I went to an auction today and I am now the proud owner of a 2 liter (16-1/2" tall) German Beer Stein (circa 1957) with the head of a large 12 point buck jutting out from the wooded motif of said stein by almost 2 inches. Despite my girlfriends displeasure of my spending $40 on a (to her) useless item for myself I am quite happy with my purchase and intend on using it tomorrow to become a drunken boar at the cookout.
My problem is this, being a man of obvious taste and refinement, I will of course be asked (and expected to know) what the saying on the Stein means. It has this imprinted under the afore mentioned trophy head: “Im Wald und aufder Haide da such ich meine Freude.” A quick Bablefish inquiry gives me “In the forest and up that Haide there look for I mean joy.” Which is both helpful and gibberish at the same time. I sure that I could fake it knowing just that much, but I would prefer to enlighten my friends and family with the type of precise and complete explanations that my fellow dopers have been able to provide me in the past. Could someone at least help me out with Haide? Is it a proper name? A name that would be familiar to beer drinking Germans who hunt?
Provide me a good explanation and I’ll drink in Stein in your honor tomorrow!
My German is very rusty, but ‘auf der Haide’ could refer to a mountain or a river called Haide (more or less pronouced Hi-duh). ‘Meine’ is ‘mine’. So: In the forest and up the Haide River (or on Haide Mountain, or whatever) I look for my joy.
Literally, it means “in the woods and on the heather, there I search for my joy!” A more connotative translation would be “My happiness is in the woods and fields”. My guess is that it’s the motto of the company whose beer is advertised in the stein. “Haide” is literally heather; I can’t figure out why Babelfish couldn’t translate it!
Still, we were going to play a prank on a friend. We were going to get him to get us a couple of beers. ‘Beine’ being ‘beers’, of course; and a request for two beers (preferably to a large and mean-looking barkeep) being ‘Sie haben schöne Beine.’ Sadly, our victim decided he’d rather stay in the States with his new girlfriend than go gallivanting around Europe.
Eh, what can I say? We were young and it would have been funny at the time.
“da such ich meine Freude” shows up on many steins and not always with the “Im Wald und auf der Haide” So the stein makers liked to use "Here I find my pleasure. I found “da such ich meine Freude” alone at times so I take it to be German humor on drinking when it’s alone on the stein. More often they replaced the forest and meadow or heather with something else.
I’m going to post my translation, because I worked on it a bit, and it’s close.
In woods and bounding heather, there I seek my pleasure.
She tells me that she is going to get her own stein with something about seeking her pleasure in a penthouse suite and a guy named Bjorn. :eek: Yep, today’s starting out good . . . :rolleyes:
So where can we order one? Do they make eroctic ones?
From the fact that it has a 12-point buck on it I’d also assume it’s meant as a celebration of the sport of, in the forest and on the field. ARe there any other hunting-specific symbols, like little horns and so on?
The buck is a symbol of the hunt, and appears on the Jagermeister label (Jagermeister=master hunter).
The lines are from the 19th century folk song Im Wald und auf der Heide, lyrics by Wilhelm Bornemann, adapted from the Latin Silva et fruticeta sunt gaudio repleta.
This Boston Sängerchor site has the original Latin lyrics, the German text, and an English translation of several verses.
Their English translation of the first lines is:
In the forest and in the heather, there I seek my joy.
Basically, it’s all about how cool it is to be a hunter.
Or is that just wishful thinking and just too far fetched?
