German politics explained with Minions, Smurfs and the famous Pumuckl
Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals start negotiating a coalition of departure - which is called a Ampel (german for "traffic light"). And: New York Times reports about German media
To understand what happens in Germany after the great election, let me introduce you to a very typical german children’s series character: Let me introcude you to Pumuckl. He “is a red-haired Kobold and descendant of the klabautermänner” is written in Wikipedia about the small guy. “He is invisible to people around him except for the master carpenter Eder with whom Pumuckl lives.”
Pumuckl lives in my hometown Munich and he is very famous - not only in Germany. His live was translated to different languages too - what is really funny because they did not only translate his storys they although translated his name. If you live in Denmark you probably know him as Pilfinger, if you are in Greece you know him as Frou Frou and all of you speaking spanish know him as Pumuky (more funny new names are here).
Don’t get me wrong: to introduce you to this famous children’s series character isn’t about a childish joke about Armin Laschet who seems to be the biggest loser of the election. He ran the campaign for Angela Merkels Christian Democrats but failed to form the largest parliamentary group in the new German Bundestag. The SPD succeeded in doing so with its chancler-candidate Olaf Scholz who will in all likelihood lead the next German government as chancellor.
Laschet was portrayed as a Minion during the election campaign and Olaf Scholz was associated with the Smurfs. Pumuckl, however, did not even appear on the political stage before the election. The fact that we should know him now has to do with the colour games that will ensue after the election.
In the past weeks two competing drafts were traded, each named after its colour combination: on the one hand, a government led by Laschet's Christian Democrats with the Greens and the liberal party FDP (yellow), which was therefore named after Jamaica's national colours in the German debate. The counter design to “Jamaica” is the coalition led by Olaf - Schlumpf - Scholz with yellow and green, which is led as traffic light in the German public: Ampel (which is not quite right because the order of Green and Yellow in the political picture is different than in the road traffic).
I am not sure if the Ampel (Symbol-Picture above: unsplash) is a good symbol for the new government. I prefer the idea Peter Wittkamp brought up: Naming the coalition after the Pumuckl, because Pumuckl wears red hair (SPD), a yellow shirt (FDP) and green trousers - but without shoes (Screenshot via mytoys).
I like it because it is more funny and optimistic than the symbol of a traffic light. Perhaps the parties' negotiators will take up the idea of the Pumuckl symbol. In any case, they will start official coalition negotiations in the next few days.
I will keep you up to date here in the next episode - then with some real viral topics from the Digital Viral Germany: After all, the supposedly prettiest supermarket cashier in the world and the "how long we fly"-sound on Tiktok both come from the land of Pumuckl and Olaf Scholz.
So stay tuned!
PS: After I finished my research about international Pumuckl-names this story from Ben Smith went viral in Germany: It is about “Sex, Lies and a Secret Payment” at Springer, a big german publisher. Among numerous other details, the text contains interesting observations from the German media public. Smith reports internals from the Ippen publishing house, which took over the team of Buzzfeed-News-Germany a year ago. Smith reports: The editors researched the situation at Springer, but shortly before publication, publisher Dirk Ippen decided not to publish the story.