(one must imagine Ludwig Beilschmidt happy)
Germany has its own brand of Carneval. It starts on 11/11 each year, and finds its finale over five days before ash wednesday. The biggest days being Rosenmontag and Veilchendienstag.
Back in the day, this tradition was started as a way for the common folk to be critical of the regime (and to give them a way to have some festivities before Lent)
Nowadays this intend still rings true and is louder than ever, with bitey political comedy, and critically satirical parade wagons ( especially in Düsseldorf. Thank you, Tilly! ). The parades on those two days, wich happen in most cities in NRW at this time, are large and loud. Everyone wears costumes. The adults get to dance, and for kids ( tho not exclusively) candy gets thrown by metric tons!
For a long time the top regime of carneval ( except for two positions ) was a mens thing. This has changed in recent years, with women now staffing some of the major driving forces.
And whilst queer ppl have long been welcome to the parades, for the past few years they too are able to staff THE main positions in local carnevals. Namely the "Prinzenpaar" (royal pair), wich used to be m+f exclusive.
If the Uniform Gilbert on the right is wearing looks suspiciously prussian, there is a reason for that. Many uniforms during carneval are in fact pokeing fun of the old prussian uniforms, because way back when this part of germany was prussian, the prussians tried to forbid the carneval. Or at the very least make it more strict and organized.
How successful they were is questionable.
(I tried not to depict any city specific uniforms, but took heavy inspiration by the cologne ones.)
