What would Franz Josef Strauss think about this neighborhood? The bust of the former Prime Minister resides in one of the best corners in the Franziskaner, one from which you can see almost everything and be seen by everyone. That’s what this evening is all about, the traditional fish meal hosted by the Reinbold family on Ash Wednesday. Strauss himself says nothing more when a black Chanel bag is placed next to him on the window sill, but his son Franz Georg does. And anyway, this evening is more about saying things than about eating, more about the neighbors than about yourself, and of course, because it’s a traditional Munich invitation, it’s about seeing and being seen in equal parts. After all, 800 selected guests are allowed to celebrate on Wednesday. Whereby it is less interesting who settles down for the tuna tartare, some of which have been the same guests for decades, but what they are talking about.
There is probably hardly a social event in Munich where guests come more punctually than to the Franziskaner. So while the obligatory fish-with-keeper picture is being taken, men and women in traditional costumes flood the rooms. Two catfish and a sturgeon, plus two sons and a father, that’s the photo that is needed. It’s not the second catfish that’s exciting, the whole fish platter weighs 85 kilos, so you might think that father Eduard Reinbold needs both sons to keep the food, but it’s more the case that son Ludwig after surviving an argument with is again socially approved by the father in the courts of the city.
Ludwig Reinbold was sentenced to a fine for buying drugs and was absent from the fish dinner last year. This evening he is co-host again and oversees the events, which resembles a middle Saturday at the Oktoberfest when the tent opens. “80 percent are regulars,” he says, and some would pass on their hard-earned table, the most coveted ones in the student hall, to their children. The generations are easy to distinguish on this evening, to put it simply, the old wear their hair on their heads, if there is any, and not on their chins, the young exactly the other way around. Everyone will eat 850 kilos of fish together, but before that, when you can still stroll from table to table, talk to as many people as possible. In the middle of the student hall there is a son who phenotypically belongs to the older generation and seems a bit sad.
The student hall in the Franziskaner on Wednesday evening.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
Franz Georg Strauss, 61, is not so concerned with the dangerous political situation. Last year, the fish dinner was about to be canceled because Putin’s war of aggression had just started. “We’ve been at war in the middle of Europe for a year now,” he says, shaking his head and listening to his sentence. His father Franz Josef once took him to visit the then Russian Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
“Shevardnadze said to my father at the time: Investing everything in armaments never worked for us.” And otherwise he has rather distressing topics in the conversation. Strauss is in the laughing and shooting party from time to time, “although cabaret was never nice to our family,” as he says with a smile, “although cabaret shouldn’t be conservative, of course.” He sees the bankruptcy of the stage that has now been filed with the eyes of a regular guest at a fish meal: “Then if necessary, a few people will have to save it financially.”
The student hall will be demolished later this year
A few people would also be there that evening, treating themselves to the catfish fillet for 39.90. Perhaps the entrepreneur Thomas Haffa, who keeps the tabloid colleagues on their toes because he is there with his girlfriend Pia, the daughter of the late former VW chairman Carl Hahn. Gloria-Sophie Burkandt, daughter of Markus Söder, joins Strauss next to the fellow prime ministers and examines the goings-on. In the student hall, waiters and those looking for a seat push past each other in desperation, and right in the middle Strauss sighs: “This will probably be the last time.” That the fish is celebrated in the student hall. Eduard Reinbold confirms that this part of the building will be demolished this year, and whether it will be rented again after reconstruction remains to be seen. Strauss Senior would certainly be difficult for it, although his bust has now almost disappeared between Chanel and a Hermes bag.