World’s Largest Showmen’s Congress Begins Today

(eap) Starting today, 2,400 European showmen and -women are gathering in the East Westphalian city of Paderborn for the 75^th Delegates’ Conference of the German Showmen Association (Deutscher Schaustellerbund e.V. or “DSB” for short). Until and including Sunday, 25 January, the city – home to the annual Libori festival, Germany’s oldest church and folk festival – will host the Delegates’ Conference, the Interschau trade fair, specialist advisory meetings, as well as a youth and anniversary ball. One of the highlights will be tomorrow’s major rally, to which representatives from state and federal politics have been invited and called upon to actively incorporate the interests and demands of the showmen’s trade into future debates and political decision-making.

During an opening event, Albert Ritter, President of the DSB and of the European Showmen’s Union, thanked Paderborn’s Mayor Stefan-Oliver Strate for his hospitality in the “birthplace of folk festivals”. Strate praised the guild of showmen as “always reliable partners, edgy but absolutely honest”. Folk festivals, he said, are places where people of all ages and social backgrounds come together to forget the worries of everyday life for a few hours and enjoy a good time together.

The significance of folk festivals and also Christmas markets in Germany is reflected in current economic figures presented by the DSB today. According to these figures, a total of nearly 200 million visits (according to the DSB approx. 198.4 million) were most recently recorded at around 9,750 annual folk festivals in Germany. Approximately 5,600 showmen’s companies, employing around 30,800 people, service these events with a total of at least 13,200 businesses, ranging from snack stands to roller coasters. Turnover on folk festival grounds most recently amounted to a total of 6.51 billion euros per year. All of these indicators – except for the number of employees – show a positive development in the sector between 2018 and 2023, according to the DSB report. “The positive development is evident: visitor numbers continue to rise and reached a record level after the pandemic, especially at top folk festivals and Christmas markets. Visitors and host municipalities perceive folk festivals as offers for the whole family and as an important component of culture and tradition, whose attractiveness has, in the assessment of municipalities, even increased,” the DSB report states.

Despite these positive developments, German showmen still face a number of current challenges, which will be the subject of tomorrow’s major rally. These include, among other things, safety at folk festivals and the prevention of potential terrorist threats and the associated questions of who bears the costs, labour shortages, energy costs, the reduction of bureaucracy, and tax equality to counter competitive distortions at the European level. ■