🦉 Schlaraffia in figures: Founded in 1859 · More than 200 chapters worldwide · 5 continents · One language · One spirit: humour, friendship and art.
The cradle: Prague, 1859
It began with a handful of artists and intellectuals in the Prague of 1859. Actors, poets, painters – people who wanted to lay aside the heaviness of the age for a few hours in order to laugh, play and cultivate friendship together. They simply called their circle Schlaraffia.
The name was a programme in itself: the fabled land of Cockaigne, that land of lightness and joy, was to become real for a few hours. No class thinking, no everyday hierarchy – only play, humour and art.
The game spreads
The idea travelled quickly. Before long further chapters arose in other cities of the German-speaking world: Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich. With the wave of German emigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Schlaraffia travelled to the New World.
New York, Buenos Aires, São Paulo – wherever German-speaking emigrants sought a new home, they founded a Schlaraffen chapter as well. The bond of a shared language and a shared game held them together across every distance.
Schlaraffia survives the storms of history
Two world wars, political upheaval, prohibition – Schlaraffia has survived a great deal. In Germany and Austria the activity of the chapters was restricted or suppressed during the war years. Yet peace had scarcely returned before the chapters came back to life. That will to survive is no accident: where true friendship exists, it always finds a way.
Remarkably, while some chapters in Europe paused for a time, Schlaraffia overseas carried on unbroken. The Allschlaraffia – the worldwide umbrella body – provided cohesion and continuity.
The Allschlaraffia – a worldwide association
All Schlaraffen chapters in the world are joined together in the Allschlaraffia. This umbrella body sets the common rules of the game, allocates chapter numbers and makes sure that a Schlaraffe from Tokyo feels immediately at home at a meeting in Frankfurt.
In doing so the Allschlaraffia preserves something that has become rare in the modern world: a community founded on values – not on profit or networking. Humour, friendship and art are not empty words here but lived practice at every meeting.
Die Geschichte des Castrum Siamesiae in Thailand
A chapter unlike any other
Castrum Siamesiae is a chapter with constantly changing members — Sassen, as we call them. Company representatives, embassy staff and travellers who stay in Thailand only briefly sit next to men who have lived here for decades. Some arrived as Schlaraffen, others became one here.
Far from the centre of the Schlaraffen world, the idea has held on stubbornly in Thailand. Our location helps: anyone travelling to Asia or Australia passes close by. Many Schlaraffen use the stopover for an Einritt — a visit to a foreign chapter — at our Sawasdeeburg.
Through ups and downs the chapter has always renewed itself quickly. Roughly every three years the venue changed; today we meet in our twelfth.
How it all began
It started with a sigh. Ritter Nomadicus, six years a Schlaraffe and arriving from the chapter Kobea Japonica in Japan, pitched his tent in Bangkok — he had been appointed chancellor of the German embassy. At his side: Ritter Gishi, an architect supervising the construction of the new embassy building.
„Life in Siam is a happy one,
in the Land of Smiles I feel at ease;
yet what I miss is that light-hearted striving,
without it my existence here feels hollow.
Despite sunshine and tropical nights a man despairs
who cannot spend an evening with friends."
In early a.U. 114 — the year 1973 in Schlaraffen reckoning — DSR Bon-Jur of the venerable Berolina joined them. Berlin spontaneously agreed to act as mother chapter for the new realm on the Menam.
On the 24th day of a.U. 114 the members adopted the designs for the coat of arms and the Willekum order. Shortly after, the pilgrim Kugler presented the young colony with a real stuffed owl bought at the Sunday market — it watches over our meetings to this day. When the first Menam castle at the President Hotel became too small, the chapter moved to the Erawan Hotel, where the 26th meeting was held before the year was out.
In a.U. 115 the colony celebrated a splendid founding festival with around 100 guests from all over the Schlaraffen world. Exactly one year later came the sanction as a full chapter: more than 100 visitors, among them 22 Erzschlaraffen.
Milestones
- a.U. 114 (1973) — Foundation of the colony on the Menam by Ritter Nomadicus and Ritter Gishi; Berolina in Berlin is the mother chapter.
- a.U. 115 (1974) — Splendid founding festival, one year later the sanction as an independent chapter.
- a.U. 119 (1978) — Fame in contest: as a small David, Castrum Siamesiae defeats the mighty Elberfeldensis at Heimbach Castle in Germany.
- a.U. 163 (2022) — Joining the league of the Quellreyche as Quellreych XIII.
Quellreych XIII — since a.U. 163
Quell is the Schlaraffen word for beer, and the members of Castrum Siamesiae are not averse to it. In a.U. 163 we joined the league of the Quellreyche.
For visiting Schlaraffen this makes a stop doubly worthwhile: we stamp the Quellreych passport — and unlike the other Quellreyche not only at dedicated Quell meetings, but at every meeting of the 383. Frequent visitors collect Quellahnen and Quelltropfen and can earn resounding titles.
So come along — three fresh Lulu from Thailand!
Castrum Siamesiae today
More than five decades after its foundation we are the only Schlaraffen chapter on the Asian continent — and therefore a port of call for travelling members from all over the world. Every visitor is warmly welcome. Anyone coming to Thailand from Germany, Austria or Switzerland will find a circle here in which language, humour and friendship are a matter of course.
Become part of our history?
Help write the next chapter. A visit without obligation is all it takes.