Hollerbeer Haven, Fall 2012

The .PDF version of the Fall 2012 edition of Hollerbeer Haven is now available for free download. This is a fairly large file, so please be patient during the download.

This is the first of a series of important articles regarding the practice of Braucherei within the Urglaawe context. We also take a look at the little spilanthes plant, which is an odd-looking but awesome plant for one's herbal medicine cabinet!

The Winter 2012 issue will discuss some of Urglaawe's philosophies and other significant aspects of the Urglaawe faith. 

Macht's immer besser!

Hollerbeer Haven, Spring 2012

The .PDF version of the Summer 2012 edition of Hollerbeer Haven is now available for free download. This is a fairly large file, so please be patient during the download.

This issue covers topics such as our folks' experiences at Trothmoot 2012 and our Hoietfescht and Freyfaxi event/ The plant of the quarter is Monarda Punctata/ 

Mach's immer besser!

A Dictionary of Urglaawe Terminology

The first widely accessible Urglaawe book is now available on Lulu.com.

This book is a repository of the terms, concepts, symbols and mythological references used in the Heathen path of Urglaawe. The entries include the cultural values, spiritual awareness, and wisdom carried through the centuries in the oral lore of the Elder healing practice of Braucherei, which is also known as Pow Wow. Included in the entries are traditions and customs that are part of the living Deitsch, -- Pennsylvania German or Pennsylvania Dutch -- folk culture. Adherents to Heathen paths, including Ásatrú, Irminenschaft, Theodism, Forn Sidr, Odinism, and other traditions, will find these entries useful as they provide another voice to the totality of the Teutonic folk experience.

Hollerbeer Haven

Hollerbeer Haven, formerly Hollerbeier Haven, the journal of the Three Sisters Center for the Healing Arts, is now a quarterly publication of Distelfink Sippschaft! 

We are making Hollerbeer Haven 14 - Volume 5, Issue 1 - Spring 2012 available in .PDF format at no cost. Former active subscribers to the Three Sisters Center guild will receive printed copies of the first three issues.

We hope you find it enjoyable!

Underscoring the Suppression

Last month, our fellow Freindschaft member and Braucherei practitioner, Patrick Donmoyer, was approached by the Reading Eagle as research for an article regarding some documents that had been found in the Historical Society of Berks County. The documents had been at the Society since June 1946.

Included with the documents was a note describing that the documents had been found nailed to a barn wall in New Jerusalem, PA, which is in Berks County's Rockland Township. The documents were not the only charms found at the barn. Over the course of time, some charred bones and other protective charms or amulets had been discovered there.

Patrick confirmed that the four charms among the documents were written around the year 1900 by Braucher Joseph Hagemen of Reading. Although Hagemen was a well known and widely trusted Braucher among the Deitsch, he was also a target of what later became a systematic effort to undermine all aspects of the Deitsch culture, including the language, the folk unity, and, especially Braucherei. This effort, known as die Unnerdricking ("the Suppression") consisted of an alliance, though perhaps not a conscious one, between the state government, scholastic institutions, medical associations, and non-Deitsch church establishments. What common threads might bring these disparate groups together?

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for starters, had always had to contend with the huge tract of land in which the Deitsch were in the majority. Some Deitsch anecdotes imply that, as late as 1920, one could drive from Germantown to the outskirts of Pittsburgh without ever needing to speak English. Now, while such an anecdote may require a rather circuitous route in order to be true, the underlying fact is that a huge chunk of Pennsylvania remained "unassimilated."

Around the year 1900, the European political stage was becoming tense with the rise of one Germanic power in Prussia and the slow decay of another Germanic power in Austria. Anti-German sentiment was on the rise in the United States long before our entry into World War I. This sentiment, enhanced by the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and American entry into the war in 1917, brought about a widespread fear of the German-speaking "foreigners" within our own homeland.

Despite the fact that the Deitsch remained loyal (Fries' Rebellion notwithstanding) and fought in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and in any number of more localized conflicts, our ancestors were still viewed as foreigners, and, at the onset of the war, a fifth column for the Kaiser. The state perceived the Deitsch as a threat, and, therefore, had reasons to assert itself into the folk evolution. Series of harassments and work camp check-ins (a topic for another blog posting) continued throughout the war.

One might think that World War I served as a lesson of the loyalty of the Deitsch, but the same, perhaps more aggravated, anti-German sentiment lived on between the wars and became more pronounced during World War II. Even after World War II, many Deitsch felt stigmatized and victimized by anti-German sentiment. Language suppression continued well into the 1960's, and, in some places, into the 1970's, even while other languages were asserting their right to be spoken everywhere.

What of the medical associations? The rise of modern medicine is, on the one hand, an good thing. Most Brauchers will not tell anyone not to see a certified medical doctor. Antibiotics are, when used responsibly, a good thing, too. However, with the rise in modern medicine came a rise in power, money, and influence. Where there is money, there is corruption. Not all aspects of modern medicine are so good. We take all sorts of toxic medications, many of which have natural -- and safer -- alternatives. Those alternatives, though, are often much cheaper than the toxins that pollute our environment now.

Medical practitioners often arrogantly disparage any form of traditional healing. In many ways, this behavior is absurd. After all, whence come the earliest medicines but from the herbs and plants around us? One need not look much further than willow bark or meadowsweet to see the origins of aspirin. It is also interesting how post-modern scientific review is now lending credence to some of the practices once held in disdain by science.

The state, of course, found ways to utilize the rising medical establishment as a tool for the suppression. Sometimes, outright persecution of a practice results in a defiant adherence to it. It is much more effective to mock it and make it look stupid and backward, which is exactly what the medical establishment did. This same tactic, by the way, was employed by the Soviet Union to undermine the folk doctors and shamans of the Siberian tribes, thus bringing their people in line with Moscow's vision of the New Soviet Man. Of course, the New Soviet Man did not speak a Mordvin language or have the appearance of a Chukchi. Likewise, the New American Man did not speak Deitsch or have the appearance of a Lenape.

What of scholastic institutions? What role did they play? Initially, the Deitsch were in the process of creating their own higher education establishments, which is where institutions like Kutztown University originate. Otherwise, particularly as it applies to primary and secondary education, the schools form the apparatus of the state, which used them to perpetuate the stereotype of the Dumb Dutchman and to belittle and to weaken our heritage and cultural identity. The 1911 ban on the instruction of German in schools formed the basis for a program of the dissolution of the Deitsch culture, so much so that by the time I was in school in the late 1960's, we were told that the Deitsch language, accent, and other cultural indicators were a detriment to our success in life. Imagine educators expressing such opinions today!

Then there are the non-Deitsch religious institutions. Granted, not all "Deitsch" religious groups embrace Braucherei. However, while many sects will not accept the totality of Braucherei due to its Heathen core, most will recognize facets of it, such as the "laying on of the hands," that are consistent with their particular denomination's beliefs.

The larger churches, particularly the Lutherans, Reformed, and Catholics, viewed Braucherei as part of the folk culture and folk religion. Thus, they generally did not view the practice as a problem. It was an innate part of their heritage, just as it was for Heathen practitioners as well as for many smaller religious denominations. While that is not to say that there were never any issues with the established churches in the Deitscherei, there were not, on the whole, a great number of problems. The troubles began primarily with the exposure of the Deitsch folkways to the evangelical churches of other ethnicities. These troubles began prior to 1830 with the Anglo-American evangelical attempts to order American social life and to keep it in line with the church (see Foreigners in Their Own Land, by Steven M. Nolt, chapter 5). 

As time went on, some of the churches, particularly those that were obsessed with legislating morality and who feared a demon behind every elm tree, began to denounce Braucherei as sorcery, Satanism, evil, etc. These fearful individuals have a tendency, even now, to spread hysteria and concern about everyone (usually, of course, neglecting to notice the holes in their own lives). Thus, the state and they became each other's tools. In their minds, they were saving the souls of everyone touched by the millennia-old practice. In the state's mind, it was saving the Commonwealth from the threat of the unassimilated Deitsch.

Such nonsense.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevail these days in the Deitscherei, and we are witnessing a resurgence in the practice and knowledge of Braucherei in all contexts. With a bit more of a struggle, we are also seeing an increase in the number of Deitsch speakers. However, the literacy rate and the mastery of grammar among those speakers is questionable, so we must work harder at standardizing the language. 

While strides with the language are being taken in the Urglaawe community with its summer language Vorschul, the wider community is still sitting mostly idle, waiting for someone else to take action.

It is only with effort and the sharing of resources and goals that we will be able to render the Suppression a total failure.

Old Dutchified English Humor

A solid Dutchman was standing at a certain place on last election day, inquiring for "de reglar Democratic dicket," when a shrewd fellow instantly stepped up and supplied him with the genuine thing.

"Vell, now," says Hans, "vot now vil I do mit 'im?"

"Put it in that box," exclaimed several people, pointing at the ballot box. But the cunning chap who had accommodated Hans with the "dicket" whispered in his ear:

"Don't let them fool you. Don't put it in the box. Keep it; put it in your pocket. It's yours; don't let them cheat you out of your vote."

And so Hans did, ramming the ticket away down to the bottom of a deep pocket in his overcoat and walking off as mad as he could be at the rogues who wanted to cheat him out of his vote by putting it in the ballot box.

-- edited from an entry in the Pottsville Miners' Journal of February 18, 1860

500 New Fairy Tales (Folk Tales?) Found in Germany

The discovery of a cache of fairy tales -- hopefully also folk tales -- has been discovered in Germany. These tales were the collection of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, and they had been locked away in a Regensburg archive for over 150 years. 


http://tinyurl.com/75og824


Given the area in which the research was conducted, I am hoping that some of these tales may be versions of tales that are known in varied forms among the Deitsch.


I am also hoping that many of the tales contained therein are folk tales as opposed to fairy tales. Ruth Bottigheimer (SUNY Stony Brook) differentiates between the two in “Fairy Tales: A New History.” I do not personally agree with everything she writes in the book, though. My primary objections to her theories is that she seems to treats any folk tale or fairy tale that was passed among the upper classes of German society with a sense that they are not as valid as those passed among the lower classes. Personally, I disagree with that notion.


Many of Grimm’s fairy tales are actually folk tales, involving no “supernatural” beings. The folk tales often transmit more data about the culture and beliefs than do the fairy tales, which can provide us with insight into the different types of beings seen in the cosmology of the Heathen, syncretic, and post-conversion eras. Bottigheimer’s delineations are more complex that that simple distinction, but that is one of the more clear differences.


I ordered the book on Amazon.de and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of these “new” fairy tales. :)