Confessional Peace, Ecclesiastical States & Revolutionary Occupation

Frankish/Carolingian power and the Holy Roman imperial order in Central Europe.

1 chapter

1517 - 1648

The Protestant Reformation shattered the religious unity of the Rhineland and Westphalia, creating a confessional divide that still structures the region's festival landscape. Cologne alone of all the imperial cities 'never experienced a crisis of faith, nor deviated from the path of Catholic orthodoxy' (Scribner, 1976)—its cathedral remained Catholic and its Fastnacht continued uninterrupted. But in Münster, Anabaptists seized the city in 1534–35; their leaders' bodies were displayed in iron cages that still hang from St. Lambert's church tower. The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) devastated the region; the Peace of Westphalia, concluded in Münster's Rathaus Friedenssaal in 1648, established the principle that rulers could determine their territory's religion—freezing a confessional map where the Rhineland remained predominantly Catholic while Westphalia became confessionally mixed. This divide still shapes festival calendars: Catholic areas celebrate Karneval before Lent, while Protestant areas developed different traditions like Schützenfeste and parish Kirmes.

1815 - 1914

After Napoleon's fall, the Rhineland passed to Prussian rule; Cologne's bourgeoisie responded by reinventing carnival as organized political satire, while the Ruhr began its transformation into Europe's industrial heartland. In 1823, the Große Karnevalsgesellschaft (now Die Grosse von 1823 e.V.) and the Festkomitee Kölner Karneval created a new organizational form: the Elferrat (council of eleven, with French Revolutionary égalité symbolism), the Dreigestirn (trio of prince, maiden, and peasant), and the organized parade. This was not a restoration of the medieval guild Fastnacht but a transformation—a different festival in the same calendar slot, using Kölsch dialect and humor as vehicles of local identity and resistance to Prussian authority. Meanwhile, coal mining transformed the rural Ruhr into the largest industrial region in Europe. Pits like Zeche Zollern (opened 1898) drew hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, creating a new urban culture alongside the old confessional traditions. In the Palatinate, the medieval Wurstmarkt continued its evolution from pilgrimage market to wine festival, drawing ever-larger crowds.

1300 - 1517

Late medieval guild culture created the festival forms whose traces still shape Rhenish and Westphalian celebrations today. In Cologne, the Richerzeche (the patrician council) and later the craft guilds (Zünfte) organized the annual Fastnacht—a pre-Lenten revel within the Christian framework of the civitas diaboli (the 'city of the devil'), where the world was temporarily inverted before the austerity of Lent. German-language scholarship locates Rhenish Karneval's origins in this medieval Christian practice, not in documented pagan continuity. In Bad Dürkheim, a pilgrimage to St. Michael's Chapel on Michaelsberg generated a market (Michaelismarkt) first documented in 1417—this evolved into the Wurstmarkt, now the world's largest wine festival. In Westphalia, the Lügde Osterräderlauf—a tradition where burning oak wheels are rolled down the Osterberg at Easter—has custodians (the Dechenverein, documented since 1410) who state that pagan origins are 'leider nicht nachweisbar' (unfortunately unverifiable). Cologne's Gothic cathedral, begun in 1248 and funded by guild wealth, stands as the material expression of this era's civic-religious fusion.

1914 - 1990

Two world wars and the Cold War divided the region physically and culturally; the Nazi regime attempted to co-opt carnival and folk traditions, while postwar West Germany made Bonn its provisional capital. In 1935, Cologne's carnival practitioners organized the Narrenrevolte (Fools' Revolt)—a satirical carnival staged in resistance to Nazi attempts to co-opt the tradition. The regime responded by imposing changes, including forcing the traditional maiden role to be played by a man (1936–43). At Lügde, the Nazi regime reframed the Osterräderlauf around the goddess Ostara; citizens erected an Opposition Cross in 1935 to reassert its Christian character. The EL-DE House—Cologne's former Gestapo prison—now houses Germany's largest local Nazi documentation center, bearing witness to this era's ruptures. After 1945, carnival resumed almost immediately (Lügde's Osterräderlauf ran again in 1946); the Zollverein mine in Essen, operational through both wars, closed in 1986. Bonn became West Germany's provisional capital in 1949, and the Haus der Geschichte museum now traces the republic's history from 1945 onward.