Oktoberfest: Microcosm of Successful Bavarian Culture

It's crazy. And it's Oktoberfest. It's also Bavaria, a state that has become accustomed to living in a cliché, and to condescending jeers from the rest of Germany, where people have a hard time explaining how the supposedly rustic Bavarians have managed to nurture a state that is superior to other German states in almost every respect.

Bavaria leads the pack when it comes to future prospects and jobs, social cohesion, security, purchasing power, income and quality of life. The Max Planck Institute and the Fraunhofer Society have strong presences in Munich. The city has top-ranked universities, orchestras and opera houses, and even children in elementary school can read and do arithmetic better than pupils of the same age in Hamburg or Lower Saxony.

Anyone mulling the reasons for so much excellence encounters questions that chip away at some of the tenets of (northern) German society. It is quite possible, even likely, that Bavaria's deep traditions and customs keep society calm as a whole, thereby unleashing forces that are needed to structure the present and future.

The slogan "laptop and lederhosen," coined by former German President Roman Herzog and promptly hijacked by the CSU, may sound humorous, but it also describes Bavaria's Janus-faced character fairly well. The state always has one leg firmly planted in the past while striding forward with the other.

When the beer tent owners kick off Oktoberfest by driving through downtown Munich in their magnificently decorated calaches, following the breweries' six-horse carriages, their procession seems to be driving directly out of the 19th century and into the 21st, toward the breakneck rollercoasters built with Siemens technology.

Cabinet ministers and city officials, the mayor and the state governor wave from the carriages. From the street, it almost seems as if the people driving by were not ordinary bar owners and professional politicians elected for limited terms in office, but born regents graciously accepting the homage of a subservient people.

This year there were 100,000 people lining the procession route. Later, at noon, they waited anxiously to see what sort of a face Munich Mayor Christian Ude would make after ceremoniously tapping the first keg and presenting Bavaria's Governor Horst Seehofer with the traditional first mug of beer. Just a week before the festival, Seehofer recaptured an absolute majority for the CSU in the Bavarian state election against Ude, who happened to be the center-left Social Democratic Party's top candidate.

Both men rose to the occasion. They praised each other and then drank beer from stone mugs, which have long been banned from the tents for safety reasons, but look better on TV.

At such moments, broadcast live on the ARD television network, another old-fashioned trait of Bavarian society becomes apparent, one that still recognizes the position of the widely respected dignitary, the person who demands unquestioned authority. Despite being political rivals, the governor and the mayor are obligated to show respect for each other, and it would be perceived as a serious faux pas if either of them were to publicly snub the other.

That sort of thing isn't appropriate in Bavaria, particularly not in villages, where residents still greet the school principal and the district administrator in the street. And it's not welcome in the capital Munich either, where an upper class authenticated by offices, honors and media presence forms a conspiratorial power clique in which one hand washes the other.

A New Energy

The church is never far away in such cultures, as exhibited by Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who celebrated his 60th birthday in one of the tents soon after the festival began. The first Sunday of Oktoberfest is also marked by the arrival of god-fearing hunters and brass players, traditionally-dressed groups and the Bavarian mountain troops, who once sent a contingency of 450 men to Castel Gandolfo for the celebration of former Pope Benedict XVI's 85th birthday, an event that turned into a festive Bavarian evening for the pontiff.

Even Bavarians find this sort of thing amusing, not to mention the entire bigoted, boozy costume extravaganza. Yet it remains a living tradition, passed from one generation to the next, successfully revitalized for centuries and not even destroyed by government exploitation in the Third Reich.

What was once nationalistic has become folksy once again, and the Oktoberfests of recent years, which have increasingly expanded into folkloristic fashion shows, mark a renaissance. It seems as if traditional Bavarian outfits, like German patriotism -- which was long taboo -- had to take a roughly 50-year break after the war, only to return with a vengeance today.

Until about 10 years ago, the typical Wiesn visitor wore jeans and perhaps a traditional cardigan known as a Janker. The only people wearing the complete Bavarian outfit were the elderly from the countryside and CSU politicians on the campaign stump. Today, three-quarters of all Oktoberfest visitors are dressed in lederhosen and dirndls. Children are dressed up in accordance with old customs, and girls wear their hair in braids, as if they had just come from working in the fields or milking a cow.

Despite the presence of Japanese tourists in Tyrolean hats and the binge-drinking visitors from New Zealand, Italy or the United States, Oktoberfest has remained a Bavarian festival. Some 70 percent of visitors are from Munich and the surrounding area. It's their festival, a quintessentially Bavarian expression of a quasi-national pride. Politically speaking, this mélange especially suits the CSU, particularly after its triumphant showing in the recent state election.

Over the decades, the party has managed to reclaim the public festivals and old customs and infuse them with symbolism. The center-left SPD may be in the majority in the Munich city council and other Bavarian city councils, but when it comes to Bavaria as a whole, the conservatives are the dominant force. As writer Peter Bichsel once wrote maliciously about the Swiss, the party has taught voters to believe the lies in their own tourism brochures -- which, objectively speaking, wasn't that difficult in Bavaria.

Change isn't the first thing that crosses a person's mind while riding a Ferris wheel on a warm fall day above the Wiesn, with a view of Munich's church towers below and, on a clear day, the majestic Alps in the distance. In fact, that person is more likely to want things to remain exactly as they are, and isn't about to believe the SPD or the Greens or anyone else claiming that Bavaria needs a restart.

The Cult of Bavaria

Perhaps the most insane Bavarian idiosyncrasy is that the state government, embroiled in embarrassing and sometimes costly scandals, wasn't punished on Election Day, but in fact is rewarded with an absolute majority. The corruption scandals and nepotism that editors at major newspapers and magazines in faraway Hamburg and Berlin are always so quick to uncover never cause much indignation in Bavaria itself. Instead, the culprits are promptly characterized as sly politicians, as if absolution were always provided immediately for political sins. "He's a real dog" is among the highest Bavarian compliments, and it's used to excuse practically any offence, from mendacity to corruption. That's not just a stereotype.

Bavaria is permeated by an Italian element, a slightly mafia-like attitude, which is perhaps why Munich likes to call itself the "northernmost city in Italy." There is always a touch of Berlusconi in everything, allowing the Bavarians to believe that too much corruption is certainly harmful in the long term, whereas a little corruption ultimately makes things more bearable than a rigid, Protestant sense of order.

Oktoberfest is the High Mass of this spirit. It may have suffered a little from its brutal marketing, and from the fact that, thanks to TV shows and the tabloid Bild, all things Bavarian have become a cult of sorts. It may also seem grotesquely distorted at times, especially when B-list celebrities and athletes drink pink champagne from mugs in the wine tents. And yet the magic of this festival seems indestructible, even after 200 years.

It also seems as though their consumption of 7.4 million liters of beer, 509,000 roast chickens, 59,000 pork knuckles, 116 oxen and 85 calves -- last year's tally -- fortifies Bavarians and Munich natives for the rest of the year.

This doesn't apply to the police officers, though, who are doing their best to keep things running smoothly. On the first Monday of Oktoberfest last week, the officers were headed toward the grassy stretch of land running along the western end of the festival grounds, between the Bavaria statue and the Schwanthalerhöhe subway station. It used to be called the Schweinehügel (Pigs' Hill), probably because during the festival it's often covered with passed-out drunks and an occasional display of uninhibited open-air sex.

The lawn also becomes the scene of crimes, when, for example, date rapists have their way with intoxicated women. The best thing, says Commissioner Obermayer, would be to stretch a giant sign over the entire hill that reads: "Human dignity is not inviolable."

His team is running diagonally up the hill after video surveillance helped them spot a thief emptying the pockets of a drunk person lying on the grass. After checking a tent, they corner a shy young man with an Ecuadorian passport in the dark between puddles of vomit. He has an unusually large number of mobile phones in his pockets, and his face turns pale when the officers surround him. Music wafts over from a nearby beer garden, where one of the many "After Wiesn" parties is beginning.

Everything is gradually shutting down on the festival grounds. Obermayer's officers make their way up to the Wiesn police station with the Ecuadorian in tow.

The first guests will be back soon, and everything will start all over again in nine hours, when the fourth day of the festival begins. Many guests will drink vodka and Jägermeister with breakfast so they can arrive at the beer tents with a decent buzz. Then they'll drink beer. And then more beer. And then they'll dive headlong into the night, into the frenzy of Bavarian conviviality.