German cities celebrated Rosenmontag carnival with traditional floats showing caricatures, and once again President Donald Trump has proven irresistible to model makers satirising current events.
Carnival floats depicting President Trump destroying Ukraine with the aid of Vladimir Putin, as Darth Vader, as Emperor Nero, and even naked with enormous testicles were paraded in German cities on Shrove Monday, ‘Rosenmontag’. The climax of the German carnival season — a Teutonic Mardi Gras — German cities compete to satirise German politics, social issues, and world events with the most grotesque, scatological, and often quite sexually explicit and violent giant papier-mache models paraded through the streets.
03 March 2025, North Rhine-Westphalia, Duesseldorf: The Musk theme float (“Napo-Elon”) drives past the spectators during the Rose Monday parade. Rose Monday is the highlight of the Rhineland carnival season with the traditional parade through Düsseldorf. Photo: Federico Gambarini/dpa (Photo by Federico Gambarini/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The longstanding tradition is often controversial and often treats German political figures and world leaders with the same disdain. President Donald Trump appears to be totally irresistible to the carnival committees, and his likeness appeared in many cities across Germany on Monday, just as it did at Rosenmontag parades through his first presidency, too.
One float in the city of Düsseldorf shows Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shaking hands. The message intended for the public is not at all subtle: the men squeeze Volodymyr Zelensky between them into a bloody pulp, and the inevitable 1930s comparison reads ‘Hitler-Stalin Pact 2.0’.
Other subjects lampooned included “wokeness”, the result of last month’s German Federal elections, child abuse in the Catholic church, Elon Musk, asylum seekers, the state of public transport, and even the Taliban and women’s rights in Afghanistan.
DUSSELDORF, GERMANY – MARCH 03: A carnival float shows satire being scared of wokeness during the annual Rose Monday parade during carnival on March 03, 2025 in Dusseldorf, Germany. Rose Monday, the highpoint of the Rhineland region carnival season, is known for its parades showcasing bawdy political satire. (Photo by Hesham Elsherif/Getty Images)
