Weltsekttag
The Internationaler Sekttag, Weltsekttag or Sekttag is celebrated on 9 April, occasionally also upon other days, mainly amongst German-speaking students and members of German Student Corps and Studentenverbindungen in general.
The tradition of the Weltsekttag was founded in the short interim period separating the wars of the Second and Third Coalition, and was initiated amongst others by the German poet Ludwig Achim von Arnim as a sign of unity against the tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte.
History
The Sekttag of 1805
German student and poet Carl Ludwig Börne was the first to propose the celebration of a Weltsekttag during an academic conference held at Gießen upon the 4th of March 1805, without favouring a particular date, however. The idea was inspired by attempts in the previous years by French vintners to initiate collective day of marked resistance to the coalition wars and the resulting economic conditions which had had a strongly negative effect upon the wine trade. These attempts were largely unsuccessful. Ludwig Achim von Arnim brought the idea to Halle an der Saale, one of the oldest and most important German universities and a centre of the literary movement of the Enlightenment in the late 18th and early 19th century, where it was picked up by academic "Kränzchen" and "Convente" of similar corporations.While it was the poet Ludwig Achim von Arnim who carried the original idea to Halle, it were the German poets Ludwig Börne and Clemens Brentano who were responsible for the foundation of the actual tradition of the fixed Sekttag during the 1805 conference of Gießen, where the decision was accepted.
The Beschluss of Gießen read as follows:
The first Sekttag was subsequently celebrated upon the 9th of April 1805 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The choice of the date was intended to symbolically represent and underline the happy and open-minded character of the Sekttag.