A cartoonist from Hamburg has won the German Caricature Prize for a cartoon likening the right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD) to the Schutzstaffel, the special forces of the National Socialist Party, or Nazi Party, that played a key role in the Second World War Holocaust.
The German Caricature Prize is organised by newspapers belonging to the Madsack media group – whose biggest shareholder is a company called DDVG, which is in turn fully owned by the German Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Madsack owns 20 regional newspapers as well as well as the influential news platform Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
Organisers refer to the event as “the Oscars of the German cartoon scene” and this year’s winners were announced on November 2.
In the first-placed cartoon, by Piero Masztalerz, a man and a woman are on their knees with bound wrists facing a wall. Behind them two gun-carrying figures in SS-like black uniforms are apparently preparing to arrest or execute the couple.
They wear armbands reading “AfD” that seem to evoke the Swastika armbands used by the Nazi party between 1920 and 1945.
“Maybe we should have done more to preserve democracy!” the bound man says. “Just wait and see for now,” his female companion replies.
Der Hamburger Cartoonist Piero Masztalerz hat den Deutschen Karikaturenpreis 2025 gewonnen. Für seine Zeichnung „Abwarten“ erhielt der 55-Jährige den „Geflügelten Bleistift in Gold“, dotiert mit 4.000 Euro https://t.co/bTKMG8nUzd pic.twitter.com/m6JMveWzLl
— NIUS (@niusde_) November 3, 2025
Masztalerz – who has worked for publications including news outlet Der Spiegel and teen magazine Bravo – will receive €4,000 in prize money.
The jury said: “It is arguably the most bitter joke of recent history and the present day that many autocrats have come to power through more or less free elections.
“Piero Masztalerz jokes about the horror of this situation. This is both courageous and necessary and its clarity makes it absolutely worthy of praise.”
Not everybody shared the jury’s view. Austrian publicist Bernhard Heinzlmaier called the cartoon “badly drawn unimaginative drivel” and the jury’s decision a sign of “boundless political stupidity and cultural decadence” in a post on X yesterday.
Altogether, 262 cartoonists had submitted 1,208 of their works to the jury.
Of the three other works that received prizes, two dealt with Germany’s renewed interest in compulsory military service. Cartoonist Philipp Sturm came in second with a drawing of a baby looking into a mirror next to a gallery of fallen war heroes under the caption: “Now it’s your turn!”.
Robert Claus received the newcomer award for “Taxi Mum to the Front” in which a woman tells an army recruitment officer that she will drive her son to the front after she has taken his sister to ballet.
