“Magic of Christmas”: Nuremberg students prepare for the traditional parade of lights

As the city of Nuremberg reports in the following press release, the candlelight procession of Nuremberg schoolchildren has a 75-year-long tradition. After a two-year break in 2020/2021 due to the pandemic, the 73rd candlelight procession of Nuremberg schoolchildren will take place this year on Thursday, December 14, 2023, again organized by the Office for General Education Schools of the City of Nuremberg. From 6 p.m. around 900 students from Nuremberg’s primary, middle and special schools are expected with their teachers and carers as well as school officer Cornelia Trinkl (also representing Mayor Marcus König). The students, led by Nuremberg Christkind Nelli Lunkenheimer, will march from the Fleischbrücke past the Christkindlesmarkt up to the Imperial Castle with self-made lanterns.

This school year, six motif lanterns are being created around the Nuremberg Christmas market in the sparkling lantern workshop at the Insel Schütt middle school. In addition to apples, nuts and almond kernels, gold angels and Christmas market decoration ideas for this year’s lanterns. In the designs, ideas from the students flow together with ideas from the teacher, and unique motifs were created again. Together with the big star at the top and the previous year’s candles, the school will be competing with around 13 large lanterns. As has been the case for more than a decade, all materials used are completely recyclable and can largely be reused.

This year, students from the third and fourth grades of the Bismarckschule elementary school will recite the candlelight procession poem on the Mount of Olives below the Imperial Castle. The Christ child will also speak there.

The students from the Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel Middle School then recreate the Christmas story in living pictures. For many years, the traditional candlelight procession has been musically supported by various ensembles from the Nuremberg Music School.

“We experience the radiant magic of Christmas during the Nuremberg schoolchildren’s festive candlelight procession. The peaceful atmosphere in the community as we march together to the castle gives me goosebumps just as much as the nativity play. Every radiant face and every little flame symbolizes the light and hope that we carry into the world from Nuremberg for peaceful coexistence,” said school representative Cornelia Trinkl.

The city’s special thanks go to Nürnberger Versicherung. It has been sponsoring the candlelight procession for 31 years now with 10,000 euros and thus ensures that the event can take place. “We are pleased to be able to continue the candlelight parade tradition with the donation from our foundation and to be able to provide school children with this community experience. Every year they make the city center shine again with their self-made works of art. An atmospheric event that will certainly move many adults and remind them of their own childhood,” says Dr. Karoline Haderer, marketing manager at Nürnberger Versicherung.

A big thank you also goes to the youth hostel, because for many years they have made the Eppeleinsaal with foyer available for two days free of charge for rehearsals, changing and make-up.

The Nuremberg Light Procession has a long history in Nuremberg, as its origin was recorded in the Nuremberg City Chronicle more than 70 years ago and lies in a very dark time in the city’s history. In 1948 – just three years after the end of the Second World War – Nuremberg was still largely in ruins. But the war didn’t just turn the buildings into ruins. The citizens of Nuremberg also lived through a very dark time, which was characterized by deprivation, sadness and fears for the future.

In this difficult and gloomy time for the city and its citizens, the Nuremberg school children sent a sign of light and hope with the first candlelight procession in 1948. The idea for this event came from the then city school councilor Otto Barthel. On the occasion of the Christmas market, which was taking place on the main market for the first time since the war, he had “his” school children make lanterns in craft lessons and marched with the students in the first candlelight procession through Nuremberg city center on December 20, 1948.