.jpg)
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Heinzelmännchen
The Heinzelmännchen (German pronunciation: [ˈhaɪntsl̩ˌmɛnçɛn] ⓘ) are helpful household spirits or kobolds associated with the city of Cologne in Germany, akin to brownies of Scotland.
It has become traditional to tell their story during Christmas-tide. The creatures are also loosely referred to as "elves", rather in the sense of "The Elves and the Shoemaker".
The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day. According to the legend, this went on until a tailor's wife got so curious to see the gnomes that she scattered peas onto the floor of the workshop to make the gnomes slip and fall. This infuriated the gnomes, who disappeared and never returned. From that time on, the citizens of Cologne had to do all their work by themselves.
Hänneschen once used to be a commonplace character in Cologne's puppet theater. The genuine Kölsch (Colognian) dialect form should be Heizemann/Heizemännche (pl. Heizemänncher), while Heinzelmännchen is the normalized High German form.
A two-pronged theory on the origin of the name was proposed by Marianne Rumpf (1976), first from the form "Heinzelmännlein" as a colloquial name for mandrake dolls, which evolved into lore about them acting as animated house spirits. Secondly, other than being a personal name, "Heinze" or "Heinzen-kunst" was the name for a water-draining contraption in the Erzgebirge mining region of Saxony. By extrapolation, its operators could have also been called Heinz, according to Rumpf.
This legend of the Heinzelmännchen was first written down by the Cologne teacher Ernst Weyden (1805–1869) in 1826. It was translated into English by Thomas Keightley and published 1828 in his book The Fairy Mythology.
Weyden's account opens thus:
Es mag noch nicht über fünfzig Jahre seyn, daß in Cöln die sogenannten Heinzelmännchen ihr abentheuerliches Wesen trieben. Kleine nackende Männchen waren es, die allerhand thaten, Brodbacken, waschen und dergleichen Hausarbeiten mehrere; so wurde erzählt; doch hatte sie Niemand gesehen
Hub AI
Heinzelmännchen AI simulator
(@Heinzelmännchen_simulator)
Heinzelmännchen
The Heinzelmännchen (German pronunciation: [ˈhaɪntsl̩ˌmɛnçɛn] ⓘ) are helpful household spirits or kobolds associated with the city of Cologne in Germany, akin to brownies of Scotland.
It has become traditional to tell their story during Christmas-tide. The creatures are also loosely referred to as "elves", rather in the sense of "The Elves and the Shoemaker".
The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day. According to the legend, this went on until a tailor's wife got so curious to see the gnomes that she scattered peas onto the floor of the workshop to make the gnomes slip and fall. This infuriated the gnomes, who disappeared and never returned. From that time on, the citizens of Cologne had to do all their work by themselves.
Hänneschen once used to be a commonplace character in Cologne's puppet theater. The genuine Kölsch (Colognian) dialect form should be Heizemann/Heizemännche (pl. Heizemänncher), while Heinzelmännchen is the normalized High German form.
A two-pronged theory on the origin of the name was proposed by Marianne Rumpf (1976), first from the form "Heinzelmännlein" as a colloquial name for mandrake dolls, which evolved into lore about them acting as animated house spirits. Secondly, other than being a personal name, "Heinze" or "Heinzen-kunst" was the name for a water-draining contraption in the Erzgebirge mining region of Saxony. By extrapolation, its operators could have also been called Heinz, according to Rumpf.
This legend of the Heinzelmännchen was first written down by the Cologne teacher Ernst Weyden (1805–1869) in 1826. It was translated into English by Thomas Keightley and published 1828 in his book The Fairy Mythology.
Weyden's account opens thus:
Es mag noch nicht über fünfzig Jahre seyn, daß in Cöln die sogenannten Heinzelmännchen ihr abentheuerliches Wesen trieben. Kleine nackende Männchen waren es, die allerhand thaten, Brodbacken, waschen und dergleichen Hausarbeiten mehrere; so wurde erzählt; doch hatte sie Niemand gesehen