Top hat or no top hat: the right costume in the right place

It's late summer and I'm thinking about buying a top hat. This is because the fields have been mowed, the vineyards have been harvested and the season of harvest festivals has begun. The most famous is, as we know, the Munich Oktoberfest, where for several years now - to come back to the fashion and strange headgear like the top hat - you should show up in a dirndl, lederhosen and jacket if you don't want to attract attention. It used to be called traditional costume, but today it is called country house fashion.

I grew up in Munich, the Oktoberfest was a must for me as a child, or rather: roasted almonds, swing boats and roller coasters - without looping. And something else was different in the early 1980s. You hardly saw dirndls or lederhosen. They were primarily used as work clothing in the beer tents. Anyone who was from Munich showed up at the Oktoberfest in normal street clothes.

At that time there was a very self-confident understanding of bourgeois understatement in the Bavarian capital. There was no need to dress up, especially not as someone from the country. I moved away from Munich back then. Also because the conditions have completely changed - these days in Munich you see people dressed in country fashion not only at Oktoberfest, but all year round - my birthplace has become quite foreign to me.

Somehow it's fitting that in the country I now occasionally come across completely urban, bourgeois fashion as festive costume - complete with a top hat. In Lower Franconia, harvest festivals often merge into church fairs. Here in Castell, on these days at the end of October, the men wear black: frock coats and top hats. It is the urban clothing of the mid-19th century. On the Tuesday after the church fair, they throw rifles over their shoulders and hold a parade.

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This is reminiscent of times when the local princes forced their subjects to take up arms, most likely during the Thirty Years' War. The parade with the subsequent prize shooting is also very, very old. Nobody can tell me why the men throw themselves into an elevator like the one we know from the German revolution of 1848. At that time, in the republican spirit, vigilante groups were formed in many places and especially in cities to restore peace and order after the successful riot.

Today you can register to work at the church fair in Castell. Maybe some people do that because the men wear top hats. I too have the right to do so. But I notice: I don't yet feel rural enough to wear urban costumes. Maybe next year.