Fluetsch, Helen

Hi! This is the source of official HCF opinions (Accept no substitutes) 

Pronouns: he/she/they

Major: Archeology

Hobbies: Scuba diving, Dungeons and Dragons (and other TTRPGs), reading, cooking, and flights of fancy

I'll be writing about the German Oktoberfest,  a harvest festival known for alcohol, partying, and excellent food.

It is a not uncommon sight for German flags and phrases to pop up around bars and breweries in September and October. They herald the arrival of the Oktoberfest, a German festival focused on beer, food, and community merriment. While the festival began in Munich, the capital of the state of Bavaria in southern Germany, it has spread across the world, being celebrated on every continent, each region bringing its own aspects to the celebration, along with its own target audiences and its own themes. Examining the Oktoberfest’s history in conjunction with its largest celebration in Munich, Germany and its second-largest celebration in Blumenau, Brazil shows the similarities and differences in the Oktoberfest’s participants, and the way they engage with the festival.

While the Oktoberfest is known as an alcohol-laden party, it actually began in honor of a wedding. The first Oktoberfest was celebrated in Munich, in October of 1810, as a part of the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach to Princess Therese Charlotte Luise Von Saxony-Hildburghausen (Bendix 1998). This celebration was of particular importance, as Bavaria only separated from the German empire five years prior, having formerly been a Catholic duchy. The wedding celebrations included horse racing and a parade of children in costumes reflecting the traditional clothes of the Bavarian state’s different districts (Wolff 2013; Bendix 1998). The five-day festival was a massive success, and coincided with the start of the brewing season, when the last of the previous year’s Märzenbier or Märzen, a bottom-fermented lager fermented from a blend of local grains with a strong taste, was drunk so the new batch could be brewed (Wolff 2013). It was also used as an opportunity to reinforce the power of the state by demonstrating a unity of culture across Bavaria, though that was temporary (Bendix 1998). The combination of these factors led to the Oktoberfest being celebrated yearly. 

In 1844, the now King Ludwig I planned to raise the prices of beers by one penny, so that it would be at the same cost as a loaf of bread (Wolff 2013). This proposal led to a beer rebellion, which ended when the king agreed to lower the price of beer to ensure it remained accessible to all citizens (Wolff 2013). This had the side effect of increasing the popularity of the Oktoberfest, which persisted even after King Ludwig I abdicated the throne, due to his affair with an Irish dancer coming to light (Desalle and Tattersall 2019). The Oktoberfest also hosted the weddings of several more kings, crown princes, and electors, reinforcing its role as a uniquely Bavarian cultural event, rather than a piece of the greater German culture (Bendix 1998). However, this importance did not spare the Oktoberfest from more changes over the years. 

One of the biggest factors to change the Oktoberfest was the change in who had the administrative power and responsibility to ensure the festival continued to be a success. Eventually, the city council of Munich took control of the Oktoberfest from the king, ensuring the preparations could be made with the needs of the city and the people in mind (Wolff 2013). After several years of the Oktoberfest experience being spoiled by rain and snow storms, and the Theresienwiese being converted to a meadow space all year rather than being used as farmland during the growing season, the city made the choice to move the start of the festival from October to September in the early 1900’s, and that the festival would last more than two weeks, based on how the dates of September interact with the days of the week (Wolff 2013). Celebrations are still hosted on the Theresienwiese, or Therese’s Meadow in Munich, but the Oktoberfest has also spread around the world, following the waves of German immigrants (Desalle and Tattersall 2019). The heart of the Oktoberfest, however, remains in Munich, Bavaria. 

As the origin of the festival, Munich remains the largest Oktoberfest in the world. Preparations for the celebration begin in July, as the beer tents, rides, and decorations take months to assemble fully (Wolff 2013). The Munich Oktoberfest now ends on October 3rd, the Day of German Unity, and begins on a Saturday at least sixteen days before (Wolff 2013). During the festival, the Theresienwiese, or Wiesn, as the locals refer to it, is split, with the west portion of the fields taken up by the beer tents, and the right side populated by other attractions, including carnival games and rides (Desalle and Tattersall 2019). The carnival rides are part of the Oide Wiesn, an area designed to show the history of the Oktoberfest by highlighting what attendees in the early 1900s would have experienced, including the low prices to ride, usually just 1.5 euros (Oktoberfest Munchen 2024). Most guests take advantage of the city’s excellent public transportation system, using the U-Bahn, a local underground railway service, the S-Bahn, an above-ground train system, or the local trams to travel to and from the festival, and spend hours on the fairgrounds, usually in the various beer tents (Wolff 2013). Local and nonlocal guests alike will attend in traditional Bavarian clothing, not unlike what might have been seen at the weddings that began the tradition (Bendix 1998). The party is made possible by the city planners, locals, and foreigners who flock to Munich every year for the celebration, making the Oktoberfest a grand multifaceted event, that welcomes millions of guests every year. 

Figure 1. "A By-the-Numbers Breakdown of Oktoberfest [Infographic]." Vinepair. Last modified September 20, 2017. https://vinepair.com/articles/oktoberfest-by-the-numbers/.

While the process of bringing about the Oktoberfest every year is a grueling one, there is a simple cry that opens the festival. “Ozapft is!”, meaning “It’s tapped” in English, is declared, as the beer then begins to flow and the festival begins (Wolff 2013). A person’s Oktoberfest experience is determined largely by their choice of beer tent, each of which can seat a minimum of several thousand people and have its own unique menu, merchandise, and most importantly, Märzenbier (Desalle and Tattersall 2019). Each tent is run by a different brewery, and there are twelve to fourteen major tents, and ten to twenty minor tents (Wolff 2013). The quantity and variety of food and drink available at the Oktoberfest should not be understated, as shown by Figure One (“A By the Numbers”). While most tents have some form of bretzel, a soft pretzel common in Bavaria, a roast chicken spiced to be eaten with that tent’s particular lager, and often large gingerbread hearts emblazoned with messages for a crush or sweetheart, each one’s menu is specially designed to show off the skill of its chefs and pair with the Märzen being served (Wolff 2013). The Hacker-Festzelt tent is reputed to have the best selection of food, with the classic Oktoberfest roasted chicken accompanied every day by suckling pig, a variety of wurst, or German sausages, and “in petto” beef (Wolff 2013). Other tents, like the Augustiner Festhalle or Hippodrome, change their menu over the course of the festival (Wolff 2013). Most tents specialize in meat items, but some non-meat items are available, depending on the specific tent (Wolff 2013). Food is one of the main factors used by tents to attract guests to pass the festival with them, helped by the fact that roughly 60 percent of Oktoberfest attendees are Bavarian and partake in the festival yearly (Desalle and Tattersall 2019). Many of the people traveling to the Munich Oktoberfest are there for the food and drink, but there is more depth to the festival’s appeal than just the sustenance and flavors on offer.

People can be drawn to joining festivals and returning in later years by a variety of factors. Research by Waldemar Cudny on the development of festivals and the factors that influence their longevity suggests that the expansion of cultural tourism has increased the draw of people to festivals like the Oktoberfest, due to the intrigue of experiencing another culture’s celebrations (2014). Increasingly, tourist preferences are leaning towards shorter and more varied trips, which makes the Oktoberfest at Munich appeal more to many of them, due to the variety of eating and drinking experiences available to them, as well as the aspects of Bavarian culture on display (Cudny 2014). Locals also refer to the feeling of the Oktoberfest as Gemütlichkeit, a German concept describing the sensation of feeling wonderful in the company of good people, a well-being only felt in tandem with others (Desalle and Tattersall 2019). The role of alcohol as a tool for maintaining social connections is well documented, including by Micheal Dietler in his chapter of Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair, titled “Alcohol as Embodied Material Culture: Anthropological Reflections on the Deep Entanglement of Humans and Alcohol”. Dietler argues that alcohol is an active force in creating social relationships, at times demonstrating a person’s membership in a group (2019). In the case of the Oktoberfest, drinking and partaking shows one to be, at least temporarily, Bavarian, participating in a key aspect of the culture. This is encouraged by many Oktoberfest traditions, like the wearing of traditional Bavarian clothing, or tracht, usually lederhosen for men and dirndl for women (Wolff 2013). In short, the draw of the Oktoberfest in Munich for many is to immerse themselves in Bavarian culture, mainly by partaking in the local food and drink with excellent local company. 

When imagining the second largest Oktoberfest, most people would imagine it would be elsewhere in Germany, or perhaps in a former German colony. Instead, it can be found in Blumenau, a city in southern Brazil (Tontini, 2018). Founded by German immigrants as part of a program run by the Brazilian government between 1818 and 1830 to increase the percentage of their land owned by white farmers, Blumenau has a lot of pride in its Germanic heritage and culture (Seyferth, 1998). The region where the city is located is referred to as the European Valley, and is one of the largest tourist destinations in the state of Santa Catarina, due to the clear European influences in the layouts of the region’s towns and cities (Tontini, 2018). Blumenau began celebrating the Oktoberfest in 1984, after a pair of devastating floods that year and the year prior (Tontini, 2018). The hope was that introducing the Oktoberfest as a city-wide event would preserve the town’s Bavarian cultural heritage and improve the economy, helping to raise money for the rebuilding efforts (Tontini, 2018). The festival was a great success, and has drawn over 20 million people in 41 years of celebrations (Tontini, 2018). Despite a brief halt to the celebrations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the city still rallies every September for the festival.

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Figure 2. "Blumenau Oktoberfest." Oktoberfest Blumenau 2023. Last modified , 2024. https://oktoberfestblumenau.com.br/home-oktoberfest/.

While the German heritage of Blumenau is clear in the design and layout of the city, the origin of its people can be most clearly seen in September. The modern iteration of the Blumenau Oktoberfest lasts 19 days, and includes a pageant, dozens of types of beers on tap, and an extensive array of foods, combining the German dishes that one might find at the Oktoberfest in Munich, with local Brazilian tastes (“Oktoberfest Blumenau”, 2024). Many staple German foods are unchanged, like apple strudel, bretzel, and bratwurst, while others are combined with Brazilian tastes, like spätzle, a cheesy potato dish similar to mac and cheese, being combined with local sausages, or cuca, a Brazilian take on German cake techniques topped with Dulce de Leche (“Oktoberfest Blumenau”, 2024). The food is accompanied by local lagers, called cervejarias or holzbiers, and imported lagers from Germany and England, though none of them are the traditional Märzenbier from Munich, which is rarely exported (“Oktoberfest Blumenau”, 2024; Wolff 2013). Many are brewed to resemble Märzenbier, so are lagured and brewed for a higher alcohol content, and served in steins (“Oktoberfest Blumenau”, 2024). Research by Gérson Tontini and associates suggests that novelties like this are a major draw for visitors to the Blumenau Oktoberfest, followed by the variety of typical food and the local community interactions with visitors (2018). These factors indicate that Blumenau’s Oktoberfest draws tourists especially for the experience of a different culture’s holiday, leading the focus of the Blumenau Oktoberfest to be on the themes of the Munich celebration, even as it makes changes to create its own distinct festival.

The Oktoberfest Blumenau may have similarities to Munich’s grand celebration, but there are a few key differences. The percentage of attendees at Blumenau’s Oktoberfest were from the state of Santa Catarina, where Blumenau is, was 84 percent, much higher than the percentage at the Munich Oktoberfest (Tontini 2018). This makes it clear that, unlike Munich, the Blumenau Oktoberfest is not designed to cater as much to tourists, it is instead meant to support the economics of the city and reinforce the culture to its local population. Sponsorships, like many that support the Blumenau Oktoberfest, allow larger businesses in the region to gain free publicity while connecting themselves to important parts of the regional culture (Cudny 2014). The emphasis on local community interaction and novelties differing from the normal day-to-day experiences available in Blumenau shows a lot of this emphasis (Tontini 2018). The food is a major part of this novelty, being a major factor in the graphics used to advertise the festival and the pictures featured on the website (see Figure 2). The associations between food and national pride are well known to exist, especially in colonized areas, like Brazil (Colas 2018). In the case of Blumenau, the emphasis on Bavarian food demonstrates the desire to think of the community as German, as well as Brazilian. This attachment to Bavarian culture mirrors that of Munich, but the added distance between Brazilian Germans and Germany means they work to reinforce their connections to their distant homes. 

The Oktoberfest in Munich and the Oktoberfest in Blumenau share a love for the old Bavarian culture, but the lenses by which they view Bavarian culture are very different. Blumenau is both geographically and culturally distant from Bavaria, and has a more romantic view of the German heritage that informs much of the town’s history. As a result, their Oktoberfest celebrates the Bavaria that was, with food and drink designed in many cases to bring this past closer to their present. Munich experiences the Oktoberfest as a celebration of the past and present in tandem, mixing old dress and traditional food with amusement park rides, modern music, and other technological advancements. Both celebrations have food designed to show their enthusiasm for Bavarian history, but both also cater to local tastes and traditions. It is especially interesting to note that the people of Munich and Blumenau both choose to return to this celebration year after year, showing that despite differences in their adaptations of the celebration, the enjoyment of togetherness and celebration accompanied by good food and a nice drink have remained a part of their Bavarian culture. 

References

Bendix, Regina. "Moral Integrity in Costumed Identity: Negotiating "National Costume" in 19th-Century Bavaria." The Journal of American Folklore 111, no. 440 (1998): 133-45. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2307/541938.

Colas, Alejandro, Jason Edwards, Jane Levi, and Sami Zubaida. Food, Politics, and Society: Social Theory and the Modern Food System. N.p.: University of California Press, 2018.

Cudny, Waldemar. "The Phenomenon of Festivals: Their Origins, Evolution, and Classifications." Anthropos (2014): 640-56. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43861801.

Desalle, Rob, and Ian Tattersall. A Natural History of Beer. N.p.: Yale University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbnm41m.7.

Dietler, Michael. Alcohol as Embodied Material Culture: Anthropological Reflections on the Deep Entanglement of Humans and Alcohol. N.p.: Oxford University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198842460.003.0008.

Oktoberfest Blumenau. Last modified, 2024. https://oktoberfestblumenau.com.br/a-festa/.

Oktoberfest Munchen. Last modified, 2024. Accessed March 3, 2024. https://www.oktoberfest.de/en.

Seyferth, Giralda. "German Immigration and the Formation of German-Brazilian Ethnicity." Anthropological Journal on European Cultures 7, no. 2 (1998): 131-54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43234842.

Tontini, Gérson, Leandro L. Branco, Lígia M. Brandt, Luciana Ronchi, and Paulo R. Vieira de Oliveira. "Nonlinear antecedents of visitors’ satisfaction with the oktoberfest in Brazil." Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 31, no. 16 (August 12, 2018). https://doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2018.1509696.

Wolff, Moses. Meet Me in Munich: A Beer Lover's Guide to Oktoberfest. N.p.: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013.