Curious and ancient things

I finally finished the first part of my planned diorama series on German small heritage sites (Kleindenkmale). Here we have a stylized, condensed version of a catholic "board place" (Brettplatz). Places like this were usually seen as haunted: Children feared them and adults ran past them when walking back from the pub at night - hence the title.

Those sites disappeared around the middle of the 20th century, but the diorama also includes their attempted revival in the late 20th century. It's mainly inspired by eastern Bavarian examples.

But let's start from the beginning. This is a bit hard to do, since the chronology of this subject is pretty unclear. It might be based on a medieval tradition, but there is hardly any evidence for it. What we know is that it was uncommon to use a coffin for a wake in rural areas well into the 20th century. Instead the body was placed on a makeshift bier made from a single board and set up in the bedroom or kitchen.

Now, items connected with death or a deceased person often became tainted. Mattresses of the deathbed were sometimes burned and dishes used to wash the dead smashed and disposed at roadside. The bier boards weren't any different. Often they were burnt or just left somewhere to rot.

However, the catholic belief of the "poor souls" gave recently deceased a special role: as long as they were in purgatory, they could be reached by prayers, either to shorten their suffering or as messengers to convey pleads of the living to the saints. So it made sense to pray in front of a bier to help the tortured soul of their owner and maybe ask for a favour or two.

With this kind of thinking it's only logical that people started to turn the boards into true memorials, carving, painting and inscribing them, putting poems and pleads for prayers on them.

Of course, at some point the bier and the memorial board disconnected. Home wakes went out of fashion, biers were no longer used, but boards were still put up - for a time. There had always been opposition against the custom, since boards were usually never removed. I've seen photos of places where the roadsides looked like wood storages. So with less boards being put up, new roads being built and the landscape being "cleaned up" post-WWII nearly all of the Brettplätze disappeared.

It was only in the 1970s when the tradition was rediscovered and new memorial boards were put up. Often very elaborate, they lack the charm, gloom and democratic, chaotic elements of the old sites. They are memorials for mayors, honoured members of fire brigades or traditional costume societies. And we really do have enough of those in Bavaria.

The items displayed in my diorama represent different forms of the tradition of memorial boards that could be found in different areas, mostly around 1900 to 1950.

1. Roadside crucifix with the corpus painted on sheet metal (Blechschnittchristus, lit. "tin cut Christ") - 1st half of the 20th century

2. rack with memorial boards in a fence-like row

3. rack with horizontal boards

4. horizontal board laid out on the ground

5. penitence cross with carving of a ploughshare, late medieval or early modern - they sometimes seem to have functioned as a nucleus for a board place

6. undecorated board used as a footbridge - the user was supposed to thank the deceased for their help crossing a creek or wet ground with a prayer

7. decaying boards - they were usually not removed, sometimes the decay was seen as an indicator for the time the deceased had to spend in purgatory, making people choose wet areas for board places

8. free-standing board

9. boards nailed to trees (or barns) - note the vaguely human shape, a common feature among all kinds of decorated boards

10. group of small memorial plaques nailed to a special "trees of the dead" - usually not made from biers

11. double board as a memorial for two people - usually not made from biers

12. metal rack with modern boards as a „show tradition“ (around 1980)