German armed forces honour 16 years of Merkel with a Großer Zapfenstreich and mark the transition to a new chancellor

39 comments

  2. That’s kinda creepy. The amount of media coverage Merkel’s walkout got is as if I’m watching media in North Korea. Let her go already, it’s about time. Nobody should be in politics that long, get an actual job.

  12. This is very cult like. Merkel was entering Putin territory with almost two decades of power under her belt. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that she was pressured to step down.

  16. Looks like a cool tradition.

    However, just changing the helmet to something that’s not the stahlhelm would probably avoid neighbouring countries needing new underwear everytime it’s preformed.

    I find it amazing that *Zapfenstreich* and *tattoo* both mean the same thing with the same origin, closing the casket at the end of the day.

    Is there a recording of Merkel’s punk song?

  18. Is germany going back to the WW2 era? This looks insane and now with the lockdown for the unvaxxed its just a matter of time.

  21. Out of the 40 minutes of this entire event of course you choose the 5 minutes where there isnt the marching band front and center playing music (a famous GDR pop song, a christian song and some other song I forgot) but the military formation with the torches. Now all of europe thinks this is some nazi style militarism event again….

    Also…this is the entire event. Its not like a french parade with fighter jets and regiments marching down in parade or the russians showing of their newest blowing up devices. The marching part takes like 5minutes of which 3minutes are the “prayer”/”moment of silence” part where nothing happens apart from everyone removing their helmets in super slow motion 😀

    Also the torches are literally because when this tradition was started they didnt really have anything else and it comes from the officers marching around camp signaling the soldiers that drinking time is over and they need to go to sleep. So it became a “something is ending now” kind of event for high ranking politicians and military officers.

  23. I’m not hysteric enough to read into this picture beyond what the title says, but if it was up to me to organize a military ceremony in Germany, I’d try to stay away from having rows of soldiers in long black coats holding torches at night time.

  27. Its kind of funny that people here see this as a nazi thing considering the biggest “Großer Zapfenstreich” like this to this day wasnt even for a german official in the first place….it was for the western allied forces leaving germany following unification in 1994….

  35. It’s kind of like desert island discs but with Stahlhelm and torches. I like it.

    Merkel chose some good tunes, too.

  36. Really beautiful. The Musicians and Soldiers did a great job as to be expected. Its always nice seeing them in action.

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