Overview
- The chancellor greeted about 140 participants from the Bund Deutscher Karneval and state delegations at the Bundeskanzleramt in Berlin.
- Delegations represented every federal state except Hamburg, which the chancellery noted has not sent a group in prior years.
- Merz began the event at 11:12 for the traditionally 11:11-themed occasion and thanked volunteers, calling their work “a piece of German culture.”
- BDK president Klaus-Ludwig Fess framed the visit as a brief pause from daily pressures and emphasized clubs as places of togetherness, tolerance and lived democracy.
- The reception was purely symbolic within the fifth-season traditions and included no policy announcements.