Augsburg High Peace Festival

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Augsburg High Peace Festival has been celebrated on August 8th every year since 1650 . Originally, the Augsburg Protestants celebrated the end of their oppression during the Thirty Years' War, initiated in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia . Today the Peace Festival is a public holiday limited to the Augsburg city area , which means that Augsburg has the most public holidays in Germany . In 2018 the Peace Festival was included in the nationwide list of intangible cultural heritage by the German UNESCO Commission .

history

In the course of the Reformation , the Lutheran Confessio Augustana , proclaimed at the Diet in 1530, won a majority in Augsburg. The imperial city therefore joined the Schmalkaldic League in 1536 . Its defeat in the Schmalkaldic War , however, weakened the Protestant majority, so that Augsburg introduced an equal government and administrative system (equal rights and exact distribution of offices between Catholics and Protestants) in its city constitution of 1548 . Within the Holy Roman Empire , the city was able to consolidate this special position in 1555 with the Augsburg Imperial and Religious Peace .

However, this denominational equality was endangered in 1618 with the outbreak of the Thirty Years War . In fact, on August 8, 1629, the suppression of the Augsburg Protestants began on the basis of the Edict of Restitution by Emperor Ferdinand II. The edict, which had already been passed in March of the same year, had initially not been implemented in the city, which prompted the emperor to crack down on cracks. On August 8, the Augsburg Protestants were forbidden to practice their faith. In 1632 the city was captured by the Protestant Swedish troops. At the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, parity in Augsburg was restored with the Peace of Westphalia and Augsburg became a parity imperial city . Two years later, the Augsburg Protestants took the anniversary of the imperial intervention of 1629 as an opportunity to thank them for the preservation of their faith with the first peace festival.

As early as 1651, the custom of handing over so-called peace paintings to schoolchildren at the festival developed . The tradition begins with printed prayers that are adorned with small copperplate engravings , but they soon turned into sheets in folio format , with a copperplate engraving in the upper half and a text below that explained the content of the picture in rhyming form, often with a polemical tendency. Mostly these are scenes from the Bible , alongside motifs from Protestant church history . A series of 138 graphic sheets up to the year 1789 has been preserved, which are unique in this form.

The Augsburg "High Peace Festival" has been a public holiday in the Augsburg district since 1950 (Art. 1 Para. 2 Bavarian Public Holiday Act).

Children's Peace Festival in the Botanical Garden

The peace festival today

The Catholic Church has also officially been celebrating Peace Day since 1984. Since 1985, the city of Augsburg has awarded the Augsburg Peace Prize every three years . The winner will be announced on August 8th.

In the seventies, the tradition of the "peace image" was revived - every year an ecumenical jury selects a child image as the official image of peace. The themes of the peace images in recent years were:

  • 2012: Chaos everywhere and one with me?
  • 2013: Nobody has the right to obey!
  • 2014: home? I've never been there!
  • 2015: Nobody has any intention of building a wall.
  • 2016: courage
  • 2017: Confess. My name is human
  • 2018: utopia. What happened if...?
  • 2019: I am so free! - Am I that free?
  • 2020: rituals

When American soldiers were still stationed in the US garrison in Augsburg , a concert by German and American military bands took place every year on the evening of August 8, followed by a large fireworks display in the Rosenaustadion .

In 2005 Augsburg combined the holiday with the celebrations of the 450th anniversary of the Augsburg Imperial and Religious Peace of 1555, the first treaty that allowed different creeds to apply and treated them equally.

Peace plaque at the town hall

Since 2005, the Augsburg Round Table of Religions has been organizing the “Pax” series of events lasting several months, which deals with issues of intercultural coexistence and interreligious dialogue. Every two to three years a historical citizens' festival is celebrated from the end of July / beginning of August until the peace festival. The actual peace festival on August 8, with a variety of events and activities, forms the center and highlight of the series.

Recurring events are the "Peace Table" on Augsburg Town Hall Square and Elias-Holl-Platz , the ecumenical opening service and the peace messages of the Augsburg religious communities. In the Zoo and the neighboring Botanical Gardens a "Kids Peace Festival" will take place.

Exhibitions

  • 2015/2016: A long road to peace. Augsburg Peace Painting 1650–1789 , Grafisches Kabinett, Kunstsammlungen-Museen Augsburg.

literature

  • Ulrike Albrecht: The Augsburg Peace Painting 1651–1789. An investigation into the Evangelical Lutheran doctrine of an imperial city . Diss. Munich 1983, II, 107, 150 pp.
  • Johannes Burkhardt (Ed.): The Peace Festival. Augsburg and the development of a modern tolerance, peace and festival culture . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-05-003540-4 (Colloquia Augustana 13)
  • Claire Gantet: A very holy festival - the Augsburg Peace Festival and the fruits of secular and religious peace . In: Carl A. Hoffmann (et al., Ed.): When peace was possible - 450 years of religious peace in Augsburg . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2005, pp. 271–281. ISBN 3-7954-1748-1
  • Helmut Gier: Peace painting of the Augsburg High Peace Festival . In: Carl A. Hoffmann (et al., Ed.): When peace was possible - 450 years of religious peace in Augsburg . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2005, pp. 631–639 m. Fig. ISBN 3-7954-1748-1
  • Horst Jesse: Peace painting 1650–1789 for the High Peace Festival on August 8 in Augsburg . Ludwig, Pfaffenhofen / Ilm 1981. 364 pages with numerous illustrations. ISBN 3-7787-3179-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City of Augsburg: Augsburg Peace Festival. Program 2014