Summer Solstice Festivals (1959)
Bonfires were traditionally lit all over Europe on the summer solstice, which was celebrated on Saint John’s Eve and associated with John the Baptist. With the rise of Pan-Germanism, Christian interpretations receded into the background, especially in Styria, and Germanic traditions returned to the fore. In 1893, the “five Graz associations of the Germanic League” decided to win over like-minded people in Styrian towns to organize these festivals so that “the sense of the genuine German essence would awaken again everywhere in the German districts.”
A few decades later, the Austrian Nazi party used summer solstice festivals as a central propaganda tool. After the Austrofascist Fatherland Front had also attempted to exploit them between 1934 and 1937, the SS took over following the Anschluss: “The celebration is carried out completely uniformly and simultaneously throughout the entire Greater German Reich by order of the Reichsführer SS (Heinrich Himmler, note).” After the fall of Nazi Germany, the tradition continued in Austria and in Germany. In many places, midsummer celebrations have been organized by two mountaineering organizations since 1945: the Alpenverein (Alpine Club, affiliated with the Austrian People’s Party) and the Naturfreunde (Friends of Nature, affiliated with the Social Democratic Party of Austria).
Photographs
Folk Life Museum at the Paulustor / Universalmuseum Joanneum