Pacific Festival 2001

How the first festival 2001 started
Falkenstein in the 'Bavarian Forest' was the place where Dr. Dr. Friedrich Steinbauer - the president of the German Pacific Society - found his place to build up a house as residence to retire and to establish a place for the archive and office for the German Pacific Society. He was working hard on it and spend a lot of energy, time and money for this idea. During his time as missionary in Papua New Guinea he collected a lot of artetfacts. He must find also a place for these materials. His idea was to open a private museum. He heared about a man who was in PNG and came back to Bavaria with wife children from Buka. He is a very skilled man and loves the culture of the Pacific. Why not building a house in the type of a PNG to display all these things from his trips to the Pacific? The idea was born to build a wooden house to keep the best artefeacts inside. 'Haus Tambaran' was born. Alexander Büttner was this man from near Würzburg with good knowledge about timber work. Friedrich Steinbauer invited hem to come to Falkenstein. In the year 2000 time came when this house needed an opening ceremony. He had also a few friends among Pacific Islanders mailny Tongans that live in Bavaria and Austria. He invited them for this opening day. In reality this was the first cultural meeting with islanders on the ground of Mr. Steinbauer. Maybe on this day the idea was born to have further meetings or a islander festival. From now on he was searching for more islanders residing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He had the help from different friends and islanders. Walter and Kisaea Werner plus daughter Jasmin from Austria that were among the guests at the opening of the Haus Tambaran were looking for adresses from other islanders to invite them for the Festival in 2001.
As soon as the islanders heare about the plan of creating a festival they started rehearsels. They meet in different placed to studied dances of theis homeland.