Mindener Buttjer

Mindener Buttjer

The artist Paul Wedepohl created the statue, which has become a Minden landmark over the past decades. The Buttjer is considered to be a primeval rock of the Weser city.

An original like Tünnes and Schäl in Cologne, for example. It reflects the "Laumalocher" in the best sense of the word, who is not a mouthful and gets through life well. The word "Buttjer" comes from the Rotwelsch language, where it means drifter or tramp. And somehow every "real Mindener" also has a buttjer in them.

The Mindener buttjer also includes the buttjerschmiede. It is a proven special language that originally fulfilled the role of a secret language as a sociolect. The oldest known glossary of the Buttjer language dates back to 1953 and contains 95 words; the latest glossary, supplemented by interviews with language witnesses, contains over 900 words. This secret language has been extensively researched in recent years. A bachelor's thesis was published in 2023.

A hypothetical fixed point at which the Buttjer language originated is the arrival of the first Sinti in Minden. Buttjer was a term for the inhabitants of the Upper Old Town, which was also a residential area for the Sinti. The verbs "buttchen", "buttschen" and "buttschern" stand for "to work". The Buttjer language is therefore also considered the language of the workers in the Upper Old Town. However, it was also spoken in other districts to the left of the Weser.