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The "German Wine Route" in the Palatinate advertises to be the first and most famous wine tourism route in the world.

It leads 85 kilometers through the wine-growing region.

It was created in 1935, at the time of the Nazi dictatorship: With the idea borrowed from winegrowers, Nazi Gauleiter Josef Bürckel wanted to make the area known and boost wine sales.

He also took over the election of the wine queen, which is still held today.

And another propaganda idea for German wine arose in 1935, albeit in the Koblenz-Trier district: “Wine sponsorships” of German cities for individual wine-growing towns.

Since the First World War, the winegrowers have had massive sales problems time and again.

After a record wine year in 1934, they sat on tons of unsold wine, and 1935 seemed to be an equally good vintage.

"In this situation, the winemakers reminded of the National Socialists' election promise to help them," says Christof Krieger, director of the Middle Moselle Museum in Traben-Trarbach.

The wine queen greets you from Harxheim am Rhein

Source: picture alliance / arkivi

The historian has dealt intensively with the history of viticulture in the times of National Socialism ("'Wine is a popular drink'") and is currently writing a book about the Nazi past of the "German Wine Queen".

The vintners had referred to the "Volksgemeinschaft" propagated by the National Socialists and the "blood and soil" ideology, says Krieger.

The demand already formulated in the Weimar Republic fit in with this: "Wine is a people's drink".

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The slogan of the anti-alcohol movement only had to be made tasty.

“The contradiction was resolved by condemning not alcohol as such, but its abuse,” explains Krieger.

The Wine Gate in Silence on the Wine Route

Source: picture alliance / arkivi

From October 19 to 26, 1935, the first "Festival of German Grapes and Wine" took place simultaneously in more than 200 cities in the German Empire.

The "Deutsche Weinzeitung" described it in the military jargon of the time as a "general mobilization of wine drinkers".

The “sponsored cities” of the wine towns celebrated with parades, plays and fireworks.

Garland-decorated trucks or railway wagons with wine were bid farewell to music and dancing, sponsorship certificates were exchanged, wine lotteries were held and excursions were organized.

Anything that increased sales was welcome.

In Hildesheim, the Nazi women's group demonstrated how wine can be used in the household, in Eisenach every theater-goer received a quarter of a liter of wine, in Mittweida bridal couples were given two bottles in addition to "Mein Kampf" as a gift during the wine promotion week.

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During the parades an anti-Semitic representation of Jewish wine merchants could often be seen, a doll with a gallows and noose.

They were defamed as scapegoats for the winegrowers' sales crisis.

The legend that 60 to 80 percent of the wine trade was in Jewish hands is still in some publications today, says Krieger.

According to his research, there were less than ten wine merchants in 180 wine-growing villages on the Moselle.

"Massive sales problems": Nazi Gauleiter Bürckel (r.) And Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick in 1935

Source: picture-alliance / IMAGNO / Austri

From an economic point of view, the idea of ​​sponsoring wine was a success - among other things, because the German brewing industry had to "take into account the national point of view", as it apparently announced under pressure from the NSDAP: In some places, all alcohol except sponsored wine was forbidden during the wine advertising week.

It is not surprising that the alcohol that was drunk for the national community also had side effects.

In Braunschweig the Gauleitung was even forced to obtain a large-scale amnesty after rampaging brawls.

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After another record wine harvest, the Festival of German Wine in 1936 was repeated with even more general staff.

Every municipality with more than 5,000 inhabitants was assigned at least one sponsor church, 900 sponsored cities were involved.

"Not for the glory of the blessed place" guests at a wine tasting in the 1930s

Source: picture alliance / VisualEyze / Unit

But the slogan "Wine is a popular drink" turned out to be a boomerang.

When in autumn 1936 frosts largely wiped out the wine harvest and, as a result, wine prices rose, the Nazi leadership set maximum prices.

The result was wine scams for cheap sponsored wine.

"What sailed under the collective term Bernkasteler Riesling, for example, will certainly not contribute to the glory of the blessed place", noted the "Rheinische Zeitung" in October 1937.

Apparently "a shot of water got into the sponsored wine idea".

The background to the intensive wine propaganda was also the competition between the Nazi Gauleiters Bürckel (Pfalz) and Gustav Simon (Koblenz-Trier) for the most important wine-growing area in the empire: While the idea of ​​the wine route went back to Bürckel, Simon had promoted the sponsorship of wine.

This rivalry finally came to an end - albeit differently than expected from the two, explains Krieger: When the National Socialists "annexed" Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, it was Austrian winemakers who supplied most of the wine.

Christof Krieger: “Wine is a popular drink.

Wine propaganda in the Third Reich ”.

(Rhein-Mosel-Verlag, Zell, 2018. 512 pp., 32.90 euros)

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