Halle / Saale – With a tiny star
Photo: SHS
May 31, 2010
There are many reasons why May 30, 2010, will long remain in memory for many people in the town of Halle. The staff of the Halle Town Marketing Agency, for example, will certainly not soon forget the major event they launched. For one day the elevated High Street that connects the old and new towns was blocked off over a length of about four kilometres. This was a complex event that required a great deal of organisational prowess on the part of everyone involved. Some couples will in fact celebrate this day year after year since numerous marriages were sealed on the High Street! Many pairs took advantage of this unique opportunity and exchanged vows at an improvised Registrar’s Office. Other visitors were then not surprised at all by the wedding carriages they encountered, the only vehicles allowed to travel that street.
Neither will Halle’s mayor, Dagmar Szabados, forget this day, since she is most thankful to the residents of her town. That’s because the people of Halle saved their municipal leader from losing an important wager: Ms Szabados does not have to sit in the fans’ section for a game with traditional rivals – the First Magdeburg Football Club. The wager – and here the folks in Halle proved their invulnerable weather-resistance – was this: While the High Street was blocked off, some four thousand residents were to form the words “Halle Saale *” on the street. They managed to do that within barely an hour and in spite of drenching rains. They valiantly persevered right to the end.
This lettering was then used to pass Halle’s Certificate for the European Town Charter through the populace, so to speak, handing it along through the logo. At the end it was received by the mayor, who then turned it over to Dr Susanne Asche, Director of the Office of Arts and Culture in the City of Karlsruhe. Dr Asche had come to Halle to receive the Town Charter and return it to the town where it had originated. The original idea for the European Town Charter came from Karlsruhe, known as the “City of Law” since the German Supreme Court is located there. Karlsruhe then sent it through the recently established network known as “National Heroes – German Cities of Culture”, made up of those towns that had vied for appointment as the European Capital of Culture.