Bavaria without beer is hard to imagine, and Bavarian politics even less without beer. This is especially true on Ash Wednesday, even though Lent actually begins there.
When politicians from the Free State insult each other on political Ash Wednesday in Lower Bavaria, Majesty stays out. She is above things. Maybe she’ll watch it on TV. She – this is the only Bavarian queen. Her name is Sarah, she lives in the Upper Palatinate and only has her title temporarily. Sarah is Bavarian beer queen.
Her real name is Sarah Jäger. And as befits a beer queen, she works in a brewery. She has a little idea about brewing and malting, and she can “o’ tap” in no time at all, as the tapping of the barrel is called in Bavaria. But she actually works in the marketing department. And she knows almost everything about Bavarian beer. “That was one of the prerequisites for the election,” she says in a light Upper Palatinate dialect.
She will certainly never forget her election two years ago. “It started the year before with a kind of casting,” she says. Then there was online voting, and finally she had to appear in front of a jury. She put Sarah and her fellow finalists through their paces, or rather: tested them for charm, quick-wittedness and knowledge. Actually, she should be elected for one year. “But then everything was still unclear last year because of Corona, and that’s why the people from the Bavarian Brewers’ Association asked me if I wanted to continue for another year. Well, and I said yes. But this year is really over,” she explains with a smile on your face.
Sarah Jäger’s job: advertising Bavarian beer, worldwide: from the Green Week in Berlin to the Oktoberfest in San Francisco.
The Bavarian loves his beer, mainly because it’s not a pilsner. That’s strange because it was a Bavarian who invented the Pils. That was in 1842, the brewmaster’s name was Josef Groll and he worked in Pilsen, Czech Republic. Pils is fermented at low temperatures and is tart and slightly bitter due to its higher hop content. It also contains more alcohol than the Bavarian “Helle”.
It took Pils more than 120 years to become the most popular beer in Germany. Only the throats of Bayern were denied him. There they drink light beer, which contains fewer hops, i.e. is not quite as bitter as the Pils. And it has less alcohol. So you can drink more of it.
“A small beer in Bavaria is half a liter,” explains Sarah Jäger – or “half a measure”. That’s the best way to spot tourists, says Jäger: They order “a beer,” a beer with a long A. In Bavaria, you order a beer, with a short A, and you drink it out of a beer mug. A liter of beer usually fits in there, and that’s just “a Maß”, i.e. a mass of beer. And so that you don’t get drunk from these masses so quickly, fatty meat and many side dishes are eaten: pork knuckle with potato dumplings and cabbage, for example. “Well, as a vegetarian you’re really in a bit of a fix here,” laughs Sarah Jäger.
And the Bavarian contemporary has another peculiarity: when he drinks, he drinks a lot. This is not really a bad thing in the white-blue Free State, but is due to the amount that Bavarians pour into themselves on a nice evening. It’s not about the alcohol. In Bavaria it doesn’t matter whether you drink light beer, the stronger “dark” or the really strong dark beer. “No Bavarian brewery can do without a range of non-alcoholic beers these days,” says Sarah Jäger. “Whether it’s wheat beer or light beer, everything’s alcohol-free. And when you drink it, you won’t look ugly,” on the contrary: in many beer gardens, non-alcoholic beers have now become the measure of all things.
Beer is also an integral part of Bavarian politics, political Ash Wednesday is just one example among many. It all started in 1580 in Vilshofen near Passau. On Ash Wednesday, farmers came together for the cattle and horse market for the first time. Not only was there heavy haggling, the farmers scoffed at their competitors and later also at royal Bavarian politics. This was actually forbidden, but the reviled kings are said to have turned a blind eye on this occasion and punished no one. In 1919 there was the first real political Ash Wednesday, organized by the Bavarian Farmers’ Association. There is said to have been only one topic: the Soviet Republic in Munich was scolded to the core. In 1946, the Bavarian party made Ash Wednesday a tradition, and the CSU and other parties followed suit. The celebrations take place in beer tents, and by the end of the events, which are now taking place at several locations, many politicians are said to have forgotten how to walk in a straight line.
But Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Lent, and many Bavarians take it very seriously. The day itself is a “quiet day”, which means that dance events and happy parties are forbidden in Bavaria. For Catholics, the theoretical rule is that you can only eat once a day, and meat is taboo. At least that of warm-blooded animals. Because Bavarians like to feast so much, fish is on the table that day. And Bavaria has a special tradition here: half of the carp consumed in Germany come from Bavaria, and 40 percent of trout. And because the fish want to swim, people top up on beer on Ash Wednesday.
But even during the 40-day Lent, the people of Bavaria speak loudly about the beer. The beer queen explains the reason: “We say that liquids don’t break fasting. But it has always been the case that beer was a staple food during Lent. It has a high calorie content, and also the malt content is very high. That is why people have been full from drinking the beer for a very long time.”
Beer is essential for people from Bavarian politics, and not just on political Ash Wednesday. This year, part of the election campaign in Bavaria will take place in late summer, when voters will be wrestled for votes at town and village festivals, but above all in beer tents. “The rule is: As a politician, you should already have a beer in front of you, but of course better without alcohol,” says Sarah Jäger.
But there are also politicians who are said to have a particularly positive relationship with beer. Günther Beckstein is one of them. The former Bavarian Prime Minister not only received positive reviews when he declared in May 2010 that anyone who drinks two liters of beer in the evening can easily drive a car. At least if he is a “well-established man”. Sarah Jäger sees it completely differently: “No,” she says categorically. “Who drinks alcohol, leave the car!”
Even Bavaria’s most well-known politician Franz Josef Strauss is said to have had a drink beyond his thirst. In his book “The CSU – Portrait of a Special Party”, Roman Deininger describes an event from 1980: Strauss opened a folk festival in Straubing in Lower Bavaria and then promised an interview with the “Straubinger Tagblatt”. The Prime Minister also appeared there, but with a lot of list. The journalists entertained Strauss with things that were supposed to sober him up: coffee, cake, sandwiches. Strauss looked briefly at the delicacies, then looked at the hosts and asked: “Hobt’s koa beer?”
The Bavarian beer queen has also enjoyed many a beer during her two-year reign. Actually, she should have a favorite beer for that reason alone. And did she? Yes, she says, laughing. “My favorite beer is free beer.”
