The SPD Council faction in Mülheim on the Ruhr in North Rhine-Westphalia feels insulted by a victim-contemptuous inscription on a grief ribbon commissioned by her. On Saturday, during a wreath-laying ceremony on Memorial Day in the district of Dümpten, it was noticed that the inscription on the group's funeral loop read: "The Victims of War and Shunning" instead of "The Victims of War and Fascism". The incident was confirmed by a spokesman on Sunday.
The SPD now go with a lawyer the suspicion of whether it is a targeted sabotage act, said Rodion Bakum, a member of the SPD Group Bureau. The topic also boiled up on social media on Sunday. The Mülheimer SPD had apologized on their Facebook page for the incident "regardless of the possible causes".
Bakum assumed that this could not be a simple mistake. He rather suspects that the reputation of the SPD should be harmed. The text on the funeral procession of the SPD Council faction is the same every year and has been transmitted in correct spelling from the faction office to the responsible nursery. However, this year, for the first time, they commissioned a new loop printing plant in Essen.
Now it will be examined whether the error was there and possibly deliberately brought about. In the printing company one admittedly confused the initial letters F and V, because the order fax was illegible. "But that does not explain how the whole word could be changed so much," said Bakum.