The Rose Monday parades want to get to the heart of what’s going wrong in the world right now – and put you in a good mood at the same time. This time Trump with Nazi symbols and Putin having sex walk through the confetti rain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin allows himself to be orally satisfied by church patriarch Kirill, Donald Trump cuts a swastika into the US flag and Chancellor Scholz is a “hollow” without a brain – the Rose Monday processions have been targeted by the world’s powerful.
In the carnival strongholds of Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mainz, the train routes were lined with hundreds of thousands of costumed revelers. Unlike on Weiberfastnacht, this time the fools were spared from rain most of the time. In Cologne, the first Jecken had already gathered in the city center after dark several hours before the “Zochs” began in order to secure good seats. Until the afternoon, the Cologne police reported “no special incidents” despite the busyness. Things looked similarly peaceful in Düsseldorf.
The Cologne satirical floats showed, among others, Olaf Scholz as a sloth in a hammock and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as an elephant in a china shop. On another car, a jester figure stretched out his bare buttocks towards some arms stretched out in a Hitler salute – one arm had the AfD logo emblazoned on it. “This car actually says it all: They can kiss our asses,” said BAP singer Wolfgang Niedecken on WDR television.
North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU), who walked on the Cologne train, said that Carnival is about living diversity. Incidentally, it is beneficial to have “a little fun” every now and then.
In Mainz, Chancellor Scholz was seen as a castaway with an eye patch. Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) was portrayed as Flying Robert, who was losing his grip on the ground with his heating law. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach – the “Master of Disaster” – had his healthcare experiment kit blown up in his face. AfD leader Alice Weidel and Sahra Wagenknecht were chauffeured in a pink convertible as Putin’s Barbies with bloody hands.
But it was once again the Düsseldorf car builder Jacques Tilly who delivered the toughest and most impressive cars. Tilly told the German Press Agency that with his blowjob motif to Putin he wanted to denounce the Russian Orthodox Church’s shared responsibility for the war of aggression against Ukraine. “The cooperation between state and church is of course disastrous. Kirill creates, so to speak, the ideological background for the war.” When it comes to the AfD, Tilly decided on a clown who takes off the friendly mask from the AfD – behind it a skull with a Hitler mustache appears. The sculptor said that at least since the Correctiv revelations about the Potsdam right-wing meeting, it has been clear whose brainchild the AfD is. This is now also driving people onto the streets – which is what a second car expresses on the subject: a small, poisonous fish with the speech bubble “We are the people!” eaten by a much larger one. Its inscription: “We are more!”
Commenting on his depiction of Trump with a swastika motif, Tilly said: “If this man gets the trigger again, he will unleash a revenge agenda across the country and probably damage American democracy beyond recognition. That is totalitarian, and that’s why “This comparison isn’t too wrong, I think. In the end, it’s a warning.” A second car addresses the Republicans’ torpedoing of American aid to Ukraine – here Trump stabs a Ukrainian soldier in the back with a spear.
Tilly also ventured into the Middle East conflict: here, a Hamas terrorist pushes a Palestinian family in front of an Israeli tank. “Both sides are not doing well with this car.” Regarding Scholz as a brainless “Hohlaf”, Tilly explained: “This is our comment on his chancellorship: At the beginning we all thought: a smart man with strategies and overview. But now we know: He’s just a small official who has to deal with that Job is overwhelmed. He just doesn’t do anything.”
In the Ruhr area, the two carnival parades in Bochum-Höntrop and Bochum-Linden began late due to a threat. According to dpa information, the threat was an email distributed on social media that threatened “booby traps.” The police said there were “intensive police measures” after receiving the threat.
In Weilerswist near Cologne, two young men were hit by a car and fatally injured on their way home from a carnival party on Sunday evening. The two men, aged 18 and 20, were walking on an unlit country road, the police said on Monday. The 33-year-old driver of the car was no longer able to react in time and hit the two of them. He suffered shock, as did several witnesses to the accident.
A police spokesman said carnivalists had been walking along the country road all day long. The route leads from the main town of Weilerswist to the district of Metternich, where a large carnival parade took place on Sunday. The celebration then continued in the festival tent on the village square. Many people from Weilerswist used the well-developed footpath and cycle path along the country road; the footpath is separated from the road by a small piece of meadow and is therefore actually harmless. But when the two young men were on their way home shortly before midnight, according to the investigation, they were not walking on the footpath, but on the lane of the country road. Cars are allowed to drive at 100 kilometers per hour there and there are no street lights. The police spokesman said how fast the driver was traveling is still being determined.
