Swabian-Alemannic Fastnacht

Pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore "Hopfennarr" from Tettnang with costume and mask The Swabian-Alemannic Fastnacht, Fasnacht (in Switzerland) or Fasnat/Faschnat (in Vorarlberg) is the pre-Lenten carnival of Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and Vorarlberg. Etymology Popular etymology often links Fastnacht (in Mainz also Fassenacht, in Switzerland Fasnacht, in Swabia Fasnet, Fasent) with fasten ("to fast") – allegedly from celebrations on the eve preceding fasting. In the beginning of the 20th century it was a common assumption[according to whom?] that the tradition had its roots in pre-Christian ritual. Comparison of dialect variants, however, yields an Old High German *fasanaht, with an element fasa- of unclear meaning. A likely derivation looked to Proto-Indo-European *pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively to Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud", and interpreted the festival as a fertility rite.[citation needed] Historians around Werner Mezger refuted those theories, and showed that the name derives from fasten ("to fast") and the tradition is Christian. They also showed that a lot of the rites came from the civitas diabol