Satire after the Paris attacks: 'We will not be silenced'

How far can you go with satire? After the Paris attacks, organizers of Germany's Rose Monday parades have been asking themselves this very question. In Cologne, they've chosen their theme for 2015: "Je suis Charlie." "They were brave," says Jacques Tilly, a Carnival float builder from Düsseldorf, referring to the cartoonists at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo who were killed in the Paris terrorist attacks. Above his desk, he's pinned a newspaper clipping with one of their drawings, along with photos of the victims. Next to that are designs for his Rose Monday float. "When I heard about the attacks, I sat down and thought about what this meant for Europe, and what it meant for satire and humor for us here with Carnival. This attack has hit very close to our work," he says. Tilly and his team have been thinking about how to best express this attack on freedom of expression in the Carnival parade - but the result will remain top secret until Rose Monday on February 16.

Variations on 'Charlie'
Cologne is quite an open, accepting city. Since time immemorial, the Cologne Carnival Festival Committee has called on citizens to suggest parade themes both of the moment and provocative. Some of these suggestions end up represented by cardboard cutouts on parade floats. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks on January 7, the committee launched a contest to choose its float theme. Fourteen designs, all variations on the "Je suis Charlie" theme, were shortlisted and posted on Facebook. The winning design (seen at top), chosen by more than 2,500 people in an online vote, shows a cartoonist with a red clown nose, shoving a pencil into the barrel of an assassin's gun. The design fits right in with the Cologne Carnival spirit, says parade leader Christoph Kuckelkorn, adding that the point of the Rose Monday parade is to expose political and social ills. "The exemplary float design chosen on Facebook shows that this is possible, without attacking specific people or their religion," he says. Deutsche Welle Sueddeutsche.de