Dresden Stollen Festival

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15th Stollen Festival on December 6, 2008

Traditionally, Dresden’s bakers and pastry-chefs celebrate the so-called Stollen Festival on every Saturday prior to the 2nd Advent. Thus, this year’s Stollen Festival takes place on December 6, 2008 from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

14th Dresden Stollen Festival on Saturday, 8th of December 2007

While most people use the last sunbeams for an autumn walk, for others Christmas is just around the corner. The bakers and pastry-chefs of the Stollenschutzverband Dresdner Stollen e.V. (Trade Protection Society Dresden Stollen) are already planning, organizing and sweating in the midst of the fall in order to prepare one of Dresden’s most important Advent spectacles. Because also in this year, the Saxon capital celebrates the Dresden Stollen Festival - a gorgeous Christmas event. During the famous Stollen procession a Giant Stollen weighing about four tons is carried through Dresden’s baroque Altstadt (Old Town) to the so-called Striezelmarkt, Dresden’s Christmas Fair. There, the huge Stollen is sold in portions to the visitors. Parts of the revenues of the sale are always donated to a charitable venture. Already for the 14th time, Dresden’s citizens honor their perhaps most well-known proprietary article, the Dresden Stollen, with a public festival.

The 14th Dresden Stollen Festival takes place in Altstadt (Old Town) on Saturday, 8th of December 2007, from 10.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.. As usual, the festival is arranged by the Stollenschutzverband Dresdner Stollen e.V.(Trade Protection Society Dresden Stollen) in cooperation with the Hommage Dresden Association for the Promotion of Traditional Handicraft in Saxony. The organizer is again the PR- and Event Agency Zastrow+Zastrow. The Dresden Stollen Festival was celebrated for the first time in 1994. More than 1.000,000 guest from all over the world had been attracted by the previous festivals, and in the meantime, the event is considered to be the highlight of the Striezelmarkt. In 2001 alone, about 100,000 guests participated in the magnificent spectacle. "The enormous visitor attendance and the reporting in the media has made the Stollen Festival an important advertising medium for Christmas in Dresden", explains Holger Zastrow, organizer of the festival. The previous Stollen Festivals were televised in Japan, the U.S., Czech, Canada and other countries.

The highlight of this year’s Stollen Festival is again the baking of a Giant Stollen weighing about four tons, and the traditional procession through Dresden’s baroque Altstadt (Old Town) on the 8th of December. Passing the fantastic scenery of Saxon’s capital, the Giant Stollen and the Grand Stollen Knife, a replica of the original knife from 1730, are carried from the Schlossplatz to the Striezelmarkt. The colorful convoy is accompanied by further coaches, wagons and horse-drawn vehicles, the Stollen Maiden, bakers and pastry-chefs, representatives of different trade guilds, historical figures and fanfares. At the Striezelmarkt, the oversize cake - probably 4.30 meters in length, 1.70 meters in width and 0.90 meters in height - is cut with the Grand Stollen Knife. After that ceremony, portions of the cake are sold to the visitors of the Festival. Because of the 14th anniversary of the Stollen Festival, several surprises are planned in this year. The organizers are still working meticulously at the program. But definitely, the procession will be bigger and more gorgeous than ever before.

You will get further information about the Stollen Festival and its individual elements in our special rubrics.