Fools storm the town halls, jerk princes take over the power in the country: It’s carnival.
February 16, 2023 is Women’s Carnival. This marks the start of the foolish highlight of this year’s carnival season: Shrove Monday, Violet Tuesday and Ash Wednesday follow.
Processions, street carnivals and ceremonial sessions are part of these days. In addition, there are always old and new carnival hits to sing and sway along with, a number of private costume parties, delicious food and drink and, above all, a lot of fun!
Read all other important information about carnival here.
How and where is carnival celebrated?
Not only in Germany, but in many countries around the world, carnival (or Fasching, Fastnacht, Fassenacht and Fastelovend) is always celebrated on the last days before Lent.
Exuberant happiness, eating and drinking are supposed to prepare the celebrating fools for the time of starvation (fasting).
The 40-day Lent period falls between Ash Wednesday and Easter. The carnival itself therefore has no fixed date, but is based on the calendar after Easter and thus after the first full moon in spring.
What is always the same: Carnival begins on a Thursday called Weiberfastnacht. From then on, there will be six days of non-stop celebrations. Shrove Monday with its big parades is the highlight. The last day of Carnival is Ash Wednesday.
On this day, after the heavy celebration, Catholics go to confession.
Carnival dates for 2023
This year the carnival season falls on the following days:
| Carnival term | Datum |
|---|---|
| Women’s Shrovetide | 02/16/2023 (Thursday) |
| Carnation Saturday / Carnival Saturday | 02/18/2023 (Saturday) |
| Shrove Monday | 20.02.2023 (Montag) |
| carnival | 02/21/2023 (Tuesday) |
| Ash Wednesday | 02/22/2023 (Wednesday) |
Carnival traditions in Germany
“Fasching” is celebrated in East Germany, Bavaria and Austria. This term also goes back to the word “Fastenschank”. The last serving of alcoholic beverages before fasting.
Legendary: Thousands of revelers celebrate Weiberfastnacht on the Alter Markt in Cologne
A special form of carnival is the Swabian-Alemannic Fastnacht in south-west Germany and parts of north-east and central Switzerland.
Unlike the Rhenish carnival, it is tied to the traditions of medieval and early modern carnival. The fools here wear “larvae” or “schemes” (masks), which are mostly made of wood, fabric, paper, clay, tin or wire. These are worn throughout life and often even inherited.
So-called carnival strongholds in Germany are Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mainz. The exuberant carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, Venice or the Mardi Gras in New Orleans are particularly well known internationally.
Swabian carnival, Ravensburg (Allgäu)
By the way: In German-speaking countries, the carnival starts on November 11 at 11:11 a.m. of the previous year. During this time, also known as the “fifth season”, up to the carnival days in spring, many carnival clubs hold their meetings, plan the parades and masks and practice pieces of music.
The History of Carnival
Even if today’s carnival is mainly based on the Catholic tradition of preparing for fasting, similar festivals have been celebrated at the beginning of spring since ancient times.
The earliest tradition is 5000 years old and comes from Mesopotamia. In Egypt, a boisterous festival was celebrated in honor of the goddess Isis.
The Greeks also held a festival: for their god Dionysus and they called it Apokries.
The Romans also celebrated foolish festivals with their Saturnalia and organized processions with ship wagons.
In the Middle Ages, church rituals were parodied at non-church Epiphany festivals and so-called fool’s masses, for example through the election of a children’s bishop.
Shrove Monday in Mainz: Emperor Barbarossa (m) is shown with two women holding up the Mainz symbols “Weck, Worscht un Woi” (small rolls, sausage and wine).
Things have always been particularly excessive in Cologne: in 1729, for example, on the Thursday before Carnival, the nuns in the Cologne monastery of St. Mauritius danced through the halls in secular disguise. Historians suspect that this was the first women’s carnival.
For a long time, craft guilds organized the carnival in most cities in the Rhineland. After the occupation by Napoleon in 1794 and the end of the powerful guilds, the bourgeoisie took over the organization of the festival.
Numerous carnival clubs were founded with their own uniforms, which from then on also made fun of the French and Prussian military.
Today in many places the town halls are stormed by female fools (“Möhnen”) during the Weiberfastnacht. They generously distribute kisses (“Bützchen”) and are symbolically handed over the key by the mayor: as a sign that they have the regiment in town for the next few days.
Helau or Alaaf? The fool’s calls at the carnival
Carnevalists and everyone who celebrates greet each other loudly with the call or end their handmade speeches with various words of greeting.
Depending on the region, there are different greetings during the carnival: the best known and most common nationwide are “Helau” (French “Hé, la haut!”, roughly: “Your, there upstairs”) and “Alaaf” (Kölsch for “all af”, means “about everything”, i.e. “Cologne about everything”).
“Alaaf” is what they say in Cologne. In Düsseldorf, on the Lower Rhine, in the Ruhr area and from Mainz and Würzburg south of “Helau”. In Braunschweig, the fools also shout “Brunswick Helau”. The people of Mainz have also adopted the “Helau” reputation from Düsseldorf.
In southern Germany, mask wearers often call out “Narri”. The audience on the side of the road replies with “Narro”. But in many places there are also calls of their own.