The Maifest, or May Festival, celebrated the end of the school year in many German-American communities during the 1800s. Children walked in a parade to the city park and received colorful ribbons commemorating the recent school year as well as treats of pink lemonade, a German sausage, and an orange. The Maifest was an important festival, especially for children. One Hermann resident who was a child in the early 1900s recalled, “It was a high point of the year. We lived for Christmas and Maifest.”
Celebrating German traditions dwindled during the years of the world wars, but by 1952 many Hermann residents had again become interested in recognizing and honoring their German heritage. The Brush & Palette Club had begun working to restore many of the older buildings in Hermann and held the first public Maifest to raise additional funds. Hoping for perhaps a few hundred people, the townspeople were astonished, and somewhat overwhelmed, by the huge response to the invitation to visit Hermann, “a bit of the old in the heart of the new.” The next year, Hermann was prepared, and a new citywide tradition began.
