Erasmus Alberus was a German humanist, Lutheran reformer, and poet.
Till Eulenspiegel is the protagonist of a European narrative tradition. A German chapbook published around 1510 is the oldest known extant publication about the folk hero, but a background in earlier Middle Low German folklore is likely. The character may have been based on a historical person.
Katharina von Bora, after her wedding Katharina Luther, also referred to as "die Lutherin", was the wife of the German reformer Martin Luther and a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation. Although little is known about her, she is often considered to have been important to the Reformation, her marriage setting a precedent for Protestant family life and clerical marriage.
Alexander Kluge is a German author, philosopher, academic and film director.
The Yenish are an itinerant group in Western Europe who live mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of France, roughly centered on the Rhineland. A number of theories for the group's origins have been proposed, including that the Yenish descended from members of the marginalized and vagrant poor classes of society of the early modern period, before emerging as a distinct group by the early 19th century. Most of the Yenish became sedentary in the course of the mid-19th to 20th centuries.
The Abraham-men were a class of beggars claiming to be lunatics allowed out of restraint, in the Tudor and Stuart periods in England.
Rotwelsch or Gaunersprache also Khokhmer Loshn is a secret language, a cant or thieves' argot, spoken by groups in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Bohemia. The language is based on a mix of Low German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Romani, Latin, and Czech with a High German substrate.
Thieves' cant is a cant, cryptolect, or argot which was formerly used by thieves, beggars, and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries. It is now mostly obsolete and used in literature and fantasy role-playing, although individual terms continue to be used in the criminal subcultures of Britain and the United States.
A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called vagabonds was first published in 1566 by Thomas Harman, and although no copies of that edition survive, it must have been popular, because two printers were punished by the Stationers' Company in 1567 for pirated editions. Two editions were published in 1568, and a revised edition in 1573. It is one of the fundamental texts for rogue literature.
The Luther Bible is a German language Bible translation by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. A New Testament translation by Luther was first published in September 1522; the completed Bible contained 75 books, including the Old Testament, Apocrypha and New Testament, which was printed in 1534. Luther continued to make improvements to the text until 1545. It was the one of first full translations of the Bible into German that used not only the Latin Vulgate but also the Greek.
Martin Luther was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and Augustinian friar. Luther was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western and Christian history.
In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of helping the poor. Alongside ever-changing attitudes towards poverty, many methods have been attempted to answer these questions. Since the early 16th century legislation on poverty enacted by the Parliament of England, poor relief has developed from being little more than a systematic means of punishment into a complex system of government-funded support and protection, especially following the creation in the 1940s of the welfare state.
Vagrancy is the condition of wandering homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants usually live in poverty and support themselves by travelling while engaging in begging, scavenging, or petty theft. In Western countries, vagrancy was historically a crime punishable with forced labor, military service, imprisonment, or confinement to dedicated labor houses.
Beggars' badges were badges and other identifying insignia worn by beggars beginning in the early fifteenth century in Great Britain and Ireland. They served two purposes; to identify individual beggars, and to allow beggars to move freely from place to place.
"Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist" is the title of several hymns in German. The first is one of the oldest hymns in the German language: a 13th-century leise. Subsequent versions expanded upon the leise; the original hymn became the new version's first stanza, and it now used melodies derived from its medieval tune. The Protestant reformer Martin Luther expanded the leise in 1524, and different Catholic versions were published between 1537 and 1975.
The Schildbürger are residents of Schilda, a fictional German town of fools, a butt of jokes in German Volksbuch (chapbook) tradition corresponding to the Wise Men of Gotham in English-language tradition.
Vogelfrei in German usage denotes the status of a person on whom a legal penalty of outlawry has been imposed. However, the original meaning of the term referred to independence, being "free as a bird".
Edward Schröder was a Germanist and mediaevalist who was a professor at the University of Göttingen and published editions of numerous texts.
Thomas Harman was an English writer best known for his seminal work on beggars, A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors.
The term Heiermann was used colloquially in some areas of Germany for the 5 Mark piece, nowadays also rarely for the 5 Euro banknote. The word probably originated at the beginning of the 20th century in the North German language area, but according to anecdotal information it spread at least as far as the Rhineland.
