Easter and May Day

The German Festival Year

Course 1 · Chapter 5 · Easter, Walpurgis Night and May Day

Spring in Germany brings a run of festivals packed into a few weeks: Easter with its eggs, bonfires and quiet Good Friday, then Walpurgis Night on 30 April when witches are said to gather on a mountain, then 1 May with its decorated trees and trade-union marches, and Ascension Day, when groups of men pull handcarts of beer through the countryside. This chapter covers each of them and looks at how much of the "ancient" is older than the nineteenth century. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Easter

The Easter bunny

The Osterhase brings eggs to children. A German doctor, Georg Franck von Franckenau, mentioned the custom in a 1682 treatise, which is often cited as the earliest written source (check). The custom spread through Germany in the 1800s and abroad with German emigrants.

Eggs and trees

Eggs are dyed, painted and hung on branches, sometimes on a bush or tree in the garden. In the Franconian region some villages decorate wells with eggs and garlands as an Osterbrunnen (check).

Easter fires

In northern Germany especially, large bonfires, Osterfeuer, are lit on Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday evening (check the dates), and are explained as a church custom or as a spring fire. Some places also roll burning wheels down a hill (check).

  • Holy Week. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday (Karfreitag, a day of mourning) and Holy Saturday lead to Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, which is a public holiday in every state (check).
  • The Easter walk. The Osterspaziergang is a family walk in spring, and the title of a famous scene in Goethe's Faust, published in 1808 (check).
  • Good Friday rules. Good Friday is one of the "quiet days" (stille Tage), and state laws limit public dancing and some events, with details differing by state (check). Some films have been restricted on certain days, a long-running subject of argument, and several courts have been asked to rule on it (check the cases).

Walpurgis Night: 30 April

Point (check each)Note
The saintWalpurga (Walburga), an English-born abbess and missionary in Germany in the 700s, with a feast day on 25 February and a second one on 1 May, linked to the moving of her relics in the 800s (check). The night before 1 May bears her name.
The witchesFolklore says that witches gather on the night of 30 April on the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz mountains, in central Germany. The idea is recorded in the early modern period in stories of the Brocken as a place of witches (check).
GoetheThe Walpurgis Night scene in Faust (1808) made the Brocken gathering famous across Europe.
TodayHarz towns such as Thale and Schierke hold costumed festivals, bonfires, and a "Hexentanzplatz" (witches' dance place) attraction, and the event is promoted as tourism (check the history of the modern festival, which looks largely 19th and 20th century).
ElsewhereWalpurgis Night is also celebrated in Sweden and Finland with bonfires and student festivities, which shows a wider spring-fire tradition (check).
What can be said The link between Walpurga's name, the witch stories and spring bonfires is real in popular culture, but how the three came together is less clear. Some writers connect it to a pre-Christian spring festival, yet the surviving evidence mostly begins in the early modern period, and the festival that tourists see in the Harz was largely built up from the 1900s (check). A careful statement says what is documented: the saint's day, the witch folklore, the literary fame and the modern events.

The Maibaum and 1 May

  • The Maibaum. A tall tree or pole is set up in the village or town on or before 1 May, stripped of bark and hung with ribbons and signs, in Bavaria often painted blue and white with symbols of local trades (check). Villages guard it, and neighbours sometimes try to steal it as a game, with a ransom of beer (check).
  • The Rhineland variant. Young men may put a birch tree outside the house of a girl they like on the night before May Day, a custom called Liebesmaien or something similar (check).
  • Dancing into May. Tanz in den Mai parties on 30 April, together with bonfires and music, are common (check).
  • How old. May trees are recorded in the Middle Ages, but the Bavarian painted pole with guild signs and the present festival form are largely later (check).

1 May as a Labour Day

Date (check each)Event
1886US labour demonstrations for an eight-hour day, with the Haymarket events in Chicago in early May, are the root of the international 1 May.
1889The Second International, a meeting of socialist parties, calls for an annual demonstration on 1 May.
1933The Nazi government made 1 May a national holiday ("Day of National Labour") and then banned independent trade unions the next day (check the details).
After 1945The holiday continued in both German states, with trade-union rallies in the West (the DGB) and state-organised parades in the East.
Berlin, 1987 onward1 May riots in Kreuzberg became a recurring event, and the "Myfest" street festival was created in 2003 to calm the day (check the history).

Ascension Day and Whitsun

  • Ascension Day. A public holiday forty days after Easter, always on a Thursday (check). It is also called Vatertag or Herrentag ("Father's Day" or "Men's Day"), when groups of men go on outings with a handcart (Bollerwagen) of beer, a custom regularly described in the press and sometimes criticised for drunkenness (check).
  • Whitsun. Pentecost Sunday and Monday are public holidays, often used for travel and outdoor events. A large gathering of the Gothic music scene takes place in Leipzig at Whitsun, the Wave-Gotik-Treffen, held since 1992 (check).
  • Corpus Christi. A Thursday in late spring or early summer, a public holiday only in some states, with processions in Catholic regions (check).
A British comparison Britain has no fixed 1 May holiday. The "Early May bank holiday" falls on the first Monday of May and dates from 1978 (check), so it follows the weekend rather than the labour-movement date. Maypoles survive in English villages, and Edinburgh's Beltane Fire Festival on 30 April (see the previous chapter) is a modern spring-fire festival. Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are familiar to British children, and the bunny is itself an import from Germany via 19th-century migration (check).
Check the details The history of many spring customs is retold with confidence but little evidence. Rules about Good Friday and holidays differ by state and change, so check the state's current law. Treat claims about pagan origins as claims until a source from the time is named.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Make a timeline from Holy Week to Whitsun with the customs of each day, and mark which are public holidays in every state.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Sort the claims about Walpurgis Night (saint, witches, Goethe, pagan fire, Harz tourism) by how well documented each is.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Explain why 1 May is a labour day in Germany but a movable bank holiday in Britain, and what each choice shows.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Osterhase: first written mention 1682 (check); spread in the 1800s
  • Good Friday: a quiet day with state-level limits on events (check)
  • 30 April: Walpurgis Night; witches on the Brocken; Goethe's Faust
  • 1 May: Maibaum, labour day, Nazi-era holiday of 1933, Berlin's Myfest
  • Ascension Day: Vatertag with the Bollerwagen