Dozens of German celebrities face a backlash over a series of videos which ridiculed Angela Merkel’s Covid-19 policies but which critics said were lacking in sympathy for the country's 80,000 dead.
In an attempt at comedy which sparked comparisons to Hollywood's painful singalong to John Lennon's song Imagine, more than 50 German actors mockingly urged their leaders to "shut down everything" and tighten restrictions to absurd new levels.
In Germany, actor Ulrich Tukur joked that supermarkets should be closed because “when we’re all as dead as a dodo, we’ll have escaped the virus”.
“My son no longer goes outside at all,” said actress Inka Friedrich. “And if he does, then I whack him with a truncheon before the police do.”
TV actor Volker Bruch said: “I’m becoming less scared. That makes me scared. I’m calling on our government to make us more scared.”
The attempted satire came as Germany imposed its toughest restrictions yet during the pandemic, with Mrs Merkel's cabinet ordering 10pm curfews after seizing control of lockdown measures from state governments.
While the collection of videos angered ministers, it delighted lockdown sceptics, including politicians in the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
As medical workers also criticised the stunt, some of the celebrities involved sought to clarify their stance.
Actress Heike Makatsch, one of those involved, posted on Instagram to distance herself from the far right and said she acknowledged the threat of Covid-19.
“If I played into the hands of right-wing demagogues, I regret that deeply,” she said.
Jan Josef Liefers, another actor who took part, said the videos were meant as ironic commentary on what he said were ineffective lockdown measures.
"There's no party in the current parliament that I have less in common with than the AfD," he said.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the videos were “disrespectful towards the family and friends” of Germany’s Covid-19 victims.
“It is disrespectful towards nurses and doctors, who are currently fighting for the lives of their patients,” he said.
However, he added that “we should not put these actors in the same corner as right-wing populists and conspiracy theorists”.
Talk of banning them from the screen was also disrespectful because it would violate their freedom of opinion, he said.
Monika Gruetters, the German government’s commissioner for culture and the media, said she “would have liked to see more empathy” from the actors involved.
She said authorities were doing their best to support actors during the pandemic with a €2 billion ($2.41bn) package for cultural industries.
However, the video was saluted by the AfD’s parliamentary leader Alexander Gauland, who said the actors had voiced legitimate criticism of Mrs Merkel’s policies.
The anger from the TV and cinema world was a “clear signal that the government’s authoritarian Covid-19 policies have finally overstepped the mark,” he said.
Germany tightens rules as third wave continues
Under the new measures approved by the German parliament last week, areas with an infection rate of more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people in a week will be subject to automatic 10pm curfews.
Schools will also close if they cross a higher threshold of 165 cases per 100,000 over seven days.
Ms Merkel's party is at a low point in opinion polls after months of restrictions and stuttering progress in Germany's vaccination campaign.
Polls show the chancellor's CDU/CSU alliance under threat from a resurgent Green party ahead of September's elections, when Mrs Merkel will not run for a fifth term.
The chancellor said on Monday that Germany would open up vaccinations to all adults in June.
“This doesn’t mean that everyone will immediately be able to get vaccinated,” she said. “But everyone will be able to try for a vaccine appointment.”
Some states had already scrapped priority lists for the AstraZeneca shot in order to hand out unused supplies of the vaccine.
EU supply problems also plagued Germany’s vaccination programme, but Berlin expects to get 50 million Pfizer/BioNTech doses in the second quarter of 2021.
Germany is also considering buying the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, which has not yet been approved by the European Medicines Agency.
