The name "Bern" is either Celtic or a reference to a Germanic hero. The bear appeared already in the first Bern town seal 1224th He fulfilled his role as the emblem and supposed eponym of the city today. On the origin of the name 'Bern', however, a controversy is under way. There
echoes of the founding myth of the city of Berne there today. In the official "Bern Show" by the Tourism Bern Aare peninsula is presented before the city was founded as a kind of "jungle". Recent soil samples from the area of Orphanage center, however, indicate that, on the Aare peninsula little of that "oak forest" was supposed to have in which Duke Berchtold V von Zähringen gathered his followers to the city's founding in 1191, described it as the town chronicler Konrad Justinger 1420th Only in the 19th
and 20 Century questioned the traditional legend of the founding of Justinger Zähringer seriously. The legend is familiar to every schoolchild Berner: The Duke decided to host a last hunt in the oak forest to be grubbed up and name the new town after the first animal that should be caught. "Well the first one about waiting gevangen; therefore the presence stat bern genempt" firmly held Justinger.
A tablet makes history The archaeologist
Armand Baer is the story of the hunt as "scholarly invention of the late Middle Ages." His professional colleague Geneviève Lüscher grabbed back a few centuries earlier in the story and pointed to the "Celtic worship" for sacred animals, such as those in the ancient bronze statue of the bear-goddess of Muri is one expression. A direct connection between the bear-goddess of Muri and the name of the city of Bern but is now excluded. "However, whether between the bear cult and the representation of the animal in the Bernese coat of arms but could not be a link is a non-exhaustive discussion question," held in Lüscher "Bund" fixed.
The possible Celtic origin of the name Bern is only since the 90s of last century, a theme. A now deceased amateur archaeologist from Thun in 1984 in an illegal search in the forest on the ground Thormann narrow peninsula, a zinc plate with a mysterious inscription. The plaques eventually disappeared in the fundus of the Archaeological Service of Canton Bern and in 1991 was analyzed in detail. It is a consecration of tablets from the time of Christ's birth. The four-line inscription in Greek letters is interpreted as a homage to the forging of God "Gobanos" by the residents of a Celtic settlement called "Brenodor." Although denied a direct Baeriswyl Derivation of the name "Bern" off "Brenodor." He suspects, however, that the Celtic term "Brena" (for forest, scrub), both in the name of "Brenodor" and "Bremgarten" and in the name of "Bern" could be incorporated. Lüscher again puts forward the hypothesis that the inhabitants of "Brenodor" the narrow peninsula in the fourth century to leave had to be based on today's City ground, a settlement the same or similar name, that name is in the course of time, "Bern" had changed.
A gap of 700 years
The derivation of the name 'Bern' from the Celtic name "Brenodor was" tricky " Franz says Thomas Schneider, co-director of the Center for Study of Names at the University of Bern. The ancient Celtic as a written language is difficult to grasp because you've found in Europe only 350 inscriptions. In addition, the Celtic in the fifth century to be extinct, and in the field of today's old town of Bern there is no archaeological finds from the early Middle Ages. The sometimes alleged existence of a castle Nydegg before the middle of the 12th Century has not been established. "Until the founding of the city of Bern the end of the 12th century, it is therefore a gap of 700 years, "says Schneider. The linguist and his team are currently in the work of the fourth sub-band of the place name register of the canton of Bern. The latter should also provide information about the origin of the name 'Bern'. It will go to an analysis of the word field "burner", the "glance over the bear pit and Bremgarten out," is to be expanded, says Schneider. A Celtic origin of local place names, according to the researchers were not uncommon. It would mean "Solothurn", for example, "Close to the water," which go back to the Roman suffix "-durum" at Celtic, "Duron" and means "narrow." The "Celtic Thesis" but is in competition with simple Nachbenennung, naming one with an already existing place names elsewhere.
A "Ansippung" the Zähringer? The Germanic
Michael Barmann considers it proven that Duke Berchtold V von Zähringen the newly founded city to "become really popular nickname" Voice of the Germanic hero Dietrich von Bern gave. Dietrich von Bern is the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great (493-526) modeled, is said to have ruled his kingdom from Verona. Verona is called in old German documents as "Nova-Bern." According to Baert were the ancestors of the city's founder, Berchtold V occasionally as "Margrave of Verona." It could be, for naming the city but also a kind of "Ansippung" to the sex of the Gothic king, holds Barmann. "Nachbenennungen are "quite common, says Thomas Franz Schneider. For the "Bern-article" in the place name book it was necessary to balance the two theories against each other. Schneider but makes no secret of his view that he feels the "Celtic trace" as exciting. Whether they are also more beautiful than the founding myth of the Zähringer, it leaves open. The founding myth of the Zähringer says the scientist, ". The newly founded city needed an emblem and a founding history to meet the fairy tale needs of the people"
The founding myth passe "very good" to Bern, says Thomas Luthi, vice director of Bern Tourism. As long as the researchers themselves about the origin of the name Bern had not agreed, the tourism organization, the traditional founding story "with a wink," will give more. The story can also sell so well, "said Luthi.
[i] Bold time Berns, ed. Rainer C. Schwinges, is the city's founding chapter. Geneviève Lüscher, "Bern, the bear and Brenodor" in: "The small federal government", 18 March 2000.
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