The Theft of Germany's Public Holidays
There are few more glorious words in the German language than “Feiertag”. It’s a word that rolls off the tongue and spreads joy to anyone lucky enough to hear it. Why? “Feiertag” means public holiday, a bonus day of freedom to be used however you see fit. Want to stay in bed? No problem. Fancy climbing a mountain? Go ahead. Want to play video games in your pants and eat six tubes of Pringles? I wouldn’t recommend it, but whatever floats your boat. German public holidays are like a bonus Sunday, the shops are closed and in more conservative areas there are restrictions on noise levels, which means no serious housework or cleaning can be done either. Many people complain that Germany has too many rules, but few would claim that forcing people to take time off was an overreach of bureaucracy.
However, there is a catch. Unlike the UK, where public holidays are always on a Monday, Germany opted to stick to the exact dates for many of its Feiertage. Should the public holiday fall on a weekend, you lose your extra day off. If it’s on a Sunday, nothing really changes, since shops are closed anyway. If the public holiday is on a Saturday, instead of a day off, we gain a more complicated weekend, since the shops are closed on both days. Those who forget this then face trudging ignominiously to the only shops that remain open on a Feiertag, gas stations, to pick up supplies.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Last year was especially bad for public holidays. Germans actually lost four national holidays with the 1st of May, the Tag der Deutschen Einheit (3rd October), Christmas Day and Boxing Day (26th December) all falling on the weekend. Given that there are only nine national public holidays per year, that’s quite a hit, but it’s not the same for everyone. Here in Bavaria we have extra public holidays related to Catholic celebrations, so on a good year we can get 13 public holidays. On a bad year, such as 2021, we lost the four national public holidays, plus one regional holiday for good measure. Losing 5 public holidays is painful, but spare a thought for the citizens of Berlin who start with 10 and in 2021 only got 6.
The regional nature of mandatory days off means that it pays to do some research on which areas of Germany offer the best options, but it must be remembered that when I say regional holidays, I mean hyper regional holidays. An example of how regional it can get would be the August 15th celebration of Mariä Himmelfahrt which takes place in Bavaria and Saarland. Despite the fact I live in Bavaria, I have never taken the 15th August off. 1704 areas within Germany’s most southern state celebrate Mariä Himmelfahrt as a public holiday, but I happen to live within one of the 352 that don’t. If I moved 20km down the road, I would gain an extra day off. I would still have missed it in 2021 as, you guessed it, Mariä Himmelfahrt fell on a Sunday.
This all seems quite unfair, especially to those of us who come from countries where public holidays always fall on a weekday, but one of the surprising things about the theft of public holidays is how few Germans seem to care about it. There’s a general acceptance that this is just the way it is, that some years are bountiful and others lean. In some cases, Germans will actually become rather annoyed at those who complain about the loss of public holidays, to the point that I’ve been told that I don’t really understand how Germany works.
It’s unlikely that things will change without some national push to reclaim public holidays. Yet, creating a national sense of grievance is hampered by the fact the states of Germany not only have different Feiertage, but also strong state identities. Sympathy for Berlin is in short supply most of the time in Bavaria, so I doubt many shed tears for the loss of public holidays in the capital. Furthermore, Bavarians would probably prefer not to make a fuss for fear that any moves to standardise German public holidays may well lead to losing some of their more curious regional holidays too.
Photo by Michael Martinelli on Unsplash
That fear is well founded given that German governments from the states to the Bundestag are far more susceptible to the arguments of business lobbyists than anyone else. Start a national discussion on public holidays and I’m certain that in a very short space of time there will be companies lobbying the government to change the rules in favour of private interests, after all, the economic argument seems to be the main driver for taking public holidays away from workers. Businesses around Germany not only have to pay their workers for public holidays, but they also have to take the hit for a loss of productivity.
It’s not just lobbyists that argue too many public holidays would be detrimental to the economy, there are those who have little to no stake in wealth accumulation of large companies or export businesses who argue the same point. As has been pointed out here, there’s a certain amount of national pride attached to German economic success, so much so that some may well support business lobbyists interests over their own.
It’s quite galling to note that the German government could fix the situation or at least create new public holidays in order to make up for those lost because they fall on the weekend. As the debacle over the Easter lockdown in 2021 shows, the Bundestag is capable of introducing new public holidays. Even if in that instance they were poorly planned and unsuitable to the situation, it showed the potential. Perhaps a future German government will look at the theft of public holidays, but I doubt even the most liberal administration will, unless workers around the country actively demand it. Perhaps it’s time we did.
