Over the decades, animals have repeatedly played a role at the Dachau folk festival. It even started with them: after the Thirty Years’ War, in 1652, horse races took place in Dachau for the first time, which “already had a kind of folk festival character,” the city reports. The first official Dachau folk festival was celebrated in 1887: At that time it was decided to combine the former horse race with an animal exhibition and turn it into a folk festival. The “district animal shows” of that time were exhibitions with farm animals, similar to the agricultural exhibitions at the Oktoberfest that still exist today, explains the Dachau city archivist, Andreas Bräunling.
Dachau folk festival: How it all began in 1887 – Dachau
