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Featured Destination: Kaufbeuren, Germany |
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| Text and photos
by Matias Tugores |
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Each year, early in summer, over 1,600 children celebrate, in old
Reichstadt (imperial city) of Kaufbeuren, a giant historical pageant,
theTanzelfest. It is Bavaria's (and probably Germany's) oldest and
grandest children's celebration. Though some ascribe its origin to
an ancient school feast combined with elements of guild festivities,
still other historians believe it goes back to the time of Maximilian
I, of the 15th century, who was sofond of Kaufbeuren that he visited
it no less than 14 times. It is one of his sojourns there, namely
that of May 25, 1497, which gives pretext to this pageantry. Under
the slogan Children Dramatize the History of their Town, the pageant
recounts ten centuries of its past, from its foundation, under the
Carolingians, to the 19th century.
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This 41,000 strong town lies in south-western Bavaria in the heart of western
Allgau, not too far from the sumptuous castles de Hohenschwange, where king
Ludwig II spent his early years, and Neuschwanstein, built in such a gorgeous
setting that the Americans call it " the one million dollar view."
It is girdled by the wooden hills of the alpine glacis and nestled in the
heart of the Wartach valley. Kaufbeuren became a free imperial city in 1286,
and it was the start of an ear of intense cultural and artistic activity
and prosperity which reached its acme during the Renaissance. |
| Of these days of affluence, and of the two following centuries,
there remain in Kaufbeuren the Funfknopfturm (five-turreted
tower), which was to become its symbol, fortifications and walls
made up of three gates and nine towers made higher and fitted
with a covered way in 1420, and a number of magnificent churches
and patrician homes. The festival, two days long, generally
over Saturday and Sunday, more than 1,600 children wearing historical
costumes, 28 floats, 120horses accompanied by brass bands, unfold
the history of their town through the centuries. |
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| At the head of the procession, 42 children
hold the heraldic flags of the Swabian districts and towns, with the
slogan Kaufbeuren greets Swabia, while standard-bearers perpetuate
the tradition of the Fachnenschwingen and perform figures with flags
in front of the patrician houses. Page girls carrying models of the
city's most striking buildings and emblematizing the "Golden
Kaufbeuren" come last.
History goes that in the year 824, under the reign of king Lothaire,
a Frank nobleman by the name of Guido Glado a Villa, bought the
village of Buron from which was to develop the town of Kaufbeuren.
The life of its founding father and the beginnings of the city,
from the 9th to the 12th centuries, are represented in the first
group of the parade.
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| Illustrious characters
were, all along its history, related with Kaufbeuren, but the fate
of some of them was in no way enviable. Such was the case of the adolescent
king Konradin, king of Jerusalem and of the Two-Sicilies. He is seen
on horseback, surrounded by Swabian knights, their shield-bearers
and servants, and young girls carrying baskets of flowers. This last
descendant of the Hohenstaufen family stayed in Kaufbeuren on July
12, 1264, on his way to Italy to try and re-conquer the kingdom of
Naples. He was defeated by Charles I of Anjou, condemned to death,
and beheaded at the age of 14.
The central figure of the Tanzelfest is unquestionably the emperor
Maximilan I, dubbed "the last knight." During his stay
of May 25, 1497, he decorated the young champion shot of an archery
contest and presented him with trousers and a gold chain. This episode
is dramatized, on the second day of the fest, by 350 children wearing
historical costumes in front of the decorated town hall. Accompanied
by the empress Marie-Blanche in her horse drawn carriage, and a
retinue of princes, dukes and other noblemen, the emperor is received
with great pomp and ceremony by the load mayor and his council. |
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In the year 1286, king Rudolf of Habsburg granted Kaufbeuren the
privilege to hold a market. The group titled Weekly Market of Kaufbeuren
at Around the Year 1300 is one of the Tanzelfest's most important
ones and shows boys and girls pedding their wares. Renaissance was
Kaufbeuren's flourishing time. Its guilds, which played a great part
in the town's prosperity, take up a great deal of room in the flowing
parade. On floats, weavers, brewers, smiths and tanners, bakers and
butchers, display their goods. |
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| In the middle of the 16th century, king Karl
V gave Kaufbeuren the right of coinage, and the town minted its own silver
and gold money. The mint master Hans Apfelfelder and his companions remind
the crowds the days of plenty when Kaufbeuren rubbed shoulders with the
great cities of the Empire. The sound of bugles announces the group Hunting
in the 16th century represented by knights and ladies on horseback, and
by falconers, hunters, beaters and a pack of hounds. Further on, imperial
mercenaries, the general von Horn and a company of Swedish mercenaries and
riflemen, call to mind the distressing times of the Thirty Year's War. |
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| Political and religious persecutions entailed sufferings
and hardships too; that's what the group Salzurger Exulanten (immigrants
from Salzburg) intends to demonstrate. It symbolizes the fate of the
protestant refugees who were driven off their land because of their
beliefs but received with open arms by the hospitable Kaufbeuren.
The Rococo period (second half of the 18th century) is represented
by a group of rustics and a middle class bridal procession. This
group of the 19th century is lead by the over 100-year-old Tanzelfest's
boy orchestra, whose reputation extends far beyond Bavaria. On the
evening of both fest days it performs in front of the town hall,
Kaufbeurer Zapfenstreich (Kaufneuren's curfew), accompanied by a
torch light procession. |
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| The militia, with its officers,
coaches, post carriage with the youngest participants, and Buronia, the
tutelary guardian of the town, who is seen gathering children at the foot
of a mode of the Funfknopfturm, form the tail of the procession. The staggering
variety of costumes convert the Tanzelfest into a riot of colors-much to
the delight of the crowds of aficionados who throng the streets of Kaufbeuren. |
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| Matias Tugores
is a Spanish-born freelance photo-journalist based in Barcelona. He contributes
travel and travel-related stories to various publications throughout the
world. |
