P.N.ZOYTLOW

Preposterous, the idea that anyone would encounter Huns today. Franks maybe, or Visigoths, but Huns?   Attila the Hun comes to mind, appearing as a subject of films and even as a political marker  (“Cheney?  He’s to the right of Attila the Hun!”). Finding Huns in Germany seems even less likely since that was the term used during World War I to stigmatize Germans as savage beings who had forgotten how to conduct their wars like high-minded gentlemen.   But that is what is happening, there are Huns in Germany and they are showing some expansionist tendencies as was their habit in the 5th Century when, on horses and armed with the Hunnish bow, they made a mess of Europe. More than any other historical group they have attracted the label of “barbarian.”

[Note: In 2005 a group of Hungarians numbering over 2000  individuals petitioned their government to be declared an official Hun minority group  The request was denied. Who needs that kind of trouble?]

Huns are most easily found in pre-Lenten revelries along the Middle Rhine Valley.  There may be more agglomerations elsewhere, a topic that should be researched by others.  It has been harrowing enough for this researcher to identify the phenomenon, much less hope to inspire younger social scientists to cut their academic teeth on the disquieting gristle of German Hunnishness.

The first encounter with Huns was unexpected. This researcher was impressed with (note academic jargon) “the thickness of Rhineland Carnival as a pervasive overarching cultural artifact”  of the region and was keen on investing his customary seventy-five minutes of field work into this phenomenon.  Observation of the carnival would be best as it intensified in the week before Ash Wednesday after which all Christendom hereabouts would abjure having any fun any more whatsoever (never again, no sir, not me! ) until Easter Sunday; in other words, they were fixing to have a blowout before Lent. All signs suggested something orgiastic was in the air and so 75 minutes of unbiased observation seemed like an easy task. [ Note to those who may be reading a Field Report for the first time or who need reminding: no more than 75 minutes of actual field work takes place. However, a lifetime of rumination about the implications of this stuff is not discounted.]

So: the Carnival. Many avenues of research presented themselves.  Some Big Ideas might be :

(1) the tension between hedonistic Fasching (as Carnival time is called) and pious Christian fasting.  This has already been tirelessly ÿstudied from New Orleans to Rio de Janeiro. The world of flesh has many students, maybe envious Protestants smugly noting Roman Catholic public sinning.   Still, it’s a compelling theme especially if you regularly hear a song here along the Rhine which states (loose translation) that “we  believe in dear God, but my, we have a lot of thirst!”  Wait!  Was that a drinking song from a Major World Religion?  However, following this line of research would only encourage  resentment towards Martin Luther by those among his high-spirited devotees who want to let go and get silly but have lost the knack over the long cautious centuries since the Reformation.

(2) the military angle: many towns pride themselves on  elegantly dressed and bewigged troops (Stadtsoldatencorps) recalling the Napoleonic Era  Their behavior is mostly a parody of military seriousness. whether French or Prussian. They march sloppily and their maneuvering is apt to cause slapstick collisions. Old rifles may have carnations in the barrels. Interesting stuff in a country usually thought of as wild for snappy militarism.

(3) the self-concept of the Rhinelander as a joker, the funniest folks in all Germany, even more than Bavarians. Their specialty:  playing the Fool (Narr). Most comedians use the Koelsch dialect to do their Fool schtick.

(4) fasching eroticism,  present with the glamorous and stunning women always in traditional outfits of red boots, short full skirts, white blouses,vests and huge smiles. They make a grand and astonishing entrance at the head of any soldier corps by being carried while seated on a man’s hand, high above his head and then for as long as it takes to get on stage. Observers might be thinking: does he have a brace under his sleeve to carry out this feat?  More likely other observers are thinking something else.  Still, is it all superficially innocent as it seems, or is there a subtext of the flesh?   These women are special features of Carnival season and much esteemed.  They train a long time to do their energetic routines, a hybrid performance of drum majorette, acrobat, and free-form dancer.  They are called Funkmariechen,  “Sparkling Little Marys” literally, but who would risk a guess at deeper interpretations?

Easy to conclude, sitting and watching the proceedings that February night in a crowded hall in a small city, that the Funkmariechen was the best choice of the four for Field Report # 8.  Research  was immediately and daringly begun by observing the audience reaction to the prominence (one must conclude) of the lovely Funkmariechen’s underpants as she hopped, tumbled, did handstands, and kicked her right leg straight and high above her head.  Time to apply the litmus test of Eros: could a researcher observe any men in the crowd, pausing for a millisecond between gulps of beer or sausage, giving each other knowing looks?

It was now that the subject of this Field Report came into view.  Not men ogling the Funk-maiden, but hairy men costumed as weasels with caps and capes fashioned of animal skins.  Men (?) who left a hall during a Funk dance! There were perhaps as many as eight of them,  moving along the edge of the crowd and then disappearing again into a corridor.  This researcher (the Observer)  immediately put down the beer and the sausage which had been ordered  (merely to fit in, just another item in the research package) and followed at a distance.  The men, for they were all males, stood near the beer taps and looked like uneasy feral beings, rather like werewolves at an art gallery opening.  Since this is happening not too far from the original Neanderthal sites in Germany, it made some sense to assume that these were fellows who would spend Carnival as cave men.  This group had something that had (perhaps) not yet been developed by humankind during those neolithic times, a self-conscious and aloof manner.  They were, according to someone dressed like a British Redcoat, The Huns. At the sound of that word, all research on the Funkmariechen phenomenon evaporated.

Huns do not attend every event during Fasching. They seem to be selective in presenting themselves to the public. From the point of research with human subjects, they were a disappoinment and so much of the information had to be painstakingly collected in beer gardens and similar venues from disinterested third parties.

As far as is known today, Huns are indeed concentrated along the Rhine. How many bands exist is not known, but they do seem to be found in some of the major cities (Cologne, the capital of the Carnival season)  but more often in smaller towns with ancient names that suggest basic stuff such as worms, swine, ponds, stones and so on. The Huns see themselves as gathered into Hordes, but this is absurd.  You cannot have a Hun Horde of, say, thirty men and women.  Perhaps together these smaller units could form a horde capable of doing some real damage and even reversing the democratic directions of the European Union today. Surely they would work towards purging any remaining royalty.  They messed with European civilization 1500 years ago, more or less, so we know it is in them. Huns like to dress up as barbarians and their taste runs to leather, fur, and horn with some metal studs and clasps.   They especially like caps with borders of fur trim that suggest connections with the steppes of central Asia.

Huns make an annual appearance in fasching parades in a number of communities and they also have summer encampments with much eating of roast swine and drinking beer from kegs.  This latter event, even if observable,  might have yielded a better result for this report.  But, with Huns, you just don’t know. As it was, on the day of the fasching parade, chance revealed the staging area and therefore the preparations of the Huns to take their place in it.

The Huns had brought along a covered wooden wagonbed mounted on a small truck.  If Huns do spread to North America, this is sure to be dubbed a Hunmobile.  About 16 Huns stood around this conveyance, men and women,  gorgeously dressed for the day. Again, they were aloof and despite an effort to get them to engage in some small talk, they were notably disinterested in anyone except their own horde.  Even so, talk among themselves was sparing. The Greeks, who seem to have coined the word “barbarian” used it to signify those who did not speak Greek or whose own language was inelegant. This did not bode well for the much-needed centerpiece of this research, an actual interview with Huns.

An hour later, the parade was underway.  Along came several units of troops and one dragged a cannon which gave a sharp report from time to time. There were many other costumes, some benign (ice cream cones, milk maids, peasants, flowers) and others which would not have worked in a parade in the that sensitive land known as the United States, (“wild Indians” and African “cannibals” cooking up something in a pot).  A big part of the parade was the throwing and even dumping of treats towards the crowded sidewalks. Most of it was junky, but everyone expected that now and then you might get a really great item.   One man was handed something promising wrapped with ribbons in colored tissue:  it was an old and worn bicycle seat. He held it aloft, laughing at his foolhardiness and the crowd laughed with him. What fools these mortals be….

Then, towards the end of the parade: Huns!  Wooden vehicle creaking, the Huns strode along, impassive, not offering a thing to the crowds except for small pieces of yellow paper.  The one with the goat horns attached to his helmet seemed to be the leader, his body padded to increase its substantial bulk. People reached out the touch the Huns, and you heard the words  “die Hunnen, die Hunnen”  repeatedly until  they passed and some group dressed like Robin Hood and his Merry Men, dispensing beer in cups to the crowd, began to command more attention. The  Huns’ yellow paper was an insult note which you could put on the windshield of cars that had parked carelessly, taking up more than their space in a land where parking is mostly a challenge.   Basically, it was a diatribe regarding the stupidity of parking malefactors and ending in a vile, tasteless suggestion as to what you could do with yourself if you didn’t like it; not a pretty insight into the mind of the Hun.

The Huns did not hang around after the parade: you did not see Huns in the taverns as you did the soldiers, the princesses or the clowns or even the occasional couple dressed as parakeets or tubes of toothpaste.   It was Shrove Tuesday, time to drink up, eat schnitzel, and to stand in the loud and smoky bars, maybe dancing a few steps or maybe just kissing.  Remember,  tomorrow  it would be, so they said, ashes and fish, maybe even the confessional.  This explained the fervor of the folks, one would like to think.

Last chance to further this research on Huns. Had the revelers in the tavern seen any Huns around here? (No, only in the parade. ) And what did they know about them? (Not much, they were “normal”• folks.  You could be sitting next to one on the trolley.) Are the Huns politically motivated?  Were they Germanophiles hard at work with an agenda?   (No, don’t think so.)  Would you and your lady like to be Huns?  (No, not really.)  So, just like that, the Huns had presented themselves, inspired admiration, curiosity, and some disgust but leaving little to fill the notebook of this researcher. Anyway, wasn’t it stupid to try to do research in a bar on an extraordinarily hedonistic day?   The Huns had taken barely 75 minutes of  research effort and produced little for the annals of social science. A Funkmarienchen would have been the better choice.  Too late. Fool!