The mayor of Samerberg, Georg Huber, recently informed his local council that a crisis team would now deal with the issue of power failure. Samerberg is by no means an isolated case, on the contrary: more and more cities and municipalities have set up similar crisis teams to be prepared for a possible blackout. The Mayor of Augsburg Eva Weber (CSU) called on the population to equip themselves privately with food, flashlights and candles for emergencies.
As important as all this may be, the fire brigades are not only concerned about the development because of the lack of energy. They warn that if more candles are lit in houses again in the future, room fires are foreseeable. In fact, candles are currently receiving growing attention. If the power actually fails for a longer period of time, then they of all people will have to provide the light and heat again. This was the norm up until the early 20th century. In rural areas in particular, it took a long time for electrical energy supply to become a reality.
There are currently many handicraft instructions for tea light ovens and candle heaters circulating on the Internet. This trend is also making fire departments nervous. Not only do they warn against leaving candles burning unattended. Tea light constructions also harbor dangers, because the flower pots used for them can get very hot and burst.
The Lebzelter and wax maker Hans Hipp made high-quality candles in his shop in Pfaffenhofen until he retired.
(Photo: Marco Einfeldt)
Nevertheless: anyone who has experienced the unstable power grids of the past knows how important it is to have access to an emergency candle. “They should be deposited in the household in such a way that they can be accessed blindly even in the dark,” advises former wax maker Hans Hipp from Pfaffenhofen.
The profession of wax or candle maker is one of the oldest in the world. Hipp says wax is described as a sacred illuminant as early as the Codex Salmasius, a collection of poems from antiquity. In the religious context, the precious wax of the bees was always used for the candles. Nevertheless, in everyday life, candles made from beef fat used to dominate for cost reasons. Beeswax and vegetable wax were very expensive and were mainly reserved for the churches and the nobility. In larger churches it was not uncommon for tens of thousands of pounds of wax candles to burn down each year.
A familiar sight on All Saints’ Day: lights illuminate the tombs. But this also resulted in some horror stories.
(Photo: Robert Kalb/imago)
The light-giving candle is a high symbol of life, so it can be read in the “Dictionary of German Folklore”. That is why the candle is indispensable on the graves, especially on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. The nocturnal cemetery with the flickering lights is a moving sight that sometimes causes a shudder. Especially when primal myths are brought to life, as in November 1983, when pop singer Michael Jackson released the video clip “Thriller”. Dancing zombies in a cemetery can be seen, an apocalyptic scenery that gives the impression that the US superstar has taken it from old Bavarian sagas. Especially in the dark times, the local villages liked to tell that the dead climbed out of their graves on All Souls’ Day and then danced in the candle-lit cemetery.
Where death, darkness and light mingled, the path to superstition was not far, whereby popular piety crossed pagan traditions and produced the most curious beliefs. Like those from the middle of the 19th century, when some people in the Bavarian Forest hoped to win the lottery by lighting 90 numbered candles around a skull and then betting on the numbers whose light went out first.
This example shows the imagination with which people for centuries imbued mundane things with magic to ward off harm and bring good fortune. In pious hope, however, thousands upon thousands of candle and wax offerings were carried to the pilgrimage churches. People felt helplessly at the mercy of the forces of nature, since there were still no lightning rods, no health insurance and no veterinarians. In the miracle book of the Niederscheyern pilgrimage site one can read: “Ursula Abelshauserin had something wrong in me, so she got engaged here with a wise candle, prayer and sacrifice in Stockh, after which things got better.”
In Altötting you can still buy black weather candles that are lit at home when a storm is approaching. Masses of such weather candles were once sold. “People believed that they had a stronger blessing,” says Hans Hipp, also because they were provided with the miraculous image or a Brother Konrad motif.
As a vow from 1492 stipulates, pilgrims carry a 13-meter-long spruce trunk wrapped in red wax from Holzkirchen, 75 kilometers away, to the pilgrimage church on the Bogenberg.
(Photo: Armin Weigel/picture alliance)
Large pilgrimages also prove the power attributed to candles. The candle pilgrimage, which begins on Pentecost Saturday in Holzkirchen (municipality of Ortenburg) and leads over 75 kilometers to the sanctuary on the Bogenberg near Straubing, is spectacular. The candle, a wax-wrapped 13-meter-long spruce trunk, is carried standing in some places. The pilgrimage started at the end of the 15th century when a plague of bark beetles threatened the forests around Holzkirchen.
No wonder that wax making is one of the oldest trades in the world. There is even a candle guild to which several dozen companies belong. The wax makers had already formed an independent guild in 1450. Later, like the Hipp family in Pfaffenhofen, they practiced a dual trade of wax-drawing and gingerbread-making. But even this venerable craft has come under pressure. Producing quality candles is expensive and time-consuming, and cheap goods imported from Asia have flooded the market. Commercially, customers almost only get industrially pressed paraffin candles.
Martin Schenk from Würzburg, on the other hand, has remained true to the old process with his family business, which has existed since 1750. “We draw our candles like we did 200 years ago,” he says. The wick is pulled through the wax bath until the candle looks like a tree trunk with growth rings. “Such candles are not comparable in quality to department store products,” says Schenk. They are heavier, burn longer and are calmer. But you have to take good care of them.
All Christian festivals would be unthinkable without candles and their light symbolism. Accordingly, the parishes are still the bulk buyers of the wax workers. However, the church candles no longer have to contain 100 percent beeswax as they used to, but only ten percent. The Munich wax maker Franz Fürst, whose business has also been around since 1862, mixes paraffin, stearin, hard wax and beeswax according to his grandfather’s recipe.
“We haven’t noticed yet that we’re selling more candles because of the energy crisis,” says Fürst’s wax workshop at Munich Cathedral. In the dark season and before All Saints’ Day, however, sales increase significantly. In the houses, designer lamps and neon tubes turn night into day. And yet they do not manage to create such a feeling of comfort as the candle. Not for nothing does it stand for the transcendent and for that hope that makes many people rush to the graves of their loved ones on All Saints’ Day.