Status: 04/29/2022 1:33 p.m
The Munich Oktoberfest will take place again in 2022 after a two-year Corona break. This was announced by Munich’s Mayor Reiter. Pandemic requirements should not exist. Hosts and showmen welcomed the decision.
After a two-year break due to the corona pandemic, the Oktoberfest is taking place again this year in Munich. This was announced by Munich’s Mayor Dieter Reiter. There should therefore be no access restrictions.
“I’m looking forward to the Wiesn 2022,” said Reiter. Just a few weeks ago he said that a Oktoberfest without access restrictions was difficult to imagine. In the meantime, however, the legal framework has changed, he emphasized: “The Oktoberfest only works completely or not at all.”
On September 17th it should start again on the Theresienwiese. The festival lasts until October 3rd. The largest folk festival in the world before the pandemic attracted around six million visitors.
Host spokesman: “Cannot be put into words”
“It’s almost impossible to put it into words. It’s beautiful, really,” said Peter Inselkammer, host spokesman and host of the Armbrustschützenzelt BR. Showman spokeswoman Yvonne Heckl said: “I’m speechless, I can’t believe it, I could actually cry for joy.”
The Bavarian hotel and restaurant association DEHOGA also welcomed the decision. This “was anything but easy under the given circumstances, so it deserves respect,” said DEHOGA Bavaria President, Angela Inselkammer.
Söder: “I think we should do it”
In 2020 and 2021 the Oktoberfest was canceled due to Covid-19. In the more than 200-year history of the folk festival, there were longer breaks only in times of war.
In the meantime, the Corona requirements for folk festivals have been dropped in the Free State. Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder had made it clear that he was convinced that the Oktoberfest had to take place “at least from a legal point of view”. “I think we should do that,” he said. However, the decision as to whether and how folk festivals take place is made by the respective municipalities. So the ball was in the hands of the state capital.
Concepts were being developed as to how the Wiesn 2022 could take place and how guests could have fun as safely as possible, Reiter said last September. For a short time it was considered whether the festival could be brought forward due to the increasing number of infections in autumn. But that was quickly dismissed.
Debate on feast in wartime
Most recently, after a performance by Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the Munich City Council debated live on whether it was possible to celebrate happily in view of the war and the suffering of the people.
The Wiesn landlords replied that it would help promote international understanding when people from all over the world celebrated peacefully together. It was also argued that a refusal would play into the hands of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin because it would show his power.