Political Ash Wednesday is usually simple and rustic. Also in this year? The most important moments of the day.
For the first time in the history of Political Ash Wednesday, a text about the most memorable moments does not have to start with the CSU, but with the Greens. There was really something going on with them – just completely different than planned. That’s why we first look at the Ländle before we go to Bavaria. Here are the tops and flops on the regulars’ table’s special day.
The worst mixture
It wasn’t until 11.45 a.m. that the first Green appeared on the stage of the town hall in Biberach, Swabia. Political Ash Wednesday should have started long ago. After all, all sorts of party celebrities had been brought in – party leader Ricarda Lang, Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann and the outgoing old master Jürgen Trittin wanted to do the honors. And Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir.
It is thanks to him, or more precisely: his customers, that Michael Groß, the co-organizer of the Biberach Green District Association, is now on stage and has to announce the inevitable: “We have decided, after close consultation with the security authorities, to… “Unfortunately we have to cancel political Ash Wednesday today,” announced Groß. “We don’t see that we can guarantee proper implementation here.” There were “sometimes aggressive atmospheres” in front of the hall.
Farmers had already dumped a pile of dung in front of the hall at dawn – peppered with green election posters. More and more farmers came, some brought their tractors with them. Haulage contractors, craftsmen and nursing staff supported the protests – at least they had co-signed a call for the demo in advance. Together they now honked and shouted – and blocked the entrances to the hall. Anyone who was already inside had to get out again when a fire alarm forced the hall to be evacuated. That was before some of the angry people set fire to bales of straw that they had brought with them.
“We were ready for dialogue and also made offers to talk,” but unfortunately these were rejected, complains the local Green Bundestag member Anja Reinalter. Even the head of the district farmers’ association had already distanced herself from the protests. Minister Özdemir then spoke to some farmers. It didn’t look like that when he stood on a trailer that morning and tried to speak to them – but was only met with malicious laughter and boos. “I understand that they are not fair,” Özdemir had shouted.
And yet today there was a green political Ash Wednesday, with beer and music. Just elsewhere. 200 kilometers away, in Landshut, Lower Bavaria, party leader Omid Nouripour was allowed to speak largely undisturbed – and also made it clear that not all the clichés about his party were true. Nouripour said he was really looking forward to a hearty white sausage breakfast at the hotel in the morning. “Then the waitress comes and asks if I want the cappuccino with oat milk.” Yes, can’t you rely on anything anymore?!
The clearest message
One person who particularly likes to criticize the Greens is Markus Söder. It only took a little more than a minute for the CSU leader in Passau to make it clear for the first time: no coalition with the Greens – “not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow”. He already did that in the state election campaign. Now it should also apply in the federal government. It is not a special moment in his speech, rather the CSU boss makes it the leitmotif through constant repetition. It is particularly important to him.
The party of wokeness, the party of bullying, the party of the heating law, the party of abstinence from meat. Söder places roast pork, Schäufele, meatloaf, white sausages and of course Franconian grilled sausages from his hometown of Nuremberg under the protection of the Bavarian constitution. This is of course a joke. But the CSU boss’s dislike grew so much that he ended up describing Environment Minister Steffi Lemke as the Greens’ Margot Honecker. Also funny? In the end, some listeners have more Söder’s contempt for the Greens in their ears than beer in their stomachs.
What does he want to do with this? Quite simply: The announcement not only applies to the Greens, it is also aimed at Friedrich Merz. The CDU chairman appears exactly once in Söder’s hour-long speech. He then thanks him for the good cooperation and promises his listeners: “Fritz and I, we’ll do it well in Germany.” Fritz AND me. Söder probably no longer believes in running for chancellor. But he certainly believes that he can set Merz conditions for his support. His Green bashing is also a message to the CDU leader, who recently expressly did not rule out a coalition with the Greens: You don’t decide anything here on your own.
The biggest mix-up
A traditional hall in Vilshofen: The SPD invites you to Ash Wednesday, almost 200 comrades came, pretty much everyone the party still has in the Free State. SPD leader Lars Klingbeil is talking and after just a few minutes you are wondering whether something in his schedule has gotten badly mixed up. There is very little to be seen of the traditional Ash Wednesday tradition at his appearance.
Can he also get a regular table? SPD leader Lars Klingbeil at the comrades’ political Ash Wednesday in Vilshofen
© Daniel Karmann / dpa
Klingbeil speaks as if he were a guest at the annual meeting of the Policy Commission. For almost an hour he tours the social democratic program, even touching on topics that should actually make him uncomfortable because they have been withering away for years despite having his own chancellor: affordable housing, better education, higher investments, a reform of the debt brake, the fight against the shortage of skilled workers .
What is better received: his call to fight right-wing extremism, to support the AfD, and to do everything to prevent nationalist projects and resettlement fantasies from becoming reality in this country at some point. If all football players with migrant backgrounds didn’t play on a Saturday at 3:30 p.m., “then it would be pretty empty in the Bundesliga,” shouts Klingbeil. Cheers in the hall. The sentence sits.
The most mixed carnival speech
A saxophonist, a tuba player and two drummers – musically, the FDP is much quieter than the brass band friends of the CSU. To ensure that the mood is still up, the Bavarian Liberals have invited a Rhenish cheerful spirit to the Dingolfing town hall. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann introduces the small music combo straight away. She would like to occasionally have a tush on command during her speech, because it’s always like that in her house: “If I make a joke, there’s a tush, then my husband knows when to laugh.”
Strack-Zimmermann gives a speech that is familiar from carnival – sorry, dear Bavarians – from carnival. A loose collection of jokes that sometimes follow a more, sometimes less, recognizable structure. The joke works in much the same way as the punch lines: mixed to acceptable.
The FDP politician, who is running as the top candidate in the European elections, is adapting to at least one basic rule of Bavarian speech culture: first the last name, then the first name. And so Strack-Zimmermann Marie-Agnes gossips about all those with whom she has little or nothing in common: the Mützenich Rolf, the Merz Friedrich, the Aiwanger Hubert and the Trump Donald.
But it is particularly dedicated, unsurprisingly, to Söder Markus on political Ash Wednesday. He was recently dressed as Bismarck. “Bismarck herring would have been better: really slippery and never easy to grab.” This is one of the better punchlines. A passage about Angela Merkel’s relationship with Vladimir is less well received. “I think they called themselves Wladie and Angie, no joke.” No, really not a joke. The saying doesn’t work. There’s not even a fanfare.
The simplest world view
To welcome the East German pacifist Sahra Wagenknecht, the brass band plays the Austrian military march “Vienna remains Vienna”. There is no better way to sum up the clash of cultures at the political Ash Wednesday in Passau. After all: the musicians in the brass band wear red vests.
The ex-left-wing politician appears unusually nervous at the beginning of her first Ash Wednesday appearance as party leader of the new Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance. But she soon relaxes: her mix of populism and current hot topics goes down extremely well in the crowded Öller inn – everything to do with gender politics, for example. Wagenknecht’s place to stay overnight, the Hotel “Wilder Mann”, serves as a starting point for everything that, according to her, people are no longer allowed to say in Germany.
It’s fitting to move on to the next favorite topic: the traffic lights’ alleged war policy. It would also be run by “wild men”, but also by a “wild woman”: by “Strack-Rheinmetall”, as Wagenknecht calls FDP defense politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. Ash Wednesday performances are often simple in their worldview. Wagenknecht’s appears even more black and white than others.
Russia is not to blame for the war in Ukraine, even if Wagenknecht avoids using the term “criminal.” But the USA, which blocked peace negotiations. Wagenknecht makes fun of the concern that Russia could attack other countries or even Germany: “That seems to be a primal fear: then the Russians will be at the door.” Which of course is nonsense: the Russian army wasn’t even able to conquer Kiev.
This is what Russia and military expert Wagenknecht says, who claimed just a few days before the attack on Ukraine began that Russia was not planning an attack. At that time she was still a member of the left. A party that apparently wanted to celebrate its meeting today in a particularly subversive way: Aschen am Ash Wednesday, the political director smoked weed at the lectern.