November 11th – Germany: On 11th November 2013 we were staying with German friends in Neumünster in Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost region of Germany. We had gone there to celebrate the silver wedding of the eldest daughter of the woman my wife had first met around fifty years earlier when they were at schools in Germany and England; they became pen-friends and later made visits to each other’s homes.
Neumünster is twinned with Gravesend (among other places in Germany, Poland and Turkey) and was once an important textile manufacturing town. I first went there around 1980 and shortly after exhibited photographs and short stories based on my stay there, later revised and self-published in the book ‘German Indications’. You can view a preview of this on Blurb.
I wondered how Germany would mark the armistice on 11th November 1918 at the end of the First World War but on the morning of 11th December found they were instead having a carnival. Though on the following Sunday there was a peace celebration, part of a National Day Of Mourning though I was busy and unable to take many photographs of that.
I came upon the event at the town hall by chance, seeing it from a distance as we walked into the city centre. These celebrations, common throughout much of Germany, mark the beginning of the ‘Fifth Season‘ – the carnival season which starts at 11:11 a.m. on November 11th and officially ends on Shrove Tuesday.
The tradition – like many revived in the 19th century – is not related to the First World War ending of hostilities on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, but predates this – and also includes the 11th minute. It is said to celebrate the storming of a town hall in the Rhineland by washerwomen in 1824 angry at having to work long hours while the men drank and had a good time, which is also celebrated and re-enacted in many towns and cities on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday.
The connection with the number 11 seems obscure; 11 is sometimes known as the ‘fool’s number‘ and November 11th is St Martin’s Day, traditionally when Catholics began fasting in the long lead up to Lent. Now in Germany is a day when people come together in silly costumes to let off steam, dance and drink beer and schnapps. After it Carnival goes back to sleep until it begins again in the week coming up to Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent.
After taking a few pictures I left for a long walk around Neumünster, a small city of around 80,000 people and with more than its share of interesting architecture, particularly from the late 19th and early 20th century. It became wealthy then as an important centre for textile and leather industries and was nicknamed the ‘Manchester of Holstein‘. Railways also made it an important transport hub for the area.
As always I found some quirky scenes to interest me as well as the architecture (of which there are many more pictures on My London Diary.)
And of course there was a brewery.
You can see many more pictures from our nine days in Germany in November 2013 on My London Diary, though much of our time was taken up with family events. But since I’m posting this on Armistice Day I’ll end with a photograph from the National Day of Mourning.
The text on the memorial reads:
DEN TOTEN ZUR EHR
DEN LEDENDEN ZUR
MAHNUNG
1939-1945
‘To honour the dead, to warn the living‘ this is inscribed on many memorials commemorating victims of war, fascism, and concentration camps in Germany, most famously at Dachau. Unsurprisingly the remembrance of war in Germany seemed to have none of the military pride and celebration which seems at the heart of the events in Britain, and is very much about peace rather than war.
Many more pictures from in and around Neumünster at German Holiday on My London Diary.
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