When the annual constitutional celebration was held at Munich’s Hofbräuhaus last December 1st, the most important person at the traditional event was missing for the first time. The Munich lawyer Florian Besold, the driving force behind the constitutional celebrations, had been seriously ill a few days earlier. The festival will also take place without him in the future, because Florian Besold died last week at the age of 75.
In his speech, the historian Hermann Rumschöttel praised Besold as a “powerful representative of Bavarian constitutional patriotism.” In fact, the Bavarian constitution found a passionate advocate and sponsor in Besold. In times when right-wing and left-wing forces are attacking everything that represents the constitution, he regularly said that not one millimeter should be given in.
From 1988 to 2024, Besold served as President of the Bavarian Unification, which was founded 70 years ago, and as Chairman of the Board of the Bavarian People’s Foundation. In these offices he worked in a non-partisan manner, attaching great importance to including all social groups and denominations in shaping the state and culture.
The constitutional celebrations he organizes are intended to commemorate the fact that the Bavarian Constitution was adopted by the people by free vote on December 1, 1946. Besold would have preferred to have Constitution Day declared a public holiday. “After all,” he said, “on this day we honor the crucial foundation of our state.” For him, the Bavarian Constitution was not a cradle gift of history, but rather the decisive link of the community and a treasure “that people in many countries around the world can only dream of.” But he also warned of the danger of folklorizing the Bavarian constitution.
Besold often pointed out that it was not the state parliament but the Bavarian Unification that brought a constitutional celebration into being. “Because Bavaria is worth it,” he used to conclude his speeches. In order to make the constitution more popular, he initiated, among other things, the “Youth for Bavaria” constitutional prize, as well as nationwide competitions in schools, from which, for example, a third verse of the Bavarian anthem was created by students.
Besold was involved in numerous clubs, associations and institutions, including on the scientific advisory board “places of democracy” of the Bavarian State Parliament, on the board of the Rudolph Moshammer Association Light for the Homeless eV, on the board of Munich Künstlerhaus Foundation, in the Friends of the House of Bavarian History eV, in the board of trustees of Institute for Bavarian History at the LMU Munich, on the board of trustees Munich Bach Choir, on the board of trustees of the Sudeten German Academy of Sciences and Arts and as an abuse commissioner for the Catholic Church in Swabia. In 2009 he was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit. The funeral will take place in the immediate family circle.