The Munich Maypole

At the end of April the courtyards smell of resin. Somewhere a peeled spruce trunk lies on trestles, the paint pots stand beside it in white and blue, and a neighbourhood in the middle of a big city argues amiably about how tall the tree may be this time. The maypole is a country custom, and Munich is the opposite of the country. It has held on all the same, stubbornly and as a matter of course, from the landmark at the Viktualienmarkt to the trunks in the districts that have one of their own.

These pages are carried by Chinesischer Turm e.V., a society named after the tower in the English Garden. We gather what there is to know about the custom: its origins and meaning, the sheer effort of raising one, the stories of maypole stealing, and the one tree that became a landmark.

What a maypole tells you

A maypole is a village directory hoisted thirty metres up. Read the plaques from the bottom up and you find the baker, the smith, the brass band, the cooper, sometimes the barber. The tree says: this is us, and this is how many hands it took. Whoever raises it puts himself up there too. What the individual signs mean is set out on the pages about meaning and decorating.

Munich Maypole 2027

At the Viktualienmarkt the coming season starts with a gap. After an inspection by TÜV, the German technical inspection body, the 2022 tree had to go, dismantled in September 2026, a good four years after it went up. The next one goes into the socket on 9 May 2027, donated as its predecessors were by the Munich breweries. Whatever else is fixed for the season is collected on the page Munich Maypole 2027.

How the maypole fits into the Munich year, between the Schäfflertanz, the Kocherlball and the Wiesn, is shown by our sister project (in German), Brauchtum München.