Report: Mainz Rose Monday parade takes aim at politics

Rose Monday: the highest holiday in foolish Mainz. Thousands of participants in the pageant, hundreds of thousands watching. Whether government or opposition – everyone gets their fat when the motif cars roll.

At eleven o’clock on the dot the confetti cannon pops and it finally starts: the Mainz Rose Monday procession starts moving. The participants have been looking forward to this moment for months, building floats, sewing costumes, rehearsing dances and hoping that everything will work out in the end. The train is coming for the 121st time this year, a special anniversary – 11 times 11, the lucky number of fools.

Dieter Wenger’s tension slowly falls away. The 84-year-old wagon builder of the Mainz Carnival Association (MCV) is, so to speak, the engine behind the “Mainzer Fassenacht” motif wagons – and has been for 62 years. He and his colleagues have been racking their brains since September last year about the motifs that are rolling through the city today: “I delayed the start of construction as long as possible, until the beginning of November. It wasn’t clear whether the ship would be at the traffic light -Coalition doesn’t collapse until February!” And that would have meant that the elaborately constructed vehicles that satirize current politics would have become wrecks before they were launched.

“Flying Robert” and “Master of Disaster”

The Mainz carnival is traditionally the political carnival. The rulers get a good drink from the fools – and that is also reflected in the motif car: Robert Habeck as “Flying Robert”, who, hanging from an umbrella, is blown into the atmosphere with lots of hot air from a heat pump.

Or Chancellor Scholz as a pirate with an eye patch in the lookout of an almost sunken ship with a torn flag in the traffic light colors. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, as the “Master of Disaster”, is frightened by an exploding experimental kit called health care.

But the opposition is also getting its fill: CDU leader Friedrich Merz is bracing himself against a firewall over which a grasping AfD woman wants to drag him by the tie. Alice Weidel and Sahra Wagenknecht are driven in Vladimir Putin’s pink Barbie convertible with blood-smeared hands.

Above all, an oversized, sad dove of peace, trapped in a cage made of barbed wire – labeled “Greed”, “Hate”, “Fanaticism” and “Intolerance” – is for the car builders the symbol of the world’s conflicts and wars.

Swaying, but for sure

In the end there were nine motif cars, eleven were actually planned. The reason is the costs, explains Dieter Wenger. The larger-than-life caricatures roll through Mainz in different positions. In total, the train is almost nine kilometers long with 138 numbers, but the route is only seven. When the first groups are through, the last ones are still in the starting blocks.

In general: logistically, the Rose Monday procession is a masterpiece. At five o’clock in the morning, the police drive along the route with loudspeaker trucks to wake up the last residents who have not yet driven away their cars – otherwise they will be towed away. Drivers in their pajamas, sprinting to their cars, that too is Shrove Monday. The line-up of the motif wagons, foot groups, bands and cavalry squadrons is like a huge game of Tetris: everyone has to get to their position so that everything goes well afterwards.

It’s always a challenge for train leader Thorsten Hartel: “There’s always something, today we lost a wheel on the train control car. But we checked – it works that way, we have enough double wheels.” All vehicles that use the route must have TÜV approvals, and a sophisticated safety concept applies to the entire city.

Around 1,000 police officers are on duty that day and more than half a million people are on the streets. There are no barriers in front of the honorary stands at the theater in the city center, but the spectators do not rush out onto the street. People celebrate, sing and dance exuberantly. And when a few rays of sun shine through the gray cloud cover in the early afternoon, many are certain: “The good Lord is a patron!”

New wind for him Traditional parade

In addition to the many traditional dance and guard groups, there are also a few innovations. Eight-year-old Luise is the first child princess to rule alone. For decades, the children’s carnival in Mainz was ruled by princes or prince couples. “Now it’s up to me and Meedsche!” (Now a girl has to do it!) was the opinion of the Mainz tourist association, organizer of the youth mask procession. And so Luise, who of course comes from a carnival family, is traveling on the train today – no longer in the car of the child prince, but of the child majesty.

And another premiere: Mainz University is taking part for the first time. She contributes an interactive cart that responds to the volume of the crowd by translating it into bar graphs on LED screens and then inflating an oversized dunce cap. A “Helau-o-meter” so to speak. Will the idea be brought back onto the streets next year? “We’ll just finish this day and then we’ll see what happens next,” says Kati, co-initiator of the digital inflatable cap.

Final spurt for the fifth season

Dieter Wenger also wants to finish the day: “If I drive the cars into the hall this evening and we start sawing the figures apart, then I can drive all the way down too.” Parts of the elaborate cardboard companions are recycled: “I even made a clown out of a politician next year.”

He won’t do that in the next session, Wenger is quitting, it’s his last Rose Monday parade as a car builder. But he couldn’t leave it alone: ​​he stayed in the creative circle that developed the ideas for the political street carnival. Speaking of which: as he reveals, there is also a Trump figure in the warehouse – who knows whether it won’t be popular again in the next session.