Overview
- The festival takes place Thursday night into Friday and is not itself a public holiday.
- The Harz region plans more than 20 staged celebrations with fires, costumes and shows in hubs such as Thale, Schierke and Braunlage.
- In Berlin, “Take Back the Night” organizers have turned April 30 into a feminist and queer protest since 2021.
- Police in the capital expect to field about 5,700 officers for May Day events on Friday.
- Historian Kai Lehmann says upbeat folklore often ignores Europe’s witch hunts and cites estimates of about 30,000 executions in the Holy Roman Empire.