Happy Birthday, Hainewalde!

2026 marks the 700^th anniversary of the founding of Hainewalde, the village in Germany’s Oberlausitz region where I regularly spend time. Garostly gardening. I’m there at irregular intervals for variable lengths of time, so I was excited to be there the weekend of the big 700 celebration. While you’ve likely not heard of Hainewalde, you have almost certainly seen its semi-famous palace. It appears at the beginning of Grand Budapest Hotel, as the stately residence of the elderly owner of the painting the protagonist steal when they visit her in the dark of night. Its impressive entrance tiered staircase (which inspired Friedrich the Great’s design for Sanssouci) is lit by flanking rows of torches.

My neighbor Knut, chief of the volunteer fire brigade during the era when Wes Anderson was there and present for safety reasons the evening when the staircase scene was filmed (Anderson got special permission from the historic preservation folks to install torch brackets on the abandoned edifice, which remain as reminders of that memorable visit to this sleepy village). When I stopped by Knut’s to buy eggs (only six, due to his aging hen population), he told me to pick up a schedule of events at ‘the shop’, which I found at hainewalde.de. Little looked appealing to me, although there were plenty of scheduled family activities.

When I did head to the shop, I noticed many improvements in the public Herb Garden, a thriving project thanks to the efforts of a team of dedicated (mostly female) volunteers. A dollhouse-sized Umgebinde house ( a very particular kind of house found in the former linen weaving villages within a circa 50 kilometer radius of the spot where Czech, Germany, and Poland meet, that is supported by a wooden arcade on the ground floor and whose two wind-facing sides are embellished by decorative and weather-resistant slate patterns in nuances from grey to nearly pink) serves as a very beautiful bird house. The herb beds were tidied, and someone had painted lovely new signs identifying plants. In the spring, when saplings were supple, a local harvested them to construct picturesque bentwood settees that looked like furniture from The Wind in the Willows. As I walked along the Mandau River (more a shallow creek or stream, really, although the mallards are certainly happy), I noticed some buildings had little signs outside that detailed their history: when, by whom, and for what purpose they were built (bakery, sieve manufacture, butcher, saddle maker, post, dry goods shop, farm stand, school), their histories (because Hainewalde is situated in the former East Germany, many buildings were repurposed once, if not multiple times, since the 1930s), accompanied by the oldest photograph, a kind of visual architectural birth certificate. This discovery naturally inspired me to wander up and down village streets to learn more local history.

On Saturday afternoon, a church service opened the festivities, and attendees proceeded afterwards to the gymnastics hall (part of a kind of ‘downtown’ comprised of a retirement home, a municipal building, and an occasionally open restaurant). Long Oktoberfest-style tables and benches were set up indoors and out, with the outdoor space surrounded by stands selling sausages and sauerkraut, sweets, and beer. No souvenirs! I really wanted one of the ‘Hainewalde 700’ tee shirts (at this point, I won’t need another tee shirt until the third millenium, but some opportunities I just can’t resist) and was disappointed to hear that they were pre-ordered by volunteers.

A jovial atmosphere reigned inside the gymnastics hall and out, and on the stage, I witnessed the single most half-hearted and disorganized line dance-to-recorded-music performance imaginable. All performers were women between 40 and 70, mostly overweight and not terrible coordinated. Afterwards, they dispersed towards their families, whose children ran up and hugged the elder performers with an enthusiasm I’ve only seen following elementary school talent shows (with the age demographic reversed). With elections in Saxony, the federal state where Hainewalde is situated, around the corner, and having been keeping up with regional news, I looked around me and surmised that most of those jovial faces belonged to supporter of the extreme right-wing (neo-Nazi) party, AfD (Alternative für Deutschland – Alternative for Germany), dominant in this impoverished corner of Germany, especially in rural areas.

On Sunday, there was a parade. With floats and a (float-riding, rather than marching) band. The parade route ran along the Mandau, past the castle, the shop, and all the spiffed-up houses, ending back at the gymnastics hall. Many local businesses, including my professional painter neighbors, made floats with varying degrees of creativity and innovation to hawk their expertises. The. Herbal Garden Association had one as did the Damask Museum in neighboring Großschönau, which, as its name implies, is one of the larger, historically richer villages and is blessed with many beautiful houses. Locals had repaired and tinkered their antique tractors, cars, and bicycles into functionality and these were driven by folks in historically appropriate attire. For many, the dark, chilly winter of 2025-26 was a busy and exhilarating time of sewing, soldering, and  tracking down rare parts and materials in preparation for that Sunday parade.

The individuals attached to particular floats waved and tossed treats to bystanders. Some walked alongside distributing goodies, the most common of which (at 11 am) was beer. I’ve been to a lot of parades, including those ending in celebrations where beer was sold (like Oktoberfest in Munich), but I’ve never before seen parade participants handing out paper cups of beer to bystanders. Only in Germany (?)! Do they distribute ouzo at Greek parades? Or Slivowitz at Serbian ones? I suppose, in any event, that beer is healthier than the sweets they distribute!

Rather than follow villagers to the gymnastics hall festivities, I opted for a walk through the castle grounds and on the ‘Victoria Path’ through the woods, where the scents and sounds of fall reminded me that summer’s nearing its end.