Over the years, the German hurdy-gurdy maker Kurt Reichmann has assembled an astonishing collection of early graphic and historical material, much of it original, depicting hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes; in 1995 he opened a gallery in Frankfurt to display these works...
An engraving from Kurt Reichmann's collection
In the beginning of the 1800's bitter poverty ruled in wide areas of Hessen. This had several causes, including a population increase due to families having many children and subsequent division by inheritance of the land into ever-smaller pieces, to the extent that viable farming became impossible.
To supplement their incomes, in the 1820s farmers and farmworkers began to make wooden brooms and fly-whisks during the winter which they, as itinerant peddlers, sold in the summers in the surrounding areas. This trade soon expanded beyond the borders of Hessen and reached England, France and even Russia.
It was soon discovered that the wares sold better when accompanied by dancing, hurdy-gurdy playing girls. Quickly the dancing and music became ever more important and the pretty girls became ever better known; it was soon realized that there was a lot of easy money to be made.
The success of the hurdy-gurdy girls then began to attract what in German are called "soul-merchants," who put the naive village girls under contract while enticing the parents with tales of how much money their children would be sending home; as a result, there were often no young women to be found in many villages of the region. The soul-merchants took the girls to dance halls and such, where the clientele was mostly sailors and miners. Thus the girls of Hessen came to nearly all countries of Europe, especially England (where they were called "Hurdy-Gurdy girls" and "Hessian Broom Girls") and also to Australia, Cuba and North America - where California was a particularly desirable destination, as the gold fields there promised brisk business, and where, because of their origins, they were also known as "Rhinelanders."
A very few young women, well-off through prostitution and dressed in finery, returned to their villages and encouraged the stay-at-homes to make the same journeys. But the life of most of the hurdy-gurdy girls was hard and many returned home broken, penniless and sick. Often the girls were forced into prostitution by their "agents" and from there slid into a criminal milieu. Meanwhile, as the business intensified, it became something of a community secret in many places - even mayors and teachers profited, by brokering "contracts" between the girls and the "traders."
Hurdy-gurdy girls in the Canadian gold-fields, 1850s; photo, BC ArchivesThe first resistance to all of this came from the church. Pastors preached against the situation from the pulpit and protested it in newspapers. In 1848 a Pastor Schellenberg carried a petition against the practice of the "sale of souls into foriegn lands" to the government, but it was not acted upon. [The document was part of the exhibition]. In 1860 another pastor, Ottokar Schupp, brought public attention to the situation in the villages with his novel, "Hurdy-Gurdy." Finally, in 1865 the government issued a "most-highest prohibition" against the "taking along of children for the purpose of the fly-whisk trade" and so ended, eventually, because of public opinion and government edict, the time of the fly-whisk merchants, the broom merchants, the "Hessian broom girls" and the hurdy-gurdy girls.
Hurdy Gurdy Girls | Bagpipes and Hurdy-Gurdies | hotpipes.com
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