Culture
Mainz is home to a Carnival, the Mainzer Fassenacht or Fassnacht, which has developed since the early 19th century. Carnival in Mainz has its roots in the criticism of social and political injustices under the shelter of cap and bells. Today, the uniforms of many traditional Carnival clubs still imitate and caricature the uniforms of the French and Prussian troops of the past. The height of the carnival season is on Rosenmontag ("rose Monday"), when there is a large parade in Mainz, with more than 500,000 people celebrating in the streets.
The first ever Katholikentag, a festival-like gathering of German Catholics, was held in Mainz in 1848.
Johannes Gutenberg, credited with the invention of the modern printing press with movable type, was born here and died here. The Mainz University, which was refounded in 1946, is named after Gutenberg; the earlier University of Mainz that dated back to 1477 had been closed down by Napoleon's troops in 1798.
Mainz was one of three important centers of Jewish theology and learning in Central Europe during the Middle Ages. Known collectively as Shum, the cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz played a key role in the preservation and propagation of Talmudic scholarship.
The city is the seat of Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (literally, "Second German Television", ZDF), one of two federal nationwide TV broadcasters. There are also a couple of radio stations based in Mainz.
According to legend, Mainz is the supposed birthplace of Pope Joan (John Anglicus), the woman who, disguised as a man, was elected pope, and served for two years during the Middle Ages.
Other cultural aspects of the city include:
- As city in the Greater Region, Mainz participated in the program of the year of European Capital of Culture 2007.
- The Walk of Fame of Cabaret may be found nearby the Schillerplatz.
- The music publisher Schott Music is located in Mainz.
- One of the oldest brass instrument manufacturer in the world, Gebr. Alexander is located in Mainz.
- Stiftung Lesen is a non profit foundation for the improvement of reading competencies.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)