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Top ten events to celebrate Germany’s holiday weekend

Whether it's a medieval reenactment, or a celebration of youth culture, groups throughout Germany will pull out the stops for events this coming 'Pfingstwochenende' holiday weekend.

Published: 5 June 2019 14:49 CEST
Updated: 10 June 2019 08:57 CEST
Top ten events to celebrate Germany's holiday weekend
Karneval der Kulturen in Berlin in 2017. Photo: DPA.

Pentecost (or Pfingsten in German) is a a major Christian holiday, and takes place on the seventh Sunday after Easter.

Even if they are not religious, however, Germans have several traditional ways of celebrating Pfingsten. In Lower Saxony, for example, Birch Trees are decorated with large wreaths (Pfingstbaumpflanzen) to mark the coming of summer, and female fertility. 
 
In southern Germany's more mountainous areas, herds of cattle are sometimes draped with flowers and plants, with the strongest ox designated to lead a procession. 
 
For most Germans, however, Pfingstenwochenende simply marks a time to relax with friends and family. It's the last national public holiday until October 3rd, or Reunification Day. 
 
We've lined up the top events taking place all around the country – from outdoor operas to cultural fairs – to enjoy it.
 

Rock am Ring Festival, Nürburgring, Nürburg, June 7th – June 9th

Nürburg in the southern state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is home to the famous former Grand Prix race course, Nürburgring, as well as the popular Rock am Ring rock music festival.

This weekend’s festival features well-known acts such as The 1975, Architects and Bastille, as well as a multitude of other rock bands. If you find yourself further south, the Rock im Park festival in Nuremberg runs simultaneously with an almost identical lineup.

Concert goers at last year's Rock am Ring festival. Photo: DPA.

Pfingstfestspiele, Baden-Baden, June 7th – June 10th

Less of a rock lover and more of an opera fan? Baden-Baden’s Pfingstfestspiele takes place at the Festspielhaus and features daily performances, with two on the Monday, from both soloists and orchestras.

Originally built as a train station, the stunning venue boasts the claim as Germany’s largest opera house with a capacity of 2,500 and the festival is considered one of the highlights of the performance year. Take advantage of the festival’s location and spend the daytime exploring the Black Forest, or relaxing in Baden-Baden’s thermal baths.

Weindorf Weinfest, Würzburg, May 29th – June 10th

Situated in the famous winegrowing Franconia region in Northern Bavaria, Würzburg’s wine festival started in May and will culminate this weekend. The so-called ‘Wine Village’ (Weindorf) is located in the middle of Würzburg’s market square, where a number of gazebos serve over 100 local wines from around 30 different winemakers. The outstanding wine selection is complemented by a variety of Franconian food.

Leipziger Stadtfest, Leipzig, June 7th – June 9th

Leipzig’s city festival hosts a range of events, including an open-air disco, a night time illumination of the city’s marketplace, and a stage at Augustusplatz with a constant rotation of performances. Nikolaikirchhof will be transformed into an Irish village, with displays of Irish dancing and Guinness on tap.

Meistertrunk Show, Rothenburg, June 7th – June 10th

Actor's in Rothenburg's 2013 Meistertrunk Festival partake in a procession through the city. Photo: DPA.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is renowned for its preserved medieval façade, and the annual festival re-enacting the plight of the town in 1631 in the light of the Thirty Years War is made only more authentic by Rothenburg’s picturesque backdrop.

The city puts on an impressive range and volume of events over the Pentecost weekend in order to commemorate the its fall following a siege and how it was then saved by its mayor at the time. According to legend, the city mayor managed to drink 3 ¼ litres of wine in one go, impressing General Tilly so much that he decided to spare the city.

The events of 1631 have been re-enacted in the city annually since 1881 and the highlight of the weekend is without a doubt the famed ‘Master Draught’ play, which is performed every evening of the festival.

Hamburg International Short Film Festival, June 4th- June 10th

This year’s International Short Film Festival in Hamburg coincides with the Pentecost weekend and offers film buffs the opportunity to view around 400 short films in international and national competitions. An element unique to the Hamburg Short Film Festival is the ‘Three Minute Quickie’ competition, whereby entrants can submit a film of no more than 3 minutes, to challenge their artistic and creative boundaries.

Rose and Light festival, Frankfurt, June 7th- June 11th

Frankfurt’s Palmengarten, one of Frankfurt’s three botanical gardens, is beautiful on any day of the year, and even more so during the weekend-long Rose and Light festival (Rosen und Lichterfest). The festival starts with the opening of the Rose exhibition on Friday the 7th, but the main event of the weekend is on the Saturday evening, when thousands of tea lights illuminate the roses, and fireworks light up the sky at the end of the evening.

The daytime also features a range of events, including those designed for children and musical performances.

Open Ohr Festival, Mainz, June 7th – June 10th

The ‘Open Ear Festival’ (Open Ohr Festival) in Mainz describes itself as an uncommercial, thematic, youth culture festival for visitors of all ages and has focused on the celebration of youth since its start date in 1975. Taking place in the city’s baroque era citadel, it features four days of music, performances, workshops, discussion forums, cabarets and craftwork.

The ‘Free Project Group’ (die Freie Projektgruppe), who organise the event, choose a controversial theme every year which is then reflected throughout the activities of the festival. This year’s theme is ‘Take Sides’ (Partei ergreifen) and is concerned with politics and increasing active participation in and conversation about democracy.

Handel Festival Halle, May 31st – June 16th

Celebrating Halle-born musical genius George Friedrich Handel, the composer who became well-known for his operas and concertos, this international music festival focuses solely on Handel's music. This year’s festival title is ‘Sensitive, heroic, sublime- Handel’s women,’ and will hone in on both the women in Handel’s life and the women figures in his operas, with leading women musicians taking to the stage to perform Handel’s music. More than 1,000 artists from around the world will partake in a programme of over 100 events in 22 different venues throughout the weekend.

Karneval der Kulturen, Berlin, June 7th – June 10th

A dance group from Berlin's 2017 carnival. Photo: DPA

Berlin’s Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures) is an explosive celebration and display of diversity which sprawls across the streets of Kreuzberg over the Pentecost weekend. Dances, parades and floats from a plethora of countries represent Berlin’s diverse city landscape. The festivities originated as a statement against the xenophobic clashes in 1996 and has now grown into an expansive festival which attracts over a million visitors annually.

The carnival starts on Friday at 4:00pm and the weekend’s highlight is generally considered to be the famous street parade which sets off from Yorckstrasse / Großbeerenstrasse at 12:30pm on Sunday.

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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