Oktoberfest Now Has Its Culture War. It Isnât About the Beer.
Traditionalists have criticized moves to modernize the Munich celebration as âwoke.â
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Oktoberfest Now Has Its Culture War. It Isnât About the Beer.
Traditionalists criticize moves to modernize the Munich celebration as âwokeâ
By Jimmy VielkindFollow
Sept. 17, 2023 9:00 pm ET
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MUNICHâOktoberfest is usually all about the beer. This year, it is about chicken.
A decision by the Paulaner festival tent to serve all-organic hens at its marquee venue is stoking a debate between advocates of a sustainable Oktoberfest against traditionalists wary of a âWoke Wiesnââa play on the short form of the name of the Bavarian celebration.
âItâs an experiment,â said Arabella Schörghuber, who runs the Paulaner Festzelt. âItâs more expensive, but the quality is higher. We want to make sure that the animal has a good life. Weâll see what happens.â
On Saturday, she helped hand out the first beers from the middle of the giant festival tent after thousands of people counted down to the tapping of the first keg. Waiters each toting a dozen glasses with a liter of beer wove through the crowds as huge rotisserie ovens cooked hens in a side kitchen, five on each spit.
Andrea Koerner, 56 years old, comes to Oktoberfest each year and usually orders the chicken, the most popular festival food. Not this time. When she saw that an organic half hen cost 20.50 euros, the equivalent of $22, about 50% more than the nonorganic hens, she opted for pretzels and a cheese spread instead.
âWe donât know the taste because it costs too much to try,â Koerner said.
Other guests said the chicken was good and worth the price. âI donât care at all,â said Jake Williams, a 32-year-old guest. âI guess it is good if people care about the chickens.â
The price hike is among other inflation-related markups. The cost of a literâor âmassââof beer in most big tents increased this year by 6% to âŹ14.50, according to a survey done by the city. That is after prices rose sharply last year following Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine. Oktoberfest was canceled in 2020 and 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The menu shift follows a pressure campaign by a coalition of groups, demanding that the Bavarian festival of hearty food and enormous beers should turn into a vehicle promoting organic farming.
The activists held a public exhibition in the cityâs central square showing a carousel of imitation bloody chicken heads to denounce industrial slaughtering. The group secured a meeting between activists, officials and Oktoberfest tent owners in the spring.
âThereâs already a lot going on. But my perspective is from an organic local farming business, and thereâs not enough,â said Susanne Kiehl, a board member of the Munich Food Council.
She and Anja Berger, an Oktoberfest official and a Green Party member, said the changes are important to meet the cityâs goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2035.
In other matters, Bergerâs party this year also secured four free water fountains on the festival grounds.
During a tour of the grounds last week, Mayor Dieter Reiter admired the new taps and joked of what might come next. âA free beer fountain!â he said. âI just havenât found anyone who will do it yet.â
Activists have sought gastronomic mandates at the festival, but the city has not imposed them. An association of Munichâs innkeepers have pushed back at such rules, saying people should be allowed to liveâand eatâas they see fit. âI donât think anyone really wants a planned economy in which a small group decides what is good for the people and what is not,â said Thomas Geppert, head of the Bavarian Hotel and Restaurant Association.
Schörghuber, who is a vegetarian, said she received a mixed reaction to her chicken initiative from the other tents, with some concerned that they would be pressured to follow suit.
For many visitors, locals and overseas tourists, Oktoberfest is a freewheeling carnivalâa chance to let loose and drink (often to excess) beer served by waitresses clad in revealing Dirndl dresses. Many guests also don the traditional Bavarian outfits and tie the ribbon of their aprons on a different side to indicate whether they are single or taken.
âIt must stay a traditional volksfest, because otherwise it wouldnât be attractive,â said Clemens BaumgĂ€rtner, an official who oversees the festival and a member of the conservative CSU. âIf you talk about being woke on the other 340 days a year, nobody really listens to that. But if you talk about being woke on the Oktoberfest, you get lots of media attention.â
The first Oktoberfest was celebrated in 1810 to commemorate a royal marriage and build support for the budding Bavarian monarchy. It was so popular that it became an annual tradition, adding agricultural displays, vaudeville shows and eventually thrill rides. Despite its name, the festival now mostly takes place in September. Around seven million people are expected to visit the Theresienwiese grounds in Munich during an 18-day run that started Saturday.
âWiesn will have to change as it has changed always over the decades,â said Lukas Bulka, who started working at an Oktoberfest tent as a teenager and now runs the cityâs Beer and Oktoberfest Museum.
The festival already uses electricity generated from renewable sources, BaumgÀrtner said, and single-use dishes and utensils are banned.
An association of the 15 largest festival tentsâwhich have seats for about 100,000 peopleâcommitted to becoming climate-neutral by 2028, mostly through projects that offset their energy use. Four tents, including the Paulaner venue, already meet the targets and built systems to recycle some wastewater.
But when it comes to farming practices, it isnât feasible to rely on only organic hops and barley for the roughly seven million liters of beer that will be consumed, Schörghuber said. HofbrĂ€u, one of the six Oktoberfest breweries, estimated that the production and transportation of festival beer in 2019 created 66 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Munich has an organic brewery, Haderner, but it doesnât have one of the coveted slots at the festival.
Schörghuber said she focused on chicken because it is so sought afterâthe city estimated that around 500,000 chickens were consumed at Oktoberfest in 2019âand a change was feasible. She found a farm in Austria that raised the organic birds for this yearâs festival and spent a year speaking with her cooking staff about what changes were needed to grill what are larger than conventional hens.
Kiehl said that while her group was happy with the Paulaner tentâs chicken change, it would be more difficult to convince the public that the brewers should be forced to tweak their recipes.
âThatâs not an easy point in Munich,â she said. âThatâs almost like religion.â
Write to Jimmy Vielkind at jimmy.vielkind@wsj.com
