"Heier wor des horschdorfer christkindla do", it often used to be. The old ones meant with it that the gifts to the christmas feast on holy evening have turned out a little sparingly. And not infrequently there has been nothing at all, which in earlier times of need was quite conceivable.
What is it about the "harsdorfer christkindlein"? On himself? The harsdorf local historian dieter eichner has investigated this question. "Once the gilded figure of laurentius in the former harsdorf church could have been the christkindla. It is said to have once stood on the gallery in front of the organ after it was no longer placed at the new altar. Later it was placed in the attic of the church. The figure was almost a meter high and has disappeared without a trace. The lute boys are said to have made a joke and placed the figure at the sound hole. They love to look down into the village until the community servant, without any order, has fetched the figure and allegedly buried it in his oven at home."
From the world of the ancestors
Dieter Eichner has studied the history of harsdorf like no one else, and in the course of his research he has naturally come across all kinds of stories and tales from harsdorf and surrounding area: "sayings sprang from the imagination of our ancestors. They bear witness to past life and experience. They reflect fears, joys, longings and feelings. The whole breadth of human feeling is expressed in them. They are like an opening to what moved people in the past: unexplainable natural phenomena, historical events and incidents or strange occurrences. Unfortunately, the saying rude parents are almost extinct."
Back to the christkindla. In the first tradition, it is said that a priest once began to give gifts to schoolchildren at christmas, taking good behavior, good attendance at school and moral conduct as his mabbard. Lazy and immoral people were left empty-handed.
Took the picture with a pastor?
After his death his portrait was painted by a painter and hung up in the church. His contemporaries, looking at the picture, gratefully remembered their youthful benefactor, who was now called the christ child. After the construction of the new church, the picture was no longer seen. The reconciliation of the findings leads to the assumption that the builder of the church, a certain priest lind, took the picture – it was supposedly a masterpiece of art – with him to obernsees, where he was ordered in 1777.
The current pastor marie-luise matt-frohlich gives more credence to the statement that saint laurentius, as the patron saint of the church, was left standing in the middle of the choir's chest in full gold adornment: "i suspect that at that time the patron saint of the church, as it always was, was also visually visible in some way. And there I think that this was a laurentius figure.
The moment the church was renamed martinskirche , the figure was in the way. But because it was a saint, they did not dare to remove the figure. That is why it went to the attic. And I suppose that this idea of the christ child has crossed with the figure of st. Laurence in some way. The figure disappeared two or three generations of priests ago. I think with pastor kufner."
because the figure of saint laurentius was only a dead wooden figure, it is also clear that this figure, in contrast to the living child jesus, could not give anything at christmas, so the children went empty-handed.
In a description of the parish from 1838 it says that the legend with the figure of laurentius is believed more.
A strikingly dressed person
Further one designated under a "harsdorfer christkindlein" but also a strikingly dressed person. This can be explained by the fact that the figure of st. Lawrence was richly gilded and thus also caught the eye.