The Cologne Jecken started the Rose Monday procession with Alaaf and confetti. At around 10 a.m. the so-called council brass gave the starting signal for the eight and a half kilometer long “Zoch” at the Severinstorburg in the southern part of the city. The carnivalists celebrated in the cathedral city in gray weather. This year the motto is: “Wat e Theater – wat e Jeckespill”. The Rose Monday parades in Mainz and Düsseldorf traditionally only start at 11.11 a.m. and 12 p.m. respectively.
Germany’s largest Rose Monday procession in Cologne leads, among other places, through the Old Market and past Cologne Cathedral, and is expected to end shortly before 2 p.m. According to the Cologne festival committee, around 300 tons of camels were to be thrown along the way, including 700,000 bars of chocolate.
Political messages at the Cologne Carnival
However, the Cologne triumvirate suffered a failure. Prince Sascha I and farmer Werner had to do without Virgin Frieda at the height of the street carnival. As the festival committee explained, Virgo Friedrich Klupsch is injured in the hip. The doctors prescribed absolute bed rest.
While the Rose Monday procession last year exceptionally started in Deutz on the right bank of the Rhine and then moved across the Rhine, this year it departed again as usual from Severinstorburg in Cologne’s Südstadt on the left bank of the Rhine.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) is also on the Cologne train. “That’s good in a time that isn’t always super easy – just have a bit of fun,” he said. Carnival is a living diversity, just like all of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The focus of the parades is traditionally on the motto floats, which critically address politics. A car in Cologne shows Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) as a sloth slumbering on a branch and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as a elephant in a china shop. On a car, a figure with his trousers down stretches his bare buttocks towards some arms outstretched in a Hitler salute – one arm has the AfD logo emblazoned on it.
“This car actually says it all: They can kiss our asses,” said BAP singer Wolfgang Niedecken on Monday on WDR television. He also recalled the big right-wing demonstration in Cologne at the end of January. “That was touching. When I walked over the Deutzer Bridge, there was a choir, an amateur choir, singing Bläck-Fööss songs, and then families came with strollers, then old people with walkers came – they wanted to be there.” All of these people wanted to communicate the message: “No, you can’t get past us.”
Clear motif cars in Düsseldorf
According to its conductor Holger Kirsch, the Cologne Rose Monday procession is somewhat more harmless than the one in Düsseldorf. “We actually always deal with the same topics, the only thing that perhaps makes the difference is that we perhaps hold back a bit in the presentation because I see the Cologne Rose Monday procession as a big family celebration,” Kirsch told the German press on Monday -Agency. “And I actually don’t want parents to have to explain things along the way if some kind of sexual practice is being shown or someone’s head is being blown off.”
The cars of the Düsseldorf car builder Jacques Tilly are generally considered to be much bolder than those of Cologne. They also receive the most attention internationally. However, Kirsch emphasized that he did not feel any competition with Düsseldorf and had a very good relationship with Tilly. “Last year he sent me a congratulatory text message for having such great cars.”
Incidentally, the Cologne Rose Monday procession is longer and is followed by significantly more people on the side of the road. “I don’t want to be so mean: Maybe more people will be interested in the Cologne Rose Monday procession,” said Kirsch.