34 oxen and more than 50,000 Gickerl, that’s how much meat the visitors of the Straubinger Gäubodenfest ate last year. Hearty bites into chicken breasts and shoulders of ox: That’s the way it should stay at Bavaria’s second-largest folk festival, which should soon, in August, attract more than a million people. And so that it stays that way, not only in Straubing, but in general, there is now one “Home Pact” for enjoyment and joie de vivre. The farmers’ association and the butchers’ trade, the restaurant association and other organizations from the more conservative spectrum recently founded it.
The Heimatpakt, headed by Bavaria’s former beer queen Barbara Stadler, is in a way the answer to the Munich alliance “Faire Wiesn” and similar initiatives in Bavaria and beyond. The Bund Naturschutz, Öko-Bauern, Greenpeace and others are campaigning against “chicken messes” at the “Fair Wiesn” and want to ensure more meatless meals at the Munich Oktoberfest and more organic food in general. All of this also plays out in the middle of the state election campaign and is slowly developing into a culture war about food and drink, beer tents and folk festivals. Enjoy!
In 2011, Barbara Stadler was elected the second Bavarian Beer Queen of the Bavarian Brewers’ Association.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Freedom instead of coercion, personal responsibility instead of paternalism, climate protection without ideology, these are the keywords of the Homeland Pact. But who exactly are these buzzwords aimed at? Homeland pact chairwoman Stadler and her deputy Thomas Geppert find it somewhat difficult to answer this question conclusively during a long phone call to the SZ. Geppert says that under the guise of climate protection, attempts are being made to prescribe one-sided paths. “What we have to do, what we don’t do, how we have to live.”
Thomas Geppert, state manager of the hotel and restaurant association in Bavaria, fights against the renunciation of meat.
(Photo: imago)
But who wants to dictate that? When asked several times, Geppert calls the action alliance “Faire Wiesn” and speaks of folk festivals in Bavaria where there should only be vegetarian food. Finally, the Vice President of the Homeland Pact speaks of “especially a party that is open to such ideas.” I mean the green ones. Geppert is the managing director of the hotel and restaurant association in Bavaria, and he is a driving force behind the Heimatpakt. And for him, a Bavarian without white sausages and meat loaf is simply unimaginable.
In a circular sent to the members of the hotel and restaurant association on Tuesday evening this week, Geppert advertises joining the Heimatpakt, which you can join “from 50 (!) cents a month”. In this circular mail, too, Geppert opposes ideological guidelines, such as an “ordered meat renunciation”. That actually sounds just like Prime Minister and CSU boss Markus Söder when he scolds the Greens as a ban party in the beer tents. And on another occasion to vote in the meat industry. “Each of us has our favorite butcher” – and that should be preserved, says Söder.
For Geppert, the fact that the topics of the Homeland Pact also appear in the state election campaign is “rather pure coincidence”. But is that really a coincidence? In any case, the new organization and the CSU are very close in terms of personnel. bumped heads the local chapter of the CSU in Bad Aibling near Rosenheim and is a member of the Federal Executive Committee of the CDU/CSU SME and Economic Union. The Homeland Pact chairwoman Stadler is a CSU councilor in Anzing near Munich. The Bavarian farmers’ association president and Middle Franconian CSU local politician Günther Felssner also belongs to the Heimatpakt leadership. And the founding members include the Bavarian Brass Band Association with its President Peter Winter from Lower Franconia, a former CSU member of the state parliament.
Should there be quotas, should there be specifications for the folk festivals?
To dismiss the new merger as an election aid association for Söder and the CSU would probably not be enough. This is where those people come together who fear for their attitude to life or even for their very existence. This also includes the showmen at the folk festivals, who, like the innkeepers, have suffered greatly from the pandemic and often only survived with state help.
Peter Bausch, chairman of the Munich showmen and market traders, sees the Heimatpakt as a “counterbalance to the many organizations and groups that are called up from the other side”. In everything that affected the big folk festivals and especially the Oktoberfest, only organizations such as the Bund Naturschutz, eco-initiatives or animal rights groups spoke up. Now the folk festival organizers also wanted to have a say and pool their arguments, “to fight back against the things that are constantly raining down on us”.
The Heimatpakt also includes the butchers’ guild, who of course don’t like it when less meat is eaten. Home Pact Vice Geppert refers to the City of Wuerzburg, who only wanted to allow meatless food at their harbor festival this summer. Now there should be at least one regional organic bratwurst in addition to vegetarian dishes.
The Oktoberfest – hard to imagine without Wiesnhendl.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
According to the homeland pact vice and multifunctional Geppert is himself a manufacturer of an organic food, namely an organic ginger drink. But too much eco, he’s just suspicious. In an Oktoberfest tent there was once an organic pretzel that “just doesn’t taste good”. And that, according to Bavarian Radio, at the Pfaffenhofen folk festival a bulk organic beer cost 20 cents less than conventional beerthe Homeland Pact Vice simply doesn’t believe that.
Apart from such questions of price and taste, the new association of innkeepers, butchers & Co. and the organic scene is separated by a fundamental question: should there be quotas, should there be specifications for the folk festivals? The Heimatpakt apparently refuses to achieve more sustainability, environmental and climate protection in this way. The path to this goal is open, says Geppert. “We don’t get in the way.” So far, the Homeland Pact has not mentioned any concrete alternatives as to how these goals can be safely achieved.
Chairwoman Stadler made rather non-binding tones. Everyone should decide for themselves what they eat. Live and let live. Show Bavaria’s diversity. overcome ditches. Giving people a “common voice”. Geppert, Vice President of the Homeland Pact and official of the CSU, hopes that people from other parties will also become members. But that should remain a rather vain hope, especially for the Greens.
Somewhere in between are the Munich Wiesn landlords. One of their spokespersons, Christian Schottenhamel, was present at the inaugural meeting of the Heimatpakt as a representative of the Association of Bavarian Landlords. The Wiesn landlords in Munich are dealing with a green-red city government and are therefore more concerned about balance. “I said right away that I wouldn’t go along with it if the whole thing got too political,” says Schottenhamel. “As innkeepers, we can’t completely ignore social trends and insist on the opposite.”