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Annually at Easter - the highest Christian feast the wells are splendorous decked out in Frankish Switzerland. Like the date of Easter and some of the feast's contents this habit has its origins in pre-Christian traditions. In heathen time the rural inhabitants of the water-poor plateau of Frankish Switzerland and adjacent Thuringia decorated their wells and fountains with fresh green in honours of a spring goddess, possibly the spring goddess Ostara (with the Celts Eostra). First virgins had cleaned the fountains under prayer and singing before sunrise.
Afterwards the wells were garlanded, and the congregation met to sacrificial feast, dance and play and hoped to secure itself by this for the whole year with the thanks of the spring goddess in the form of plentifully water for humans and animal.
Like elsewhere during the Christianization preachers and monks made the heathen customs usable for their purposes, if these absolutely could not be banished from the heads of humans. Finally clean water for Christians is just as vitally necessary as for heaths, in addition for first the important role of the water comes with the baptism. Thus particularly special effect was attributed to holy Easter water, as the vernacular repeats still today: Children, baptized with this water at Easter, are to become particularly clever, a drinking of Easter water protect from diseases and, sprayed in house and yard, it drives out vermin and keeps parasits away.
Protestant thoroughness with the cleaning of the faith teachings from non-Christian after the Reformation brought the "heathen" custom of the Easter fountain decoration almost to a standstill. In Thuringia this succeeded to a large extent, however not also on the rocky plateaus of Frankish Switzerland, where the water had often to be scooped under biggest troubles from sources in the valley and carried miles long uphill home.
As passed on by word of mouth the custom was revived at the beginning 20. century and intensified, where it had not become extinct yet. The time trend of the romantics obviously animated to searches in history and to new activities. In Aufseß for example the inhabitants decorated the first Easter sources around 1909, in Engelhardsberg it was started in 1913. In the center of the 20th century the custom was forgotten again. Many traditional life styles and behaviours lost at meaning by mechanization, however the new awaked homeland and customs care kindled new life in the 80's in Easter spring decoration. Already in 1986 could be counted again over 200 decorated Easter fountains and trees in Frankish Switzerland.
Decorating the Easter sources starts today still, like in ancient times, with the cleaning of the grounds, the so-called "well sweeps". In former times only young lads exercised this activity, today this is done by both women and men. Afterwards the well is decorated, in the vernacular is spoken thereby of the "well decking". Blown out multicoloured egg shells, individual paper ribbons or some ones bound to tufts, the so-called "Pensala", serve as decoration, garlands from branches of spruce, which are wound around the well or twisted to stands and crowns. Besides still genuine flower decoration adorns the Easter fountains in most places.
All this and more compiled Claudia Schillinger by extensive research in the periphery of Forchheim, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Pegnitz and summarized to a beautiful and stimulating illustrated book (Bayerische Verlagsanstalt GmbH, Bamberg, ISBN 3-87052-293-3).
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