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The Prince of Bavaria complained about the effect 'cultural appropriation' has had on Oktoberfest, bemoaning the fact that the annual German festival is 'just about wearing a costume to get drunk in.' While speaking to a local radio station, Luitpold Rupprecht Heinrich said that the focus on spectacle has caused Oktoberfest to lose its way. "When I see Chinese-made folk costumes made of plastic, pseudo-costumes with tight dirndls, then the whole thing becomes a carnival," Heinrich said, per the Daily Mail. "We all talk about cultural appropriation today. Here it's happening to us Bavarians!" The great-grandson of the last Bavarian...

Archaeologists in Germany have discovered a 3,000-year-old wishing well brimming with finely crafted ceramics, jewelry and other items they think the area’s Bronze Age inhabitants lowered into the ground for ritual purposes.The well is located in Germering, a town in the Fürstenfeldbruck district of Bavaria, just west of Munich, per a statement from the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection.Since 2021, archaeologists have been excavating the area ahead of construction on a new distribution center. So far, they’ve discovered more than 70 wells dug from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages...This wishing well, however, is different from all...

Thieves have stolen a hoard of Celtic gold coins...from the museum in Manching, Bavaria... Just before the break-in, nearby internet cables were cut causing widespread outages. Employees discovered shattered glass on the museum floor and the coins missing from their display case the next morning. They were unearthed during a 1999 archaeological dig near Manching - considered to be the biggest discovery of Celtic gold in the 20th Century. According to Mr Blume, the find gave people a glimpse into the daily lives of people living in Bavaria over 2000 years ago.

In 2018, Laura Young, the owner of vintage good shop in Austin, Texas, spotted a carved marble bust priced at $34.99 in a local Goodwill. At 52 pounds, it was heavy, and it looked old. An expert examination revealed that it was, in fact, ancient. It dated back to the 1st century CE—and had once belonged to the collection of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Four years later, the ancient Roman bust, which may depict Roman commander Drusus Germanicus, will be returned to Germany’s Bavarian Administration of State-Owned Palaces, Gardens and Lakes. In a signal of the institution’s gratitude, it...

In Germany's Lower Saxony and Bavaria, citizens are now barred from publicly displaying the letter "Z," which has become a symbol used by the Russian army during the war. Anyone who displays the symbol at demonstrations or publicly showcases it on cars or buildings could now face a fine or up to three years in jail, according to the Moscow Times. "It is incomprehensible to me how this symbol 'Z' could be used in our country to condone this crime," Boris Pistorius, Lower Saxony's interior minister, said in a statement, according to the news outlet. Similarly, Bavaria's Justice Minister Georg...

St Conrad of Parzham (St Conrad de Parzham) Feast Day– April 22 St Conrad of Parzham, whose baptismal name was John, was the son of the devout and honest couple George Birndorfer and Gertrude Niedermayer. He was born on a farm near the town of Parzham in Bavaria in the year 1818. From his earliest years, St Conrad of Parzham gave indications of his future sanctity by his modesty and love of solitude. The fervor of his devotion was noticeable especially when he prayed in church, the distant location of which was no hindrance to his visiting it frequently even...

In the run-up to the expansion of a quarry near Mammendorf in [Frstenfeldbruck Bavaria Germany], finds and settlement structures come to light again and again. This year there is an enigmatic double grave. Mammendorf - A mysterious double grave from the Bronze Age has been discovered near Mammendorf in the Magdeburger... "The double grave was covered by six millstones and a stone block weighing around one ton, a menhir," said project manager and archaeologist Susanne Friederich on Wednesday. "The surface of the stone stele was provided with bowl-like depressions in three places." Anyone who was buried under this heavy stone...

Amid increasing frustration over lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic, multiple protests took place across Europe on Saturday to demand businesses reopen. In Warsaw, Poland, law enforcement used tear gas on protesters, while police made arrests at a demonstration in London's Hyde Park. Police in several German cities enforced distancing rules as thousands of people gathered to vent anger over economies in freefall and perceived losses of freedom. Police in Stuttgart said that the number of demonstrators exceeded the permitted threshold of 5,000; they directed other protesters to another open space. Police said they were enforcing a mask requirement...

Saint Corona – Patron Saint of EpidemicsShe had become nearly forgotten. Little is known about the young woman who was killed for her Christian faith, presumably in the second century A.D. But now, a pandemic is shedding light on her: St Corona. The German Catholic news agency KNA reports the Church’s martyr records put the year of her death at 177 A.D. It is not certain where she lived. A Greek account put it in Syria, while a Latin one said it was Marseilles, France, and Sicily. What is proven is that she began to be honoured starting in...

Finding the perfect fringe during these times of confinement may prove to be an expensive gamble after German police went underground to uncover two makeshift hairdressing salons on Saturday. When the officers arrived at the salons, carefully installed in the cellars of two private houses, “people were having their hair done”, local police said in a statement. Two people were waiting for a cut in Elsenfeld and another in a cellar in Momlingen, according to DPA, which claims that “the salons were professionally equipped”. Police have opened investigations for non-compliance with lockdown measures which, in Bavaria, are among the strictest...

Tree-dwelling apes in Europe strode upright around 5 million years before members of the human evolutionary family hit the ground walking in Africa. That’s the implication of fossils from a previously unknown ape that lived in what’s now Germany about 11.6 million years ago, say paleontologist Madelaine Böhme of the University of Tübingen in Germany and her colleagues. But the relation, if any, of these finds to the evolution of a two-legged stride in hominids by perhaps 6 million years ago is hazy (SN: 9/11/04). Excavations in a section of a Bavarian clay pit produced 37 fossils from the ancient...

The Islamic Republic of Iran is involved in the illicit procurement of technology for weapons of mass destruction, the German intelligence agency for the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern wrote in its May report. In the 206-page report, that was reviewed by The Jerusalem Post, the intelligence agents wrote: “The fight against the illegal proliferation of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction and the materials needed for their manufacture, as well as the corresponding delivery systems [e.g. rockets], including the necessary knowledge, in cooperation with other authorities, is also the responsibility of counterintelligence.” The intelligence report continued, “From these...

A 3,300-year-old treasure trove of gold found in northern Germany has stumped German archeologists. One theory suggests that traders transported it thousands of miles from a mine in Central Asia, but other experts are skeptical. Archeologists in Germany have an unlikely new hero: former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They have nothing but praise for the cigar-smoking veteran Social Democratic politician. Why? Because it was Schröder who, together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet)...

"He arrived in our hallowed German land. Because he can't get a lady, he helped himself to one with a knife" 14-year-old Ida Marie Muller's poem that caused a storm in Germany recently All expectations are of a sharp rebuke to Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union, in the Sunday October 14th state election in the southernmost state. The outrage over mass migration and the social consequences of it for Germany are boiling with the anti-mass immigration Alternative for Germany Party now polling as the second most popular party nationwide behind Merkel's party which is...

Voters in the southern German state of Bavaria go to the polls on Sunday in a regional election that could shake the fragile coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. The Christian Social Union (CSU) -- a conservative sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrat Union (CDU) -- has dominated Bavarian politics for almost seven decades. Apart from a three-year period in the 1950s, the party has continuously governed the state since 1949. At this election, however, the CSU could lose votes to the anti-immigration, far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party and to the left-wing, environmentalist Greens.

The first keg has been tapped and the beer is flowing as the 185th Oktoberfest gets underway in Munich. Mayor Dieter Reiter inserted the tap in the first keg on Saturday with two blows of a hammer and the cry of "O'zapft is" - "it's tapped." As tradition demands, he handed the first mug to Bavarian governor Markus Soeder, who declared that "the Oktoberfest is perhaps Bavaria's biggest and best calling card in the world." Around 6 million visitors are expected at the festival grounds in Munich before the Oktoberfest ends on Oct. 7. As in previous years, backpacks and...

In a local election on Sunday, the residents of Kaufbeuren, a small town in Bavaria, voted against providing public land for the construction of a mosque. At issue was the question of whether the city would provide the local branch of the nationally active Turkish-Islamic religious association DITIB with a 5,000 square meter (54,000 square foot) plot in an industrial area. At least 45 percent of the approximately 34,000 voters took part in the election. A minimum of a 20 percent turnout was necessary to make the vote valid. The city must now break off its negotiations with DITIB. According...

"Horst Seehofer and the CSU have preformed a cheap bit of theater. The back and forth and the cancellation of his resignation as interior minister were all staged." Alternative for Germany Party co-leader parliamentary leader Alice Weidel comments even before the 'deal' was reported in Germany Alice Weidel of the AfD Party broke into a bit of a laugh when she spoke the words above to the media in Germany today and perhaps in the end, she got the story right even before it broke late tonight. The deal between the CDU and CSU parties involves 'transit centers' for migrants...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly secured agreements with 14 European Union countries to rapidly return some asylum seekers as she seeks to end a schism in her government over migration policy. The countries included Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, which have all been harsh critics of Merkel's welcoming stance to migrants, as well as Belgium, France, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Top CSU lawmaker Markus Soeder, Bavaria's governor, on Saturday praised the EU agreement as more than his party had expected, but at the same time suggested that it left open the...

a CSU official told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Seehofer, addressing senior party colleagues in Munich on Sunday, had labeled Friday’s deal as insufficient and not meeting the conditions he had set to postpone his proposed closure of Germany’s borders. While the deliberations continued, Mr. Seehofer’s comments appeared to steer Europe’s largest country toward a full-blown government crisis. Should Ms. Merkel fire Mr. Seehofer and end their respective parties’ seven-decade alliance, she would find her coalition without a majority in parliament. Mr. Seehofer would make an announcement later Sunday, the CSU official said, declining to say whether the party...