BY ANGELA KOENIG
Enquirer Contributor
COLERAIN TOWNSHIP -- Beer aficionados won't have to wait until the downtown Oktoberfest to get Hofbrau beer. Samplings from the German brewing company will be among many attractions at the 103rd German Day celebration taking place June 6.
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If you go
German Day takes place June 6 from noon to midnight at Germania Park, 3529 West Kemper Road in Colerain Township.
Admission is $2 per person. Children under 12 are free.
This year's honorary chairman is television and radio personality Bob Braun.
In addition to food and live entertainment, there are cultural booths and rides and activities for children.
Information: Call Jane Grossheim, 385-3554.
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"I think it makes it more authentic, more German to have them and other German beers at our event," said event coordinator Jane Grossheim. Another highlight, she said, will be a new Volkswagen bug on display.
She said the two new features and the "usual goodies" -- the traditional offerings of German-style food and entertainment -- complement the day's theme of celebrating Cincinnati's German-American heritage.
German Day has its origins around 1880. It was first called the Pastorius Celebration, to honor Franz Daniel Pastorius, who founded the first German settlement in America, Germantown, Pa.
It was renamed German Day and became an annual event in 1895, when the German-American Citizens' League of Greater Cincinnati -- which was founded that same year -- took over sponsorship.
Now the league -- which still sponsors the event -- serves as an umbrella organization for 18 German-American societies, with memberships of more than 25,000.
"It's a good time to be of German heritage in Cincinnati," said league member Ute Papke, who -- as president of the Munich Sister City Association -- has acted as a liaison between the city and Hofbrau. The 400-plus-year-old German brewing company recently announced that it intends to build a Hofbrau House -- similar to the one in Munich -- in downtown Cincinnati. In addition, for the first time, Hofbrau will have its own tent at the downtown Oktoberfest Zinzinnati on Sept. 19 and 20.
Hofbrau's decision to be present at German Day for the first time "reflects the ties between Cincinnati and Munich and the growing interest in Cincinnati's German-American foundations," said league President Don Heinrich Tolzmann.
Over the past 25 years, Mr.Tolzmann said, the league has made great strides in bringing the city's German-American cultural origins to the forefront.
Most visible is the effort under way to establish a German-American Pioneer History Museum at West Fork Park in Green Township, he said. The museum is being build out of logs from a mid-19th-century German-style structure that was once home to five generations of a German-American farming family -- the Feist family of Delhi Township. The structure was disassembled in 1995 and moved to the park.
Mrs. Grossheim said the majority of German Day's profits will go toward the museum's completion. It is scheduled to be under roof by fall.
