Talkin’ About a (Beer Garden) Revolution: Munich’s Waldwirtschaft
That sweeping vista across the valley below! It’s the first thing you notice when you find a seat in the Waldwirtschaft’s expansive beer garden. Known locally as the “WaWi,” the Waldwirtschaft in southwestern Munich is nestled in the woods just beyond a residential neighbourhood lined with villas. Perched atop a beer cellar cut into an embankment high above the Isar River, the WaWi conveys a topographical sense of what it meant to cut fermentation and lagering cellars into riverbanks in the days before modern refrigeration. Indeed, this entire area was once a bastion of beer cellars.
As with any top-notch beer garden worth its malt, local lore has woven a certain mystique around the WaWi, which found itself at the center of the “Beer Garden Revolution” of 1995. So significant was this local upheaval that it helped usher in the Beer Garden Ordinance of 1999.[1] The atmosphere is more tranquil these days, and the WaWi makes an excellent starting point for a postprandial stroll along the Isar to nearby beer gardens like Hinterbrühl and Menterschwaige.
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Despite the April chill, I bundled up and headed out to the Waldwirtschaft. I had only three days in Munich, and I wasn’t going to let a bit of wind and drizzle get in the way of a much-needed tour of my favourite beer gardens. I braved the elements as long as I could before heading into the charming Wirtshaus for a rejuvenating Brotzeit Teller of chilled Schweinsbraten (pork roast).
Catering to the well-heeled locals of Pullach and Grünwald, the WaWi’s Wirtshaus is a touch more upscale than other beer garden inns. Fresh-cut flowers grace every table topped with white linen, and Mouton-Rothschild labels line the walls amid the usual Wirtshaus décor.[2] The wine labels aren’t incidental; Pullach’s sister city is Pauillac in France’s Bordeaux region.
There’s even more to that French connection. In fact, the Bavarians have a Frenchman to thank for one of their most storied beer gardens. Jean-Baptiste Drouet d’Erlon, a lieutenant general in Napoleon’s army, enjoyed immense prestige in the Munich area for his role in quelling the Tyrolean Rebellion of 1809. After Napoleon’s defeat, Drouet d’Erlon acquired an estate on the outskirts of Munich, erecting a brewery and sinking a cellar on his estate in 1820. He laid out the Waldwirtschaft beer garden shortly thereafter.[3] I’ll say santé to that.
Prelude to a Revolution
But it’s not the French connection that accounts for the Waldwirtschaft’s latter-day fame. In a land where citizens have been known to riot over increases in beer prices, it’s not surprising that it was a threat to a cherished way of life bound up with beer that motivated people to take to the streets, albeit much more peacefully in 1995 than in the past.[4]
Every good revolution needs its antecedents. A perfect storm began to form when, in the decades prior to the 1990s, more and more villas were built in the woodlands around the WaWi. Tensions boiled over when sleep-deprived residents who lived near the WaWi filed a court suit about the noise from live music and loud beer garden denizens. In response, the Munich Administrative Court delivered a verdict in April 1993 obligating the WaWi to close at 9:30 p.m. and prohibiting it from opening on the first and third Sundays each month. Appeals came in from all sides.
The effects of the decision reached far beyond the courtroom, occasioning a demonstration that was, in retrospect, a dress rehearsal for the Beer Garden Revolution of 1995.
Nearly 5000 people took part in a “funeral march” to the Waldwirtschaft beer garden from the nearby train station.[5] Six of the black-clad demonstrators shouldered a casket bearing the epitaph “Munich Beer Garden Gemütlichkeit” and decorated with blue-and-white streamers, pretzels, and stoneware mugs—the most recognizable components of a Biergarten Brotzeit. Representatives from all the major political parties spoke out in favour of the former opening times under the motto “liberality and life” (Liberalität und Leben).[6]
A Carnivalesque Revolution
This wasn’t enough to convince the courts. In April 1995, the Bavarian Higher Administrative Court handed down a judgment that all beer gardens (not only the WaWi) had to close by 9:30 p.m.
The press response was swift. Opponents of longer opening times were derided as bigwigs who could afford mansions with gardens while those of lesser means were forced to exist in dark dwellings deprived of the fresh air (and fresh beer).[7] Some journalists went even further, depicting these folks as opponents of tradition tout court who’d just as soon take to the courts to stop cowbells from clanging and church bells from chiming.[8] As one incensed beer garden denizen put it in a letter to the editor published in Munich’s tz tabloid: “Tradition is coming under increasing attack. Jetzt ist das Maß voll” — in other words, we’ve had enough.[9]
On 12 May 1995, some 20,000 people from all walks of life gathered on Marienplatz, Munich’s main square.[10] The atmosphere was carnivalesque. People arrived in lederhosen and dirndls, and the Association of Munich Breweries showed up with their old guild standard held aloft. A mock guillotine was set up on the square by a famous Oktoberfest impresario, who symbolically beheaded the Liberalitas Bavarieae, the figure that watches over the Oktoberfest grounds.
In the speeches that followed, politicians of all stripes praised the beer garden as a place of conviviality, all to rapturous applause. Afterwards, demonstrators marched to Odeonplatz, led by a brass band and the Münchner Kindl. A festival wagon brought up the rear bearing not its usual cargo of beer barrels, but rather sacks of signatures collected in favour of longer opening times. These were presented to the Bavarian Minister President Edmund Stoiber. As editors at tz noted, these signatures, along with a huge stack of letters to the editor, “read like a copy of the yellow pages.” Companies like Deutsche Bahn voiced support, the Dallmayr coffee company voiced support, even representatives of the Kripo (criminal police) voiced support.[11]
The demonstration hit home. Stoiber, also an avowed connoisseur of the “beer garden way of life,” declared himself in favour of a new ordinance governing opening and closing times for beer gardens.
Not long after, in June 1995, the Bavarian government passed a law that balanced the desires of Bavarians to preserve the traditional “beer garden way of life” with those of residents who needed their sleep. Music was to end at 10:00 p.m., food and drink service was to cease at 10:30 p.m., and folks were to be on their way home by 11:00 p.m. These provisions later found expression in the now-famous Beer Garden Ordinance of 1999.
A Nightcap at the Waldwirtschaft
I’m back at the Waldwirtschaft, this time on a balmy autumn evening before Oktoberfest. The WaWi has Spaten’s Festbier on tap, a beer I prefer to most other Spaten beers. It’s getting close to 10:30 p.m. Thanks to the chain of events set in motion by the residents of the upscale neighbourhood just beyond the gates of the WaWi, I’m able to order one last Festbier before I head back to the bright lights of the big city. The half hour before 11:00 p.m. gives me a few moments to ponder how the Beer Garden Revolution of 1995 illuminates the symbolic aspects of beer in Bavaria.
For numerous Bavarians (and for countless others, myself included), the beer garden embodies life’s joys. It is precisely this “populist popularity” of the beer garden—something perceived by a broad swath of Bavarian society to be an essential aspect of everyday life—that served to attract large numbers to the cause of defending the “beer garden way of life” in 1993 and 1995.[12] This broad-based support for beer gardens might also be why politicians of all stripes were unified in their support of these leafy oases. It cost them nothing to take a stand in favour of something that not many people were against.[13] For in Bavaria, beer gardens and the way of life they represent are virtually sacrosanct. As a journalist covering the protests quipped, “If you mess with the Bavarian notion of beer and Gemütlichkeit [coziness, contentment], Bavarians can become downright ungemütlich [discontented].”[14]
With that thought, I drink the last drops of my Festbier, surrounded by Gemütlichkeit untainted by discontent.
Related Posts
Beer Gardens with a Dash of Spice: The Menterschwaige in Munich
Beer Gardens in Baden-Württemberg, Germany’s Southwest
Bamberg’s Beer Gardens: A Bierkeller for All Seasons
The Art of the Beer Garden Food Feast
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[1] Among other things, the Beer Garden Ordinance recognizes the importance of beer gardens to Bavarian cultural identity.
[2] For non-wine drinkers, Mouton-Rothschild is among the most sought-after wines.
[3] See Jürgen Wolfram, “Bastion des Brauwesens,” in Mir san Bier: Braukunst und Biergärten in und um München (Munich: Süddeutsche Zeitung Edition, 2013), 76-81, for an account of the WaWi’s French connection.
[4] It’s worth noting that Munich and other German cities have been the site of protests over beer for well over a century. The peaceful “Beer Garden Revolution” of 1995 is an echo of the more violent Munich Beer Riots of 1844 over a 22% increase in the price of beer, along with unrest in 1888 and 1910 in the wake of other beer price hikes. For an account of the Munich Beer Riots, see Brian Alberts, “Streets as Stages: The Munich Beer Riots of 1844,” Good Beer Hunting (15 July 2020).
[5] See Birgit Speckle, Streit ums Bier in Bayern: Wertvorstellungen um Reinheit, Gemeinschaft und Tradition (Waxmann: Münster, 2001), 158-166, along with Jürgen Wolfram, “An der Wiege der Revolution,” in Mir San Bier, 82-83 and Larry Hawthorne, The Beer Drinker’s Guide to Munich, 7th ed. (2015), 181-183 for an account of these protests. I’ve leaned heavily here on both Speckle’s comprehensive account and her body of sources.
[6] Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15 May 1993, “Letztes Geleit für ‘Biergartenkultur,’” cited in Speckle.
[7] See Claudius Seidl, “Trinker der Welt!” Der Spiegel, No. 19 (8 May 1995), for a satirization directed both at Bavarian politicians—“In the hour of need, there are no political parties, only drinkers”—and at the response of the Munich boulevard press to the pending “revolution.” Even if Seidl doesn’t mention nineteenth-century forms of sociality explicitly, tropes of the Wirtshaus as the “living room” of the working class and the beer garden as its “backyard” pulsate just beneath the surface of his critique. Consigned to dark and dingy apartments, workers at the time sought out the Wirtshaus as a source of heat and comradery in winter, and the beer garden as a source of fresh air and conviviality in summer. Of course, by 1995, this form of sociality had largely disappeared. But for the numerous Munich residents who live in apartments without access to a backyard garden, the beer garden has not lost its appeal.
[8] Letters to the editor in tz (12 May 1995) and Abendzeitung (4 May 1995), cited in Speckle, p.164.
[9] Leserbrief, tz (10 May1995), cited in Speckle, p.166.
[10] See Speckle, pp.161-162 for a detailed account, along with Wolfram and Hawthorne.
[11] “Danke, liebe Leser! Ihr wart einfach super,” tz (15 May 1995). Cited in Speckle, p.159.
[12] Much as I love beer gardens and what they represent, it’s nonetheless important to avoid the tendency to flatten all social distinctions when it comes to beer gardens (as evidenced in the mantra that high and low are on equal footing in the beer garden). It wouldn’t be the first time that very real class differences are glossed over or elided in the discourse about conflicts surrounding beer, that great leveler.
[13] In making this claim, I don’t mean to paint the politicians as entirely cynical. It seems that Bavarian politicians were (and still are) sincere in their support of Bavarian beer culture, believing (as do many Bavarians) in the notion that “the beer garden way of life” was and is central to Bavarian identity.
[14] Münchner Merkur (15 May 1993), cited in Speckle, 167.
Photos by Franz D. Hofer
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