May Day

Posted by James

The First of May has been celebrated as a holiday in Germany for thousands of years. In Roman times, April 27 was celebrated in the Roman parts of Germany as Floria, the Festival of Flora the Roman goddess of Flowers. In the Germanic parts, the night from April 30 to May 1 was celebrated with bonfires as Walpurgisnacht, or the Night of the Witches. As with the night of Halloween in Anglo-Saxon lands, witches supposedly gathered on the Brocken, the highest of the peaks in the Harz Mountains in southeastern Germany. This legend may have evolved from a natural phenomenon, the Brocken Spectre, an optical illusion in which the shadow of an observer standing on the peak of the Brocken appears on a low lying cloud bank surrounded by halos of light. When Christianity spread in Europe, the First of May became the Festival of St. Walpurga, an 8th century English missionary who brought Christanity to the Franks and was an abbess. St. Walpurga's Day was celebrated throughout the Middle Ages. Traditional celebrations include erecting a maypole (see the particularly fine example from Munich above above the maypole on the Wilmersdorferstrasse pedestrian mall), dancing, and, in coastal northern Germany just north of Berlin, lighting huge bonfires on the night of April 30. In Berlin, we visited a couple May Day celebrations.

On Thursday evening, a carnival seemed to be assembling on the Wilmersdorferstrasse pedestrian zone, When Renate and I left the apartment on Friday, May 1, the carnival was in full swing:

 One important ingredient for a carnival in Germany at any time of year is a stand selling roasted almonds and gingerbread hearts, which you can see above. The roasted almonds are coated with a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. They're sold in paper funnels of various sizes. We bought a 100 gram funnel for 3 euros, and immediately experienced a sugar rush of major proportions.

Another ingredient is rides for the kids:

 Her's a pony ride that's about to begin.

 And here's a carousal already twirling.

And here's the most exciting one of all, bungee jumping for kids! The bungee is fastened onto a tall frame, and underneath is a trampoline. The kid just needs to bounce up and down on the trampoline and the bungee keeps them from bouncing off onto the concrete. So not only is it fun, but its also safe. Wish someone had thought of that when I was a kid.

May Day also has more political overtones in much of the world outside of North America, where it is celebrated as Labor Day. In the US and Canada, Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday in September, but most of the world including Germany celebrates it on May 1. The Second Socialist International selected May 1 as Labor Day to commemorate the Haymarket labor riots in Chicago, which occurred on May 4th 1886. In Germany, May Day is today a public holiday. In Berlin, May Day is traditionally "celebrated" by riots in Kreuzberg, the part of West Berlin that was the center of the communist, socialist and anarchist scene during the Cold War and for 10 years thereafter. In 2001, a riot in Kreuzberg began with the police trying to shut down a campaign to stop the Berlin census, and ended with the rioters chasing the police out of the neighborhood while residents threw garbage and furniture from the upstairs windows onto their heads. The residents celebrated with an all night party, and the next year, they decided to keep up the tradition with a more sedate festival that would attract families with kids (riots not being known for that), aligning with a general trend toward gentrification in Kreuzberg. Thus began the tradition of the Myfest in Kreuzberg (note: link is in German).

Renate and I took the S5 to the Zoo S Bahn station then the U12 to Kottbusser Tor. The subway car was packed, and when we disembarked, a slow moving crowd flowed up the stairs and out onto the street. We were greeted by an impressive police presence: scowling officers dressed in riot armor lining the street and police cars and ambulances on the street side of the pedestrian barracades. One group were even from Aachen, a small town in the Rhine Valley some distance away from Berlin, according to their shoulder patches. The scene was completely out of tune with the crowd, mostly young people, some families with kids, but all in a party mood with any kind of criminal activity the least thing on their minds. But once we were away from Kottbusser Tor, the scene became more mellow. There, the police roamed around in small groups in simple uniforms:

Above you can see a group wearing black berets with the letters "ZEI" on their backs, for "Polizei" the German word for police, behind the woman in the in the blue jacket. I guess the cops at the entrance were there to remind people about the history of the event.

The place was rockin'. Here you can see the crowd:

There were a grand total of 16 stages, one around every two blocks or so, with mostly unidentifiable but really loud music. When we were on our way out, I did note some Led Zeppelin but that was about it. In some places, people had set out speakers for an unofficial performance. Here's a band with a Texas theme where the performers seem to have painted their faces in orange Day-Glo paint (or is it just the lighting?):

There were lots of food stands:

But, strangely, no stands selling art and crafts, such as belong at a successful California street festival. Maybe the influence of the anti-capitalist philosophy in Kreuzberg keeps them away.

Politics is still a big part of the festival. Right now, refugees from the wars in the Middle East are a hot political topic in Germany:

The German left-wing party Die Linke had a whole row of booths at Marianneplatz and a stand where you could send a message to Chancellor Angelia Merkel:

Some folks also wanted to show their nostalgia for times gone by with a display of flags from former socialist countries:

Above the flags of the former German Democratic Republic (DDR in German) on the left and the former Soviet Union on the right.

Dancing was also popular, a May Day activity more in line with the traditional celebration:

Here you can see a round dance, well, maybe hard to see because of the people in front but the woman in the green jacket is holding hands with her neighbors. A drum and bagpipes accompanied them.

As we headed out toward the Moritzplatz subway station to return home, we spotted this decorated doorway at the corner of Adelbertstrasse and Waldermarstrasse:

The sign over the door says "Gallarie Zeitzone" or Timezone Gallery in English, maybe an art gallery. Despite gentrification Kreuzberg remains a center for the creative arts in Berlin, kind of like Burning Man in the US, and I expect we'll get back there now and then during our stay.