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Explanations
1: Title page
To be sung when one is well, / to the tune: / Mannheim a beautiful town, / where every quadrangle is a square. etc. This particular song is not known to the Mannheim City Archive, nor to the German Folk Song Archive (Freiburg im Breisgau). This humorous song could well be a variation of the type "[city name] ist 'n schöne Stadt...". These rhymes were usually invented by children and were sung to the melody of a Burschen song, that appeared in 1845. This Burschen song can often be found in song books from the middle of the 19th century onwards. It quickly became very popular and was given numerous, usually funny, alternative lyrics. Ludwig Becker may have known this melody as a kind of contemporary "Hit" before his emigration to Australia. Even today children in Germany sing songs of this type, for example:
Karlsruh' ist 'ne schöne Stadt,
juppheidi, juppheida,
die auch eine Schule hat,
juppheidi heida.
Die Schule ist aus Lehm gebaut,
die wackelt, wenn der Lehrer haut,
juppheidi, juppheida... tirallala,
juppheidi, juppheida, juppheidi heida.Karlsruh' ist 'ne schöne Stadt,
die auch einen Metzger (Bäcker, Schutzmann, eine Feuerwehr and so on) hat.
(Summary of a letter from the German Folk Song Archive to Frau Lotte Hoffmann-Kuhnt, 20th May 2001. Ludwig Becker was her great-granduncle.)
A distinctive feature of the city of Mannheim is its grid-like layout in squares, which goes right back to the founding of the city, and which is seen in many 19th century drawings of the city from an aerial perspective. Mannheim has the nickname die Quadratestadt (the city of quadrangles). Becker was fond of word puns, which is no doubt the case in the line about quadrangles and squares.
Mannheim around 1850, engraving by Johann Poppel. (Reiß-Museum
der Stadt Mannheim)
<< Title page
Part 3
The scene represents a place which the writer August von Kotzebue invented in his play Die deutschen Kleinstädter (Leipzig, 1803). The name Krähwinkel (meaning "Crow-Corner") makes fun of small provincial towns. The hero in the cradle is holding what were perhaps at that time symbols of a German male, a beer stein and a meerschaum pipe. The motto on the wall is a proclamation issued by the Prussian Minister of the Interior in Berlin in 1806 after Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena. Its purpose then was to reassure the population, but for many years after Napoleon's defeat in 1815 it was made fun of by Germans who wanted more political freedoms in the various German states. It reads:
| "Recht hast du, Herr. Schweigen muss ich, denn Ruhe ist des Bürgers erste Pflicht." |
You are right, my lord. I must stay silent, For silence is the citizen's first duty. |
The signature 'Michel' at the end of the motto is a name for a dull-witted
German man who doesn't think beyond his own little world. The domed city tower
appears to have eyes that are keeping watch, and with the raised bayonets
Becker has it symbolising the oppressive undemocratic rule of kings and princes
in the German states.
<< Sketch 3
Part 4
The traveller carries a wand whose entwined snakes symbolise Mercury, god
of travellers. Prostitutes were on display in Hamburg shop windows even in
the 1850s.
Thisthelthorph u. Gudefrau = probably word puns
by Becker on names well-known to German emigrants.
Perhaps Thisthelthorph represents (Eduard) Delius,
emigration agent in the port of Bremen for the South Australian and Victorian
governments (Delius >> Distel - thistle??). Another suggestion is that
Thisthelthorph could represent the German city
name Düsseldorf.
Gudefrau represents the shipping company of Johann
Caesar Godeffroy and Son. Becker twists Godeffroy into Gudefrau (good woman).
The Godeffroy family were a Hugenuot family that had moved to Hamburg from
La Rochelle in France in 1737. In 1855 they named one of their ships La
Rochelle. Georg von Neumayer received free transport on the La Rochelle
from Johann Godeffroy when he returned to Melbourne in 1857 to establish the
Flagstaff observatory. However, by 1866 conditions on the La Rochelle
were so bad that the Queensland Government conducted an official enquiry.
In the 1840s the Godeffroy firm bought shares in South Australia's successful
copper mines at Burra. They later went into the South Pacific trade, but got
into financial difficulties. From the 1830s until the collapse of the company
in 1879, Godeffroy was very important in emigration shipping, especially for
the regions Pacific, American east coast and Australia. In the sketch the
list of "good" items you get on board doesn't sound that pleasant!
<< Sketch 4
Part 6
O Jemine! = (in the Bible) the first daughter of Job. The expression means
the same as: "Oh God! Oh God!"
<< Sketch 6
Part 7
Steerage = the cheapest and most uncomfortable accommodation section in the
ship, originally at the back, near the rudder (steerage).
<< Sketch 7
Part 8
The ship is lying becalmed in the doldrums, a region around the equator,
where (even though there could be sudden storms) it was often hot with very
little wind. Perhaps the traveller feels like he's being hung by the heat.
<< Sketch 8
Part 11
The reddish captain = red perhaps from embarrassment,
but with the bottle, perhaps more likely from drinking.
<< Sketch 11
Part 13
The church tower is that of St James, a Melbourne landmark of the time. Melbourne
had a tent city just east of today's central business district after the discovery
of gold and the flood of immigrant arrivals. Becker writes that the people,
like the houses, were full, i.e. a German word-pun, voll
also meaning drunk (the bottles walking along).
<< Sketch 13
Part 17
Becker playfully creates a new German verb: diggen!
One of many uncomfortable things on the gold diggings was the flies. There
were masses of flies in black swarms on the diggings, partly because of the
way the butchers operated. On the Mount Alexander diggings (Castlemaine area)
more than a thousand sheep were slaughtered every morning, six days a week,
throughout 1852 (Becker was there at the end of that year). The unusable remains
of the sheep were piled up in a heap near the butcher's tent. The authorities
didn't require them to bury it; most didn't. The flies loved it.
(Annear, Robyn - Nothing But Gold. Melbourne:
Text Publishing, 1999)
<< Sketch 17
Part 18
His waggon's tipped over. Chyser is Becker's
own spelling to represent the miner's word "shicer", probably because
to his German readers the German word it derives from is vulgar, though it
was a perfectly common word among English-speaking diggers for a hole with
no gold in it (see Germans on the Goldfields).
<< Sketch 18
Part 20
Tarrangower = the first name for the Maldon goldfield. Meyer's Flat = north
of Bendigo. Forest Creek = creek running along the edge of Castlemaine; at
that time the name "Forest Creek diggings" was known all over Australia.
<< Sketch 20
Part 21
Rusch...Klähm = Becker playfully creates his
own German words for the mining words rush and claim. Mining
had a thousand-year history in Germany, but it was different to in Australia,
and there was no exact word for claim.
<< Sketch 21
Part 22
The Southern Cross at the end is a symbol readily recognised by many emigrants
as indicating Australia, or at least the southern hemisphere. Many emigrant
accounts of their experiences mention the Cross which they saw in the night-sky
for the first time on the journey to Australia.
<< Sketch 22 | Ludwig
Becker
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