Oktoberfest and Bavarian Festival

Frankenmuth throws two of the biggest German celebrations in America, and one of them carries a blessing from Munich itself. Every June the town holds its Bavarian Festival, a multi day party of traditional German music, dancing, food, and beer that grew out of the grand opening of the Bavarian Inn back in nineteen fifty nine. Then in autumn comes Oktoberfest.

Frankenmuth held its first Oktoberfest in nineteen ninety, and it earned a remarkable distinction. In nineteen ninety six, by proclamation of Munich's lord mayor, Frankenmuth's Oktoberfest was declared the first Oktoberfest permitted to operate outside Munich with the blessing of the original. That is a rare stamp of approval from the home of the festival.

For a few weeks the beer tents fill with polka bands, dancers in dirndls and lederhosen, and the clink of one liter steins. It is exactly the kind of full throated German celebration the town's founders might never have imagined, given they came as sober Lutheran missionaries, but it draws enormous crowds and cements Frankenmuth's claim as the capital of German American festivity.