By Stefanie Dazio | Related Press
BERLIN — Vandals set fireplace to a mouse statue that’s a TV star and mascot for kids’s programming at German broadcaster WDR, the tv station stated Saturday.
The cartoon mouse, identified solely as “Die Maus,” is the eponymous star of “Die Sendung mit der Maus” (The Present with the Mouse) because it first aired in West Germany in 1971. Every brief episode options different languages and academic segments.
The statue — that includes the character’s well-known orange physique with brown ears, legs and arms — greets households and youngsters outdoors a media constructing in Cologne, Germany.
A receptionist for WDR noticed a number of younger folks standing across the statue in Cologne on a digital camera feed in a single day Friday into Saturday. She then observed flames and referred to as the fireplace division, WDR stated.
The fireplace blackened elements of the mouse’s face and arm, photographs present. The station stated a police criticism had been filed in opposition to an unidentified individual.
Matthias Körnich, head of youngsters’s programming for WDR, stated it’s not only a figurine that was broken.
“A piece of childhood, a symbol of joy and togetherness, has been attacked,” he stated. “The mouse belongs to Cologne.”
The mouse statue isn’t the primary German TV character to be attacked.
In 2009, the statue of a depressed German loaf of bread named Bernd das Brot (Bernd the Bread) was stolen from his conventional place outdoors the city corridor in Erfurt, the place German kids’s public tv channel KiKA relies.
Bernd, a cult traditional in Germany, was held hostage for almost two weeks earlier than being found unhurt in an deserted barracks.
Initially Revealed: July 26, 2025 at 1:27 PM PDT
