Thursday, December 9th, 2021
Before Baerbock’s visit to Poland
Posters raise the mood against Germany
When the new German Foreign Minister drives through Warsaw today, she may notice strange posters on which Angela Merkel is placed in line with Hitler and Goebbels. The aim of the Nazi settlement are demands for reparations payments – at least superficially.
Before the new German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s inaugural visit to Poland on Friday, a drastic poster campaign in Warsaw emphasizes Polish claims for war damage. The posters show the ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, Baerbock’s predecessor in office Heiko Maas and the Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier as well as the German ambassador in Warsaw, Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, in a row with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
“Dear Mr. Freytag, can those responsible in Germany, who are so interested in the rule of law in other countries, finally deal with Germany’s scandalous lawlessness and pay reparations to Poland for the damage and war crimes of World War II?”, Stands up in English and Polish the posters.
The draftsman Wojciech Korkuc is behind the action. He caused a sensation in 2020 with posters on the subject of compensation. “The recently repeated ‘German moral responsibility’ without material compensation is just an empty Goebbels slogan,” said Korkuc. In addition to the logos of the right-wing national media, the posters also bear the mark of the Polish Ministry of Culture. A government-affiliated foundation funded the project. Media close to the right-wing populist government have long had experience with Nazi visual comparisons. In 2016, the Wporst magazine caused a sensation when, among other things, it mounted a Merkel head in a picture from the Führer headquarters.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently announced the establishment of an institute for war damage. It should institutionalize efforts to research all war damage and also deal with the further pursuit of reparation claims. In 2017, PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczyński had already announced a “historic counter-offensive” against Berlin in this sense, like the “Southgerman newspaper” noticed. For the federal government, the issue is legally and politically closed. It mainly refers to the Two-Plus-Four Treaty on the Foreign Policy Consequences of German Unity of 1990.
The ruling party PiS is under domestic political pressure, also because the EU is blocking corona aid worth billions due to concerns about the rule of law. In polls, the PiS currently has no chance of winning an election.