If your name is Giuseppe, Peppe, Peppino, Pino, Beppe or maybe Gioseffo, or Giuseppa or Giuseppina or Pina, today, March 19, is your name day. And it is also the case in Bavaria, where, as in many Catholic areas, the name day was once as important as the birthday, and St. Joseph's Day was a day of celebration, in which the Giuseppi and Giuseppe could stay home from work , lounging and enjoying mugs of strong beer, that this is his time. Ferdinand Maria of Wittelsbach, prince elector of Bavaria, husband of Henriette Adelaide of Savoy, in 1663 declared Saint Joseph the patron saint of the Land. And until 1968 March 19, Josefstag, was a day of celebration and rest, particularly loved in rural areas. Saint Joseph was celebrated by all the Josephs, Josepha, Josefine, Josef (by the way, the young Bavarian Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, was registered as Josef at birth, then had the habit of changing his name to Joseph, considering it probably more cultured ), but also at the Sepps', with laziness, rich meals and children home from school. But, precisely in 1968, the Bavarian government decided to abolish the holiday, despite the fact that at that time a significant number of deputies with this name sat on the seats of the Land parliament in the CSU majority (now there are only 4 left). And perhaps it is precisely for this reason that only the members of the Königlich-Bayerische-Josefs-Partei (Royal Bavarian Joseph's Party) remained fighting to restore the holiday, whose only aspiration is to restore St. Joseph's Day as a holiday. The singular movement was founded in 1985 by Otto Steuerl, a municipal employee and journalist from Aichach, who was particularly angry at the abolition of the day dedicated to the patron saint of workers, craftsmen and carpenters, lumberjacks, carpenters and wheelwrights. After threatening the politicians that if they did not reintroduce the party he would found a party that would pursue only this goal, he wrote the statutes of the “Royal Bavarian Party of Joseph”, and set the membership fee at one German mark per year to allow every citizen to become a member. Now the party, which has no program and does not participate in elections, has more than 6,000 members in more than 30 countries. After glorious years of meetings which also involved the Land's most prominent politicians, the enthusiasm of the old days is waning, perhaps also because there are fewer and fewer Giuseppi and Giuseppe in Bavaria too. Thus on the party website for “St. Joseph 2024” we read that «due to lack of demand and participation, the Königlich-Bayerischen-Josefspartei party congress in Aichach is suspended until further notice».
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