For 32 years he has made everything right - court champion Siegfried Kistler is retiring

Created: 08/18/2022, 08:05

By: Stefanie Zipfer

Foreman and forewoman: Siegfried Kistler and his successor Magdalena Staudt.

The 62-year-old from Großinzemooser, who probably knows the Thomawiese better than anyone else in Dachau, is retiring after 32 years of service in the municipal building authority.

This means that the technical planning of the folk festival is now in the hands of women for the first time.

© farewell

For more than half of his 62-year life Siegfried Kistler was foreman for the Dachau folk festival.

In October, the town hall official will go into well-deserved retirement - with mixed feelings, as he says.

A look back at 32 exciting years at the Dachau folk festival.

Dachau

– Young people today should no longer be able to imagine life without a cell phone.

But up until the mid-1990s this was still a reality, you had to talk to each other either in person or by landline phone.

Service bike with helium balloon

So that Siegfried Kistler, who has been employed in the urban planning department at the Dachau building authority since 1990 and as such is also directly responsible for the technical and structural organization of the folk festival, i.e. was easily accessible for all festival participants, he was given a "special bicycle": his service bike was filled with a Helium balloon, snatched from the city's lucky port, tied and labeled "Platzmeister".

The showmen and stand operators would have seen from afar: "There's the Kistler!"

One last goodbye: Volksfest site manager Siegfried Kistler on Saturday at the Volksfest tapping.

© City of Dachau

In order to be able to communicate with the showmen on the fairground from the town hall, especially during the important construction phase, you still had to use the landline telephone.

For this, according to Kistler, “the post office set up a landline connection for every showman.

So kilometers of telephone cable laid on the meadow.

An insane effort”!

Kistler: "All the folk festivals were great!"

Nevertheless, the 62-year-old, who planned his last Dachau folk festival this year, does not look back negatively on his early years.

On the contrary: “All the folk festivals were beautiful.

When it started and everything went right, I was always happy!”

Of course, the work itself has changed enormously over the years: In the beginning he still drew up his basic plan on the drawing board: Which ride is where, where do we put the caravans, how does it all fit together with the location of the marquees?

Since there was no digital survey of the site in the 1990s, which was basically a meadow and was only gradually expanded and fortified over the years, it was never clear which lines were lying dormant underground and at what depth.

"Once," says Kistler, "we hammered in a nail and then it started to glow and was electrified."

All in all, and despite all the nostalgia for the good old days, he does state: "Digitization has made work a lot easier."

Apart from the technical aspect, it was above all the human part that made him so happy to do his job as technical manager for the Dachau folk festival over the years.

"Nice contacts were made" with the showmen.

The cooperation with the four mayors who have accompanied him throughout his career, as well as with the municipal utilities and the building yard colleagues, was “really great”.

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There was only one problem with Mayor Lorenz Reitmeier

Only Lorenz Reitmeier presented him with a somewhat special challenge when he was young.

With his colleague Klaus Mader, who was responsible for the administrative organization of the folk festival, he often went to the Oktoberfest in Munich to get ideas and see what was new on the fairground ride market.

One novelty in particular caught their eye: "Breakdance", a wild vehicle in which the gondolas attached to a turntable rotate constantly and sometimes in the opposite direction of travel.

The young people loved it - and when a "breakdance" operator applied for the upcoming Dachau folk festival, it was clear to Kistler: "We need that!" Unfortunately Mayor Reitmeier didn't quite share the enthusiasm,

he let Kistler know that a ride with English lettering would not come to his Bavarian Thomawiese.

In the end, a compromise was found: The "Breakdance" was allowed to come, but the lettering had to be covered with a poster.

"Here we go" was written on it and according to Kistler it was "really expensive" for the "Breakdance" operator.

Nevertheless, the showmen would have always liked to come to Dachau, even if - as in this case - there were certain special requests from the town hall and "you couldn't please them 100 percent", as Kistler admits.

Accommodating 75 showmen and their 100 or so caravans, all of which have become larger and heavier over time, and supplying them with electricity and water, remains a major task even in times of comprehensive digitization.

Magdalena Staudt will be his successor

Starting next year, Magdalena Staudt will devote herself to this task. Together with Andrea Löffler, she will form the city's first female folk festival organizer duo.

Siegfried Kistler is happy that he was able to train his successor “at full throttle” this year.

But he is also grateful for himself personally that he was granted a real folk festival - and not a slimmed-down "summer on the Thomawiese" like in 2021.

"I can stop like this," he says happily.

However, how he will feel when he strolls across the Thomawiese as a pensioner in a year's time, "I don't know".

"Probably" he will also be a "bit wistful".

By the way: everything from the region is also available in our regular Dachau newsletter.