Bavarian State Show Ansbach: Against harde Glichees

Decisively decentralized: This year’s Bavarian State Exhibition in Ansbach asks what is actually typically Franconian. Is it the inability to do the hard T, the bratwurst, half-timbered houses, wine or beer?

franconia est omnis divisa in partes tres, all of Franconia is divided into three parts. However, the inhabitants of the three parts of Upper, Middle and Lower Franconia would dismiss too much proximity, especially in the following apparent similarities: in the dialect (the “Bätzla”, “Moggl” and “Stuusl” sound as pine cones or the “Abfl”. very different on the dialectal map of the three), denomination (Middle Franconia predominantly Protestant, Upper Franconia with the Franconian Rome Bamberg in the center against the Protestant strongholds Kronach, Coburg and Kulmbach mixed denominationally, while Lower Franconia is predominantly Catholic), especially when it comes to bratwurst (with or without marjoram, roasted on pine cones as in Coburg with a length of 31 centimeters or deliberately kept short at seven centimeters as “Drei im Weggla” in Nuremberg, which Dürer is said to have eaten with great pleasure in the Bratwursthäusle there near Sankt Sebald) or mentality (It still makes a difference today whether the people concerned come from one of the many Franconian imperial cities e or a “Prussian” because of Hohenzollern margraves such as Ansbach or Bayreuth or an ecclesiastical bishopric and later a prince-bishopric such as Würzburg-Mainz).

Franconian magic potion Silvaner

When asked about the respective neighbors, it is not without reason that one often hears the sentence: “One should thank God for everything, just not for the (to be used here optionally) Middle Franconia, Upper Franconia or Lower Franconia.” It is tricky, and if Caesar Franconia like Gaul ever had conquered, he would probably only have identified a drinking vessel as the element connecting all three parts of the country, which suspiciously resembles Asterix’s magic potion container on his belt, the “Bocksbeutel”, from which strengthening Silvaner vom Würzburger Stein, Randersackerer Ewig Leben or Escherndorfer Lump would be enjoyed. But even the idiosyncratic wine vessel made of green glass does not connect, but separates into two further parts, namely wine and beer francs, whereby the border here runs right through Lower Franconia behind Schweinfurt’s Petersfront, from whose vineyards Goethe and his Weimar household, according to the invoices, five liters per day, and runs across Middle Franconia. Not to speak of possibly “All-Franconian” half-timbering, because what was carved in the wood in the “Schnatterloch” of the small Lower Franconian town of Miltenberg in the form of picturesque St. Andrew’s crosses and fire dogs can always – although the shapes are very different – keep up with Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Middle Franconia. whereby unusual half-timbering is not a sufficient unique selling point in Germany anyway (although the Playmobil houses from Zirndorf, which are sold all over the world, are copied from their models around Nuremberg).