Ash Wednesday - thoughts at the end of Carnival

Posted by MadScientist (Düsseldorf, Germany) on 25 February 2009 in Lifestyle & Culture.

Despite its age-old origins - preliminary stages of Carnival were already celebrated by the Babylonians - Carnival in the Rhineland is a pure 19th century spectacle. The habit of celebrating the splendor of life till the beginning of Lent so often run into riots and situations of civil disobedience, that the holders of power first tried to ban all kind of Carnival events, later they canonized it by establishing Carnival societies and rituals that still exist today.

The large amount of traditional habits and costumes originates from the French occupation of the Rhineland and the following Prussian seizure of the Rhine Province. Carnivalists were pulling the French's and later the Prussian's leg when they satirized the occupier's uniforms and marched along the streets with flowers in the gun barrels. The persiflage of military habits is still an important part of the official Carnival events. However, the criticism of former days became broadly folkloric.

Parts of the former bitchiness survived, though: I've seen a super-size sculpture of our Chancellor, Angela Merkel, equipped with several breasts, each one feeding a part of our suffering economy. The 'Capitulating Wolf', feeding the economy at our expense: that clearly it's only depicted at Carnival.

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