They had not spoken out for a long time and tried to exert their influence behind the scenes. Now, shortly before the city council’s decision, they are making their protest public: Helmut Pfundstein and Karl-Heinz Knoll want to prevent the impending demise of the Herzkasperl tent at the Oidn Wiesn. They are two of the inventors of the concept according to which the Oide Wiesn has been operating since 2011 – with historical rides, a museum and musicians’ tent, the Tradition festival tent and, since 2017, also with the folk singers’ tent.
Pfundstein, a former CSU city councilor, is particularly clear: “Although the broad majority in the city council recognizes the cultural significance of the Herzkasperl tent, they do not dare to enforce this knowledge and point to the legal situation to which the city council is bound,” he says . The importance of the Herzkasperl tent for the Oide Wiesn is clear to a broad majority in the city council, only the economics officer Clemens Baumgärtner (CSU), who is responsible for the Wiesn, has “no sense of it whatsoever and arrogantly brushes off all relevant information.”
Karl-Heinz Knoll, the President of the Munich Festring, also makes it clear: “I hope that the Oide Wiesn will not be ruined by formal bureaucracy,” he wrote in a statement on Saturday. “An Oide Wiesn without a Herzkasperl tent is actually unimaginable. ” The festival ring was significantly involved in the development of the Oidn Wiesn. Among other things, he organizes the entrance of the Oktoberfest hosts and the traditional costume and shooting parade and runs the Tradition festival tent at the Oidn Wiesn, which is exempt from the normal admission process.
This Tuesday the city council will decide on admissions to the Oktoberfest and the Oidn Wiesn, and the Herzkasperl tent will most likely not be there. This time, in the points ranking, it completely unexpectedly falls behind a new applicant: Peter Schöniger from the Festhalle Bayernland, who is competing with a new tent called “Boandl Kramerei” and is expected to be awarded the contract, even though he was awarded significantly fewer points by the cultural department than Beppi Bachmaiers Herzkasperl tent. But he has significantly more in other categories in which the Herzkasperl tent didn’t get any.
This is particularly remarkable because the Herzkasperl tent was almost set up and would have even been present there during the Central Agricultural Festival. However, after the farmers’ association had to cancel its festival in January due to a lack of exhibitors, the Oide Wiesn was quickly re-advertised. And then a new applicant suddenly appeared in the form of Schöniger, who applied for the musicians’ tent for the first time with his “Boandl Kramerei” and passed the Herzkasperl tent.
Pfundstein and Knoll have been calling for changes to the evaluation criteria for the Oide Wiesn for years. Knoll literally: “The problem has long been that the Oide Wiesn is treated like the normal Oktoberfest with the tents.” The cultural significance, tradition, folk singers, real brass music, traditional costumes and customs as well as modern, young Bavarian folk music were more important to the fathers of the Oidn Wiesn, “than top gastronomic performance and points gained through long-term business ownership at the normal Wiesn.”