der Vater Unser Krug The “Our Father” Stein Not the Lord`s Prayer

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der Vater Unser Krug
The “Our Father” Stein
Figure 1 shows a stein featuring the Lord’s
Prayer. Designed by Fritz Hellmut Ehmcke
in 1909 for the firm of Reinhold Merkelbach,
it is commonly known as the Vater Unser
Krug (the “Our Father” stein).
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Prosit, March 2012
the 16th century known as a Schnelle. The
glaze color, known as kölnischebraun, was
a very popular treatment for “modern” steins
in the first decade of the 20th century. And
of course, the Lord’s Prayer, Vater Unser
and the Pater Noster (Latin) are timeless.
A correction
Not the Lord’s Prayer
After All
In a recent installment of “Photos From the
Road” (June 2011) one of the steins depicted (figure 2) was brought to a chapter
meeting of the Golden Gate Zechers. Its
owner, Jim Stoner, had concluded that the
verse on this stein, actually a six-liter size,
was the Lord’s Prayer.
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Doch wird’s nicht ausgeplaudert;
Denn ist das Mittel erst bekannt,
Dann nimmt das Saufen über hand,
Es säufther nach Alt oder Jung
Und uns trifft die Verantwortung.
The first word in this verse plays a crucial
role in understanding its meaning. The old
German word Kather (and its modern counterpart, Kater) has a double meaning, translating both as “tom-cat” and “hangover”.
That bit of knowledge explains why we so
often see a cat depicted on beer steins, especially those which depict a drinker suffering from over-indulgence.
With his head bandaged and a sorrowful
howl emitting from his mouth, the Schierholz Drunken Cat (figure 3) drives home the
symbolic relationship between the cat and
the hangover.
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The words on the stein read as follows:
VATER UNSER, DER
DU BIST IM HIMMEL
GEHEILIGET WERDE
DEIN NAME ZU UNS
KOMME DEIN REICH, DEIN
WILLE GESCHEHE, WIE IM
HIMMEL, ALSO AUCH AUF
ERDEN. UNSER TÄGLICH BROT
GIEB UNS HEUTE. UND VERGIEB UNS UNSERE SCHULD, WIE
AUCH WIR VERGEBEN UNSERN
SCHULDIGERN. UND FÜHRE UNS
NICHT IN VERSUCHUNG, SONDERN ERLÖSE UNS VON DEM
ÜBEL. DEN DEIN IST DAS REICH
UND DIE KRAFT UND DIE HERRLICHKEIT IN EWIGKEIT. AMEN
Produced from the height of the Jugendstil
or Art Nouveau era until very recently, this
stein shows an unusual blend of modern,
historical and timeless elements. The tall,
tapered shape of this stein is a form used in
The verse on Jim Stoner’s six-liter stein can
be roughly translated as:
Roy De Selms soon realized that the stein
in fact shows a different verse entirely, one
which is very much in keeping with the Germanic sense of the relationship between
drinking and humor. The verse on the stein
reads as follows:
Der Kather ist ein Leid für wahr.
Vordemes Jedem schaudert,
Ein Mittel gibt’s dagegen zwar.
The tom-cat is unpleasant for sure.
Everyone shudders when facing him,
on the other hand a remedy is available,
which should not be a secret;
for the medicine is well known,
just get the upper hand of drinking,
of boozing by old or young
and the answer will come to us.
In other words, instead of drinking from the
six-liter stein, consider switching to the 1¼liter Vater Unser stein, or better yet, from
the ½-liter Drunken Cat.