It’s the Cologne K question: Carnival in the face of war – is that possible? At 11:11 sharp, the fools try to come up with an answer. “Three, two, one – Alaaf,” boomed the loudspeakers on Alter Markt. The people cheer, confetti flies, firecrackers crackle. So Weiberfastnacht as if nothing had happened on February 24, 2022? For the Cologne triumvirate, Jungfrau Gerdemie calls into the microphone that they don’t want to “sway past” people’s concerns: “But we don’t let people determine the limits of their happiness, who trample on freedom and peace.”
It’s a jolly balancing act, also for Henriette Reker. One hour before the start of the carnival, Cologne’s mayor receives the triumvirate in the town hall. Reker seems depressed, after the morning news she decided to appear in civilian clothes this time: her Red Sparks uniform is staying in the closet. Without make-up, without a carnival wig, Reker steps in front of three dozen assembled carnival people, feels for words to somehow manage the balancing act between the beginning of Fastelovend and the end of peace in Europe. “My thoughts and sympathy are with the people of Ukraine,” she says, “and with the soldiers on both sides.” Thirty seconds of mourning, then three times “Kölle-Alaaf!” Later, a carnival functionary remembered this sentence: “Make love, not war.”
In a conversation after the ceremony, Reker asserts that she herself will no longer celebrate in this fifth season. However, she is not allowed to ban the pub and street carnival. Have a curfew or close the pubs – “the state government would have to do that.” She does not want to address a public appeal to her Cologne residents to forego all carnivals during the war. Although you’re worried: “There will be pictures that will make people shake their heads.” The mayor is therefore becoming clearer behind the scenes: She is urging the carnival companies to cancel the Rose Monday parade – like in 1991 during the Iraq war. In the afternoon, the festival committee announces that instead of the “Zoch” they are inviting to a peace demonstration, complete with a satirical float on the situation in Eastern Europe.
“Make-up blue and yellow instead of red and white.”
As early as Thursday at 2 p.m., a few hundred people from Cologne were demonstrating against Putin’s war on the Neumarkt. Tatiana Dettmer is pleased about that. The Cologne native comes from the Ukraine. “The danger is closer than many Germans think,” she says. “Putin hasn’t just declared war on Ukraine — on the West as well.” The 45-year-old historian understands that many people in Cologne still want to celebrate: “But they should show solidarity.” How? “By taking Ukrainian flags with them, or putting on blue and yellow make-up instead of red and white.”
In the morning Dettmer phoned her parents in Odessa. They would have told of explosions, of dead and injured. Dettmer has been asking her to flee to Cologne for weeks. They hesitated, now they were probably ready. At the demonstration on the Neumarkt, Henriette Reker repeated what she said to the triumvirate that morning: “People who have been displaced by war are always welcome in Cologne.”