Public holidays in Germany

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.

Notes:

In addition the state of Brandenburg has formally declared Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday as public holidays. As these are Sundays anyway, they have been left away by the other states, nor counted in the table above (the state of Hesse even declared all Sundays public holidays).

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, and the like.

Some public holidays are quiet days:

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

one other Sunday is a quiet day:

and some days may be quiet days without being public holidays:

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 .

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

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.

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