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The guilds are reacting to a racist skit that caused great outrage after the last Sechseläuten.
For the first time this year, the Basel Carnival Committee has created a guide against any form of discrimination. This is because racist carnival motifs have appeared at carnival in the past. Now the Zurich guilds are following suit. A code of conduct applies at this year’s Sechseläuten, which formulates the principles for “respectful cooperation”.
“Racism, xenophobia, sexism, insults and denigration do not correspond to the spirit of the Sechseläuten,” says the code, which is already available to SRF. The comparison shows that the rules of conduct correspond practically exactly to those of the Basel carnival.
A few weeks ago, Christoph Bretscher, guild master of the Kämbel guild at SRF, announced that the Central Committee of the Zurich Guilds (ZZZ) was considering whether such a guide based on the Basel model could also be useful for the Zurich Sechseläuten.
The fact that the ZZZ has now decided to do this is probably due in particular to the incident at the last Sechseläuten. At that time, an appearance at a guild event caused outrage.
With raffia skirt and black painted face
On that occasion in April 2023, a man appeared wearing black make-up, with a curly hair wig and raffia skirt and a bone in his hand. The mayor of Zurich, Corine Mauch (SP), sharply criticized the appearance.
“It’s a primitive way of having fun together.” Although it was a private event surrounding the Sechseläuten, the guilds still had to take a position on this behavior, Mauch said at the time.
The Zurich public prosecutor’s office, which had initiated a preliminary investigation, assessed the skit as “tasteless, but not punishable”.
There is nothing to add to this assessment, writes the Central Committee of the Zurich guilds. Last year it also exchanged ideas with the foundation against racism and anti-Semitism.
No censorship authority
Despite the code of conduct, the Central Committee of the Zurich guilds does not want to be a censorship authority. You don’t want to order, just recommend. “The Sechseläuten should remain a happy festival free of commercial and political influences.”
We cannot and do not want to order, but only recommend.
The Sechseläuten and the mutual visits on the evening parade are characterized by humor. The speeches could be political, socio-political, critical, trivial, complicated, sad, funny, mocking, sophisticated or unsophisticated and much more.
Almost all forms of creativity are conceivable and tolerated as long as they respect the principles of respectful cooperation, writes the ZZZ.