Barometers Realm

A distinctive Central European variation on the humorous rope barometer, here adapted specifically to the atmosphere of a Tyrolean wine tavern.

The card reproduces a rustic sign from the Weinstube Schicketanz in Kufstein. Instead of using an animal’s tail as the mock measuring element, the joke is built around a simple hanging rope. The text explains that the state of the rope indicates the weather: when it moves, the weather is windy; when it is wet, it is raining; when stiff, it is frozen; and when seen double, the observer has evidently consumed too much alcohol.

The humour therefore combines two traditions: the familiar pseudo-meteorological “rope barometer” and the drinking culture of the tavern in which the sign was displayed. Several of the verses explicitly shift from weather observation to wine and intoxication, turning the “barometer” into both a comic weather instrument and a drinking-house joke.

The caption beneath the image identifies the location as the Kufsteiner Batzenhäusl, known as “Schicketanz”, while the reverse names Martin Heißl as the wine tavern keeper. This makes the postcard more than a generic novelty design: it is also a piece of local commercial ephemera advertising a specific establishment in Kufstein. In contrast to the Mule, Cow, and Donkey Barometer postcards in the collection, this example dispenses with the animal entirely and reduces the concept to its simplest form: a rope whose condition supposedly reveals both the weather and, eventually, the sobriety of the observer.