German Wine Queen

The 75th German Wine Queen is Eva Brockmann from Haibach, Lower Franconia;[3] she was chosen on 29 September 2023 for the period 2023/2024.

Until the beginning of the Second World War, the official Gau Photographer sought out the "prettiest young woman associated with the wine industry" on behalf of the very popular Gauleiter of the Palatinate, Joseph Buerckel.

As the newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, said in 1950, the candidates were "true daughters of the vineyards, they were of powerful build, healthy and wholesome".

Trips abroad, such as to Belgium (Irmgard Mohler) or to Spain (Wilma Seyer, later Scholl) remained the exception.

In the 1980s the image of the Wine Queen in public began to fundamentally change, especially with the election of personalities such as Karin Molitor (1982/83) and Petra Mayer (1988/89).

From the 1990s, it changed from being a role for young women vintners or those who were linked to the wine trade, to being a career springboard into politics (Julia Klöckner), into marketing (Katja Schweder, Evelyn Schmidt), into gastronomy (Carina Dostert) or starting small businesses (Sandra Hake, Sylvia Benzinger).

In addition each candidate had to assist – in English – a "confused foreign tourist" visiting Germany's wine country.

Only six candidates went through to the second and final round, a televised "gala" attended by 1,300 guests and watched by more than a million viewers, where the 18- to 25-year-olds had to demonstrate they could field questions on wine-making spontaneously.

After the competition, the newly elected wine queen and her two princesses were invited by the Minister for Agriculture and the town of Heilbronn to a festival banquet, the so-called "After-Show Party".