Day of People's Sorrow in Germany
Description:
The day was established by the German People’s Society for War Graves in 1919 to commemorate the nearly 2 million dead and missing during the First World War.
The "unprescribed" grief was the motif of the day, a sign of solidarity among those who had lost no one and had no one to mourn, with the relatives of the dead and missing.
In 1922, the first official ceremonial meeting was held in the Reichstag in Berlin. Paul Löbe, then president of the Reichstag, delivers a speech with an international response, contrasting the hostile world with reflections on reconciliation and understanding. Since 1926, the Day of People’s Sorrow was regularly celebrated on the 5th Sunday after Easter (i.e. in late spring), but was not a public holiday.
After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, this day was legally declared a state holiday. The organizers of the new national holiday from 1933 to 1945 were the Wehrmacht and the National Socialist German Workers Party. The nature of the Day of People’s Grief has also undergone strong changes. Propaganda Minister Josef Goebels issued directives on the content and conduct of the holiday. Now mourning was no longer his foundation. From now on, the dead soldiers of the First World War were glorified with Nazi pomp as “Heroes”. Flags in the country were not lowered, but raised completely. Especially clearly expressed the change in the content of the holiday in the change of its name: the Nazis renamed the Day of national mourning in the “Day of memory of heroes”.
In 1948, the German People’s Society for War Graves again adopted the tradition of celebrating the Day of People’s Sorrow in the form it was before 1933. The purpose of the holiday, as before, became grief and mourning for the dead, but now two world wars, a reminder of the victims of tyranny and despotism, regardless of nationality.
The first central mourning rally dedicated to the Day of People’s Sorrow was held in 1950 in Bonn. Since 1952, this day in Germany is considered a national day of mourning. In order to break away from the Nazi “Heroes’ Day of Remembrance,” the Day of People’s Tribulation was moved to the penultimate Sunday before the First Advent (i.e., the penultimate Sunday of November). After the Bundestag moved from Bonn to Berlin, a central mourning rally takes place in the plenary hall of the Bundestag in one of the Reichstag buildings in Berlin. A mandatory part of the rally is the speech of the Chancellor, the heads of cabinets of the government and the diplomatic corps, as well as the musical design: the performance of the national anthem and the song “Good Comrade”. Similar rallies are held in all federal states and most German cities.