Cologne fans don’t have a joke!
The Cologne carnivalists are pissed off at Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (58, SPD). He had taken the fool’s hope of the carnival season and suggested that the fifth season be postponed to summer. “Then under safe conditions,” says Lauterbach.
Lauterbach pretends that the jesters are “incorrigible Corona deniers”, criticized Christoph Kuckelkorn, President of the Cologne Carnival Festival Committee (130 carnival societies), in an open letter. He should break out of the “talk show mode” and take the concerns of the carnival seriously.
As a member of the Bundestag from the constituencies of Cologne and Leverkusen, Lauterbach should know “that the Rhenish carnival is recognized as an intangible cultural asset of the Federal Republic of Germany,” said Kuckelkorn. “And rightly so, because our customs consist of much more than wild parties and rampant alcohol consumption.” Carnival also gives people hope and confidence.
Lauterbach should go to schools, daycare centers, hospitals and old people’s homes: “There you will experience how people carry the carnival in their hearts – and at the same time deal with the pandemic situation extremely responsibly.”
According to a study, the added value of the carnival in Cologne alone is 600 million euros per year, noted the head of the festival committee. “Of this, the carnival societies receive the smallest share, but without the meetings, balls and carnival parades they organize, hotels and pubs, taxi drivers and waiters, hairdressers and costume shops also have no sales in the carnival.”
Therefore, the carnivalists did not need any “further moral appeals”, said Kuckelkorn, “but a clear stance and support for the clubs, artists, hall operators and other service providers who otherwise threatened to go bankrupt through voluntary cancellations”.
Kuckelkorn invited the minister to a meeting at the Carnival Museum in Cologne. There one should talk “as soon as possible” about prospects for voluntary associations, artists and other affected persons.
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