The Anachronistic Train 1980

The beginning of the 2017 federal election campaign brought back memories of previous election battles in Germany - and allowed me to delve deep into my historical image archive. I came across an almost forgotten series of black and white photos that were taken in Kiel in September 1980. On this late summer day, shortly before the federal election in early October 1980, the “Anachronistic Train” reached the town hall market in Kiel.

Agitation against the candidate for chancellor Franz Josef Strauss

The Anachronistic Train was a mobile political street theater that was staged in Munich in 1980 as a protest against the then CDU/CSU candidate for chancellor, Franz Josef Strauß. It was based on the 1947 poem “The Anachronistic Train or Freedom and Democracy” by Bertolt Brecht. In it, Brecht satirically castigated the networks of old Nazi party members and followers in post-war Germany. Brecht's 41-stanza poem describes how "from the south, from the valleys" "a ragged procession" of servants and beneficiaries of the Nazi regime pompously makes its way through ruined Germany. At the beginning they carry their new motto: “And it was something like freedom and democracy”.

From this key line, the directors of the train developed their agitation in the 1980 election campaign: posters with alienated variations of the motto were mounted on trucks (“Freedom instead of butter”); The actors' cardboard masks and occasionally grotesque costumes symbolized representatives of West German politics and business - from the directors' point of view, kindred spirits of the candidate for chancellor Strauss.

Insult or freedom of art?

Of course, these drastic depictions were intended to deliberately provoke and challenge the state. During the Anachronistic Train's tour from Bavaria to Schleswig-Holstein, there were several conflicts with the police and the judiciary. The organizers appealed against a conviction by the Kempten district court for insulting Franz Josef Strauss to the Bavarian Supreme Court, citing the freedom of art enshrined in the Basic Law. The regional court rejected this objection as “obviously unfounded”. The Federal Constitutional Court appealed to saw the case in a more differentiated manner and recognized the aspect of artistic freedom in principle, but referred the dispute back to the Kempten district court.

In 1990 the Anachronistic Train passed through Germany once again. The direction of the agitation was to warn against nationalist tendencies in Germany after reunification.