Urnäsch?

Yes

60%

No

40%

If yes, did your parents grow up here too?

If no, when did you move here?

Question 28

What type of house do you live in?

Farmhouse

47%

Apartment

17%

Single-family dwelling

36%

Question 29 (optional)

What are your parents’ professions?

Father:

Mother:

Agriculture sector

35%

Housekeeper

72%

Industry sector

35%

Professional

13%

Service sector

28%

Combined

8%

Blank

2%

Farmer’s wife

2%

Blank

3%

Question 30 (optional)

What is your name?

Notes

Abbreviations:

inf.

Informant

d.i.

date of interview

APZ

Appenzeller Zeitung

m./f.

male/female

()

the informant’s age appears in parentheses

INTRODUCTION

1. The two schools of “symbolic anthropology” spurred many interpretative studies of rituals (Ortner 1984, pp. 4-8). Geertz’s “thick description” was best exemplified in his “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” (1973, pp. 412-53). Turner (1969), instead of considering symbols as a way of grasping a culture’s ethos, focused on the social transformations produced through rituals. More recently, Wagner (1972) and Schieffelin (1976) in New Guinea and Kracke (1978) in Brazil attempted to find meaning in rituals. The only book-length treatments of contemporary European festivals and rituals in folkloristics that offer interpretations are Dundes and Falassi’s analysis of the Sienese palio (1975) and Kligman’s study of a Romanian ritual (1981). Newall’s work in Great Britain (1972, 1978) and Pasqualino’s analysis of a Sicilian festival (1981) are also important contributions to a comprehensive approach to the study of customs and festivals.

2. Mannhardt’s monumental work (1904) remained the major reference for Swiss researchers far into the twentieth century. Hoffmann-Krayer (1907; 1940) applied the “fertility demon” to a broad range of customs, and Meuli (1924; 1933; 1943) explored a theory that related the origins of customs to death rituals. The latest edition of Weiss’s Volkskunde der Schweiz (1978) does not offer a more modern approach to customs research: “It is the task of the folkloristic historical method to come as close as possible to the original meaning of customs and so almost decipher the ‘ur-language’ of humanity out of the stiff hieroglyphics which are transmitted to us through the forms and elements of customs” (p. 160). Though Weiss hints at the possibility of shedding light on a custom’s present function through a formalistic approach, it is still the “mythological” explanations that strike the fancy of both writers and readers of present-day newspapers and magazines. Röllin, the current Swiss authority on customs, is the only one who takes a more sober approach to customs research. In his own observations on Silvesterklausen (1981a, pp. 77-84), he points out an “aesthetic escalation” due to increased competition, which in turn he attributes to custom tourism and archaic attitudes among the custom bearers. His recent study of a late-fall custom (1981b) establishes five “principles of formation” that may be more inherent in other customs than the one he discusses in detail.

3. The term custom is the closest to the German Brauch. I consciously use it instead of ritual, the term more common in Anglo-American (anthropological) scholarship. Custom is used to emphasize the secular aspects of the event that seem dominant to me. Ritual carries a sacred connotation. Another folklorist might have been attracted to Silvesterklausen precisely because he/she regarded it as a remnant of a religious celebration. Yet, having grown up in a culture where such so-called rituals were common and never treated as though they had religious significance, I am wary of using what I consider a loaded term. One might argue that a few custom bearers do regard the event with religious zeal, but then one would have to employ a broader definition of religion than is known to the custom bearers, who regard themselves as Protestants. The custom bearers do not use ritual to describe their activities, and I would rather follow their usage than elevate the terminology to a scholarly level that has no relevance to them.

4. See, e.g., Bonney (1979), Gyr (1982), Heim (1958), Moser (1962), Röllin (1981b), Schmidt (1966, pp. 289-312).

5. See Turner (1978), especially with regard to his discussion of work, play, and leisure.

6. Urnäsch does, however, have the longest uninterrupted record of Silvesterklausen, rivaled at most by Herisau. The community of Waldstatt revived Chlause in the 1950s, Teufen in 1970.

7. Glassie (1975) outlines such an approach even more radically by reporting entire conversations he has recorded. Since the Irish Christmas mumming he was studying is no longer practiced, the memories of his informants substituted for personal observation.

8. For more ethnographic information, see Ebel (1798-1802) and Fuchs (1977).

9. In German folkloristics, this phenomenon has been called “Rücklauf” (flowing back); see Bausinger (1979, pp. 199-209).

10. Eliciting what Dundes has called “oral literary criticism” (1966) proved very difficult. Even though my informants were more than willing to explain the elements of Chlause, they shied away from questions concerning meaning. This was partly because of their awareness of one particular folkloristic theory, partly because they did not consider this a crucial question. In offering several theoretical perspectives, I have tried to avoid creating another label in order not to stifle the Urnäscher’s own ideas about the possible meaning(s) of their custom.

CHAPTER 1: URNASCH IN ITS CONTEXT

1. Inf. m. (ca. 80), d.i. 7/20/81, remembers this division as particularly strong in the 1920s when he first came to Urnäsch.

2. The 1977 Urnäsch census.

3. Ruesch (1979, p. 246); the local chronicler Paul Tinner wrote: “During this time of crises, many people thought that the phrase ‘be fruitful and multiply’ ought to be left out [from the Bible], otherwise the industries might leave us with all those who emigrate” (unpublished notes, n.d.).

4. Inf. m. (20), d.i. 6/20/81.

5. Planning for this museum started in 1972 when a local mailman left his collection of traditional goods to the community. A committee for Appenzell traditions was then formed, and it purchased a house, which now, after extensive renovation, houses the collection.

6. These local musicians are world-famous and have performed widely in Europe, the United States, and Japan and on cruise ships. For more on this subject, see Schläpfer (1967).

7. The Bloch happens biennially and is known in other parts of Europe. Structurally it is very different from Silvesterklausen in that it is organized by a “Bloch society.”

8. A complete man’s costume costs ca. SFr 1,500 (exchange rate as of May 29, 1984: $1 = SFr 2.21) because various specialized craftsmen are involved. A woman’s costume ideally includes only the cost of materials since a woman can tailor it herself. The man’s costume includes a yellow embroidered jacket, a red embroidered vest, a white embroidered shirt, a tie with a silver clasp, hand-knit white socks, leather clasps to keep the socks in place, a pair of long brown pants or knee-length yellow pants (depending on one’s status on the alp), heavy black shoes with silver buckles with a cow engraving, leather suspenders with brass fittings, one gold earring (on Sundays and holidays it is in the shape of a miniature cream spoon, on workdays a little cow), and a black hat with artificial flower decorations. A pipe with silver ornaments and a pocket watch on a silver chain may also be included, as well as a leather tobacco pouch with a pipe reamer, decorated with brass fittings–naturally in the shape of cows, the central decorative element of this outfit. On workdays, a cowherd may wear a leather cap instead of a black hat in order to protect his hair while he milks. For a picture, see Schuerch and Witzig (1978).

9. The present women’s costume was created by the painter Paul Tanner in 1927. It comes in plain blue or rust red with a white blouse and a striped apron. Hand-knit stockings, a crocheted collar, and black mass-produced shoes complete the costume (such shoes are standard in almost all Swiss women’s costumes). A fancier costume was designed in 1978, but it resembled the one worn in the other half-canton Innerrhoden too closely and was declared superfluous a year later (Burckhardt-Seebass 1981, pp. 222-25).

10. The most recent defeat occurred on April 26, 1982, in Innerrhoden. Since members of the parliament are elected by canton, Appenzell women have no chance to elect representatives nor to get elected themselves.

11. Die Zeit, June 5, 1981, p. 62.

12. The dance is performed in a circle and requires mostly strength.

13. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/17/81; inf. m. (75), d.i. 6/23/81.

14. Inf. f. (ca. 45), d.i. 6/26/81; inf. m. (48), d.i. 6/26/81.

CHAPTER 2: THE WORLD OF THE CHLÄUS

1. Inf. f. (ca. 45), d.i. 7/14/81.

2. Inf. f. (ca. 45), d.i. 6/26/81.

3. As the custom bearers start differentiating between Wüeschte and Schö-wüeschte, these masks become the essence of wüescht. This is how papier-mâché masks are made. A newspaper, preferably the APZ, is torn into little pieces and then soaked in water; a kind of glue (brand name Perfax) is also mixed into this paste. The paste is then spread on a plaster model of a face, and the maker shapes the mask as he deems appropriate. Holes for teeth or horns have to be made now. The mask is then dried, which takes about two weeks (unless one is in a hurry, in which case it is placed next to an oven). When dry, the mask is colored with oil colors, and lacquer is painted on the inside and the outside in order to protect it from snow and sweat. Foam rubber is glued along the rim so that the mask will not press on the Chlaus’s face.

4. Inf. m. (ca. 30), d.i. 7/20/81.

5. Inf. m. (ca. 75), d.i. 6/17/81.

6. Inf. m. (38), d.i. 12/29/81.

7. Inf. m. (23), d.i. 7/14/81.

8. Informants frequently stated that they were frightened of Chläus when they went chlause for the first time from ages four to eight.

9. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 12/30/81.

10. Inf. m. (ca. 30), d.i. 7/20/81; inf. m. (20), d.i. 6/20/81.

11. Inf. m. (20), d.i. 6/20/81.

12. Inf. m. (61), d.i. 6/23/81.

13. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/17/81.

14. Inf. m. (61), d.i. 6/23/81.

15. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/16/81.

16. Inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81.

17. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 12/30/81.

18. Inf. m. (ca. 75), d.i. 12/31/81.

19. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

20. Personal observation on December 31, 1981. This happens only on the New Silvester.

21. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 12/30/81.

22. See question 16 of the student questionnaire (Appendix B).

23. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

24. Marcel Cellier, “Commentary,” Appenzeller Zäuerli (record), Disque Cellier 009; the English is Cellier’s.

25. Zemp (1981); for more on the Alphorn-fa, see Leuthold (1977); see Mauser (1980) on Zäuerli technique specifically.

26. Hugo Zemp, personal communication, Paris, July 1981

27. My informants disagreed, saying that recognition was not necessary for gradhäbe.

28. Zemp (1981).

29. See Baumann (1976, pp. 192-93) for a written example; for a complete analysis of gradhäbe and its similarities to Schellä schotte, see ibid., pp. 168-203.

30. A local musician holds that obenie gradhäbe is not necessarily more difficult but that the choice between obenie and onenie is made according to the melody. Written communication, June 14, 1982.

31. Inf. m. (48), d.i. 6/26/81.

32. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/17/81.

33. Inf. f. (ca. 28), d.i. 7/17/81.

34. Inf. m. (ca. 75), d.i. 6/17/81.

35. For an excellent analysis of music folklorism and Heimat ideology, see Baumann (1976, pp. 226-48); see also Niederer (1983).

36. Inf. m. (49), d.i. 6/30/81.

37. In question 14 of the student questionnaire, 28 percent ranked zaure first, with only Groscht scoring higher with 33 percent. Throughout the questionnaire it was obvious that the students were familiar with Zäuerli but had difficulties with defining other chlause vocabulary.

38. Inf. f. (ca. 45), d.i. 7/14/81.

39. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 12/30/81.

40. Inf. m. (23), d.i. 7/14/81; inf. m. (ca. 30), d.i. 7/20/81.

41. Inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81.

42. Inf. m. (48) told the anecdote twice, once in the summer and once after Christmas 1981; the content was the same.

43. Inf. m. (48), d.i. 7/14/81.

44. Inf. f. (ca. 45), d.i. 7/14/81.

45. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

46. On bells in customs, see Bachmann-Geiser (1977) and Doerrer (1954).

47. Inf. m. (20), d.i. 6/20/81.

48. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

49. Inf. m. (49), d.i. 6/17/81.

50. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

51. Inf. m. (48), d.i. 7/14/81.

52. Currently, there is one schö-wüeschte Schuppel where each Schelli carries two bells; another Schuppel has three Rolli and six Schelli, three of whom carry a normal Senntum and three of whom carry a specially forged Öberschlagsgschäll.

53. Inf. m. (20), d.i. 6/20/81.

54. Inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81.

55. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81. Teasing between the two roles is understandable since they do present opposite characters, i.e., male and female. Possibly, Rolli are psychologically more extrovert than Schelli, but it would be necessary to observe a Schuppel closely over a very long period of time to prove such an assumption.

56. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/16/81.

57. The following quotes up to the next section are all from Josef Mattle (ca. 55), d.i. July 1981.

58. The law forbidding Chlause in the Dorf after noon still exists, though it is no longer enforced.

59. Inf. m. (23), d.i. 7/14/81; inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81.

60. Strech is derived from Landstrech or stretch of land; interestingly enough, there is a similar expression about prostitutes in town who are “uf em Strech,” i.e., on the route.

61. The circular routes can be seen as ritual visitations, marking and mapping the borders of the community.

62. Inf. m. (20), d.i. 6/20/81.

63. Inf. m. (48), d.i. 6/26/81.

64. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

65. Inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81; observation of the custom over several years would be necessary to establish whether there are any signals given by hosts, such as clearing the paths after a fresh snowfall.

66. Inf. m. (75), d.i. 6/23/81.

67. Drunkenness is, however, extremely rare. Only one anecdote was overheard in a restaurant; it was told by an unknown farmer about a young Schuppel that had arrived inebriated and some of whose members apparently had to vomit after leaving his farm.

68. Inf. m. (unknown), d.i. 12/31/81.

69. Inf. m. (ca. 40-year-old salesman), d.i. 12/31/81.

70. Inf. f. (ca. 28), d.i. 7/17/81.

71. Inf. m. (ca. 75), d.i. 6/17/81.

72. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/17/81.

73. Inf. m. (79), d.i. 7/14/81. Recipe: “It is best to use day-old cream, so it is a little lumpy. You add some flour, some salt and stir in a little anise, coriander, and two eggs, and then you bake it at 220-230°C.” The informant’s sister (ca. 73, d.i. 7/14/81) remembers those busy days very well:

Yes, people would bring that Schloorzi–that’s what they call this cream mixture–themselves, and then of course they wanted their own pie back, so you had to mark the Flade when it was baked. We used matches for marking the pies, but you know, with time you run out of ideas on how to combine the matches.

74. Inf. m. (23), d.i. 7/14/81; inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

75. A seat in one of these halls costs now between SFr 6 and SFr 7, and most seats are taken early in the evening (1981-82).

76. The pieces are usually structured similarly to the Zäuerli with several repeated parts (i.e., aabbcc, etc.).

77. The restaurants print special menus for the occasion, showing less variety and higher prices.

78. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81; inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81.

79. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

80. Infs. m. (35-60), d.i. 12/30/81.

81. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

82. These short portrayals of the Schuppel performing in 1981-82 constitute the most adequate means of grasping the idiosyncratic characteristics of the various Schuppel. A comprehensive statistic of Schuppel membership would require following the groups over several years, just to establish the membership. Indeed, informants were reluctant to name all the Chläus in their Schuppel, partly because Chläus would like to preserve at least the illusion of anonymity, partly because I was an outsider. A systematic numerical representation is therefore neither desired by the participants nor readily or easily grasped by the outsider.

CHAPTER 3: ORAL AND WRITTEN HISTORY

1. See Röllin (1981a, pp. 85-88); Handwörterbuch des Deutschen Aberglaubens (1934-35, vol. 6, pp. 1086-1111); Jones (1978). See Geiger and Weiss (1949) for the dates of other St. Nicholas customs in Switzerland.

2. St. Nicholas also acts as a scolder, and parents use this figure to threaten children.

3. See title page of Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde 28(6) (1938).

4. Appenzeller Synodalakte (1663), quoted in Röllin (1981a, p. 79).

5. Inf. m. (ca. 80), d.i. 7/20/81.

6. One can assume that before the Reformation Ausserrhoden had its own Fasnacht, and it is possible that certain elements of Fasnacht were adopted by Chläus, such as having men disguised as women. Change of sex roles is prominent in many Shrovetide celebrations; see, e.g., Fischer (1966). Liungman (1937-38) discusses a wealth of customs possibly historically related to Chlause, and he finds ample evidence for males disguising as women (see especially vol. 2).

7. Mannhardt (1904) and Frazer (1918-22). Liungman (1937-38, vol. 1, ch. 11) very convincingly refutes the Mannhardtian vegetation demon, which Liungman recognizes as a theoretical construct not to be found in folklore “unless it has been taught” (p. 335); Urnäsch may be seen as a prime example. Sydow (1939) also criticized Mannhardt and suggested the concept of fict as a replacement for the vegetation demon.

8. One hopes that a search in the local church records will reveal further data. A special group has been formed to undertake this task, but the work has not yet begun.

9. Röllin (1981a, p. 79).

10. “Mandatenbüchlein,” no. 24 (1776): 30-31.

11. Handwritten chronicle in the Museum for Appenzeller Brauchtum, Urnäsch.

12. Huerlemann (1981, pp. 58-60).

13. Röllin (1981a, p. 79).

14. Senn (1870, p. 204).

15. Staub and Tobler (1895, p. 694).

16. Inf. m. (48), d.i. June 1981.

17. APZ 9 (1836): 101.

18. Freier Appenzeller, January 25, 1848, p. 26.

19. APZ 71(8) (1898): 4.

20. The bans were probably posted locally earlier; APZ 70(304) (1897): 4; APZ 72 (1899): 4. Begging was obviously a considerable problem in Europe, as evidenced by numerous decrees starting in the seventeenth century. See Ribton-Turner (1887) and Gutton (1974); for Switzerland specifically, see Dubler (1970), Heim (1966), Kyd and Fettling (1913), Scheuss (1832); most recently, Fiedler (1982) and Abel (1981) have researched this question in Germany.

21. Paul Tinner, unpublished notes, n.d.

22. Inf. m. (48), d.i. 6/26/81.

23. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/16/81. The son of this informant recalled the anecdote with the policeman ending up in a fountain.

24. Moesch (1906, pp. 265-66).

25. Inf. m. (75), d.i. 6/23/81, inf. m. (ca. 60), d.i. 6/27/81.

26. Inf. m. (ca. 30), d.i. 7/20/81.

27. Inf. m. (78), d.i. 7/17/81.

28. Senn (1870, p. 204). This citation also notes: “Kläuse are to be found only in mountainous areas not yet licked by culture.”

29. Hartmann (1917, pp. 29-30).

30. The Heimatschutz movement was founded in Switzerland in 1905. In the neighboring countries of Germany and Austria, similar movements existed, the Austrian one apparently proving to be a basis for Nazi ideology.

31. APZ 93(2) (1920): 2.

32. APZ 94(1) (1921): 2.

33. APZ 95(12) (1922): 5.

34. APZ 101(1) (1928): 2.

35. APZ 106(1) (1933): 2. There were 250 Chläus.

36. APZ 109(11) (1936): 2.

37. APZ 110 (1) (1937): 4; APZ 110 (12) (1937): 2.

38. Inf. m. (61), d.i. 6/23/81.

39. APZ 110(1) (1937): 4.

40. Several informants, summer 1981. Switzerland, though a neutral country, has obligatory military service for men up to age fifty-five, and during World War II the army was on permanent alert, which meant constant service for every man. In peacetime, service is restricted to two to three weeks per year, all of which is spent in refresher courses.

41. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 7/2/81.

42. Inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81.

43. APZ 118 (1) (1945): 2.

44. Traffic regulations for Silvester had to be introduced in Herisau in 1975, and in 1981-82 the police were observed directing traffic in Urnäsch.

45. Inf. m. (75); inf. f. (ca. 70), d.i. 6/23/81.

46. APZ 122 (13) (1949): 2.

47. APZ 120 (1) (1947): 2.

48. APZ 121 (1) (1948): 2.

49. APZ 123(13) (1950): 3; APZ 124(12) (1951): 2; APZ 125(12) (1952): 2. By “Wüeschte,” the correspondent initially meant the tattered Chläus, but as he goes through the years, he uses the term for the “demon” Chläus, a type that seems to appear more and more frequently.

50. Migros is today a large supermarket chain, one of the largest companies in Switzerland, but it used to be a food cooperative.

51. Inf. m. (ca. 60), d.i. 6/27/81.

52. Inf. m. (61), d.i. 6/23/81.

53. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/22/81.

54. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/22/81; affirmed by inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/16/81 and inf. m. (78), d.i. 7/17/81.

CHAPTER 4: THE WORLD AND THE CHLÄUS

1. See Taylor (1977, p. 112) and Stoeltje (1983).

2. Newall (1972) found similar attitudes among the custom bearers of an English fire festival: “The desire to believe in the antiquity of the custom in more or less its present form was, and still is, very strong. The 1933 press report provoked an irate correspondence from local people, attempting to prove that its origins remained completely unknown” (p. 261). Röllin also comments on the current desire to “mythologize” (1981a, pp. 1-6, 77).

3. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/17/81.

4. Geertz (1973, p. 141) and Winch (1958, p. 98).

5. McCarthy (1973, p. 365).

6. Ruesch (1979).

7. Poverty and the periodic appearance of begging have occupied researchers in various disciplines, such as jurisprudence, history, sociology, and folkloristics. A close examination of this literature, however, goes beyond the scope of the present study. See ch. 3, n. 20.

8. Ruesch (1979) points out, however, that emigration took place before the nineteenth century. Yet emigration was then often a temporary phenomenon.

9. APZ 130(3) (1957): 6, 9.

10. Moesch (1906).

11. “Charity wounds him who receives, and our whole moral effort is directed towards suppressing the unconscious harmful patronage of the rich almoner” (Mauss 1925, p. 63); “To accept without returning or repaying more is to face subordination, to become a client and subservient, to become minister” (ibid., p. 72). See also Abrahams and Bauman (1978, pp. 206-07) and Newall (1972, p. 262).

12. The most recent instance occurred on August 1, 1983, when a group of Chläus performed during a celebration of the Swiss national holiday in the town of Aarau, located in a different canton. Local rumor had it that the performers had been granted very little time and that the performance had been rather miserable, which was attributed to various infelicitous factors. Both the seasonal and spatial context was considered highly inappropriate.

13. The teams that have visited Urnäsch include Swiss Radio (1937, 1949), Walt Disney’s People and Places Film Series (1954), a French team (1977, 1980), a Flemish television team (1979), and a German television team (1980). Swiss television has also been in Urnäsch to film the custom, but the years this was done are not known. The visit of the German team is remembered when the negative aspects of performing for the media are highlighted.

14. Rollin (1981a; 1981b).

15. Farmers in Switzerland are heavily subsidized by the state, according to a rather complicated system that involves the amount of livestock owned, the type of produce planted, and the altitude on which one’s farm is located.

16. Based on personal observation of visiting patterns on the Silvesters of 1981-82.

17. Inf. m. (75), d.i. 6/23/81; inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81; inf. m. (49), d.i. 6/30/81; inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

18. Urnäsch has various old-age homes; one of them is run on a private basis, one is open to any person, and the third one is reserved for people for whom Urnäsch is their home community and who are not able to support themselves (e.g., they never qualified for social security payments). Every Swiss citizen has such a home community (which often does not correspond to his place of residence), and in case of need, this community must house, clothe, and feed the individual. The third Urnäsch old-age institution is called “Bürgerheim” (burghers’ home), and its inhabitants often have very little connection to Urnäsch–some of them never lived in Urnäsch until their often unhappy lives forced them to. It is this particular home that is often visited by Chläus; there is even a Strech named after it.

19. Only the Bloch provides another occasion for disguise, but it takes place only every second year, and only members of the “Bloch society” may participate.

20. The articles in Babcock’s collection (1978) focus on the inversion occurring during ritual events, such as order versus disorder or, important here, male versus female. At the turn of the century, there seems to have been a greater emphasis on Rollewiiber: Chläus disguised as women even carried around chamberpots or other “unclean” paraphernalia belonging to women’s domain. Within the development of the Wüeschte one could possibly see an attempt to portray womankind, given the assumption that the female represents the natural power, the male social power (Kligman 1981, p. 125). But since the Wüeschte were introduced in the late 1940s, this hypothesis seems unlikely.

21. In addition to the fact that the Rolli today are reduced to two representatives per Schuppel, custom bearers claim that the Rolli role demands the most physical strength and is in that sense the most “masculine.”

22. Kligman (1981, p. 125).

23. Inf. f. (ca. 70), d.i. 6/23/81; inf. m. (38), d.i. 6/22/81, repeating his wife’s words.

24. Inf. f. (ca. 45), d.i. 7/14/81 (on mumps). In 1982, one Chlaus returned early from a military refresher course to take part in the Silvester. The news spread quickly through the village, and everyone wondered how he had talked himself out of his military duty.

25. Inf. m. (74), d.i. 6/16/81.

26. Having grown up in Urnäsch himself, the doctor of course knew that it would not make much sense to try to stop a Chlaus: not only would it probably not work, but he’d be upset with him ever after.

27. Calendar customs and festivals can probably be seen often as renewal or rebirth. See, e.g., Dundes and Falassi (1975, pp. 187, 204, 212), Kligman (1981, pp. 123-38), Gennep (1908, pp. 179, 183), and Stoeltje (1983, p. 243).

28. Kligman (1981, p. 145). Here there is an attempt to apply Tönnies’s Gesellschaft (society) versus Gemeinschaft (community) distinction to Urnäsch.

29. Other circular manifestations can be found in Appenzell culture. In restaurants there is always a “regulars” table, often round, around which one gathers. The “Mölirad” dance is also performed in a circle, and popular couple dancing includes dancing in tight, small circles.

30. Inf. m. (ca. 35), d.i. 6/19/81.

Glossary

aachlause

To begin to chlause with bells

Alpfahrt

Transhumance procession; also called öberefahre or inefahre

Alphorn-fa

Eleventh tone of the natural overtone series

Appezeller Striichmusig

String music from the Appenzell; name valid both for the music and the ensemble that plays it

Ausserrhoden

Protestant half of the canton of Appenzell

Bättelchlaus (noun)

Begging Chlaus

bättelchlause (verb)

To go chlause in order to beg

Bloch

Biennial winter custom in which a log is pulled through the village in an organized procession

Buurestand

The farmer class; antiquated but often-used word

chiide (verb)

“Es chiit guet”–it sounds well; used to describe the sound of a bell

Chilbi

Fair

Chlaus

Active bearer of Silvesterklausen; in “normal” vocabulary used to describe a clumsy or slow person

Chläus

Plural of Chlaus

chlause

To move bells rhythmically in order to produce sounds

Chlause/chlause

The custom and activities of Chläus during the Silvester

Chlausefieber

Euphoric state of Chlaus before and during the custom

Chlausefründ(e)

Person(s) with a sympathetic attitude toward Chlaus

Chlauseversammlig

Meeting of the members of a Schuppel

Chlause zäuerli

Appropriate Zäuerli for Chlause

Chläusli

Diminutive of Chlaus

chügele

To sew little glass pearls on the headdresses of schöne Chläus

Chügeli

Small glass pearls or little round balls

Dorf

Lit. village; “business center” of Urnäsch; distinct part of the community; often used in contrast to the Tal

dreechlause

To start chlause on the offbeat

Fasnacht

Shrovetide celebration

Flade

Lit. something flat; a word for pie, also for cow pie (excrement)

Föh

Warm southern wind like the mistral or sirocco

Früechlause

Unofficial, early Chlause

Glüewii

Hot wine, often with addition of cinnamon and cloves

gradhäbe

To support lead singer in a Zäuerli

obenie gradhäbe

support lead singer above the melody line

onenie gradhäbe

support lead singer below the melody line

Groscht(e)

Costume(s) of a Chlaus

Häämatoobed (-ööbed)

Evening(s) for the “homeland”; folklorism sold to locals and tourists

Heimatschutz

Movement for “the protection of the native land”

Huet (Hüet)

Flat headdress(es) worn by the Mannevölker of the Schöne

Huube

Semicircular headdress(es) worn by the Wiibervölker of the Schöne

iichlause (verb)

“Warm up” for Chlause; it may take an hour until the Schuppel is “iigchlauset”

Innerrhoden

Catholic half of the canton of Appenzell

Jodelchörli

Yodel chorus; also name of one of Urnäsch’s yodel clubs

juuchze (verb)

“Yell for joy,” often in head voice

Juuchzer (noun)

“A yell for joy”

Klausen

Standard German term for Chlause

Lands gmänd

State assembly of all eligible voters in some cantons of Switzerland, only males in Appenzell

Lärmbrauch

Lit. noise custom; term used by Swiss folklorists for customs where bells and other instruments are used to make noise

Lendauerli

Type of pipe smoked in Appenzell

Lompechlaus

Lit. raggedy; a tattered Chlaus; negative word for Chläus wearing old clothes as a Groscht

Mannevolk (-völker)

Lit. manfolk/menfolk; Chläus dressed as men in a Schuppel

Mölirad

Traditional Appenzell dance for men, specifically for cowherds; performed in a circle, stressing strength

Naturchlaus

Another name for Schö-wüeschti

nebedosse (adverb)

Lit. next to the outside; used to describe isolated houses and routes that reach isolated houses

Norolli

Last Rolli in a file of Chlaus

Öberschlagschellä

Additional, deeply pitched bell used for Chlause; has to fit with a Senntum

Rolle

Small round bells; earlier used on horse harnesses, today worn by Wiibervölker

Rollechlaus (-chiäus)

Chlaus wearing Rolle

Rolleträger

Harness with thirteen Rolle

Rollewiib(er)

Same as Rollechlaus

Rolli

Short for a Rollechlaus or Rollewiib

Romflade

Flade made with a cream mixture

Schellä

Cowbell

Schellächlaus (-chiäus)

Chlaus carrying one or two cowbells

Schellä schötte

Moving bells rhythmically as an accompaniment to Zäuerli; occurs on the alpine pastures and during folkloristic performances

Schelli

Short for Schellächlaus

Schloorzi

Cream mixture on a Flade

Schluuch

Lit. hose; bent straw

schö(-ni, -ne) (adj.)

Lit. pretty; used to describe one type of Chlaus

Schöne (-i)

Pretty Chlaus

schö-wüescht(-i, -e)

Lit. pretty ugly; used to describe

(adj.)

one type of Chlaus

Schö-wüeschte (-i)

Pretty ugly Chlaus

Schuppel

Group(s) of Chläus

Schüppeli

Diminutive of above; used for children’s groups

Senneb all

Cowherds’ dance

Sennepfiife

Pipe decorated with silver; belongs to the traditional cowherd’s costume

Senntum

Three cowbells tuned in a tritone, carried by the lead cows during transhumance processions

Senntumgschäll

Same as Senntum

Senntumschellä

One bell belonging to a Senntum

Soucheib

Lit. pig pain; swearword used both for people and things

Spasschlaus (-chläus)

Chlaus wearing old or funny clothes who does not accept money

spasschlause

Verb describing above activity

Strech

Lit. stretch of land; route(s) that a Schuppel chooses to walk along; derived from “Landstrech”

Stobete

Cowherds’ dance

Sujet(s)

Theme(s) shown on headdresses

Tääli

Parts (of a Zäuerli)

Tal

Lit. valley; district of Urnäsch; often used in contrast to the Dorf

träge

To carry; used here specifically to describe the sound of a good cowbell; “si träät” or “si träägt”–she (the bell) sounds well

uuschlause

To end Chlause; means both to end the performance and to visit the restaurants

Vechschau

Lit cow viewing; the marketplace

verschloh

Lit. to break; used to describe the sound of bells inside a room; “es verschloht si”–she (the bell) is dampened, broken

Vorrolli

First Rolli in a file of Chläus

vorzaure

To sing the melody line of a Zäuerli; also implies to start a Zäuerli

Vorzaurer

Lead singer; the person who starts a Zäuerli

Wiibervolk (-Völker)

Lit. womanfolk/womenfolk; Chläus dressed as women

wüescht(-e, -i) (adj.)

Lit. ugly; used to describe one type of Chlaus

Wüeschte (-i) (noun)

Ugly Chlaus

zäuerle

To sing a Zäuerli

Zäuerli

A wordless yodel of the Appenzell Ausserrhoden; “me nennt e Zäuerli”–one takes (chooses and sings) a Zäuerli

zaure

To sing a Zäuerli

Zaurer

One who sings a Zäuerli

zemmepasse

To fit together; used for bells, voices, and Groschte

Zürchersmühle

Northernmost part of Urnäsch

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Zemp, Hugo 1981 “Commentary.” Yodel of Appenzell, Switzerland (record). UNESCO Collection Musical Sources, Philips 6586 004.

Plates

FIG. 1. Schöns Mannevolch holding a Lendauerli and resting his hand on the bell. Note the decorative patterns made with glass pearls on his Huet (New Silvester, 1981).

FIG. 2. A schöne Scheilachlaus getting ready to start again after a mid-morning break. While balancing the two bells he had already put on, he ties the kerchief and tightens the strings of his mask before he puts his headdress on (1976).

FIG. 3. A schöne Schuppel walking along a Tal Strech. The Sujet displayed on their headdresses represents the farmer’s life from spring to fall, focusing on festive events (1977).

FIG. 4. A plywood skeleton of a Huube in the making.

FIG. 5. Draft sketch for a Huube, showing the decorative work in detail; each glass pearl to be used is foreseen. The Sujet–the carpenter’s work–will be illustrated with a house building scene and a proverb, which translates: “When God, the Lord, conceived of art, he first made the carpenter.”

FIG. 6. Once the decorative work on the Huet is finished, the top layer with the Sujet will be placed on it.

FIG. 7. The basement of this sawmill has been converted into a workshop for chlause preparations. A farmer is finishing the top of his wüeschte Groscht.

FIG. 8. A wüeschte Schuppel descending from a farm they have just visited. Note that each Chlaus is holding his bell so as to prevent the clapper from making any sound.

FIG. 9. A wüeschte Chlaus drinks Glüehwii through a straw, which the hostess carefully aims through his mask.

FIG. 10. A schö-wüeschte Schuppel–whose trademark consists of roots fastened to the headdresses–forms a circle demarcated by the gigantic bells. The group is standing in the center of the Dorf and singing a Zäuerli.

FIG. 11. The Vorrolli of a schöne Schuppel meets two Rolli of a schö-wüeschte Schuppel, and they greet each other with enthusiastic shaking of the Rolle (1982).

FIG. 12. A schö-wüeschte Chlaus fully disguised. As this Schuppel enjoys hunting, a taxidermically prepared animal is displayed on the hat, and the coat is decorated with two animal mosaics (1975-76).

FIG. 13. A children’s Schüppeli, all disguised as Rollechläus. Each Huube illustrates the style of a different period, even though they were all apparently made in one year (1971).

FIG. 14. A Schuppel from ca. 1910. Note the modest size of the Huube. The Sujet on the Hüet was “battleships” or “ocean steamers.” The velvet jackets of the Schellächläus are slightly reminiscent of uniforms.

FIG. 15. The Heimatschutzchläus in the neighboring community of Herisau in 1928.

FIG. 16. A postcard supposedly from the turn of the century, but more likely from the 1930s and 1940s, showing a Spasschlause-Schuppel. Note that the hostess on the right is offering drink and food.