National Holidays

That the US community in Freiburg celebrated their 4th of July holiday this year already on the 2nd certainly had to do with the fact that a sunny Saturday afternoon is better suited than an even brighter Monday. Nevertheless, moving a festivity forward disturbs me somewhat, although it is customary in Germany to celebrate birthdays conveniently after the due date.

The ongoing "crazy hazy days of summer full of pretzels and beer" (Brezel und Bier) remind me that past German national holidays were never sunny.

As you may recall, Germany became a rather late nation to create the 2nd Reich in 1871, but without a national holiday. Eventually, on September 2, the Sedantag was accepted as the day of the decisive victory over Germany's Erbfeind, France. 

However, the people of Freiburg preferred February 18, when the fortress of Belfort eventually surrendered to the German coalition army in 1871. Belfort is nearer to Freiburg than Sedan in terms of distance and was closer to their hearts.

Philipp Scheidemann standing in a window of the Reichstag
 on November 9, 1918, proclaiming a German republic

On November 9, 1918, when Germany had lost the First World War, Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a German republic. This was a date many country fellows considered appropriate as the day on which Robert Blum, deputy of the Frankfurt National Assembly and a strong advocate of a German Republic, had died in front of a firing squad in Vienna in the aftermath of the 1848/49 revolutionary uprisings.

The Nazis, however, always regarded November 9 as the date of surrender and national shame. They attempted a Putsch in Munich on this same date in 1923 that broke down in the machinegun fire of troops loyal to the republic. However, when Hitler came to power in 1933, November 9 didn't change as a national holiday since it became the day of the martyrs who had died in Munich for the Nazi cause. 

It became a day of bad emotion and infamous in 1938 when, in the so-called Reichskristallnacht - the night from November 8 to 9 - not only the windows of Jewish shops were smashed, but most of the synagogues were burned to the ground.

With the war and the nightmare over, the Federal Republic of Germany, after designating the day of the adoption of our constitution (Grundgesetz) as the new national holiday, spontaneously switched to June 17, 1953. 

On that date, a general strike in East Germany against the communist regime - they hadn't been as lucky as we in the West with a teacher telling us how a federal state should work - was brutally crushed in the fire of Russian tanks. For years, West Germans used the date of June as a day of recreation rather than commemoration, as it offered the advantage of the summer season over November.

But November 9 remained the day of German fate when in 1989, after twenty-eight years of separation, the wall between the East and the West came down. Germany became unified again. In my opinion, and that of many others, it would have been most appropriate to switch back to November 9, a date that illustrates German history's highs and lows.

When on October 3, 1990, the first freely elected parliament of the GDR voted that East Germany shall adhere to the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kohl administration decided to make that date our national holiday. This was a wise, politically and seasonally correct decision to give the last democratic vote of the East German parliament the importance it deserves. For people, the date offers a chance to visit a chestnut-shaded beer garden on a day of the Golden October (Germany's Indian summer).

Wikipedia tells me the only country still celebrating November 9 as a national holiday is Cambodia, which has a much warmer climate than Europe.

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