- Germany from 1250 to 1493
Daily life and social customs
News •
The incursions of modern patterns of life and global forms of entertainment, from fast food to Hollywood films, have weakened the traditional arts, entertainments, and customs of regional and rural Germany, although this has occurred somewhat less so in southern Germany, where the older arts and usages have persisted concurrently with a gradual adaptation to a modern urban pattern of life; the old and the new coexist in an incongruous compatibility. In late summer in the Alpine regions, colourful and festive parades still celebrate the successful return of cattle from mountain pastures to lowland farms. The wood-carvers, violin makers, and gunsmiths of Upper Bavaria continue, under great economic pressure, to follow their trades, not because doing so is quaint but because they still believe in the work itself. Similarly, some women in the Black Forest still wear an elaborate costume known as a Tracht on festival days because they have always done so rather than to amaze tourists. However, even in more traditional communities, where the tourist industry is often highly developed, many folk usages have all but disappeared: older women now seldom wear black dresses and scarves, and the village men no longer appear in top hat and cutaway for a funeral procession.
Popular festivals continue to abound in the west, southwest, and south, the regions that have clung most to the practices of a traditional, preindustrial age. For example, the donning of elaborate wooden masks during the pre-Lenten celebrations in the southwest remains unchanged despite being televised; hundreds of smaller towns and larger villages in the south still commemorate an anniversary from the Thirty Years’ War with a parade in 17th-century costume or, in Roman Catholic areas, march in full procession on Corpus Christi Day. What is remarkable is not merely that these traditions survive but that the homelier and less celebrated of them remain truly genuine in the observance.
Traditional German cuisine, though varying considerably from region to region, makes generous use of meat—pork is especially popular, both cured and fresh. Beef, poultry, game such as rabbit and venison, and both freshwater and ocean fish are also widely consumed. German dairies produce a variety of excellent cheeses, and fresh soft cheeses find their way into many dishes. Starches are supplied by bread (wheat and rye) and by potatoes, noodles, and dumplings. The necessity of preserving foods for the northern winter has led to a highly developed array of cured, smoked, and pickled meats, fish, and vegetables such as sauerkraut (fermented cabbage). German hams and sausages (Wurst) are world famous and widely imitated, produced in an impressive variety. Mustard, caraway, dill, juniper berries, and marjoram are favoured spices and herbs. Tortes, kuchen, cookies, and other pastries produced in the Konditorei (pastry shop) or home kitchen are served as a conclusion to a meal or an accompaniment to coffee. Holidays bring an array of seasonal sweets such as stollen, gingerbread, and anise cookies. Few meals of the traditional sort, whether presented in the home or in a Gasthaus (inn) or restaurant, are unaccompanied by locally produced wine, beer, brandy, or schnapps. By the early 21st century, German cuisine had become more cosmopolitan with the influence of immigrant cultures, and a meal out was as likely to involve Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Turkish foods as traditional German dishes such as sauerbraten, schnitzel, or spaetzle.
As in many other Western countries, family life has undergone many changes. In contrast to past generations, when families had numerous children, an estimated 30 percent of married German couples never become parents, and most of the remainder have only one or two children. Thus, German birth rates are low and below replacement levels. More people are living together before or instead of marrying, the number of marriages is declining, and the number of divorces has increased. More than one-third of all births now occur outside of marriage. Changing marriage patterns have also influenced gender roles. Traditionally, German families had highly differentiated gender roles within marriage—men worked outside the home and women undertook most homemaking activities and child care. During the last decades of the 20th century, however, this pattern shifted, with more than 70 percent of working-age women employed outside the home—though they still are underrepresented within the elite professions.
The arts of Germany
Government and audience support
For several centuries Germany has enjoyed a tradition of governmental support of the arts. Before the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the many small kingdoms, principalities, duchies, bishoprics, and free cities that preceded it—as well as Austria and German-speaking Switzerland—supported the arts; they established theatres, museums, and libraries, and their leaders acted as patrons for poets, writers, painters, and performers. The institutions thus founded and the convention of generous public support have continued uninterrupted to the present.
The quantitative dimensions of Germany’s cultural life astound non-Germans. Several hundred theatres are subsidized by the federal government, the states, and the cities, and there also are many privately financed theatres. Unlike the United States, Britain, and France, in which theatre is more often than not centerd in one city, no single German city predominates. Also, productions in Vienna, Austria, and in Zürich, Switzerland, are significant to Germany’s artistic life, and artists and resources move easily and freely among the theatrical and operatic companies within the German-speaking regions. Only in Vienna, the capital in which the arts arouse far more intense passions than do politics, does theatre have a broader audience base than in Germany. Audiences in Germany are not limited to a small intellectual or social elite but are drawn from all ranks of society. Season tickets, group arrangements, bloc tickets bought by business firms, and theatre clubs constitute the major patronage of such production companies as the People’s Independent Theatre (Theater der Freien Volksbühne), dating from 1890 in Berlin. Going to the theatre or opera in Germany is nearly as affordable and as unremarkable as attending the cinema is elsewhere. The same is also true of concert music. Every major city has at least one symphony orchestra offering many concerts and recitals each week, and many smaller cities and towns also have concerts.
In few countries are the arts so lavishly cultivated as in Germany in terms of the proliferation of cultural amenities, the funds allotted to them, and the attendance upon them. Although this abundance and generous support has not called forth a new era of brilliance to rival that of the Weimar Republic—when Germany (especially Berlin) experienced a resurgence in the arts and a proliferation of creative talents unparalleled since German Classicism and Romanticism—there are a number of noteworthy individual talents and movements dotting the contemporary landscape.
