New Year’s Eve: cowbells instead of rockets – Bavaria

Every child knows the windows and doors of Advent calendars. The existence of Oberstdorf New Year’s Eve doors, on the other hand, may not be that familiar to people in Bavaria. There are six of them this year in the so-called Oberstdorf Haus, the local event venue, although there are fewer surprises than information to be discovered behind them: Behind every door, visitors will find reasons not to have New Year’s Eve fireworks. The risk of injury from the firecrackers, the consequences for wildlife, all of this has long since caused Oberstdorf, one of the most visited holiday resorts in Germany, to no longer offer fireworks – and to ask locals and guests alike to switch to pasqueflowers.

“S’ Allgäu schealled” is the name of the campaign, which Allgäu GmbH, the regional organization for tourism and location management, is promoting again this year. At the turn of the year, people should ring large cowbells and small cowbells instead of shooting rockets and setting off firecrackers. For a few years now, localities and administrations have been trying to get their citizens to switch to bells, but so far they have not had any resounding success. However, the Allgäu is on trend: Nobody wants to ban firecrackers, but many cities, large and small, are again designating exclusion zones for fireworks this year or are offering alternatives, such as light and laser shows – or are at least debating about it, as in Regensburg.

As was the case last year, there will be a ban on firecrackers in the old town of Regensburg, which also applies in Stadtamhof and the Oberen and Unteren Wöhrd. The Stone Bridge will be closed. An extension of the ban to other parts of the city, as requested by an ÖDP city councilor, is not possible because there must be a “demonstrable threat to public safety”. This is what the legal advisor said.

It was actually once discussed that the city would offer a replacement event such as a light show, but according to Mayor Gertrud Maltz-Schwarzfischer (SPD), the cultural office currently has no capacity for this. Not because the employees didn’t want to work there, but because they worked so much and needed the winter time to reduce overtime. There is such a light show in the municipality of Kreuth, among others, which was declared a “mountaineering village” by the Alpine Association in 2018 for its comparatively gentle tourism and which celebrated the next New Year’s Eve with a municipal laser show instead of fireworks and is doing so again this time .

Exclusion zones like those in Regensburg now also exist in Augsburg and Nuremberg. In Lindau, the city administration announces that violations will be punished with a fine of up to 50,000 euros. In principle, rockets or firecrackers may not be set off near hospitals, children’s and retirement homes, half-timbered houses or churches. Nuremberg also has a special prohibition zone: No fireworks may be set off around the Imperial Castle, and even “carrying rockets or firecrackers is prohibited there between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m.,” according to the city. If you want to enjoy the view of the city from the so-called Freiung, the castle’s viewing platform, at midnight, you also have to leave glasses and bottles at home – a security service checks your bags.

However, a ban on firecrackers for private households, as demanded by the Bavarian Nature Conservation Association LBV, for example, is not met with much approval in the administrations of Bavarian municipalities. Instead, according to the LBV, centrally organized fireworks should be sufficient. Cities and municipalities could take care of this, the nighttime disruption of nature would then be limited to one place. “In wild animals, the violent noise triggers the escape reflex. It then takes them a very long time until they calm down again. This nighttime escape costs them valuable money Energy that they need to survive, especially on long, cold winter nights,” says LBV biologist Angelika Nelson. That’s why the Bavarian Forest National Park Administration asks visitors not to use fireworks in the national park.

They fire at Tegernsee in the summer, but no longer on New Year’s Eve

The municipalities’ strategy is more to call for people to do without and to set a good example. It’s not just locals who like to have a blast at Tegernsee and those who spend the New Year there in their second home. For a long time, the expensive hotels on the lake also felt it was their duty to offer their New Year’s Eve guests a correspondingly magnificent fireworks display. But for several years now, the communities in the valley have been foregoing all fireworks, not at all of their summer lake festivals, but certainly on New Year’s Eve, and have also called on all citizens, guests, event organizers and hotels to do so – although so far with limited success. This was initiated by the community of Kreuth. Bavaria’s very first mountaineering village, Ramsau near Berchtesgaden, has not allowed firecrackers since 2016, and the other two mountaineering villages of Schleching and Sachrang are also committed to refraining from fireworks.

In the town of Oberstdorf alone, which has a population of 10,000, 1.5 tons of waste is generated in public areas on New Year’s Eve. In Regensburg it was 7.5 tons last year. The Oberstdorf municipal services have to spend 42 staff hours and 22 machine hours to remove the garbage. In Germany, the administration warns, around 5,000 tons of fine dust are released every year through the burning of fireworks. This corresponds to 17 percent of the amount of fine dust produced by road traffic each year. The Oberstdorf market therefore considers fireworks to be a threat to the environment, a health risk and an “immense stress factor” for domestic and wild animals. For several years now, according to the tourism office, there has been a growing desire in the health resort with its healing climate to free nature, the animals and the place, which are worth protecting, from the stress and pollution of New Year’s Eve fireworks and to provide a view of the winter starry sky.

However, it is uncertain whether the relatively new custom of ringing cowbells will prevail. Some hosts in hotels and guesthouses in Oberstdorf have continued to set off fireworks for their guests in recent years, despite the community’s call for them to refrain from doing so – similar to what happened at Tegernsee. If you don’t have your own bell, you were even able to pick up a small, free Allgäu bell at the tourist information center in the Oberstdorf Haus shortly before the New Year so you could actively join in with the ringing. However, Oberstdorf no longer wants to offer this service this year. Many tourists picked up such a bell. However, less so for use at the turn of the year. More as a souvenir of the wonderful winter holiday.