German elections are bound to become everything but dull this year. A local candidate in the Berlin district, from Angela Merkel’s CDU party, has spiced up her campaign with an election poster, featuring a picture of the German chancellor in a revealing top. The slogan speaks for itself: “Wir Haben Mehr Zu Bieten” translates as “We have more to offer.”Europe’s biggest nation will head to the polls in less than two months and fierce campaigning around the country has begun. Vera Lengsfeld, the CDU candidate for the Berlin district of Kreuzberg.
Splashed around the chancellor’s breasts, Vera Lengsfield PR team printed the slogan “We have more to offer”, placing herself next to the German leader. She too is wearing an evening gown with a revealing neckline. The photo of Merkel was taken during the 2008 opening of Oslo’s new opera house, in Norway. It made the rounds in the German media last year (right).
The 57-year old Lengsfled said she “needed to come up with something to even be noticed in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.” The reason for this is she is running against Hans-Christian Stroebele, who has twice won the only directly mandated seat for the Greens.
She has clearly achieved her goal. Lengsfled has 20.000 clicks in one day on her election blog and she hung 750 posters in her district, although many have been stolen, according to the German channel ZDF, “because constituents want to have a souvenir.”
The reactions were divided. Some described the poster as “witty, cheeky and fun,” while others rejected it and dismissed it as “shameful and embarrassing.”
One person who will not be amused by Lengsfeld’s action will be the chancellor herself. Lengsfeld has not asked for permission nor did she notify the chancellor’s office in advance. That same office has so far declined to comment.
Another sign sex is returning to German politics is the poster of a centre-left socialist democrat. Candidate Halina Wawzyniak’s poster shows her bare back with the tattoo “Socialist,” and a slogan that reads “Mit Arsch in der Hose in den Bundestag”, a colloquialism that literally means “With trousers full of arse in the Bundestag,” a reference to plucky politics.
