The Wild Ones.

Photos by Simon Thorogood.

The German Swabian-Alemannic Fastnacht or Fasnet carnival, as featured in a previous post, culminates in the Fasching or ‘eve of Lent’ festival.

With pagan folk traditions that hark back to Medieval times, Fasching serves as a last coming together of local Fastnacht communities before Lent – the 40 day stretch of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, which represents an important religious observance in the German liturgical calendar. The original imperative for the carnival, the processions, costumes and masks was a concerted, communal effort to drive out evil spirits during the dark days of winter. For Catholic towns and communities, Fastnacht is a prominent public holiday period.

Then, as now, the carnival is conducted with great zeal, becoming the focal point of a particular host village or district every weekend throughout the Fastnacht season. Although, street processions are highly visual spectacles and make for great family entertainment, there can be an undercurrent of menace or impropriety that permeates proceedings.

Here, there are clues within the name. Some believe ‘Fasching’ is derived from the German word Fastenschank, meaning the last serving of alcoholic beverages before Lent. Others, maintain the name stems from an old word fasen, meaning to be foolish, wild, or silly. The word, fasnach, closely approximated to fastnacht, roughly translates as “night of being foolish.”

In fact, all three interpretations are legitimate. But, the imminent abstinence of drink and fasting prompts many devotees to overindulge whilst they have license to, and hence become foolish, wild, or silly. Once dressed up, fuelled by alcohol often consumed quickly, and roused by cumulative ardour, crowds readily assume the rubric of ‘wilde leute’ or wild people.

Interestingly, the final Fasching Carnival parade in mid-February can register quite different energy levels from festivities at the very start of Fastnacht. Whilst Fasching itself can evidence increased conspicuous indulgence on one hand, it can reveal a noticeable decrease in carnival vitality on the other, as preceding weekends of merrymaking (since Epiphany of January 6th) takes its physical and psychological toll.

But, to reprise the concluding point in my previous post on this subject, Fastnacht arguably exemplifies the very best attributes of creative culture. Essentially, it is a framework is which to exercise ‘difference.’ It represents a unique opportunity to connect with others, to dress up, to assume alternative personas, to be misplaced, to challenge commonly-held assumptions, to ask complicated questions of oneself and society, and to test out being someone, something, and somewhere else.

Fastnacht can remind us how crucial ‘opting out’ is for us, in some form or shape, and for some period or other. It also tells us how critical the arts and humanities are as both instrument and portal to enhanced human existences, storytelling, and the crafting of surrogate worlds and mindsets.

And, in much the same way that UNESCO awarded the Basel Fastnacht ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ status, singular places, practices and mechanisms of ‘otherness’ should be celebrated and nurtured as mediums for divergence and variance.

Such places have traditionally included enlightened universities, art schools, design colleges, theatre companies, or local community groups, to give just a few examples. However, regrettably these are the very places that appear at risk of being devalued by a world seemingly focusing on standards of acquisition and certainty over rituals of emprise and conjecture. Surely, such operation is foolish and silly.