Schauessen, defined, part 5
Schauessen = Aufsätze und Speisen, welche zum Anschauen und nicht zum Genuß auf einer Tafel bei feierlichen Gastmahlen aufgesetzt werden.
"Schauessen = Displays and dishes which are displayed on table at festive meals only to be looked at and not for pleasure" (translation mine).
From Johann Hübner. Zeitungs- und Conversations-Lexikon. 31st ed. Rev. by F. A. Rüder. Vol. 4. Leipzig: Johann Fr. Gleditsch, 1828.
Definitions matter. So do translations. My translation is perhaps a bit misleading: Genuß here means pleasure or enjoyment, but the original German perhaps has a stronger sense of the specific pleasure that comes from eating or consuming something.
Hübner's lexicon isn't wrong that a Schauessen isn't there for gustatory satisfaction. But what, exactly, counts as pleasure? The pleasures and entertainments of the seventeenth century were not necessarily those of the nineteenth, so perhaps someone sitting in Biedermeier Germany would not have found architectural sugar sculptures or fruit carved to resemble ducks all that amusing. The thrill is mostly gone from ice swan sculptures for the twenty-first century viewer, as well, although Sandra Lee's tablescapes never cease to amaze me. (Don't worry. We're not going there. Yet.)
The Schauessen existed solely to provide pleasure, but a visual pleasure and a delight in deception, artistry, and craftsmanship that was a source of marvel to a certain audience. So, did Hübner miss that point, or does this definition merely reflect a time when the Schauessen no longer mattered?
I prefer a world in which Schauessen are sources of unambiguous pleasure, because that is a world that finds value in beauty, in the random, and in the useless. But I think we're in Hübner's world now.
