3rd October: National Day in Germany

• 02/10/2023
• Bianca
• no comments

October 3rd doesn’t mean much to you? And yet it’s Germany’s national holiday! What does the country celebrate (or not)? The Berlin like a Local guides will tell you all about it during a private guided tour of Berlin, but for those who can’t wait, here are some answers.

Celebrating unity

As with July 4th in the USA or July 14th in France, October 3rd is a public holiday in Germany. It gives all citizens the opportunity to look beyond regional, identity or religious differences and think about, and possibly even celebrate, the unity of the country.

The “Day of German Unity” (Tag der Deutschen Einheit) commemorates 3rd October 1990, the official date on which West and East Germany were reunited. This very recent bank holidays celebrates a country whose borders and identity are new realities.

The story of a choice

The German National Day has changed date 5 times in the last century! This is because each regime wanted to reflect its identity with a different symbolic event:

• The German Empire (1871-1918) celebrated 2nd September, the fall of Sedan in 1870 and the capture of Napoleon III: German identity was then synonymous with victory.
• The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) chose to commemorate 11th August 1919, when Germany’s first democracy signed its constitution.
• The Third Reich (1933-1945) exploited May 1st, the Labour Day celebrated by the trade unions, to crush the opposition.
• East Germany (1949-1990) used to celebrate twice: on 8th May for the end of the war, the end of Nazism and the victory of Communism, and on 7th October for the creation of the Socialist Republic.
• Meanwhile, West Germany chose to commemorate the riots of 17th June 1953, which took place in the East, to highlight an image of people fighting for freedom and democracy, and to denounce the East German dictatorship.

With the end of the GDR, it was imperative to find an event common to both Germanies to form a positive symbol for the identity of this reborn country.

What about celebrating the fall of the Wall?

The fall of the Wall would have been an ideal symbol, since it evokes freedom, joy and peace.

Unfortunately, 9th November is also a reminder of the divisions, massacres and brutality that marked German history in the 20th century:

• 9th November 1918: two parallel announcements of a new German Republic (one with a parliamentary democracy, the other a socialist republic), as a prelude to the future division of the country,
• 9th November 1938: the pogrom against the Jews known as the “Night of Broken Glass”,
• 9th November 1923: Hitler’s failed putsch to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

After much debate, this date was dropped in favour of a more neutral date: 3rd October, the date of the administrative unification of the two Germanies.

National pride?

Germany’s National Day is far from being a day of popular celebration. There are no big military parades, no balls and no fireworks. Possibly because the 3rd October is a rather artificial date and is not associated with an emotional event such as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This date stands for the rational desire for a new country to be built when order has been restored and passion has faded. In a federal country, celebrating national identity is challenging enough in itself, but the task is all the more difficult in Germany, where national pride is quickly associated with shame and guilt from the Nazi era, or the East German dictatorship.

Finally, it takes time to build a life together as a country, when the people were born in two different countries. There are still a number of critics regarding German reunification, both from the former West Germans, who complain about the cost of integrating the new Länder, and from parts of the former GDR, who denounce the replacement of their institutions by the Western system.

A nomadic celebration

To overcome this lack of popularity, celebrations for the German Unity Day are organised discreetly and step by step, from one Land to another. Every year, one of Germany’s federal states is the focus of the country’s festivities.

This year (2023), the event will be hosted by the state of Hamburg, with both the Chancellor and the President attending, in an effort to inspire some sense of unity amidst the prevailing scepticism.

Are you interested in German history and want to find out more? Our guided tours in French of Classic Berlin, East Berlin or the Berlin Wall will help you learn more about the fascinating construction of the German identity.