Finger Exercise

As far back as the 14th century, and perhaps before, Bavarian males have tested each other by the simple, direct method of sitting on opposite sides of a table, inserting their middle fingers in a leather loop and pulling. Well ballasted by beer, a hefty Bauerbursche (farm boy) can jerk an opponent belly-first across the table. At wedding receptions and opulent wakes, muscular champions of Fingerhackln (finger wrestling) customarily duel for a girl's favors. Last week in the market hall at Rosenheim, 76 burly Bavarians met for the Fingerhackln championship of the entire state.

To toughen their fighting fingers, contestants had long practiced such tricks as pulling a string of five coal carts up an incline, or tugging along a 4 1/2-ton truck. Top challenger Willi Lehner, 36, a 230-lb. stonemason from Unterpeissen-berg, was fond of hanging suspended by his finger from the claw of a derrick. Dressed in their holiday leather knickers and green felt hats, the wrestlers wound their legs around steel stools (wooden chairs would snap like toothpicks), and at the umpire's command "Auf!" tried to pull their opponent's hand across a line drawn a foot from the center of the oak table. During minute-long deadlocks, noses began to bleed from the strain.

In the finals, Lehner met 240-lb. Blasius Glatz of Garmisch. Both men had heavily bandaged middle fingers, but neither was feeling much pain after downing eight Mass (two-quart steins) of beer during the long afternoon. For 25 seconds they grunted on even terms. Then Lehner, his face contorted like a gargoyle's, inexorably forced Glatz's fist over the line, rose to declare: "I'm blessedly glad that I've won today." With that the big brass band oompahed into the Fingerhackln Hymn:

Yes, I'm doing Fingerhackln For the courage that it takes, For the knuckles that it breaks, For the pleasure that it makes.

But please learn Fingerhackln well Otherwise, you go to hell.

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