Bauernschnapsen
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The history of Schnapsen: A game with a long memory

Schnapsen grew out of card games played across the German-speaking lands for three hundred years, and it is still played with cards that show a Swiss legend, first printed in Hungary. This is where the game and its cards come from, and why they matter.

Origins

From Mariage to Schnapsen

Schnapsen belongs to a large family of card games built around one idea: the King and the Ober of the same suit are a married couple, and showing the pair scores points. That is where the Zwanziger and the Vierziger come from. The oldest well-recorded game of the family is Mariage, French for marriage, first described in a Leipzig ladies’ encyclopedia in 1715. It was played with 32 cards, and it lives on in the Czech lands as Mariáš.

A plaque in the German town of Paderborn says the game of Sechsundsechzig, Sixty-six, was invented in an inn there in 1652. Historians who looked into it found no evidence and think the story was made up in the 19th century. What the card-game books do show is that around 1860 Sixty-six appeared as a shorter Mariage: 24 cards instead of 32, and the hand ends as soon as someone reaches 66.

Schnapsen is Sixty-six made tighter: the Nines go, leaving 20 cards, and each player gets five instead of six. Nobody knows for sure where the name comes from. It may come from schnappen, to snatch a trick, from playing for a glass of Schnaps, as the popular story goes, or from Schnorps, an old name for the game in Saxony. One account from 1880 says it reached Austria in 1866, with the Prussian army. Its rules were in print in Vienna by about 1920, and by then it was everywhere.

Bauernschnapsen, farmers’ Schnapsen, is the Austrian way of playing it with four: two against two, partners opposite, every card dealt, and a list of bigger games to call, from the Bettler to the Bauer. Nobody wrote down when it began. It grew at the tables, which is why every region has its own names and its own special games, and why players argue about them to this day.

The marriage that gave the family its name: König and Ober of one suit.

The cards

Hearts, bells, acorns and leaves

Most of the world plays with French cards: hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. In Austria, Schnapsen is mostly played with German suits, which are older.

  • Herz

    like hearts

  • Schelle

    like diamonds

  • Eichel

    like clubs

  • Blatt

    like spades

Playing cards reached the German-speaking lands in the late 1370s. Their makers tried many suit signs before four settled, by about 1450: Herz (hearts), Schelle (bells), Eichel (acorns) and Laub or Blatt (leaves). The French suits were drawn from these German ones around 1480. Their plain shapes were easy to print, and with France, Britain and later America behind them, they went round the world.

German cards have no Queen. Each suit has a König and two knaves, the Ober, who carries the suit sign high, and the Unter, who carries it low. The top card, the Ass, is really a Two, the Daus: the true Ace dropped out of German packs in the 15th century and the Daus took its place. French cards came north with the armies of the Thirty Years’ War (1618 to 1648) and pushed the German suits out of most of northern Germany. The south and the east kept them.

That is still where you find them: in Bavaria and the rest of southern and eastern Germany, in Austria and South Tyrol, in Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia, and further east and south, much of it the old lands of the Habsburg monarchy. Austrians call their cards Doppeldeutsche, double German: German suits, with each picture printed twice, head to head, so a card reads the same either way up. The older single cards, the Einfachdeutsche, with one picture filling the card, are still played in Vorarlberg.

The William Tell pattern

A Swiss legend, printed in Hungary

The faces on the cards are characters from Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell of 1804, the story of the Swiss crossbowman who stood up to a Habsburg governor. Look closely and their names are printed beside them, in Hungarian.

  • Tell Vilmos

    William Tell, Eichel Ober

  • Geszler Herrmann

    Gessler, the governor, Herz Ober

  • Rudenz Ulrich

    Ulrich von Rudenz, Blatt Ober

  • Stüszi vadász

    Stüssi the hunter, Schelle Ober

The pattern appeared in Pest, today part of Budapest, around 1835. Its first maker was most likely the card painter József Schneider, with Ödön Chwalowsky of Pest at about the same time. Schiller’s play had reached Hungarian audiences by then: it was first performed in Hungarian at Kolozsvár, today Cluj in Romania, in 1827.

Why Tell? The story most often told is that it was a quiet protest. Hungary was restless under Habsburg rule, and a Swiss legend of a revolt against a Habsburg governor was something a censor could hardly forbid. Nobody left a note to say so, so it remains a good story rather than a proven fact. What is certain is that after 1865 the Viennese card maker Piatnik printed the pattern and spread it across the whole monarchy, and that by about 1890 it had replaced the other German-suited patterns in Hungary.

The four Asse show the four seasons, an idea that seems to go back to a Viennese pack of 1823 or 1824: spring on Herz, summer on Schelle, autumn on Blatt and winter on Eichel. The Könige ride on horseback, and the Ober and Unter carry the names from the play. In Switzerland, the home of William Tell, these cards were never used for play.

At the table

A game of the Wirtshaus

Schnapsen is often called Austria’s national card game. It is played in the Wirtshaus, at the kitchen table and at tournaments, from Vorarlberg to Vienna and across the old Austro-Hungarian lands.

  • The Bummerl

    The score is kept from 7 down, or up to 7 as the game does, and the loser gets the Bummerl, traditionally a fat chalk dot or a bead on a counter. A match is usually two or three Bummerl.

  • Into everyday speech

    “Das Bummerl haben”, to have the Bummerl, means to be the one left worse off, at cards or anywhere else. The Viennese singer Horst Chmela even made a song of it: Ana hot imma des Bummerl, someone always gets the Bummerl.

  • Preisschnapsen

    The big Austrian tournaments are the Preisschnapsen: a knockout where you may buy more than one entry, with prizes for the best eight. Once, the winner took home a goose.

  • Skill, not luck

    Austrian law counts Schnapsen as a game of skill, not a game of chance: counting the cards, remembering the trumps and knowing when to close the talon all matter.

  • Every table its own rules

    Bauernschnapsen especially is played a little differently from valley to valley: which big games count, what they are called and what they are worth. This game plays the rules of one real table, and says so.

  • Across borders

    The same game, under other names and with other cards, is played in Bavaria, in Hungary, in Upper Silesia and across the old Austro-Hungarian lands. At tournaments where players from different regions meet, special packs carry both German and French suit signs.

Timeline

Six hundred years in a deck

  1. late 1370s

    Playing cards reach the German-speaking lands.

  2. about 1450

    The German suits settle: Herz, Schelle, Eichel and Laub.

  3. about 1480

    The French suits are drawn from the German ones.

  4. 1618–1648

    The Thirty Years’ War carries French cards north; the south and east keep the German suits.

  5. 1715

    Mariage, the marriage game, is first described in Leipzig.

  6. 1804

    Schiller writes Wilhelm Tell.

  7. about 1835

    The William Tell pattern appears in Pest.

  8. about 1860

    Sechsundsechzig appears in German card-game books.

  9. 1865

    Piatnik in Vienna starts printing the Tell pattern, and it spreads across the monarchy.

  10. about 1920

    The rules of Schnapsen are printed in a Viennese book of card games.

  11. today

    Schnapsen and Bauernschnapsen are played in homes, inns and tournaments across Austria and its neighbours, and now on screens too.

Why this project

Keeping the cards on the table

Games like these live as long as people play them. They are passed on at the table, from grandparents to grandchildren, from one regular at the Wirtshaus to the next, and very little of it is written down. When families move away, or a younger generation grows up with other games, a whole way of playing can quietly disappear.

This project is an attempt to keep that heritage alive and to make more people aware of it. It plays the rules of a real Austrian table, checked hand by hand by people who play it, with the classic William Tell cards, the old words and Austrian voices at the table. It is free against the computer, so anyone can learn, and it lets families and friends who live far apart sit down at the same table again.

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Sources

Where this comes from

Dates marked “about” are the sources’ own estimates. Where the sources disagree, this page says so or leaves it out.