The former German Chancellor appears without a cigarette on the two euro coins minted with his image. The measure is debated.
Germany pays homage to Helmut Schmidt, the famous chancellor who ruled the country from 1974 to 1982. Two euro coins bearing his likeness were struck to celebrate the centenary of his birth. They will be in circulation in 2018 but are already being debated. Because between the two fingers of the politician, an element intrinsic to his personality has disappeared: the cigarette of Helmut Schmidt.
The man was known to drop packages as fast as his shadow – he had been smoking 60 cigarettes a day since his teenage years. Like Lucky Luke, whose cigarette was replaced in France by a blade of grass, Helmut Schmidt therefore sees this attribute disappear, in an effort to denormalize tobacco within society.
History of smokers
This is “the corrected story”, rebel Internet users on social networks, who recall to their memories the pranks of Helmut Schmidt, always quick to draw his hair, including in strictly non-smoking areas – at the theater, in the bus, on the TV sets… A whole series of anecdotes would thus be swept away by this memory revisited on a penny. On Twitter, some have resorted to Photoshop to restore the past and its truth.
… let me fix that for you ???? #HelmutSchmidt pic.twitter.com/127Z8DfWmZ
– Fabian Lippke (@FabianLippke) September 19, 2017
Helmut Schmidt is not the only one to have paid the price for public health policies, which aim to make tobacco less glamorous, to reduce its trivialization in the public space. We remember the protests generated by the withdrawal of Jacques Tati’s pipe on RATP posters. The instrument had been replaced by a yellow windmill, under the Evin Law.
Before that, it was the image of André Malraux who had to wean himself. In 1996, the stamps bearing his effigy had been altered so as not to reveal the object of discord. In 2005, Jean-Paul Sartre also had to drop the butt for an exhibition poster at the BNF, in the name of public health.
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