Saturday, October 28, 2017

Pic(k) of the Week: Small ceramic beer steins

Small ceramic beer steins

Two illustrated, aluminum-handled, ceramic German beer steins, circa 1960 *. On the left is a 200-milliliter stein (6.75 ounces); on the right, a 300-milliliter stein (10.14 ounces).

There's some German doggerel on the larger of the two:

Stich und Hieb, und ein Lieb,
muß ein Landsknecht haben.


—Two lines from a German folksong, loosely translated as:

Sword and uniform, and love,
That's what a Landsknecht has.



A Landsknecht was a mercenary, of the 15th and 16th centuries, from the 'lower' German lands of, what was then, the Holy Roman Empire (in, what is now, the Rhineland, Alsace, etc.).

Some believe that drinking steins were originally designed, hundreds of years ago, with hinged lids to keep flying insects out of the beer. If so, a worthy innovation. Danke und Prost!

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  • * My parents purchased the steins in Bonn, West Germany, circa 1960, while stationed there by the U.S. Foreign Service. At the time, during the height of the 'Cold War,' Bonn was the capital city of non-Communist Germany. Now, it's a Federal City in unified Germany, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

  • Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of photos taken (or noted) by me, posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as the subject.
  • See the photo on Flickr: here.
  • Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.
  • Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.

  • For more from YFGF:

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