STORIES FROM THE TENT

Windhoek’s first proper Oktoberfest was held at Sport Klub Windhoek on 4 and 5 November 1960, under the patronage of the club and the Lions. The idea came from Kurt Dahlmann, editor-in-chief of the Allgemeine Zeitung. There was a brass band, a small funfair and a rag ball. There was also a Beer Queen, Marianne Berker, and there has been one every year since.

By the second year the Lions, the Red Cross, the hunting club and half the organisations in town had attached themselves to the festival. It was a city event by then, not a club one.

Dirndl and Lederhosen, fairground stalls, sausages and roast chicken, and one German band after another making the trip south: the Alpenland Kapelle, das Frankenfeuer, the Flößerkapelle Neuses, the Bergmannskapelle Stockheim. Two days, last weekend of October. Sixty years on, we have not felt the need to change much.

A chicken was R1.70. A T-shirt was R2.00. A beer was 65 cents. The brewery sent up a 1,200-litre keg and threw in a crash course in tapping it.

Gitti Poulon lifted 24 half-litre mugs in 35 seconds, a Beer Queen record that has not been beaten. The same year, the tennis section raffled a live piglet as third prize. It got loose on stage, chewed the master of ceremonies’ Bavarian socks and led a full chase through a packed SKW hall before it was caught and handed to the winner.

The keg was tapped at seven, the Beer Queen was crowned straight after and the brick-lifting followed on the Saturday. Anyone in traditional dress got in free, and so did the children.

The Mayor of Windhoek tapped the barrel, flanked by the Mayor of Maisach in Bavaria, who had travelled down with the band. The Luitpold Musikanten played, the judging panel for the Beer Queen was three brewers, and Gunhild Schnabel took the title for the second year running.

The brick-lifting went to a run-off. Michael Baas and Uwe Traupe both got eighteen bricks up, 46.44 kilograms of them. Baas held his in the air longer.