What are Bellegeck and Môtzenbestohl?
Hi, this text contains quite a few words you probably won’t see too often. Bellegeck is one of them.
In Cologne, everyone participating in Carnival is referred to as a “Jeck”. “Geck” is the same, the G is pronounced like the English “Y” And there are several types of costumes making a typology of “Jecken” possible. “Belle” are bells (Hochdeutsch: Schellen or Glocken), and a Bellegeck/ Bellejeck is someone wearing a clown’s costume with bells attached to it.
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“Mötzenbestohl” is explained in the text. It was an old habit on the Thursday before carnival taking place on the Alter Markt in Cologne, where Girls and women used to steal each other’s headgears (mötze, Hochdeutsch Mützen = caps).
To be honest, I didn’t know these two terms although I lived in Cologne for a few years, but you can guess their meaning if you know a little the dialect of that region.