Summer Festivals
The German Festival Year
Course 1 · Chapter 6 · Summer: Schützenfest, Wine and Village Fairs
Summer in Germany is the season of the local fair. Almost every town and village has its own weekend with a marquee, a brass band, a parade and rides, and many have a festival of something specific: shooting, wine, sailing, music. Most of these are neither religious nor national, but belong to clubs and communities, and many look older than they are. This chapter covers the main types, from the shooting festival to the giant rock festival and the Pride parade, and asks which of them are medieval, which are nineteenth-century and which are only decades old. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
The Schützenfest
Origins
Shooting guilds (Schützengilden) grew up in medieval towns as citizen militias that defended the walls with crossbows and later guns (check). Over time they became social clubs, and the military role faded.
The festival
A Schützenfest lasts a weekend or longer, with a parade in uniform, a marquee with beer and music, a fair, and a shooting contest at a wooden bird (Vogelschießen). The winner becomes the Schützenkönig (shooting king) for a year (check the details).
The biggest
The Hanover Schützenfest in early summer is advertised as the largest in the world (check), and Neuss in the Rhineland has a large festival with a long tradition (check). Such "largest" claims are advertising and should be treated as claims.
- Two kinds of club. Catholic brotherhoods (Schützenbruderschaften) with church ties, and sport-shooting clubs, are different organisations with different traditions (check).
- Changes. Women were long excluded from the top role and many clubs now allow queens or female kings (check). Debates about guns, uniforms and the clubs' political links come up from time to time.
Kirmes and Volksfest
| Term (check each) | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Kirmes or Kerwa | From Kirchmesse, the mass on the anniversary of a church's dedication, which in the Middle Ages was marked by a village fair. In many regions the Kirmes is still a village's main summer weekend. |
| Volksfest | "People's festival": a large public fair with beer tents, rides and music. The Cannstatter Volksfest in Stuttgart is a well-known example, dated to 1818 under King Wilhelm I of Württemberg (check). |
| Rummel, Dult | Regional words for a funfair; the Auer Dult in Munich is a market fair with a long history (check). |
| The trade | Travelling showmen (Schausteller) move between fairs with rides and food stalls, and the trade is a family business in many cases (check). |
Wine Festivals
- Where. Mostly in the wine regions of the Rhine, Moselle, Palatinate and Franconia, where almost every wine village holds a Weinfest in late summer or autumn (check).
- Bad Dürkheim. The Wurstmarkt in the Palatinate calls itself the world's largest wine festival, with a giant wine barrel built as a restaurant, and a history it traces back to the 1400s or to 1832 (check; the dates are disputed).
- Wine queens. Villages and regions choose a wine queen, and a German Wine Queen has been chosen since 1949 (check).
- Rhine in Flames. Fireworks and illuminated ships on the Rhine at several places during the summer (check the dates and towns).
- New wine. Federweißer, partly fermented grape juice, and onion tart arrive in early autumn (see the next chapter, check).
Harbours and Sailing
| Event (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Kieler Woche, Kiel | A sailing regatta and street festival in June, dated to the 1880s and one of the largest sailing events in the world. It is held in the city's harbour on the Baltic. |
| Hafengeburtstag, Hamburg | The "port's birthday" in May, which celebrates a charter said to have been granted in 1189. Historians have shown that the charter is a later forgery, though the festival continues (check the details). |
| Hanse Sail, Rostock | A gathering of historic sailing ships in August, started after 1990 (check). |
Music Festivals and Pride
- Bayreuth Festival. Founded by the composer Richard Wagner, opened in 1876 in a theatre he designed (check). It is a place of pilgrimage for opera fans and a subject of debate over Wagner and the Nazi era (see German Music).
- Wacken Open Air. A heavy-metal festival held in the village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein since 1990, with tens of thousands of visitors (check the figures).
- Rock am Ring and Rock im Park. Large rock festivals held in parallel at two sites since the 1980s and 1990s (check the dates and the move of the Ring site).
- Love Parade. A techno street parade begun in Berlin in 1989 and later held in other cities. The 2010 event in Duisburg ended in a crowd crush that killed 21 people, and the parade was not held again (check the number and the later legal proceedings).
- Christopher Street Day. Pride marches, called CSD in Germany, are held in many cities, with Berlin's dating from 1979 (check). They are political demonstrations and parties, and in some towns they are the target of protests (check).
Exercises
Choose three summer festivals from the chapter and say for each who organises it, what it celebrates and how old it really is.
Explain how a festival can be popular and real even if its founding story is false, using the Hamburg port's birthday as the example.
Compare a German summer fair or Schützenfest with a Scottish Highland games or Common Riding: what is similar, what is different, and what is claimed about age.
Quick Reference
- Schützenfest: shooting-club festival; king chosen by shooting at a wooden bird
- Kirmes: from Kirchmesse; village fair; Volksfest is a large public fair
- Wine festivals: Bad Dürkheim Wurstmarkt, wine queens, Rhine in Flames
- Harbours: Kieler Woche; Hamburg's birthday rests on a forged charter (check)
- Music and Pride: Bayreuth 1876, Wacken, Love Parade (ended 2010), CSD