When the Maibaum Falls

For almost 90 years, my home town spent the annual May Day public holiday transporting and carefully setting up the same maypole. Three generations essentially watched an identical process play out, as Lederhosen-clad men hoisted the roughly 38 meter pole into its mooring, secured it in place, and then celebrated the achievement with copious amounts of beer and, more often than not, Wurst. Although the traditional Maibaum has a finite life cycle, ours could easily have lasted decades longer, its sturdiness never in question, even when it gave the occasional disconcerting wobble when the wind caught it. Sadly, all good things do eventually come to an end, and it was with no little sadness that in 2021, locals awoke to find the pole lying on the road, in two very broken pieces.

Those periodic wind-based wobbles had actually been a warning, rather than a natural part of erecting what amounts to a very large stick in the ground. A vicious storm, one of many faced by our Maibaum over the years, had finally taken its toll on the pole and it had come loose and collapsed in the middle of night. Luckily no one had been physically hurt, but everyone in the town felt some small amount of sadness that a bit of local tradition was gone. Some assembled to say one final goodbye to the old pole after it was cleared from the road and placed in the car park near the Rathaus by the volunteer fire brigade. It may not have been the most honourable end for such a venerable object, but it was as good a place as any for it to be picked up and disposed of.

It may seem a little ridiculous that people would feel sad about the passing of a glorified inanimate object, but that’s the thing about traditions: they don’t always make sense from the outside. I must admit, when I first moved to Bavaria, I wasn’t prepared for the amount of traditions I would have to acknowledge, even if I wasn’t an active participant. There’s religious processions, where supposed saintly relics are still paraded through the streets, Fasching festivals with costumes and masks made decades before, and particular seasonal recipes, usually involving Spargel, that have been made by families for what could well be centuries. “The past is a foreign land” said L.P. Hartley, but in the south of Germany, that foreign land is a frequent holiday destination.

Some critics claim Bavarians are stuck in a bygone era, and given the weight tradition holds here, it would be hard to argue otherwise. Everytime I’m told I need to send a fax, I have the same thought, but this isn’t the whole story. Celebrating tradition is a way of holding communities together, connecting the old with the new, and in Bavaria this is usually done by also constructing a beer tent, just to help oil the wheels of historical convention. These celebrations aren’t just hyper-local though, they cross municipal lines to connect villages, towns, and cities together in celebrating seasons, holidays, or the building of the local church.

The best example of this was last year, when almost all towns and villages across the state had 170 year anniversaries for their local volunteer fire brigades. You may wonder why they all seemed to have the same birthday, but most of the fire services were set up in Bavaria at roughly the same point in time during the 19th century. This meant that through the summer of 2023, you could travel far and wide across Bavaria and see roughly the same celebration. In some cases, as we discovered when we took our own little tour of the local area, the same people were often in attendance, as fire brigades from all around came to help their compatriots enjoy several commemorative pints of local heritage.

With tradition being so central to life in Bavaria, it was clear that our town would eventually have to find a replacement for our now wood-chipped Maibaum. Initially, discussion focused on who could actually construct a new pole. It turns out that in order to make such a large object, you need a very particular set of skills, as well as tools, and only a few companies were capable of delivering a fresh maypole by the time May Day 2024 rolled around. As is typical in Germany, the debate went on for months, until it was eventually decided that given the untimely demise of the previous Maibaum, a new one should be more sturdy and less prone to shattering on impact with the ground.

A proposal was finally made and agreed on. The next town pole would not be made of wood, but would instead be steel with a wood effect paint job over the top. When I heard the decision, I was a little shocked. After all, this was Bavaria, supposedly the land of tradition where nothing ever changes. Apparently, this wasn’t the case as everyone I spoke to about it, and the various comments on social media and in the local paper, seemed broadly supportive of this new take on an old idea. After all, it was still a Maibaum, just slightly more modern than previous versions.

I was there to see Pole 2.0 make its short journey through the town this year, flanked on either side by grizzled men in ancient Lederhosen and accompanied by a rather jaunty brass band. Despite the newness of the Maibaum, the traditions remained the same, except for the new addition of a large crane to proceedings, which was needed to hoist the new pole into its equally new mooring. It was perhaps a little less exciting than seeing a team of people heave the Maibaum into place by hand, but it certainly sped up the process, and surely made the whole event a lot safer than it ever has been. Still, no one complained, they just adapted - after all, there was still beer on offer.

Proofreader: @ScandiTina

Image Credit
Photo by Flo Lorenz on Unsplash
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