Hallo,
"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain" (Mark Twain).
Und selbst wenn Du jetzt sagst "klar, weiß ich", denke nochmals über die Bedeutung des Sprichworts nach, bevor Du danach unten weiterliest.
Unser Team der The Tenth Man in Omeath hatte sich nämlich bereits die Mühe gemacht.
The Tenth Man
Why bankers want their umbrella back in the minute the rainfall begins
Mark Twain once said that a bankers is a fella who lends you an umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back in the minute the first raindrop falls. We assume he was talking about greedy bankers. Nevertheless, we are asking today whether there is perhaps another explanation that might make more sense.
The family history of the Irish Republican politician Gerry Adams provides an answer.
Gerry Adams, like probably all Belfast working class children, grew up in extreme poverty in the early 1950s. The family lived for years in a room, sometimes with ten people crammed together. The father, a construction worker with political prison experience, had because of latter little chance on the Belfast job market.1 The mother was therefore responsible for the family finances.
Whenever Adam's mother needed money spontaneously for feeding her family, she went to the pawnshop and handed in her husband's clothes, but he wasn't allowed to know. Therefore she always had to keep an eye on the weather so that he wouldn't notice the absence of certain clothes, like an umbrella. And Irish weather is very changeable.
Whenever the first rain clouds appeared in the sky, the mother ran into the pawnshop and quickly released father Adam's umbrella.2
So why is a banker a guy who gives you an umbrella while sunshine and wants it back in the minute the first raindrop falls?
Because the umbrella doesn't belong to him, but he himself had the umbrella only for safekeeping and lent it to another person during sunshine for capital increase. Because an umbrella lying around when the sun is shining is dead capital, whereas it's valuable asset in relation to people who want to have a cheap replacement umbrella when the sun is shining. And this means that the banker's customers were not interested in the primary use of the umbrella as rain protector at all, but paid for using it as a sunshade replacement. And thus, the umbrella takers suffer no harm at all if the umbrella giver wants the umbrella back exactly to the minute when it rains. On the contrary, the umbrella giver is doing the umbrella taker a favor when he's demanding back the thing and brings him a cheaper umbrella replacement instead – a parasol.
Because when Mother Adams sees rain clouds appears in the sky, she runs to the pawnshop and wants to release her umbrella - that is her right. So the pawnbroker says "just a second", runs out of the back door and to the customer six houses further on, from whom he wants the umbrella, exactly in the minute it starts raining.
The umbrella taker is happy to hand over the replacement parasol, while the pawnbroker, being a good banker, puts a parasol in his hand. Then he runs back to Adams' mother, who is waiting for him in the pawnshop, she gets her umbrella and is back home dry before father Adams is coming, so that he receives an already opened umbrella from his for him caring wife at the front door, while she, thanks to her attention, covers all traces that indicate that the umbrella hasn't been at home the whole time.
This keeps the pawnbroker dry and he earns double, the pawnbroker's umbrella lender stays dry thanks to the parasol he receives, and Mother Adams stays dry as well, while she probably gives away the parasol as a pawn on this occasion, which the pawnbroker passed on to the umbrella lender.
Therefore, all parties involved are winning. Even the father doesn't lose because he has no umbrella on the way back from work anyway. This is instead the main reason why he comes home earlier.
So, the whole idea makes sense, and the only amazing thing is that Mark Twain knew about the secrets of Gerry Adams' family so good.
Presumabely, because this was usual behaviour in the past - all women did it. In this case, maybe our contemporary perception of recognizing greedy bankers in Mark Twains speech is wrong.
And that would make perfect sense, because Mark Twain was known for his humorous manner and excellent observation skills on a local level: he liked to write about what he saw by himself.
Footnotes
1 Cf. Adams 1996: 12f.
2 Cf. Adams 1996: 29f.
Source
Adams, Gerry (1996): Bevor es Tag wird. Autobiographie. 1996, London. Brandon Books Dingle (Irland) / William Heinemann Publishers (London).
