What do you think of this fact?
Today Germans get the day off because October 3 is a public holiday. But it almost became a Sunday, every single year.
A holiday as a budget fix
In 2004, the German government had a problem: the economy was growing too slowly. So finance minister Hans Eichel (SPD) came up with an odd idea. According to the fact-checking team at CORRECTIV, he proposed moving German Unity Day to the first Sunday in October, so that an extra working day would give the economy a boost.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) agreed. According to the news site The Local, he defended the plan in a letter, arguing that the holiday would not be abolished, just moved to the first Sunday of October.
More working days, more economic output, that was the math. The catch: a holiday on a Sunday gives nobody an extra day off.
Dead within a day
Hardly anyone liked the proposal, not even the chancellor’s own party. Just one day later, SPD chairman Franz Müntefering rejected the plan, CORRECTIV reports. The holiday stayed where it was: on October 3.
Legally, it would have been tricky anyway. The date is written into the Unification Treaty between West Germany and East Germany. Article 2 says that October 3, as the Day of German Unity, is a public holiday.
Why October 3 at all?
Many people wonder why Germany doesn’t celebrate November 9, the day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. According to the Baden-Württemberg State Agency for Civic Education, that date was actually discussed. But because November 9 is also the date of the 1938 Reichspogromnacht, the idea was dropped. Instead, Germany picked the day unification took effect in 1990.
East Germany’s parliament, the Volkskammer, approved unification in a night session. According to the State Agency, the result was announced at 2:30 in the morning: 294 votes in favor, 62 against, 7 abstentions.
So the holiday that holds Germany together only just held on to its own spot in the calendar.