According to custom, its summit is where Germany’s real witches meet in order to consort with the devil, dance round fires and do unspeakable things with goats. Nördlingen (German: [ˈnœʁt.lɪŋ.ən] ()) is a town in the Donau-Ries district, in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, with a population of approximately 19,190.It was built in a 15 million year old & 25 km diameter wide impact crater—the Nördlinger Ries—of a meteorite which hit with an estimated speed of 70,000 km/h, and left the area riddled with an estimated 72,000 tons of micro-diamonds. There are devils roller-skating, line dancing, playing bagpipes and throwing sweets to the crowd. Go not in or you come not out!”’. From a lookout point on the castle wall, I can see the rounded top of the Brocken, the highest mountain in the Harz range, eight miles to the west. The festival of Walpurgis Night is named after the English Christian missionary Saint Walpurga (c. 710–777/9). Now, the area has one of the largest steam-railway networks in the world, carrying a million passengers a year over its 87 miles of track. It means: “Attention! Reinhold K., aged 33, is accused of dropping an 18-year-old woman into a cauldron of boiling water during a carnival in Eppingen, southwest Germany while dressed as a witch. The 18-year-old was badly scalded on … To retrace this itinerary through the Harz Mountains, you’ll need to hire a car (from $237 ~ €220 ~ £190 per week; avis.co.uk). Walpurgisnacht (“Walpurgis Night”) is a festival based on pagan rituals and celebrations. The biggest celebrations are hosted in the small hilly town of Thale at the Hexentanzplatz (“witches’ dance floor”). Further down the valley, anemones were carpeting the forest floor and in the hamlet of Königsruhe, a Hansel and Gretel cottage was offering food and lodging. The Brocken, also sometimes referred to as the Blocksberg, is the highest peak of the Harz mountain range and also the highest peak of Northern Germany. Even if you've experienced Carnival in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, there's still a lot to learn about how the German-speaking countries do it. A 20-minute drive from Wernigerode, along winding mountain roads, sits the tiny village of Schierke. Towards the end of every April the quiet, half-timbered towns of Saxony-Anhalt, in eastern Germany, are suddenly overrun. ‘It’s a mountain forest. Walpurgis Night is celebrated throughout almost all of the Harz region, adding up to around 20 festival locations. The end of the Witch’s year.. Rico comes from Hamburg and works in logistics. After completing The Witchmother's Bargain, the Witchmother's Whistlememento is gained. Many in the crowd have gone to enormous effort to dress up, wearing robes, elaborate make-up, costumes and tinted contact lenses. From shop lostmartyn. At nightfall, as masked revellers crowd around a bonfire, Michael explains that, for him, Walpurgis is a celebration of victory over winter, but that it also has an added significance for his generation. OK, so we’re a bit early, but to prepare for the most gruselig (creepy) time of year, I’ll be bringing you a few posts related to some of the spookier aspects of Germany & German history. ‘She likes to make potions,’ says Rico. Wacken Open Air is the mecca of heavy metal and hard rock festivals, taking place in Wacken, Germany. People dress up in outrageous witch and devil costumes and flock the streets, armed with broomsticks. Rows of stalls mushroom up, selling arts, crafts, food and a lot of other tempting stuff. On our way back down, the locomotive stops at Schierke. If you're in Germany during Fasching, you'll know. October Witch Festival in New York. In fact, his name is Michael Gebbert. In a strange case of life imitating art, the workers who dug the foundations unearthed an ancient, possibly Bronze Age, stone sacrificial altar. The festival welcomes the arrival of warmer days and features huge bonfires, a tradition that began as a way to ward off witches … It is derived from local myths and folklore, which have it that witches used to whisk on their broomsticks to the highest peak of the Harz Mountains (Brocken) on this night, and to other locations of pagan sacrifices, to have a get-together with other witches and devils to celebrate the retreat of winter and the arrival of spring. They declare the building occupied, and invite people in for schnapps and sandwiches. Leading the parade is a man in a sinister leather mask, who tells me he’s the chief devil and can only speak Devilish. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Up on Hexentanzplatz, the traditions of Walpurgis Night are enthusiastically observed with a witch museum, the Witch’s Cauldron café, a Devil’s Grill Barbecue, an outdoor theatre, a year-round toboggan run, and stalls and shops doing good business in witch trinkets. Every 1st and 3rd weekend of September, Wurstmarkt sees over 500,000 people celebrating 2 of Germany’s most popular exports – wine and wurst (sausage). In 1901, Walpurgis Hall was built to exhibit paintings that illustrate the story. Through this period, the South West of Germany in cities such as Rottweil, Württemberg, Baden-Baden, and Horn, becomes an epicentre for witch-hunting and persecution. Now, in an unprecedented move, leaders of top German cultural institutions have joined forces to declare: enough The Bode carves a deep gorge through the granite of the Harz as it emerges from the mountains into the town of Thale. Up in the remoter corners of the Harz Mountains, winter tends to cling on for a while and so, perhaps, did old customs. No area experienced more witchcraft trials in the early modern era than the German-speaking lands of central Europe, and no country […] Germany’s Most Famous Witch Posted by Constanze on Oct 17, 2018 in Folklore, History, Language, vocabulary Guten Tag and Happy Hallowe’en! An informal parade snakes up the steep path to the central courtyard of the town’s castle, which was founded in the 12th century. During the time of the Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648), more witch trials and executions took place in this area than in any other area in Europe. A vast coven of witches, warlocks and minor devils descend in a blur of brooms and face paint for one of Europe’s oddest celebrations; Walpurgis Night. Clearly, it was never Goethe’s intention to inspire a group of middle-aged motorbike enthusiasts from Berlin to dress up as devils and put on novelty contact lenses. Perching on the Bode and surrounded by woodland, it has the distinction of being mentioned by name in Faust. Still legendary throughout the Harz region, Walpurgisnacht is rooted in the pagan Frƒhjahrsfest, or Spring Festival. Saint Walpurga’s Day, 1st of May, happens to fall exactly halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Another is that the Communist leaders feared its citizens meeting up en masse in case it led to political demonstrations. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. every hotel and guesthouse in Schierke is booked solid. For more information about these and other events, visit the official tourism site for Germany. The hero, Faust, and the devil Mephistopheles, to whom he’s sold his soul, pass through it on the way to meeting the witches on top of the Brocken. Walpurgis Night is an annual festival based on traditional pagan celebrations that sees people dress up as witches, devils and demons for a night of merrymaking in late April. Drinking from the Witchmother's Cauldron will transform your character into skeleton for the duration of the buff. 870 by Pope Adrian II. By mid-morning on the last day of April, the cobbled streets of picturesque Wernigerode are thronging with people in costume. There are still snowdrifts under trees and a chilly wind blows along the valley. Not succumbing to trends, the festival is one of … Air Berlin also flies from Birmingham and Manchester (from $80 ~ €74 ~ £64; eurowings.com). I felt I would be content lose myself for weeks here, hiking through the silent forest, eating picnics on the emerald moss and hoping to catch sight of one of the lynxes that were reintroduced to the Harz in 2001. Melt Festival . A fun event peculiar to Wernigerode is the storming of the city hall by witches. There are some sore heads aboard the 9.40 train from Wernigerode as it heads up to the Brocken the next day. Local beer is drunk steadily all day and the regional food for sale looks like things a hobbit might cook: potato and plum dumplings from Thuringia; split pea and sausage soup; berry wines; sweet, fried cheese balls. In fact, you’d be foolish not to venture into the forests of the Harz Mountains. As competition for religious market share heated up, … The origin of the festival can be traced back to an ancient pagan legend, which says that the devil Wotan married his beloved Freya on the Brocken on the night of April 30. ( Log Out /  The German lands have long been known as the ‘heartland of the witch craze’. This folk festival dates back to the 12th century, when farmers and wineries of Bad Dürkheim sold their produce for pilgrims heading up to Michaelskapelle (St. Michael’s Chapel). Nowadays, the witches tend to arrive by cable car from Thale. Born into a prominent Anglo-Saxon family, Saint Walpurga studied medicine and became a … The whistle can be used repeatedly during the event to summon the Witchmother's Cauldron, which grants you and your party a two-hour 100% XP buff that stacks with all other XP bonuses. Carolin has to tip her head back so she can sip her beer without getting her prosthetic nose wet. Michael says friends and families met up quietly to mark it, but the event was discouraged in East Germany. The festival only became known as the Wurstmarkt in the early 19th century, because of the heavy consumption of sausages, the fast food of Germany in times past. Many streets come to life with colorful parades, loud music, and celebrations around every corner. Samhain is also the time to face our shadow, the dark side of ourselves. WITCH PRIDE PARADE founded by LADY RHEA MEET AT THE SOUTH END OF UNION SQUARE PARK ON THE STEPS AT 14TH STREET 4th ANNUAL WITCH PRIDE PARADE SATURDAY JULY 11TH, 2020 9:30AM Lady Rhea INVITES ALL GROUPS/COVENS/TEMPLE S/SOLITARIES… to be part of WITCH PRIDE PARADE March in solidarity down Broadway … ( Log Out /  Walpurgis Night is a time for families, friends, and communities to get together and indulge in some crazy fun for one night. ‘It’s like World of Warcraft, but in real life.’. The air is filled with the smell of coal and hot oil. Winter’s been banished for another year. For a more whistle-stop trip, trains link Hanover and Wernigerode (from $63 ~ €58 ~ £50; two hours; bahn.de), and Wernigerode and Thale (from $25 ~ €23 ~ £20; one hour). Here in Germany it is different in so many ways, yet still feels like “home”. Fill with the infectious buzz of the Brocken, the location of the Harz Mountains to take part the! 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