Figure Pedlar

Like musicians, pedlars moved around the towns and in the country. They lived as the poorest in society on the brink of subsistence. They frequently came from economically underdeveloped regions with few opportunities for earning money. They went from village to town, from door to door as general traders, selling trouser-braces and shoe-polish. They often pestered residents impudently, insisting on selling their wares to men and women who had the good fortune to live in houses. In this way some pedlars even made it to prosperity. In the Eifel pedlars were still a familiar sight well into the 20th century.

An Eifeler remembers his childhood (1955):
"In my youth I knew numerous pedlars, who regularly did the rounds of Eifel villages …among them were many characters, but the king of them all was the "Hornickel". He came from the back of beyond, a poor village in the district of Daun.. it was never entirely clear what he was peddling. He always dragged a sack around with him, filled with all kinds of indiscernible junk. He was wrapped up in rags and sackcloth, with his shaggy beard and an old hat pulled down deep over his head he was the bogeyman of the Eifel villages."
(Baur, Victor, Ausgestorbene Eifelberufe, zitiert in: Eifelkalender Jg. 1955, S. 96)

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