Milwaukee Mullers keep wacky tradition alive
I can try to describe Muller Fasching Verein Nordamerika, but there's nothing like seeing them burst through the door and take over a room.
They're in wooden masks and elaborate costumes. They're noisy and a little scary. They're dancing and offering everyone swigs of booze from flasks.
And they're keeping alive a 300-year-old pre-Lenten folk custom from the mountains of Austria.
Born here in Germantown 20 years ago, they call themselves Milwaukee Mullers for short, and they claim theirs is the only club of its kind in the United States.
What they do is part heritage, part hallucination.
"It's just a merriment," said Rodney Raasch, one of the founders. "It's like a 3-ring circus.There's something going on all over the room.
I can attest to that. At one point I found myself face-to-face with a heinous witch who insisted that we dance. The witch's name, I learned later, is Jack. Underneath their masks, all the characters are males just like in the old country.
"I carry a broom," Jack Suworoff said, "and I sweep your feet and that's to sweep all your sins away from the previous year."
My first experience with the Mullers came at a party last Saturday night at, of all places, an Irish pub, O'Donoghue's in Elm Grove. Our hosts, my friends Kathy and Bob Lemke, had seen the troupe at Kegel's Inn a couple years ago and invited them as a surprise attraction at their gathering.
A bus pulled up out front and about 30 Mullers poured into the bar in a baffling mix of colorful outfits, masks and feathery flowery headgear. If it was a bank, you might reach for the ceiling.
Three accordion squeezers played them into the room. Percussion was provided by woodmen or Kloetzlers, two characters who gyrated in robes made of wooden slats.
One performer came as a bear who kept sneaking up on partygoers with his huge toothy face. A trainer pulled on a chain to hold him back.
Four guys in lederhosen shorts took over the middle of the room with a thigh-slapping dance called Schuhplattler to the strains of a Muller waltz. They were surrounded, I learned later, by characters representing the four seasons of the year — the Halbweisse, Melcher, Zaggler and Zottler.
The dancing and carrying-on lasted about 20 minutes. It's meant to give us hope for the arrival of spring, while driving evil spirits from our midst.
In Austria, larger Muller groups of 100 or more would perform for farmers and villagers, giving them a Mullerschlag, or back slap, for good luck and fertility. The slap is followed by passing the flask containing a German schnapps called obstler.
Fasching is the German Mardi Gras. The local Mullers perform mostly on weekends, primarily for German clubs and some bar hopping, between Three Kings Day on Jan. 6 and Ash Wednesday. They don't charge much, usually just enough to pay for their bus rental and other expenses. Free beer is gladly accepted, too.
Raasch and a few other original members first saw the Mullers on a trip to the Tyrolean village of Rum, Austria, in 1995. They were blown away.
"In 1996, we went back again, and that's when we kind of decided that, hey, no one is doing this here in the United States, so maybe we should give it a try," he said. "When I worked with these guys over there, I promised I would keep it identical to their tradition and the way their costumes are. And we haven't broke from that."
The Mullers' clubhouse is a beer hall in Germantown called Von Rothenburg Bier Stube. Local members are mostly German, but it's not a requirement.
"I'm Russian, so figure that one out," said Suworoff, a Miller brewery retiree, a 10-year member of the club, and one of several witches. "I think I'm the oldest guy at 74."
He especially loves the tavern stops and the surprise of people seeing fasching fun for the first time.
"You go in there and just take the place over and do your thing. And then, boom, we're gone and heading for the next place," he said.
The 10 p.m. visit to O'Donoghue's was the group's fifth and final stop of the night. The members lingered, posed for pictures, and let us try on their masks and pieces of their handmade costumes.
Then they vanished and left us to wonder: Did that really happen?
The group has a web site, Milwaukee-Mullers.org, that lists upcoming appearances. Searching for Milwaukee Mullers on YouTube finds videos like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvX51x56pJU
Contact Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or jstingl@jrn.com. Connect with my public page at Facebook.com/Journalist.Jim.Stingl