Stand: November 1, 2024, 4:54 a.m
Von: Christoph Sahler
PressSplit
On Reformation Day and All Saints Day, the people of Hesse look down the tubes as always. The state government sees no need for changes.
Wiesbaden – The question of why Hesse, along with a few other federal states, has the lowest number of public holidays in Germany has plagued citizens from Darmstadt to Kassel every year since 2018 at the latest. The year before, 2017, the entire Federal Republic celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, with all 16 federal states enjoying a day off on October 31st.
North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria were particularly privileged this year, as they consider themselves to be predominantly Catholic and therefore also have November 1st, All Saints Day, as a public holiday. Therefore, these five states were able to enjoy two consecutive days off.
Reformation Day or All Saints Day? – Only Hesse and Berlin come away empty-handed on both days
Of course, officially this has nothing to do with luck. Holidays serve to celebrate and commemorate significant social or religious events in appropriate peace and quiet. The colloquial expression “sleeping longer” and the free time associated with it are just side effects.
The last Hessian state government saw it similarly. A spokesman for the Hessian Ministry of the Interior responded to a request from HE DOES 2023: “In Hesse, around 35 percent of the people were Protestant in 2017 and the population was therefore not predominantly Protestant. On this basis, the state government has not decided to generally introduce Reformation Day as another public holiday.”
Why All Saints Day was abolished as a holiday in Hesse
What about All Saints Day? Until 1952, this day was “considered a holiday” in some Catholic communities in Hesse. However, in order to treat all citizens of Hesse equally, this holiday was abolished, along with the Assumption Day. You could say: “We’re not here for fun,” to put it in clichéd German. Or one could ask the provocative question, why doesn’t Hesse simply declare both Reformation Day and All Saints’ Day a public holiday if it can’t decide?
After 2017, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, Bremen and Hamburg added October 31st to their list of public holidays. They noticed that they already had fewer public holidays than all other federal states and since they consider themselves to be predominantly Protestant, they joined Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia and have celebrated Reformation Day annually ever since.
CDU sees no holiday vacancies in Hesse – SPD remains silent on its own election campaign issue
Since then, people in Hesse have been thinking more about which event they should urgently celebrate once a year. May 8th was proposed as the day of liberation from National Socialism, but the state government actually lacked the “specific reference to Hesse”.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser even suggested a new holiday when she ran as the SPD’s top candidate in the 2023 state elections in Hesse. She wanted to declare December 1st a public holiday as “Democracy Day”. One should think about “the referendum on the Hessian constitution”. However, the CDU Hesse saw then and now sees “no need for this.” The SPD Hesse has obviously not pursued the issue any further since forming a coalition with the Christian Democrats at the beginning of 2024. The regional association left a corresponding request from IPPEN.MEDIA in March unanswered.
