First May Day Holiday

© ADMA Ceremony for the 1st of May, Munich, 1923

In 1920 for the first time, 1 May becomes a legal holiday in the Reich states of Baden, Lippe, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and Anhalt as well as in the Free State of Brunswick. As early as 1919, the national assembly meeting in Weimar had declared the first of May a national holiday. In the following years, all attempts fail to turn the first of May, characterized by the socialists as a „labour day of struggle“, into an annual peoples’ holiday in Germany. This will not be done until 1933 by the National Socialists.