Carnival

Well, it is carnival season again (luckily, I must say, only for two more days). My friend Catherine put a nicely concise definition of this carnival thing on her blog:

Carnival is when all the uptight, humorless, Recht und Ordnung Germans don garish costumes and face paint and exercise every long-suppressed impulse to conduct themselves like frat boys.

After having shared a train with about a hundred carnival goers on my way back from Konstanz yesterday (coincidentally, or better say unfortunately, I had a get-together with friends on the same day as peak carnival), I can totally confirm the part about the frat-boy behaviour - this includes apart from drinking way too much the singing of every profane song known to man.

In general, carnival is only important in predominantly Catholic areas. In my eyes this is because catholicism demands that people go to confession once in a while. To make sure, that there is something to confess, carnival was established. Roughly speaking, there are two types of Carnival, namely the Karneval of the Rhineland, centered around Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mainz, and the Swabian-Allemanic Fasnacht/Fasnet/Fasching (the name varies with location) of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Western Austria.

The modern Karneval in the Rhineland started in the 19th century as way to mock first the French and later Prussian occupation. Thus, this form of carnival is dominated by parades in mock uniforms with music and dance. On top of that, one staple of Rhenish carnival is the "Sitzungen" (festive sessions) of the carnival clubs, where the club members or invited guests entertain by performing dance, comedy or songs in costumes. Sounds not quite entertaining, and having suffered through countless TV broadcasts of those sessions during my childhood I can tell you, this impression is justified.

The Southern, Swabian-Allemannic carnival is a somewhat different animal. There are also parades and carnival sessions but the spirit of the costumes is different: the costumes of the organized carnival groups are inspired by local tales and therefore often depict witches, monsters and the like, or refer to local characters. In general, most figures wear wooden masks, like for example this one:

A "Hopfennarr" from Tettnang (Tettnang is about 10 km north-east from my hometown). Photo: Andreas Praefcke (Eigenes Werk (own photograph)) [GFDL oder CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

As said, there are many local variations on carnival. One very common feature in many communities in the South are "Hemdglonker" evenings (often held the Thursday before Ash Wednesday), when everyone roams the streets wearing old-fashioned sleeping garments.

Hemdglonker evening in Radolfzell at the very western end of Lake of Constance. Photo by Usarobert (own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This is especially true in Konstanz (the town where I studied). There, the whole city is filled with people in sleeping garments on Thursday night before ash Wednesday, going from pub to pub till way too late some mornings later. Furthermore, there are also "Lumpakapellen", brass bands whose sole objective seems to be to play any song as fast, loud and drunk as possible, playing in the streets the whole night. Since this provides quite a noisy background, you are only left with two options as a local: Either participate or flee downtown Konstanz. While I was living there, I usually compromised - celebrating one night, then get the hell out of the city. Since continously partying from Thursday to Ash Wednesday, i.e. for a whole week, is something that is better left to the professional partyers. And I am an amateur at best when it comes to that.