By law, "the Sundays and the public holidays remain protected as days of rest from work and of spiritual elevation" (Art. 139 WRV, part of the German constitution via Art. 140 GG). Thus all Sundays are, in a manner, public holidays – but usually not understood by the term "holiday" (except for, normally, Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday).

Public holidays apart from the Sundays (there must be some of them constitutionally) can be declared by law by either the Federation or the Länder for their respective jurisdictions. By federal law, only the German Unity Day is made a holiday at present (Unity Treaty, Art. 2 sect. 2); the others, even the ones celebrated all over Germany, are made holidays by state legislation.

List by state

Holiday	Local name (in German)	Date	BW	BY	BE	BB	HB	HH	HE	MV	NI	NW	RP	SL	SN	ST	SH	TH
New Year's Day	Neujahrstag	1 January	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Epiphany	Heilige Drei Könige	6 January	✔	✔												✔
International Women's Day[1]	Internationaler Frauentag	8 March			✔					✔
Good Friday	Karfreitag	Easter Sunday – 2d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Easter Monday	Ostermontag	Easter Sunday + 1d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Labour Day	Tag der Arbeit	1 May	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Ascension Day	Christi Himmelfahrt	Easter Sunday + 39d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Whit Monday	Pfingstmontag[2]	Easter Sunday + 50d	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Corpus Christi	Fronleichnam	Easter Sunday + 60d	✔	✔					✔			✔	✔	✔	[lower-alpha 1]			[lower-alpha 2]
Augsburg Peace Festival	Augsburger Friedensfest	8 August		[lower-alpha 3]
Assumption Day	Mariä Himmelfahrt	15 August		✔[lower-alpha 4][lower-alpha 5]										✔
World Children's Day	Weltkindertag	20 September																✔[lower-alpha 6][3]
German Unity Day	Tag der Deutschen Einheit	3 October	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Reformation Day[lower-alpha 7]	Reformationstag	31 October				✔	✔[lower-alpha 8][4]	✔[lower-alpha 8][5]		✔	✔[lower-alpha 8][6]				✔	✔	✔[lower-alpha 8][7]	✔
All Saints' Day	Allerheiligen	1 November	✔	✔								✔	✔	✔
Repentance and Prayer Day[lower-alpha 9]	Buß- und Bettag	Wednesday before Totensonntag		[lower-alpha 5]											✔
Christmas Day	Weihnachtstag	25 December	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Second Day of Christmas	Zweiter Weihnachtsfeiertag	26 December	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Total number of holidays per state[lower-alpha 10]			12	13	10	10	10	10	10	11	10	11	11	12	11	11	10	11[lower-alpha 6]

Quiet days

A couple of days are designated stille Tage (quiet days) by state legislation, which regularly means that public dancing events, music at inns (if live or if not much quieter than usual) etc. are prohibited.

Some public holidays are quiet days:

• Good Friday
• Prayer and Repentance Day (where it is a public holiday and in a couple of other states)
• All Saints (where it is a public holiday)

One de facto public holiday (not determined by law, because it is always on a Sunday, but with officially organized celebrations) is a quiet day:

• Memorial Day (33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time)

One other Sunday is a quiet day:

• Totensonntag (the German-Protestant equivalent of All Souls Day), on the last Sunday of the ecclesiastical year

Some days may be quiet days without being public holidays:

• Christmas Eve (beginning in the afternoon, in some states)
• Ash Wednesday (in Bavaria)
• Holy Thursday (in some states; in some of them beginning in the evening)
• Holy Saturday (in some states)
• All Souls' Day (in Lower Saxony and the Saarland)

In a limited number of cases – apart from All Saints which, however, has long been associated in popular understanding with remembrance of the dead. The status of quiet days is also given to festivities joyous in nature: in Hesse, the highest Christian holidays are half-quiet days (until midday) and in Rhineland-Palatinate, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day are two-thirds-quiet days (until 16 o'clock). For details see the German article on the dancing ban.

Flag days

A yet third category that may sometimes be called "holidays" in a sense are the "flag days" (Beflaggungstage). Only the very highest institutions and the military use the national flags at every day, so the directives when flags are to be displayed mark the days in question as special.

Flags are to be shown by Federal Decree on

• Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January, half-mast)
• Labour Day (1 May)
• Europe Day (9 May)
• Constitution Day (23 May)
• Uprising Day (17 June) This day was public holiday under the title of "German Unity Day" from 1954 until 1990 when that unity actually was achieved.
• World Refugee Day (20 June)
• German Unity Day (3 October)
• Memorial Day (half-mast) (two Sundays before the first day of Advent)
• Election Day (Bundestag, European Parliament)

and by state decrees on other days, such as election days for state parliaments, state constitution days, anniversary of the election of the Federal President (in Berlin) and so forth.

Frequently flags are ordered ad hoc to be shown at half-mast in cases of national mourning.

Unofficial holidays

Either Carnival Monday ("Rosenmontag") or Mardi Gras is a de facto holiday in some towns and cities in Catholic western and southern Germany which have a strong Carnival tradition.

Also, Christmas Eve is developing into a semi-holiday: from mid-afternoon it is practically treated as a holiday, and while shops still open in the morning, for other businesses (apart from those that work even on holidays) this is becoming increasingly unusual; schools are closed in any case.

Customs about holidays

Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt) and Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam) are both always on Thursdays. By taking only one day's leave, employees can have a four-day weekend.

The Three Kings Day, better known as Epiphany, is 6 January, the day after the 12 days of Christmas. In parts of Germany, it has its own local customs.

Public holidays in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany)

See also

• Holidays in Nazi Germany

References