Elogues of this type only develop their effect when the author is named. Because it makes a big difference whether they come from Markus Söder, Georg Gänswein or someone else entirely.
The explosiveness of a sentence results from the context. If the statement “Franconia is a divine country” is made, for example during a city tour in Bamberg, as happened recently, it has a certain effect in all its immodesty, but is quite likely to meet with approval. If the Green Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck or FDP leader Christian Lindner were to present something like this, knowing that this region has not only produced the best beer and countless types of sausage, but also Markus Söder, the nuisance of the traffic light coalition, the reactions would probably be a little more surprised.
Praising Franconia no longer surprises anyone when it comes to the already mentioned Bavarian Prime Minister, permanently verbalized love of home is part of the core of the brand. “If you want to feel at home and comfortable (…), you have to go to Franconia,” is a statement that could be attributed to Söder at any time.
But if Georg Gänswein, the longtime private secretary of the late Pope Benedict, was sitting in front of a Schäuferla and exclaimed: “At this moment I am so sluggish that I think I am the Archbishop of Bamberg”, this could trigger a certain unrest, since the chair of the Oberhirten is currently vacant. However, Gänswein will probably not become nuncio in Costa Rica, as some had hoped and even more feared, according to the latest church rumours.
So the job in Franconia is still available and anyone who will get it can be happy because: “The whole area is a festival day, and so everyone must be in a festive and celebratory mood.” One or the other recognized this long before Markus Söder, in this case the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who traveled through Franconia in 1827 at the age of just 18. He even went on a trip to Banz Monastery – also long before the CSU – and played the organ there.
He recorded his impressions in letters to his family, from which the Bamberg author Andreas Reuss may now have quoted publicly for the first time. Without contradiction, of course. A few years later, Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny also joined in the eulogies and praised Bamberg and Erlangen in her diary, “which seems to be a lovely little town”. You don’t hear that very often there – at least from visitors from Bamberg – these days.