In view of the current situation, it must be pointed out: Employees at the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus are real people too. In the excitement about the new election campaign posters of the CDU, there seems to be a lot of confusion with the terminology. There is talk of a “fake nurse” and a “fake policewoman”. The party gets a lot of malice for not depicting “normal” or “real people”.
It is correct: For the photo shoot for the federal election campaign, the CDU hired volunteers from its staff in the party headquarters. A press spokeswoman was disguised as a nurse, a colleague was photographed as a police officer in uniform. With this motive, the CDU even drew the displeasure of the police union GdP. Its deputy federal chairman Jörg Radek was allowed to work in an exposed position in the picture– blaspheme newspaper: “We are not the set for election programs.”
Apart from the fact that the GdP does not appear garnishing here, because it is not a true police chief, the counter question arises, what would have been going on if the CDU had taken a real policewoman? Not only would that have been forbidden under service law, it would probably have sparked a debate about why the real police force lets themselves be involved in a party’s election campaign. How to do it is kind of wrong.
Usually models are hired
CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak justified the in-house casting, among other things, with the fact that his party did not want to keep nurses, police officers or geriatric nurses from work with photo opportunities during the pandemic. Usually, professional models or actors are required for such shootings. This time, according to Ziemiak, they did without in order to be able to comply with the “strictest Corona standards”. That is why the CDU makes election advertising from its own cohort.
What is certainly worth discussing about this campaign is whether the slogan “Make Germany Together” makes grammatical sense and whether a self-proclaimed modern people’s party really does justice to its claim if there is no hint of the slightest migration background anywhere on any of the posters. Probably the campaign just turned out to be as diverse as the staff structure in the Adenauer-Haus. These people are real anyway.
Of course, one expects more authenticity from election advertising than from detergent advertising. And the CDU has certainly underestimated the effect of its obvious breach with truthfulness. But it would be naive to believe that election posters basically depict reality. On request, the SPD and the left also announce that they have already printed the faces of party members on advertising material. Even with them, not every roofer and supermarket cashier shown is actually employed in this job.
The FDP is making it much easier for itself with its election campaign. She consistently relies on a poster motif: just always Christian Lindner.
Kingston is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
