Anyone who sees the maypole only as a painted trunk with guild emblems misses the most interesting phase: the weeks when it is not yet standing. Once the tree is felled, decorated and stored away, the neighbours try to take it. Under the rules of the custom that is exactly what is meant to happen. It is not a legal licence. It is tolerated because both sides play along.
The rules of maypole stealing
The code is written down nowhere and is still fairly precise:
- The tree is taken only before it stands. A raised tree is off limits in Bavaria.
- Only by honest means, which means no force and no tool that damages the tree.
- Whoever succeeds does not keep the tree but negotiates a ransom.
It is settled not in money but in beer, Brotzeit, the bread and cold cuts that go with it, and hospitality. The thieves bring the tree back, the place that lost it lays on the hospitality, and in the end both sides have won what the custom has to hand out: an evening and a story. If the negotiations fail, the thieves raise the tree in their own village as a Schandbaum, a tree of shame, often with a plaque of mocking verses, and after a few weeks it is sawn up and auctioned off.
The tree almost always comes back. The only question is how much beer it costs.
Keeping watch
From that follows the second half, the one people underrate: the watch. In the nights before the raising, the young men sit by the tree, keep watch and sleep in shifts. Those nights are no tiresome extra. They are the social core of the whole thing, and they bind a neighbourhood across generations.
What the custom is, and what it is not
Maypole stealing is one of the few customs in which breaking the rule is the rule. It works only as long as both sides recognise the same unwritten contract. Damage the tree or refuse the ransom and you have broken the custom. In law, taking the tree remains an interference with someone else's property and can have consequences. More background on the custom comes from our sister project (in German), Brauchtum München.
Sources
- Abendzeitung München, 29.04.2014: Strenge Regeln für Maibaumdiebe.
- Wikipedia: Maibaum.
- München Wiki: Maibaum (muenchenwiki.de).
- Michael Ritter, Bayerischer Landesverein für Heimatpflege, in: MUH 48 (2023): Maibaumaufstellen.
Retrieved on 8 October 2026. The sources are in German. They document the facts given on this page; the bodies named remain the authority.