🦉 Schlaraffia in figures: Founded in 1859 · More than 200 chapters worldwide · 5 continents · One language · One spirit: humour, friendship and art.
The cradle: Prague, 1859
It began with a handful of artists and intellectuals in the Prague of 1859. Actors, poets, painters – people who wanted to lay aside the heaviness of the age for a few hours in order to laugh, play and cultivate friendship together. They simply called their circle Schlaraffia.
The name was a programme in itself: the fabled land of Cockaigne, that land of lightness and joy, was to become real for a few hours. No class thinking, no everyday hierarchy – only play, humour and art.
The game spreads
The idea travelled quickly. Before long further chapters arose in other cities of the German-speaking world: Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich. With the wave of German emigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Schlaraffia travelled to the New World.
New York, Buenos Aires, São Paulo – wherever German-speaking emigrants sought a new home, they founded a Schlaraffen chapter as well. The bond of a shared language and a shared game held them together across every distance.
Schlaraffia survives the storms of history
Two world wars, political upheaval, prohibition – Schlaraffia has survived a great deal. In Germany and Austria the activity of the chapters was restricted or suppressed during the war years. Yet peace had scarcely returned before the chapters came back to life. That will to survive is no accident: where true friendship exists, it always finds a way.
Remarkably, while some chapters in Europe paused for a time, Schlaraffia overseas carried on unbroken. The Allschlaraffia – the worldwide umbrella body – provided cohesion and continuity.
The Allschlaraffia – a worldwide association
All Schlaraffen chapters in the world are joined together in the Allschlaraffia. This umbrella body sets the common rules of the game, allocates chapter numbers and makes sure that a Schlaraffe from Tokyo feels immediately at home at a meeting in Frankfurt.
In doing so the Allschlaraffia preserves something that has become rare in the modern world: a community founded on values – not on profit or networking. Humour, friendship and art are not empty words here but lived practice at every meeting.
Die Geschichte des Castra Praetoria in Pretoria
A chapter at the foot of the Magaliesberg
Castra Praetoria is one of three Schlaraffen chapters in southern Africa. According to the family tree of the Allschlaraffia it goes back to Castellum Auri Africae (355) in Johannesburg, which acted as mother chapter; the year of foundation is recorded as a.U. 121 — 1980 by ordinary reckoning. Shortly afterwards Grosse Gold Grube (394) joined as a sister chapter.
For those who like to check the arithmetic: the running count of meetings has now passed 1050. At two meetings a month through the winter season, that amounts to a good four decades of uninterrupted play — in a country that has seen more upheaval in that time than most others.
The German language on the Highveld
Pretoria is a seat of government and a university city, and German-speaking communities have a long history here — from the mission stations of the 19th century through engineers and merchants to the families who arrived after 1945. The chapter still draws on that world: members from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Africa, along with people posted here for a few years and visitors from all over.
Our meetings are held in German — the common language of all Schlaraffen worldwide. Outwardly, Castra Praetoria is trilingual: this website exists in German, Afrikaans and English, so that neighbours and friends without German can also understand what is played here.
The Burg in Ashlea Gardens
Our meeting place is in Ashlea Gardens in the south of Pretoria, a few minutes from Menlo Park. Twice a month, on Tuesdays at 7 p.m., the owl is set up there, the candles are lit and everyday life stays outside the door.
In November, when the jacarandas turn the streets purple, the festival of orders falls in the most beautiful time of the year — a coincidence no other chapter in the Schlaraffen world can celebrate quite like this.
The chronicle keeps growing
Much from the early years has so far been passed on by word of mouth only. Anyone who can contribute memories, photographs or documents is warmly invited: this page is where the history of Castra Praetoria is being gathered.
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Help write the next chapter. A visit without obligation is all it takes.