The First Oktoberfest

0:00Guys, Fall has officially arrived, and the cooler days have me pulling out those go-to wardrobe staples, like those favor-pare of jeans, those long sleeve t-shirts, or a new addition I recently picked up from Quince, a Mongolian cashmere full zip-up hoodie. I was blown away by how soft it is, and I absolutely loved that I could wear it to almost every occasion. See, Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials, like that 100% Mongolian cashmere, or organic cotton, and marino wool. The styles are timeless, versatile, and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for day after day. And I remember thought I could afford cashmere clothing, but they have Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just $60. See, everything at Quince is priced 50-80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut off the middlemen, so you're paying for high-quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince brings that same approach to everything they make, from hotel quality betting and bath to kitchen essentials and thoughtfully designed furniture. They make well-designed pieces for everyday living.

1:01So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to Quince.com, get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know. It was on today in history with retrospectives. It's the best way to support the show. Hey Spotify listeners, when you travel with American Airlines you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff unwind in the Admiral's Club lounge, with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi, sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. But now at AA.com. It's October 12, 1810. And another remarkable event is about to be uncovered by… Arya, Rebecca and Ali. The Retro Specters

2:03First thing any Octoberfest newbie learns is that Octoberfest isn't actually celebrated in October but rather in September. But that wasn't true of this first one, which was held very squarely in October specifically today in history in 1810. And it wasn't a celebration of beer and later hosin and beer and sausages and pretzels and beer that we know today, but rather a massive festival to mark the wedding of the Bavarian Crown Prince. You didn't mention beer. Beer is significant as well to Octoberfest, I believe. But weirdly, there were no beer concessions for five years after this day, which as far as I'm concerned makes this not the first Octoberfest at all. But beer certainly would have been being drunk. It just wasn't the raison d'être, as you'll say. The focus instead for this celebration of a royal nuptial was a week of games that centred on a horse race and children dressed in Bavarian folk costumes, paying homage to the royal family with poems, flowers and fruits. I think I'd rather go to the modern one. Yeah, this is the pre-German Unification days when Germany was really a collection of

3:07autonomous kingdoms, Duchies. The kingdom of Bavaria was one of the largest. It actually only came into existence four years earlier. The former electorate of Bavaria had upgraded itself after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire from a sort of a Princedom to a kingdom. And the 24-year-old Crown Prince of the New Kingdom, Ludwig, was marrying a 18-year-old to a razor of Saxa Hillburghausen, which they comparatively small, Duchy on Poveria's northern border. And in honour of this, St. had organised five days of public festivities. The streets were lit up with eliminations. There were free performances of operas and plays, a big public ball and scenes of general reverie. I think we can assume beer was present, even though it wasn't the theme. I said there was beer there. Yeah, there was plenty of beer. You could go around sampling the 6% beer, that's all I'm saying. No. And the climax on the final day was this horse race staged by the Bavarian cavalry in a large meadow just outside the Sendlinger Tor, which was on the historical entrances to the city around the city walls, where there was a convenient hillside that provided a viewing area for thousands of Bavarians.

4:08And the newlyweds attended this in person. They were ceremonially welcomed by nine couples from farms in each of Bavaria's districts, dressed in traditional outfits, and to raise a war gown in Bavarian colours, which sealed her popularity in the eyes of locals, who we can imagine were already quite fondly inclined towards her after this 5-day party. And that race, by the way, took place in this meadow just outside Munich city gates that's since been named Taresen's Vicer or the Vicer, and that was in honour of the bride. And that's what locals actually call October 1st Vicer. So if you ever find yourself in Germany celebrating October 1st, that's what you're there for. But the idea of staging this public festival around a royal wedding was, it was kind of part politics, but also part theatre, because Bavaria in 1810, as Rebecca was saying, was only recently a kingdom, and it had been elevated by Napoleon in 1806. And King Maximilian I Joseph was keen to cement loyalty among his subjects, and to project

5:10this sort of prestige of his dynasty. This was a festival that was about celebrating, yes, in giving the people their bread and circuses, but also it was nation-building. You know, the horse race itself was organised by the National Guard, and it was reinforcing the idea that Bavaria was this modern, powerful, martial and united place, and then you had the local brewers and farmers supplying the refreshments and the artisans and guilds decorating the fairgrounds and stores. So it was all this kind of, look, we are Bavaria. Here we are, this is us, on the international stage. Which, by the way, is good monocking, isn't it? I mean, you know, it's no different really to the King's coronation in the UK, is it? It's using a royal event as a linchpin, as an excuse for people to go out and fly their flags and play their traditional songs and feel patriotic and spend money and support businesses. That is what a good royal family does when it's doing his job, right? But I guess it just seems all a bit quaint now because the Bavarian royal family doesn't really have any power anymore in Germany.

6:12And you look at the wedding itself that was being celebrated, and it's a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing really. This was not the happiest of relationships. I mean, she seems like a nice lady, Ludwig later wrote of his choice. The Tories is distinguished by her heart, by reason, by beauty. I would not wish for a better woman, but I married without passion as it's more profitable for the future. Again, good monocking. But he shagged around, he had loads of affairs. Even though Tories was pregnant a lot of the time as well, she had nine children, it wasn't to marriage that in the end seemed to be one that you'd want to celebrate with a party that we're still doing annually now. Well, in fact, she would remain so popular with Bavarians that the public scandal of Ludwig is a fair with an Irish born-court song called Lola Montes, was said to be a contributing factor to his abdication in 1848. So I mean, the people really took to raise it to heart. In fact, they were not willing to let the whole reason we have October fest is because they weren't really willing to just leave this celebration in the past. The horse race in particular had been so popular, it was decided to stage it again the

7:14following year. And then this just kept happening. They started adding things on, an agricultural element was the first thing to join onto the horse race. It became more of a fair as you can imagine, enterprising local entrepreneurs were setting up carnival games and stalls selling food and drink and crafts to the crowds of a turning up to to come to this event. But at this stage, if it could be said to have a theme, it was, as you say, just Bavaria. And it doesn't seem to be until the second half of the 19th century that the focus shifted from Bavarian culture more generally to Bavarian beer culture specifically. And we see breweries beginning to take the starring role. Societies were there though, can I just say on this day, 400 kilos of mutton and 8,120 sausages. So, and 3,992 pounds of Swiss cheese and 32,065 buns. Wow. So there were always some important culinary factors at play. And actually, Bavarian brewing goes back at least to the early Middle Ages with monasteries as ever, being crucial centers. The big turning point there was the Reinheitzgebot, the Beer Purity Law of 1516, which limited

8:21the ingredients of beer to just water, barley and hops. And that was, it wasn't just food regulation, but also a quality guarantee. And over the centuries, it did cement Bavaria's reputation for clean and consistent beer. But quite a lot of the tropes of Bavarian culture that we associate with the place now did come along much, much later that mass-cruge, the one-litre beer-stine, became standardised in the 19th century, especially as October fest grew and people wanted bigger and bigger beers, I guess. It's impressive, though, it's still 150 years ahead of Instagram. That's true. But never been bigger than now, I would imagine. But still stuff like the traditional dress like later hosen and durndals, they began as rural alpine workwear. But in the 19th century, urban elites kind of rediscovered those outfits and codified them as symbols of Bavarianness, much like kilts in Scotland were rediscovered and made

9:24into a national dress much later than we presume. And the pretzels, they kind of had a monastic origin, they were old, but sausages, the white sausage. That was supposedly invented in Munich in 1857 by accident. And the story goes that there was this particular guy who just ran out of the proper sheep casings that are usually used for his pork sausages, and he had to improvise by using pork casings, but he realised that if he fried the sausages, they were going to burst. And so he had to gently simmer them, and the sausage came out really white because it was kind of undercooked and became this national delicacy. But again, in the 19th century, rather than any earlier than that. Yeah, and I mean, even some of the beer-related elements are relatively recent. It was 1935 that best started to be a parade of floats from local breweries, and since 1950 that beer officially opens the festival in a ritual that seems much older than it is. But at noon on the first day, the mayor of Munich taps the first keg of the festival

10:25and declares, oh, that's it. It's tapped in Bavarian dialect. The first mayor to perform this ritual, Thomas Vimert, needed 19 strokes before he got the beer flowing. And to this day, bets are taken on how many taps it will take them there. The record is two. It's so interesting when we cover these kinds of annual events, and we've done them before Groundhog Day, Burns Night, New Orleans, Mardi Gras, they often start very different how they end up. And people who go now think that things have always been this way when very often there are traditions that only go back a few decades. I mean, the scale of October fest, the actual October fest in Germany has been increasing exponentially since the 60s and particularly since the 90s. People now spend one billion euros a year. There are 7.2 million visitors and 6.5 million litres of beer drunk each year. So someone's dodging around. Yeah. Do you know, I mean, I looked at that statistic and it was held up as this, that's nearly

11:28three Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of beer. And I was like, yeah, but if you've got 7.2 million people, each person is having less than a liter of beer, which means no, which means someone's done their math strong, or there's a lot of people just turning up for the pretzels. This episode first aired last year exclusively to members of Club Retrospectors. Join today and unlock a new episode this Sunday. At ZockDock, we know you care about your health. You wouldn't do that early morning cardio if you didn't. So the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor. Sorry, that doctor's not a network. Press one for more options. You've reached us outside normal business hours. The next availability is in three months. But ZockDock makes finding the right doctor easy. Download the app and search by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews.

12:29Then book instantly. ZockDock. Ready to be seen. Stonefire Non is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion. I put out Stonefire Non with dips at every dinner party. I make non-grilled cheese when my daughter is friends over. I use Stonefire Non to reward the humans who do my bidding. Right. It's perfect for camping trips. Dance for it, feeble mortal. Sorry, is he talking to me or? Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. From our tradition to yours, Stonefire. Together, be not.