No dancing on Good Friday? German party-goers rebel

BERLIN — Observe Easter or go dancing?

In many parts of tradition-bound Germany, religion is winning out. And for those who like to go club-hopping into the night, it's not a happy holiday.

For a century, loud music and dancing all night long during religious holidays has been verboten. Here in the German capital, where the most popular clubs don't get going until after midnight, many just ignore such hidebound rules. "I don't find it modern at all," said Matthias Jeromin, 28, an engineering student in Berlin. "It contradicts my idea of a secular state."

Germany has restricted dance celebrations on religious holidays since the Middle Ages, but the ban only became legal in 1919.

Since then, each of Germany's 16 states decide when and how to enforce the ban, which prohibits all manner of raucous behavior in public during state-recognized religious holidays, such as Good Friday, which is the focus of the Easter holiday in this country.

In southern Germany's Catholic-dominated Bavaria, a strict, 70-hour dancing ban runs from 2 a.m. Thursday until midnight on Easter eve. In Berlin, there's only a short dancing ban on Good Friday, from dawn till dusk.

In November, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled that making citizens hang up their dancing shoes on religious holidays violates their constitutional right to assemble, but many German states have yet to revise their bans. Until then, tradition still rules.

Germany's influential Protestant and Catholic churches defend the ban as part of a social contract. "Germany is a secular society in the sense that church and state are separate, but they have a cooperative relationship with one another," said Heike Krohn-Bräuer, a spokeswoman for the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Oberlausitz.

"There are people that don't accept that," she added. "But the societal consensus is that we have these quiet public holidays that society has to comply with."

In Berlin — known as the country's party as well as political capital — residents, nightclubs and police largely ignore the ban. One of city's largest and hippest clubs, Matrix, which has nine bars and five dance floors, planned a massive party on Good Friday.

Yet in Potsdam, 22 miles southwest of Berlin, a dancing ban is in effect throughout Good Friday until 4 a.m. Saturday. Violating the ban carries a maximum fine of more than $1,000.

Members of different craft guilds participate in the Good Friday procession through Lohr am Main, Germany, on April 3, 2015. (Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand, European Pressphoto Agency)

That isn't deterring members of Spartacus, a left-wing collective in Potsdam. They're protesting the ban by throwing two separate parties over the weekend — despite warnings from police .

"They threatened us with fines if we go through with it ... but we're going to do it anyway," said member Philipp Ziems.

Ziems said he's got nothing against those who celebrate religious holidays, but "to dictate to people of other faiths or atheists what they can or cannot do on these days is absurd."

Asked if the city will enforce the ban and shut down the Spartacus party, Stefan Schulz, a city spokesman, said that if "we're tipped off that the law is being breached, then we have to intervene."