Today the question is whether political Ash Wednesday can also succeed digitally, whether rapid tests mean more freedom and what the new head of government in Italy has to say.
Home regulars' table
No beer, no pretzels, no brass music, no sweating bench neighbor - a political Ash Wednesday in asceticism.
It is a foretaste of an election campaign with aha rules, sterile, distant, fully digital.
No roaring, no cheering, no booing, no faces flushed with excitement and alcohol, can that work?
I am sceptical.
Political Ash Wednesday was always a thermometer; it measured the temperature between the party people and its leadership.
It offered the opportunity to melt the political conflict down to one crude punch.
It was also always a reminiscence of the time of cultivated insults, as practiced by Franz-Josef Strauss and Herbert Wehner.
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Markus Söder on the political Ash Wednesday three years ago.
Photo: MICHAELA REHLE / REUTERS
In the more recent editions of the Bavarian speech battle, some of the contributions were rather simple, with EPP boss Manfred Weber being called a "wimp" or the grand coalition being spurned as a "cabinet of invalids", but there were also fine tricks, for example as Markus Söder SPD troika made up of Saskia Esken, Norbert Walter-Borjans and Kevin Kühnert as "tick, trick and track" ridiculed.
But this year, it is to be feared, it will be much more humorous.
After all, most of the parties keep their location, the CSU broadcasts live from the Dreiländerhalle in Passau, and whoever wanted was given a fan package for 20 euros, including two bottles of beer, a stein, a pretzel and a ratchet.
In addition to host Markus Söder, Armin Laschet will also speak.
Olaf Scholz joins the SPD in Vilshofen, Christian Lindner gives a speech in Munich at the Bavarian FDP.
The heads of the Greens broadcast from the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin.
The left relies on Bodo Ramelow, the possible future party leader Janine Wissler and the Bavarian state spokeswoman Ates Gürpinar in its live stream from Passau.
It will be a large virtual get-together.
Let's hear how loud the jugs crack.
Everything digital - this time the carnival also had to get along without physical encounters.
Fast rapid tests
One could almost believe that Jens Spahn learned from Donald Trump.
Large messages fit in 140 characters, and a tweet can do it instead of a press conference.
The Minister of Health then needed two tweets yesterday to surprisingly announce that there will be free rapid tests for everyone from March 1st.
It was Spahn's bazooka-and-thump moment in one, a break free.
Finally good news after weeks of complaining about the lack of vaccine and the mishaps in obtaining it.
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Corona rapid test
Photo: Bodo Schackow / dpa
The surprising announcement was, however, also a PR trick to suppress another problem.
The test samples from the nose or throat should only be taken by trained personnel for the time being.
Tests that anyone can use themselves are still not allowed.
Germany is running late again, and its neighbor Austria has been using them for a long time.
However, it is the quick tests for at home that are intended to accompany the upcoming start of lessons in many elementary schools.
They are intended to help protect older teachers in particular.
The longer they wait, the greater the pressure on Spahn.
Is a new phase of the pandemic now beginning?
Rapid tests could help bridge the time to mass vaccination.
They enable highly contagious people to be identified quickly and reliably.
In this way, chains of infection can be broken.
Perhaps they can also allow more openings: a visit to a restaurant under strict hygiene conditions, for example, or an evening at the cinema.
Politicians would have to create the framework for this as quickly as possible.
Experts warn against excessive euphoria.
The tests are not 100% certain and could never replace vaccination.
Yet they are a ray of hope in this dark phase of the crisis.
Why the rapid home tests won't come until March.
Super Mario speaks
If there were a ranking of political consistency in Europe, Italy would probably be at the bottom of the table.
There have been 67 governments in the country since the end of the war, the 68th was heralded last Saturday with the swearing-in of the former head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, as head of government.
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Prime Minister Draghi
Photo: EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP
Today the 73-year-old will give a keynote speech in the Senate.
It also depends on how strong the support of the other parties for Draghi, and how unshakable his government will be.
As President of the ECB, Draghi has repeatedly called for structural reforms in his home country, but they have been approached very slowly.
Now he has to prove that he is capable of major upheavals.
A statement by Draghi from the summer makes it clear that as head of government he will not adopt all the principles of the ECB chief.
At a conference in Rimini, he spoke about the situation in the corona crisis and said many economic rules have now been overridden in order to respond more pragmatically to the pandemic.
He quoted the economist John Maynard Keynes.
"If the facts change, I'll change my mind."
It was a first look at Draghi's program.
New Prime Minister Draghi: Can the ECB boss save Italy's economy?
Loser of the day ...
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Armin Laschet
Photo: SASCHA STEINBACH / AFP
... is Armin Laschet.
With his personally influenced and theses-strong speech at the CDU party congress, Laschet had refuted the impression of many that he was a politician who stood for nothing, who was fickle and without foundation.
The speech showed: Armin Laschet has a concern.
The impression didn't last long.
Laschet has fallen back into his old role, that of the unsteady who wants to serve all sides.
If he defended the decision of the Prime Minister's Conference to extend the lockdown last week in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament, he now adopted a different tone in a video appearance in front of Baden-Württemberg entrepreneurs: "We cannot measure our whole life just by incidence values." a sentence in a speech in which Laschet continues to urge caution.
But a sentence can develop a dangerous life of its own, as a political professional like Laschet knows.
Why, some may now ask, should one obey the rules of politics when one of the most powerful politicians is indirectly questioning them?
Such doubts are destructive at a time when everyone's behavior still matters.
The latest news from the night
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I wish you a good start into the second half of the working week!
Your Martin Knobbe