Kirchweih Season is Here

One of the reasons I love living in Franconia is the  Kirchweih festival.  We were first introduced to the concept when staying in a holiday apartment at the gorgeous Castle Egloffstein (left). Our hosts invited us to the Egloffstein Kirchweih which they defined as ‘the birthday of our church.’ We were pretty ignorant about Germany in those days and we thought this was a custom specific to that village. Now we know that almost every community celebrates the Kirchweih and all the festivals are the same, and all delightful.First of all, of course, there is beer; and there is sausage; and there is a brass band. The locals wear their traditional costume which, in this part of Franconia, is very attractive. The men wear embroidered leather knee-breeches instead of   leiderhosen, and rather elegant jackets. The women wear vaguely eighteenth century kirtles, heavily embroidered, in bright rich fabrics. The crowd is always good-humoured, welcoming, and charming however much beer is consumed.

The big event of the Kirchweih is the erection of the Baum.  In our part of the world this is always done by the local volunteer firefighters.  The Baum is a fir tree, about 30 metres tall. The lower branches are lopped off leaving a bush of branches at the top. These are decorated with ribbons and wreaths according to the tradition of the village. A large hole has already been prepared and  everyone gathers round with a stein of kellerbier to watch the base of the tree being manhandled into it. However, they have to do it the traditional way with long forked poles.  It looks incredibly dangerous and I try to keep well out of the way in case it slips. But it never does.  It used to be traditional for the village boys to shin up the tree and grab prizes from the top of the baum but it appears that even here Health and Safety hold sway and I believe it’s no longer allowed.

The history of the Baum goes back much further than Kirchweih of course. The early Christian church, as we know, was very canny about adapting existing customs and festivals to keep the new converts sweet. The raising of the Baum, like the Maypole in England is a very obvious fertility rite and has been practiced for thousands of years. But I can’t help thinking that if you had wandered over to some early Frank, swilling mead and watching the tree go up and you had said to him ‘You do know this is a fertility rite, right?’, he would probably have said ‘Don’t be daft, it’s just a bloody good excuse for a knees up!’  And it still is.