Frankfurt/Main (dpa/lhe) - Hundreds of thousands of visitors and dozens of events await the city of Frankfurt for the Paulskirchen Festival in May. The four-day festival celebrates the 175th anniversary of the first German National Assembly in the Paulskirche. The city expects around 300,000 visitors, as Mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg (Greens) announced on request. The program is scheduled to be completed in February. A ceremony will take place on May 18, patron is Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who will hold the speech.
Several stages and around 70 individual projects and program items such as exhibitions, theater performances, workshops, concerts, symposiums and congresses are planned so far. City tours to the freedom movement of 1848 and to the sites of the 1848 revolution with a visit to the interior of the Paulskirche are also planned.
In 1848/49, the Frankfurt National Assembly drew up the Paulskirche constitution in the Paulskirche, which is considered the first all-German and democratic constitution in Germany. Although it never came into effect, it laid the foundation for later German constitutions.
A viable overall concept for the planned House of Democracy and the planned renovation of the Paulskirche should also be drawn up quickly, as Eskandari-Grünberg said. After being voted out, she is Peter Feldmann's acting mayor of Frankfurt. The Paulskirche is to be retained in its current form; there will be no conversion based on the historical model.
The House of Democracy is intended to complement the Paulskirche Memorial. The results of an online survey on the design of the house are to be published at the end of January. A national commission of experts was set up for this purpose, which is chaired by the former Union parliamentary group leader Volker Kauder.
