Pages: 341-354 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp265341354
This article explores the phenomenon of urban gardening in Bamberg (German: Bamberger Gärtnerei). Drawing on 20th-century German-language literature, museum collections, and selected archival sources, I explore the structure of the craft guild of Bamberg market gardeners from the 15th to 18th centuries. I discuss the history and transformations of this guild and the communities that replaced it. Drawing on recent fieldwork conducted in 2025, I explore current customer communication strategies, production organization principles, and the rhetoric of farm owners’ political statements. These statements clearly reflect the history of vegetable growers and their professional traditions, as well as the declared value of this past. By analyzing these materials, I attempt to answer the following questions: How did the rules and traditions of the craft guild influence the later organizational forms of Bamberg gardeners? How and to what end does a modern, commercially successful farm regularly renew its connection to a long-gone craft guild? I conclude that the guild past is used as a resource for the production of authenticity, because this concept is very popular in today’s society looking for impressions, and for building consumers’ trust in the produced food.
Keywords: craft Guilds, Germany, agriculture, urban gardening, history of professions, ethnography of professions
Information about author:
Julia Buchatskaya (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences. Universitetskaya Emb., 3, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0001-9139-0179