This year we should celebrate Saint Martin with special awareness

For a long time, the Saint Martin festival has not been as up-to-date as it is this year. At the center of the legend of the saint, which is commemorated on November 11 with amateur plays, lantern parades and songs, is the Roman cavalryman, who shares his warming military coat with a freezing beggar. Because of the heating costs, it is no longer just the homeless who fear the winter cold.

A greater contrast can hardly be imagined than between Martin of Tours, who in the 330s in Amiens performed an act of humanity that is still valid today, and the Russian commanders, who want to freeze millions of Ukrainians with their rocket terror.

St. Martin's Festival has retained its roots in childish popular piety not least because of its simple core over the centuries: that someone halves their clothes because someone else only has rags on their body makes sense to even the youngest - much more so than many a creepy life of a martyr. "Oh help me in my need / otherwise the bitter frost will kill me," says a well-known Martinslied.

One of the most beautiful Martinslieder developed in the 19th century based on a text by the Tübingen poet Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862) with a melody stolen from another song: "The autumn storm roars through forest and field" is certainly not great poetry, but it is his Folk song character simply indestructible.

As children we loved the pathetic lines: “Saint Martin then rides his horse / as fast as the clouds rush; / in his right hand the sword flashes / to part the mists.” The flashing sword, dividing first the cold autumn mists and then his own cloak, is in a way already the individual anticipation of the modern pacifist slogan “swords into ploughshares”.

This is also an appropriate association, in line with the life of the saint: after his baptism in 351, Martin was to go into battle with the Roman army near Worms against the Alemanni – he is said to have refused to take part on the grounds that he was not a soldier of Caesar more, but a miles of Christ, a soldier of Christ.

A verse added later to the Uhland verse sums it up like this: "Saint Martin was a brave hero, / was undaunted in battles, / but he did not cling to this world, / he devoted his heart to the Lord." After serving in the army, Martin became an ascetic monk who, in 361, built the first monastery in the West, the Abbey of Saint-Martin de Ligugé; In 371 he became bishop of Tours. Highly revered during his lifetime, he died in 397.

The fact that Martin is considered the patron saint of beggars and travelers (and also of refugees) makes him a very present saint who, at the upcoming lantern singing, can be remembered with a clear conscience even as a doubter or non-Christian. Of course, Martin is also responsible for riders and soldiers; but according to his life story, he will also protect those who do not want to go to war.