Oktoberfest 1900: beer and blood … and now on Netflix
Germany | Munich’s publicans weren’t amused when the TV mini-series “Oktoberfest 1900” was aired in September to coincide with the 2020 Oktoberfest, sadly cancelled due to the pandemic. Their – fictional – predecessors in this epic historical crime drama are two-faced sleazebags, switching from suave burghers to bloodthirsty thugs in their battles to control the Oktoberfest.
The series doesn’t present a celebratory vision of Munich at the turn of 19th century. There are no elegant ladies and their chivalrous paramours digging into their pork knuckles. Instead, Munich is shown as a cauldron of violence and conflict: there is murder, rape, intrigue and blackmail. There is no shortage of lynchings and sex orgies either. It is as if morals, the law and common decency are just for the timid.
Nuremberg publican serves as model
The plot revolves around an upstart brewer from Nuremberg, Curt Prank, who hatches the grandiose plan to build the first large beer tent on the Oktoberfest. That an outsider manages to best the Munich beer cartel at their own game is the only historically verified fact in this series.
He is modelled on the Nuremberg publican Georg Lang (1866 – 1904), who erected a marquee for 6,000 beer-thirsty punters and thus outdid his local rivals, who then operated shacks for perhaps 300 people each. He entered into the annals of the Oktoberfest with his “Lang’s Giant Hall”. Documents show that he managed to obtain five lots through shady middlemen on which he built his marquee. Even though Lang wasn’t allowed to serve his Nuremberg-brewed beer – to this day, the Munich beer cartel makes sure that only locally brewed beers are served at the Oktoberfest – his marquee proved successful.
In the series, Prank will stop at nothing: like a mobster he has one Munich brewer murdered, while he himself kills another one in cold-blood.
Back to Lang. His musical legacy proved enduring. He was the first to introduce a 40 piece brass band and distribute booklets with songs for punters to sing along. One was “Ein Prosit, ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit! Eins, zwei, drei – g’suffa“. Even today it is one of the most popular Oktoberfest hymns.
Thin on facts but thick on intrigue
Otherwise, the visually stunning TV series offers a lot of fiction – love, passion and a thirst for power. The storyline that waitresses went on strike in order to fight for higher wages is totally fictitious. The historical “beer girls” had to make do on tips alone.
Ultimately, Munich’s publicans needn’t have worried. This isn’t a cinematic epic disguised as 19th century history. It is the German version of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather 1-3” without a Marlon Brando or Al Pacino. Merely “a poor man’s mafia saga”, as one critic sneered. But we can think of worse ways to spend a few hours.
