68 Fun Facts About Bavaria

Bavarian culture is heavily shaped by which religious heritage?

Catholic: when the Reformation swept through northern Germany, Bavaria's dukes kept their lands strictly loyal to Rome and made the duchy a centre of the Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation.

By area, where does Bavaria rank among Germany's 16 states?

First: it reached roughly its present borders in Napoleon's day, when siding with France let it expand at its neighbours' expense.

Bavaria's official name uses which title?

Free State: the word was coined as plain German for 'republic', and the revolutionaries who toppled Bavaria's king in November 1918 declared the country 'from now on a Free State'.

The Romans divided what is now southern Bavaria between which two provinces?

Raetia and Noricum: Rome fortified the northern frontier to keep the Germanic tribes out, and an army camp behind it grew into Augsburg, the capital of Raetia; the provinces held until the 5th century.

Which Frankish ruler deposed Bavaria's Duke Tassilo III in 788?

Charlemagne: by removing Tassilo he ended more than two centuries of rule by the Agilolfings, Bavaria's earliest ducal house, and for a time made the duchy a province of his Carolingian empire.

Which family ruled Bavaria for 738 years, from 1180 to 1918?

Wittelsbach: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa gave the duchy to a loyal count, Otto of Wittelsbach, and his line held it until revolution in November 1918 drove the last king into exile without his ever formally abdicating.

Which duke, deposed by his cousin Barbarossa in 1180, is credited with founding Munich?

Henry the Lion: he wanted the tolls of the salt road from Salzburg, so in 1157-58 he gave it a new bridge and market on his own land, and the town that grew around them outlasted his fall.

What does 'zu den Munchen', the Old High German name behind Munich, mean?

To the monks: the name is usually traced to a settlement founded from a nearby abbey, and a hooded monk has stood on the city's seal since the 13th century, drawn ever more childlike until he became the 'Munich child'.

Munich lies on which river?

Isar: the river runs through the middle of the city, and on one of its side channels in the English Garden surfers ride a man-made standing wave a short walk from the centre.

Bavaria's duke was made a prince-elector for helping the emperor crush a Bohemian revolt early in which war?

Thirty Years' War: Duke Maximilian I lent the emperor an army on condition that he be given the rebel leader's electoral title, and after victory at White Mountain he collected it in 1623.

In the German Empire founded in 1871, Bavaria ranked second in size behind which state?

Prussia. Bavaria drove a hard bargain to join: it kept command of its own army in peacetime, its own postal service and railways and its own beer tax, more independence than any other state in the empire.

Which socialist journalist led the Munich revolution of November 1918 and proclaimed Bavaria a republic?

Kurt Eisner. His party was crushed in the election that followed, and in February 1919 a nationalist count shot him dead as he walked to parliament to hand in his resignation.

Hitler's failed 1923 Munich coup began with him storming what kind of venue?

A beer hall. Hitler burst into Munich's Bürgerbräukeller and declared a national revolution; police gunfire stopped his march the next day, and he was freed after less than a year of a five-year sentence.

Why did Bavaria's parliament vote against West Germany's Basic Law in 1949?

It gave too little power to the states, Bavaria's deputies decided, but they also agreed to be bound by the law if two-thirds of the other states ratified it, and every one of them did.

Which party has supplied every Minister-President of Bavaria since 1957?

CSU. It stands for election only in Bavaria, while its sister party the CDU stays off the ballot there, so the two never compete and sit as one group in the Bundestag.

Which Bavarian Minister-President of 1978 to 1988 has Munich's airport named after him?

Franz Josef Strauß. As West Germany's defence minister he had to resign in 1962 over the Spiegel affair, after editors of a magazine that had criticised him were arrested on suspicion of treason.

Which Bavarian village has staged its Passion Play about once a decade since 1634?

Oberammergau. By tradition the villagers vowed during a plague outbreak to act out Christ's Passion every ten years, and the first performance was staged in the churchyard, over the graves of the victims.

Munich is the capital of which Bavarian administrative region?

Upper Bavaria. The regions were originally named after rivers, copying France's départements, until King Ludwig I ordered a return to historic names in 1837.

The Bavarian flag comes in two official forms, one striped and one covered in what?

White and blue lozenges. The diamonds were the arms of the Counts of Bogen, and Bavaria's dukes took them over when that family died out in 1242; by law neither flag outranks the other.

Which concentration camp near Munich, opened in March 1933, became the model for the whole Nazi camp system?

Dachau. Set up in an abandoned munitions factory weeks after Hitler took power, it first held political opponents, and the SS guards trained here went on to staff the later camps.

Besides Bavaria itself, the Bavarian dialect group is spoken across most of which country?

Austria. Every Austrian state except Vorarlberg speaks a Bavarian dialect, Vienna included, while the north of Bavaria itself speaks Franconian instead.

What is the name of Germany's highest mountain, which stands in the Bavarian Alps?

Zugspitze. An army surveyor mapping the range made the first documented climb in 1820 with an assistant and a guide; today a rack railway and cable cars carry visitors to the summit.

Who taps the first keg to open Oktoberfest each year with the cry 'O'zapft is!'?

The mayor of Munich. The custom began in 1950, when mayor Thomas Wimmer needed more than a dozen blows to drive in the tap; the first mug poured is handed to Bavaria's Minister-President.

Ludwig II of Bavaria, who built Neuschwanstein, was known by which nickname?

The Fairy Tale King. From 1875 Ludwig slept by day and lived by night, crossing the mountains in ornate sleighs and having operas and plays staged for an audience of one.

What happened to Ludwig II in June 1886, the day after his arrest at Neuschwanstein?

He and his doctor were found dead in Lake Starnberg. The doctor was the psychiatrist who had certified the king insane, and the official verdict of suicide by drowning has been disputed ever since.

In 1867 Ludwig II was briefly engaged to Sophie Charlotte, younger sister of which royal?

Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Ludwig postponed the wedding again and again, broke the engagement off after less than nine months and never came close to marrying again.

How did Ludwig II pay for Neuschwanstein?

His own fortune and heavy borrowing. By 1885 foreign banks were threatening to seize his property, and when he went on planning new castles his ministers had him declared insane.

Neuschwanstein's wall paintings show the medieval legends behind the operas of which composer, Ludwig II's idol?

Richard Wagner. Ludwig summoned the debt-ridden composer to Munich within weeks of becoming king, was forced by his ministers to send him away the next year, and went on paying for his work regardless.

Ludwig II's Herrenchiemsee palace, on an island in the Chiemsee, was modelled on which building?

Versailles. Ludwig built it as a monument to Louis XIV, the French king he revered, yet he stayed there for only a few days in 1885, and work stopped for good when he died the next year.

Which of Ludwig II's three palaces was the smallest and the only one actually completed?

Linderhof. In its park he had an artificial cave built for himself alone, with a lake and a waterfall, lit in changing colours by electric light that was ultra-modern in 1878.

The first Oktoberfest, in October 1810, celebrated what event?

A royal wedding. Crown Prince Ludwig's marriage was feasted for five days and capped with a horse race on a meadow outside the city gates, and repeating the race a year later began the annual festival.

Oktoberfest is held on which Munich fairground?

Theresienwiese. Locals shorten it to 'Wiesn' and use the word for the festival itself, which since 1872 has opened in September to catch longer days and warmer weather, so only its last days fall in October.

Besides limiting ingredients, Bavaria's 1516 beer purity law also fixed what?

Beer prices. A litre-sized Mass could cost no more than one Munich penny in winter and two in summer, and a brewer caught using forbidden ingredients had his barrels confiscated.

Which three ingredients did the 1516 Bavarian beer law permit?

Water, barley and hops. Yeast goes unmentioned: brewers reused it from batch to batch without understanding its part in fermentation, and they were held to barley so that wheat and rye stayed with the bakers.

Traditional Bavarian Weisswurst is made mainly from what?

Minced veal and pork fatback. Legend has a Munich innkeeper inventing it by accident in 1857: out of thin sausage skins, he filled tougher pork casings and boiled them for fear they would burst if fried.

By tradition, Weisswurst should be eaten before what?

The church bells ring noon. The usual explanation is that the sausages, made fresh each morning and neither smoked nor cured, would have spoiled by the afternoon in the days before refrigerators.

Which Munich tavern began in 1589 as a brewery serving only the duke's court?

Hofbräuhaus. Duke Wilhelm V founded it so that his court no longer had to buy costly beer from Einbeck in northern Germany, and ordinary citizens were not served there until King Ludwig I allowed it in 1828.

Which Franconian-born Renaissance artist is famous for his 'Praying Hands' and 'Young Hare'?

Albrecht Dürer. His 1515 woodcut of a rhinoceros was worked up from a written description and a rough sketch, since he never saw the animal himself, yet it was copied across Europe for three centuries.

By what name was the Bavarian city of Regensburg long known in English?

Ratisbon. Under that name it entered Napoleonic lore: as his troops stormed its walls in 1809 a spent shot bruised Napoleon's foot, and once it was bandaged he rode out again to show the army he was unhurt.

Which two rivers join the Danube at Passau, the 'City of Three Rivers'?

Inn and Ilz. Their waters run side by side before mixing, the Inn green with glacier melt and the Ilz dark from peat bogs, and on average the Inn brings more water to the meeting than the Danube does.

Which engine, named after the engineer who invented it, was developed at an Augsburg machine works in the 1890s?

The Diesel engine. Rudolf Diesel spent four years perfecting it there and grew rich on the royalties, but in 1913 he vanished from the deck of a steamer bound for England and was presumed drowned.

Augsburg was home to which two families that dominated 16th-century European banking?

Fugger and Welser. Jakob Fugger put up most of the money that bought Charles V the imperial crown, and the housing estate he endowed for Augsburg's poor still charges under one euro a year plus three daily prayers.

Which US Secretary of State was born in Fürth, Bavaria, and fled Nazi Germany as a teenager in 1938?

Henry Kissinger. He never stopped following his hometown football club, even in office, and in 2012 he flew back to keep an old promise to watch a match if it ever reached the Bundesliga.

Würzburg, home of the UNESCO-listed Residenz palace, lies on which river?

Main. Bombing in 1945 destroyed most of Würzburg and badly damaged the palace, yet the vault over its grand staircase held, saving Tiepolo's ceiling fresco, one of the largest ever painted.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber lies on which tourist route through southern Germany?

Romantic Road. For all its medieval towns the route is a postwar invention, launched in 1950 to win visitors back to Germany, and its first holidaymakers were American occupation soldiers and their families.

Germany's first national park, established in 1970, lies in which region on the Czech border?

Bavarian Forest. Its motto is 'let nature be nature': when a storm flattened thousands of trees in 1983 the minister ordered them left where they fell, and bark beetles have since been allowed to kill old spruce in the core zone.

Only electric boats, rowing boats and pedal boats have been allowed on which Bavarian lake since 1909?

Königssee. On the crossing the boatman stops and plays a trumpet at the sheer rock wall so that passengers hear its famous echo answer back; crews once fired a small cannon instead.

Berchtesgaden National Park is dominated by which massif west of its central lake?

Watzmann. In legend the massif is a cruel king turned to stone with his wife and children for his crimes, which is why its lesser peaks are still called the Watzmann's wife and the Watzmann children.

Waldi, the 1972 Munich Olympics mascot, was what dog breed?

A dachshund. The breed is a Bavarian favourite, and the organisers carried the joke further: the marathon course through Munich was laid out in the dog's outline, with the runners setting off from the back of its neck.

Which Bayern Munich striker, nicknamed 'Der Bomber', scored 365 Bundesliga goals between 1965 and 1979?

Gerd Müller. When second-division Bayern signed the stocky teenager in 1964 their coach scoffed, 'What am I supposed to do with a weightlifter?'; his goals took the club up within a year and on to three European Cups.

Under whose captaincy did Bayern Munich win the European Cup three years running from 1974 to 1976?

Franz Beckenbauer. 'Der Kaiser' is credited with inventing the attacking sweeper: instead of waiting behind his defenders, he carried the ball out from the back and started the moves himself.

Why was Munich's Allianz Arena built with a shell that glows red or blue?

To tell two home clubs apart: red marked a Bayern home game and blue one for city rivals 1860 Munich, with white kept for the national team. Since the rivals moved out in 2017, the lighting has followed Bayern's colours.

Which carmaker is headquartered in Munich?

BMW. It began in the First World War as a maker of aircraft engines, survived the peace on motorcycle engines and railway brakes, and did not sell a car of its own until 1928.

Audi is headquartered in which Bavarian city on the Danube?

Ingolstadt. The firm's home factories in Saxony fell inside the Soviet zone and were seized after 1945, so its managers fled west and started again in the old garrison town, building motorcycles in a converted granary.

Adidas and Puma, founded by the feuding Dassler brothers, are headquartered in which Franconian town?

Herzogenaurach. The brothers' quarrel split the town along its little river: each firm's workers kept to their own bakers, butchers and bars, and locals learned to check a stranger's shoes before starting a conversation.

Which Munich-born composer, whose 'Also sprach Zarathustra' opens the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, was a brewer's grandson?

Richard Strauss. His mother was a Pschorr, of the Munich brewing family, and his father was the court orchestra's leading horn player; raised on that sound, he wrote his first horn concerto at 18.

Which Bavarian city gives its name to Germany's most famous Lebkuchen, protected by EU law since 1996?

Nuremberg. Medieval trade routes brought exotic spices through the city and beekeepers gathered honey in the imperial forest outside its walls, so its bakers had both costly ingredients on the doorstep.

At Oktoberfest, a dirndl apron bow tied on the wearer's left side is said to signal what?

She is single, while a bow on the right says she is taken. The code caught on only in recent decades, spread by media reports around the turn of the millennium.

The Danube, which crosses Bavaria via Regensburg and Passau, rises in which German region?

Black Forest. A short way downstream the young river sinks into limestone caverns and comes up again as a spring that feeds the Rhine, so on many days each year its own bed lies dry and its water ends up in the North Sea.

Which UNESCO-listed town, built on seven hills and nicknamed the 'Franconian Rome', is famous for its smoked beer?

Bamberg. Its old town hall stands in the middle of the river, on the old boundary between the bishop's hill town and the burghers' island town, and brewers there still dry their malt over beechwood fires.

Bavaria has the second-largest population of Germany's states, behind which one?

North Rhine-Westphalia. About 18 million people live there, most of them along the Rhine and the Ruhr, where coal and steel turned a land of farms and villages into one of Europe's largest clusters of cities.

Which pope was born in the Bavarian village of Marktl in 1927?

Benedict XVI. Joseph Ratzinger stunned the Church in 2013 by stepping down, saying his strength was failing, the first pope to resign since 1415, and lived on inside the Vatican as 'pope emeritus'.

Bavaria and Switzerland face each other across which lake?

Lake Constance. Bavaria holds only a short stretch of its shore, and the three countries around the lake have never agreed on binding borders across its open water, so no fixed line divides the middle.

What was the only food an 1812 royal decree let Munich's beer cellars serve with their beer?

Bread. The limit answered complaints from the cellars' rivals in town, so drinkers packed their own picnics, a custom Bavaria's 1999 beer garden ordinance treats as a mark of a true beer garden.

Franconian wine is traditionally sold in which distinctively shaped bottle?

Bocksbeutel. The flattened flask is thought to descend from the field bottle, shaped so that it cannot roll away, and in the 1720s Würzburg's council ordered the best wines of its own winery to be bottled in it.

Which minister modernised Bavaria on the Napoleonic French model between 1799 and 1817?

Count Montgelas. He had left Bavarian service in 1787 after being exposed as a member of the secret Illuminati, then came back twelve years later as chief minister and made schooling and vaccination compulsory.

Until its abolition after a 1998 referendum, what second chamber did Bavaria's legislature have?

A Senate. Its 60 members were chosen by farmers, unions, churches and other groups, not by voters, and the voters scrapped it themselves: a small party's petition forced the referendum, and 69 per cent chose abolition.

The Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919 was crushed by the army and which paramilitary units?

The Freikorps. These bands of demobilised soldiers under former officers put down left-wing risings across Germany in 1919, and many of their men, among them the future chief of Hitler's brownshirts, went on to join the Nazis.