Annual harvest festival at Bueckeberg
Creator(s)
- Ms. Katherine Tillman
- Mr. Phillip R. Sloan
- Mr. John Vincent Tillman (Camera Operator)
Biographical History
John Vincent Tillman (1907-1956) was on a fellowship at the University of Munich studying German opera between October 1935 and the summer of 1936. Tillman recorded his travels across Germany (some via motorcycle), from small towns in the Alps to Berlin, Dresden, and Munich, on 16mm film and kept a diary. He later received a doctorate from the University of Chicago and chaired the German department of St. Louis University.
Scope and Content
Large groups of civilians travel along a road to the harvest festival in Bueckeberg on October 6, 1935. Germans heil officials and watch a large procession. Tillman describes in his diary how one million people traveled by special trains and by foot to the rally. "The whole mountain... was alive with people, hardly room for more... People of different parts of G[ermany] with their native costumes marched in procession until 12:00 when the Fuehrer arrived - walked through the crowd to platform on top of mountain to watch the battle - very realistic." In his manuscript "Meine Herrschaften" (in USHMM's collection) Tillman describes the festival as similar to Thanksgiving Day in the United States and notes that..... (pg 5-6)
Note(s)
The harvest festivals took place annually from 1934 to 1937 in Bueckeberg and stopped in September 1938, a few days before the 1938 festival, because the special trains that were used to bring participants to the nearby station of Hameln were bringing troops to the Czech border. Unlike the party rallies in Nuremberg, which carried a military focus, harvest festivals were for the national community where peasants and city dwellers, men, women and children, came from all over the Reich.
Subjects
- GERMANS
- PARADES
- RALLIES (NAZI)
- HARVESTS
- CROWDS
- COSTUMES
Places
- Bueckeberg, Germany
Genre
- Amateur.
- Film