The first Anti-WAAhnsinns Festival took place in 1982 at the Lanzenanger venue in
Burglengenfeld. Primary responsibility for the event was held by the local autonomous youth center "Jugendzentrum Burglengenfeld", where many such festivals had taken place before. Between 2,000 and 4,000 people visit the concerts each year. Since many members of the youth center had actively been participating in the resistance against the recycling plant, the management decided to change the original festival into the Anti-WAAhnsinns Festival. The main purpose of the events was to attract public attention to the problems related to the WAA and the protests. From their engagement in culture-related work, the youth center very quickly managed to come into contact with many
Bavarian musicians like
Haindling or
Biermösl Blosn; who also argued against the building of the recycling plant. While these festivals got more and more positive feedback from the public, the idea began to emerge of encouraging big-name performers, like BAP,
Udo Lindenberg, or
Herbert Grönemeyer, to take part. Finally, because of the good relations with the management of BAP, the record label
EMI Electrola was able to convince their - mostly left-leaning - artists to participate in the festival. In that same year, a live recording of the festival was released as a double
LP by this record label. The proceeds of this album were used to support a citizens' initiative against the WAA. Originally, the organizers intended the Anti-WAAhnsinns Festival to take place in the immediate vicinity of the planned WAA. After excessive protests at
Easter and
Pentecost the position of both parties got more radical, especially influenced by the catastrophe of
Chernobyl. As a result,
the Bavarian government set up inviolable precincts up to 120 square kilometers around the construction area. Ultimately, the organizers opted for a field near
Burglengenfeld as the venue for the festival. Even before preparation for the festival took place, some city councillors of the
Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) and the mayor of Burglengenfeld, Stefan Bawidamann, had already voiced their concern about riots on the fringes of the festival. Although the Anti-WAAhnsinns-Festival had been officially authorized by the town, the
Bavarian Ministry of the Interior and the local government of
Upper Palatinate voiced intentions to prohibit the event. An extraordinary meeting of the city council that was scheduled for the 15 July, again voted in favor of the realization of the festival. However, the town's major Bawidamann repealed the ballot, referring to article 19 of the penal law. He considered this necessary in order to prevent danger being brought to the general public, their health, and material goods and to save them from heavy disturbances. The decision about the authorisation of the festival was thereby passed to the subsequent regulating authority, the district office of
Schwandorf.
Hans Schuierer, the district administrator, validated the decision of the city council and assigned the local government of Oberpfalz (
Upper Palatinate) to check the legal force of Bawidamann's decision again. The
motorcycle club Kuhle Wampe took charge of security and entrance. Fields within a radius of several kilometers were rented by the festival's management for parking. In part, the fields had to be harvested directly before the beginning of the festival although the grain was not ripe yet. The number of visitors exceeded expectations and more fields had to be marked as parking spaces on short notice. At one of those rented fields, in particular on the stubble field in the vicinity of Greinhof, a hot
catalyzer set off a large-scale fire. A local farmer used a plough to create a
firebreak, preventing major damages. == The festival ==