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Carnival floats mocking Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel feature in this year’s German parade which has been scaled back this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The former US President is depicted naked as a suckling pig above a fire, while Putin is kicked in the groin by his jailed critic Alexei Navalny.Â
The Rose Monday parade in Dusseldorf normally attracts thousands of spectators who came to see the hotly-anticipated floats designed each year by Jacques Tilly, Germany’s leading carnival float designer.Â
The festival takes place on the Monday before Ash Wednesday but the mass celebrations have been called off this year due to the raging virus.
But that has not stopped Tilly from preparing the satirical floats which traditionally take aim at political figures and current events.
The designs are a secret until their unveiling and the floats were revealed to the media on Monday without the usual crowds in attendance.
Organisers sent eight floats through the city – separately, rather than in a parade, and on routes that were kept secret in advance to prevent crowds from gathering.Â
A carnival float depicting former US President Donald J. Trump is shown to German media on Monday for the traditional Rose Monday carnival, which has been cancelled this year due to Covid-19
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny kicks the crotch of Vladimir Putin in a judo fight in another satirical float made by Jacques Tilly
Armin Laschet, the newly-elected leader of the Christian Democratic Union party, was depicted dressed up as Angela Merkel in disguise in the scaled-down carnival
A cartoonish coronavirus confronts a jester depicting the Rosenmontag carnival as organisers were forced to abandon plans for their usual festivities
One of the more provocative floats this year shows a Catholic bishop with a penis-shaped mitre with the message ‘the core problem of the Catholic Church’
This year, one of the floats depicts a naked Donald Trump as a suckling pig roasting on a fire with the words ‘Make America Great Again’ in the flames.
Another shows the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny kicking the crotch of Vladimir Putin in a judo fight.
The President is a black belt in the martial art and he has described it as his ‘favourite sport’.
One of the more provocative floats this year shows a Catholic bishop with a penis-shaped mitre.Â
On his robe is a message which reads: ‘The core problem of the Catholic Church.’Â
One of the floats showed the earth looking concerned at the coronavirus while a huge climate wave lurks behind the planetÂ
The festival takes place on the Monday before Ash Wednesday but celebrations have been called off this year due to the still raging virus
The Rose Monday parade in Dusseldorf normally attracted thousands of spectators who came to see the hotly-anticipated floats
The controversial Polish abortion ban was depicted in the floats, with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the ruling polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, shown holding a cross over a screaming woman
A carnival float depicts a conspiracy theorist whose brain is flying out of their head
Another float shows a cartoon depiction of the coronavirus gleefully wreaking havoc with the carnival.
Angela Merkel is also represented in the parade, with Armin Laschet, the newly-elected CDU leader, seen dressed as the Chancellor.
The 59-year-old is a fervent Merkel loyalist and is seen as the continuity candidate ahead of September’s election which will see Germans deciding on their first new chancellor in 15 years.Â
Tilly, 56, says his main influences for his designs are classic British comedies including Spitting Image, Monty Python and Little Britain.Â
He told the German news agency of this year’s event: ‘It’s a small signal that we’re still alive.’
Officers in Germany have been attempting to shut down a number of clandestine carnivals this weekend as the traditional celebrations have been cancelled
In Cologne, another carnival display, designed by Greenpeace activists, showed a clownish Laschet bulldozing German towns
Carnival fools of the Schwarze Veri Zunft Ravensburg walk through the Obertor gate in Ravensburg before police broke up the gathering
Carnival reveller Erich walks with his ship, which symbolically sails through a sea of coronaviruses, through the Severinstor gate in Cologne
The ‘fool’s jump in Rottweil is normally one of the highlights of the Swabian-Alemannic carnival in the southwest German region. This year, some masked fools arrived but police tried to stop them from taking part in celebrations
One of Germany’s first superspreader events stemmed from a Carnival celebration in a town west of Cologne in February 2020, where many people came into contact with an infected man.
This year, authorities are taking no chances, with public consumption of alcohol banned in some places.
Some have tried to hold clandestine carnivals which officers have been trying to shut down. Â
But police trying to bust a Carnival in eastern Germany were left red-faced when most of the revellers escaped police on skis.
German news agency dpa reported that police in the town of Marienberg, near the border with the Czech Republic, received information that about 100 people were partying without abiding by the requirements to wear face masks or respect minimum social distancing.
Police were unable to determine how many people had broken the law, however, because their arrival prompted a hasty on-ski departure by most of the party-goers.
Saxony, where Marienberg is located, has the second-highest infection rate of Germany’s 16 states.
Germany has restricted entry from the neighbouring Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol state to prevent the spread of variant viruses from those countries.Â
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