Landshut Wedding – After the Wedding is before the Wedding!

Slowly but steadily, the tension level rises. There is a foreboding, special shimmer in the air in the time before it starts, a very special atmosphere... The Landshut princely wedding - which nobody in Landshut calls it that - is a celebration that draws in large sections of the city's society and creates a sense of identity. The next performance of the "Landshut Wedding 1475" (external link, opens in a new window) will take place from 25 June to 18 July 2027!

Before the wedding is after the wedding - hopefully this is not usually true in normal life. But in Landshut, the old Bavarian ducal town that was the seat of the Bavarian government before Munich, this is certainly true. At least since 1902, the year in which the "Die Förderer" association was founded, which created the Landshut Princely Wedding of 1475, a historical play that has developed into the largest historical festival in Europe today.

I myself ran along for the first time as a teenager, in the large procession of noble ladies with a beating heart and the obligatory box wreath around my forehead.

Since then, the LaHo virus has never left me. In 2001, heavily pregnant, I joined the falconers for the first time, the group I still belong to today - once a falconer, always a falconer.

I remember my costume rehearsal back then. The dance master of the dance theatre, an expert in medieval dance and costume known throughout Europe, explained how nice it was to finally see a Gothic line of figures! He was a little disappointed that a child was hiding under the arch ...

But now to the Landshut Wedding 2023!

If you walk through the city during these spring days, the signs are unmistakable: The scaffolding in front of the old town houses is falling, the residence in the heart of the city, which has been covered up for years, is shining as it did when it was built around 1540.

On the Zehrplatz, which spans a huge area between the old town and the Isar, construction work has long since begun. Whenever you cycle past, the buildings that characterise it become clearer: the princely tribune, the countless individual houses and huts of the various groups ... and if I have time, I stop for a moment to see if the falconers' house is already taking shape.

And then a special time begins - perhaps the most beautiful?

The preparations and the slow, careful familiarisation of the falcons with their surroundings in Landshut. Day after day, we falconers spend a long time with them, getting them used to horse and rider, to being carried on our fists - which they love because it reminds them of a branch from which they can observe their surroundings.

After many, many hours between training and rest, between elaborate preparations and leisure time - but always with Falke! - it is here:

The first weekend!

Reflecting on the experience that is indelibly etched in my memory, I realised that it really does exist, this one wonderful moment that encapsulates everything I love about the Landshut wedding:

It's that brief moment when the whole wedding procession sets off on Sunday and you suddenly find yourself standing on the spot where the Munich Gate used to be in the time of the Rich Dukes, the heyday of Bavaria-Landshut:

At the entrance to the historic city, at the highest point of Dreifaltigkeitsplatz. The church bells are ringing, the old town - which really has that name - is full of thousands and thousands of people and lies before you in all its splendour.

You are standing here in a place that you would never take in your normal life, because you cross it quickly by car or bike: in the middle of the street. And it is precisely at this point that you realise the mastery with which this unique street was created.

More than 130 metres high, the brick tower of St. Martin's Basilica rises up to the right - next to Burg Trausnitz (Trausnitz Castle), it defines the great horizon line. At the foot of both are the magnificent town houses, the stage of the old town on which the more than two thousand 'wedding guests' and the guests celebrate the festival.

Hans Kratzer writes about this in his wonderful book "Zeitlang", which he published together with photographer Sebastian Beck: "Emotionally, a person of the present day cannot immerse themselves more deeply in the Middle Ages than at the festival 'Landshut Wedding 1475', which ... commemorates the splendid marriage of the Polish king's daughter Hedwig to the duke's son Georg. A European love affair in which the present and the past are interwoven in a grandiose density."

The crowning finale for the participants is not the last of the four wedding Sundays, but the church service on the following Monday evening, where all the participants and friends come together once again for a large thanksgiving service. Incidentally, everyone comes to this on foot - with one exception: the iron knights, who climb off the loading ramp of a lorry in their armour weighing up to 60 kg to enter the cathedral...