“Hier stehe ich und kann nicht anders.” // “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”
Inspired by his original defiant declaration at the Diet of Worms in 1521, the apocryphal saying of the 16th-century rebel monk and reformer Martin Luther has come to be a proud proverb of Protestantism and symbolic of virtuous subversion.
However, in the run-up to state elections in the eastern German state of Thuringia on October 27th, the National Democratic Party (NDP) is playing off the famous phrase on some of their election posters.
Instead of “Here I stand,” Martin Luther is made to say, “I would vote NPD, I cannot do otherwise” alongside the NPD’s slogan “defend the homeland.”