The blue dress of the recently deceased former state parliament president Barbara Stamm is now hanging in the Fastnachtsmuseum in Kitzingen and that is only logical. After all, the CSU politician was something like the queen of the Franconian carnival and since the Narr brothers started singing about the blue dress in the 1990s, jokes about clothes have reliably ignited in the carnival fireworks of the Veitshöchheim fools.
Prime Minister Markus Söder has not yet been given this honor, although he likes to stylize himself as a jester and is also regularly sung about – just not as lovingly as his party friend. Well, his costume hangs in the House of Bavarian History in Regensburg, with which he gave the Prince Regent in 2018, shortly before he became Prime Minister. It is a matter of interpretation as to what means greater honor for a Franc.
Items of clothing are always presented in exhibitions, preferably those in which prominent people have been married, celebrated or murdered. And, of course, trademarks such as Helmut Schmidt’s Elbe pilot’s cap, Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s yellow tank top and Oskar Maria Graf’s lederhosen. But there are also textiles that have received a lot of attention, even though they are Not were worn.
The Dirndl, for example, that Marga Beckstein, wife of the then Prime Minister Günther Beckstein, absolutely didn’t want to wear for the opening of the Munich Oktoberfest in 2008. As a Franconian, she didn’t want to dress up in the traditional costume of Upper Bavaria, but came in a skirt and floral blazer. A decision in which some later identified at least a partial reason for the crash that the CSU experienced in the state elections that took place shortly thereafter.
The tie that Horst Seehofer, Beckstein’s successor, left out at the 2011 state parliament summer reception also belongs in the exclusive collection. What hardly anyone would notice these days was the topic of conversation for the evening. Can he do that? Result at that time: rather not.
And then there would be the crown and ermine coat, which Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg never wore, but which many people in Bavaria would have given him without reservation for quite a while. Until Germany’s short-term chancellor king hopes disappeared again very lackluster from the political stage. Because it’s not just clothes that make the man.