We’re in a quiet, fourth-floor room opposite Munich’s mighty twin-domed Frauenkirche cathedral. Dieter Reiter is tuning his beautiful Lowden guitar, handmade in Downpatrick, Co Down, and recalling his “sensational” holiday in 2022 touring Ireland’s music pubs.
Outside this room everyone knows Reiter as the powerful and popular lord mayor of Munich. But on Sunday, when he plays an outdoor set with his musician friends, he is an honorary ambassador for Ireland.
St Patrick’s Day in the Bavarian capital is an annual explosion of colour, dancing and music, the largest Irish gathering on continental Europe attracting more than 1,500 participants and 40,000 onlookers. That this year’s three-day festival is happening at all, though, is largely thanks to a push from Reiter to secure €95,000 in city funds.
“I didn’t have to wait long until the city council supported me,” he says. “Since corona[virus] we only seem to have demos against things, and the atmosphere can be depressing and a bit aggressive, so St Patrick’s festival is a welcome antidote to all that.”
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Listening in is fellow musician Paul Daly, owner of Kilian’s Irish Pub downstairs and honorary godfather of Munich’s 1,000-strong Irish community. It was Daly’s friendship with Reiter, and their shared love of music, that have helped bring the festival to the next level.
“It gives us a great sense of community here,” says Daly, “but are reaching out, too, to people who would never have considered Ireland, or going to Ireland.”
Someone who remembers well the origin story of St Patrick’s Day in Munich is Frank McLynn, a native of Tang, Co Westmeath and Munich resident since 1975. It was in 1996 that a friend – the late Mike Spillane – suggested the idea of a parade, and McLynn filed for a permit estimating 300 attendees. On the day 3,000 people came.
“I was going to be arrested at that stage for having this number of people with no permission,” says McLynn. “Luckily I had a pink piece of paper from the local authority and I could convince them that I was not trying to be seditious or overthrow the government.”
The Irish and Bavarians are a good match, we like to celebrate life and our traditional culture
— Munich tourism chief Benedikt Brandmeier
This began a pragmatic and productive relationship between the Irish and local police that has remained constant as St Patrick’s celebrations grew from a one-off parade to a full weekend event – the one-weekend event for which Munich police volunteer to work.
“From the start it has been such a peaceful and happy event, the marchers and the onlookers, something that almost never happens these days,” says Robert Kraus, recently retired superintendent who was the police co-ordinator for the festival.
As the parade has grown, so have the security costs and bureaucracy. A new generation of Munich-Irish organisers have faced a series of challenges, from pandemic cancellations to the withdrawal of some familiar Irish brands as sponsors.
“Without the city of Munich we couldn’t have run such a professional festival this year,” says Derek McDonnell, head of the Munich Irish Network responsible for the parade. “It’s a great celebration of Irish identity, but also of Munich as a wonderful place to live, work, raise a family or kick-start your career.”
Recent years have seen a shift away from alcohol to a broader, family-friendly celebration of Irish culture. This year’s opening event is a concert of Irish poetry set to new music by Newfoundland composer James Hurley and performed by Irish tenor Dean Power. Power spent a decade here until 2022 at the Munich State opera and is a hugely enthusiastic about this weekend – and Bavaria for the rest of the year.
“So many Irish have come out to Bavaria – either to live permanently or to develop as a person – and they all have such positive experience,” says Power. “St Patrick’s festival in Munich huge and not just about Irish people, instead it is a welcoming thing for all people from everywhere.”
Munich tourism chief Benedikt Brandmeier agrees and see this year’s official city support – not just funding but also marketing and branding expertise – as a win-win.
“The Irish and Bavarians are a good match, we like to celebrate life and our traditional culture,” he says, noting that it generates welcome trade for city businesses at an otherwise quiet time of year. “I can think of no better form of friendship between two cultures than celebrating together.”
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Praise indeed in the home of the Oktoberfest – and a balm to the Munich Irish, some of whom feel the festival thrives on benign neglect from Ireland. Angela Feeney, a Belfast-born soprano, has been based in Munich since 1976 and, in previous years, was part of the parade organisation committee.
“It is so exciting and I wouldn’t miss it, it makes you very proud when Germans come up to say what a great day it is,” she says. “But there is a huge lack of knowledge at Government level in Ireland that we are here, representing our country to such a high standard, and all volunteering.”
We generate an awful lot of good will towards the Irish and that is something deserving of more support
The ambivalence is particularly palpable this year in Munich. On the one hand, Ireland is making a big push in Germany with Zeitgeist Irland 24. This is a year-long celebration of Irish culture, co-funded by Culture Ireland and the Department of Foreign Affairs, of which Dean Power’s concert is part. Another boost will come in June when a new Irish consulate in Munich, the second after Frankfurt, opens its doors in June.
Given that, many Irish here wonder why all the senior ministers are flying elsewhere. The official St Patrick’s representative to Germany is Martin Heydon, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
Back in his office above Kilian’s pub, owner Paul Daly remains hopeful that Ireland will eventually realise – and want to be more involved in – what he and the other Munich Irish have created. Berlin may be the political capital, but Munich is Germany’s boom town and Irish capital.
“This is the biggest Irish event that happens on mainland Europe every year,” he says. “We generate an awful lot of good will towards the Irish and that is something deserving of more support.”
The Irish are popular in Bavaria, but it wasn’t always the case. One of the earliest visitors here was Cavan-born monk Cillian, who made waves in Würzburg, today the northern Bavarian region of Franconia, by converting the local duke to Christianity. The duke’s wife, fearing the Irishman was usurping her authority, had him and two fellow monks beheaded in 689.
Their skulls are still kept in Würzburg cathedral while Cillian’s Bible, held in the local university, contains margin notes which are the oldest-known written examples of old Irish. Outside of Cork, Cillian – or Kilian – remains a popular name in Bavaria.
After Cillian, Irish monks founded the St Jakob monastery in the 11th century in today’s Regensburg. Some even speculate that Munich – derived from “zu den Munichen”, a nod to a monk settlement on the Isar river, – is named after another itinerant Irish holy man.
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On the wall of Nymphenburg Palace, where Dean Power sang on Friday night, hangs a severe-looking portrait of Elisa Gilbert from Sligo. In 1846 she became the most notorious woman in Bavaria when, performing as Spanish dancer Lola Montez, she bedded King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The Irishwoman’s hold over the king was said to be so great that the state government – and Munich students – rebelled against her. Ludwig abdicated and Gilbert, elevated to Countess of Landfeld, was forced into exile.
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