IMI-Standpunkt 2025/031en
Armed candy bunnies and the ideological role backwards
A prime example of banal militarism goes viral and provides insights into deep human abysses
von: Reza Schwarz | Veröffentlicht am: 30. Mai 2025
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but at Easter here in Tübingen there were Easter bunnies that drove tanks and held cannons in their paws. Although they were only made of cream, sugar and water, their imagery and symbolism was all the more explosive. Hermann Leimgruber, the boss of the traditional Tübingen company ‘Café Lieb’, took advantage of this to make the cash registers ring just before Easter. He wanted to make old people happy by giving them the chance to hold rabbits like the ones they had during the Second World War. This was reported in the „Schwäbisches Tagblatt“ at the beginning of April (see IMI News 2025/199).
In view of the fact that Nazi Germany had to be smashed exactly 80 years ago in order to prevent the systematic extermination of millions of human lives and to be able to realise its imperialist dreams of a Greater German Reich, this is simply an extremely disgusting marketing stunt. We at Informationsstelle Militarisierung publicly criticised this in an SWR interview, which was broadcast on television and also uploaded to Instagram and Facebook.
I said in the clip that this was about the normalisation of military violence and that it also made fun of those affected by military conflicts. This news spread like wildfire within the German and European media landscape. The British ‘Telegraph’ ran the very direct and blunt headline ‘German bakery brings back Nazi-era Easter bunnies – Old-fashioned sugar treats depicting animals riding tanks and firing criticised for glorifying war and country’s past ’, while the “Times” added „A bakery in southwestern Germany has caused controversy by reviving the Nazi-era practice of selling Easter bunnies mounted on tanks. ‘ A Polish newspaper wrote: ’A German bakery sells sweets with war symbolism – Germans are thinking about militarisation. “ To what extent this statement can be seen as ironic and tongue-in-cheek is something I would like to leave to everyone to decide for themselves. This whole story even made it to Russia in a pro-Kremlin medium, but I don’t want to give it a platform here.
This whole thing might seem also kind of funny at first. But some of the reactions on social media were less funny. The comment columns were literally overflowing… Many were critical of the armed candy bunnies and labelled them a revival of Nazi propaganda or simply ‘tasteless’. Others said: ‘Welcome to Germany, where armed candy bunnies are your biggest problem’. However, there were also many hate comments that attacked me personally. Many, preferably men, insulted me in various ways as a ‘pierced tank’, ‘problem hairdo’, ‘passenger in my own body’, said ‘you can always tell what they think’ or directly threatened me with physical violence.
Even more serious than the subterranean level of discussion is the background of the ‘traditional business’ in National Socialism itself… Another terrible fact that casts an even darker shadow over this whole tasteless „armed sugar bunnie issue“ is that the founder and previous owner of ‘Café Lieb’, Christian Lieb, bought the business and house of the Jewish family Max and Sofie Löwenstein for very little money in 1937. The Löwensteins, like some Jewish families at the time, had a cattle business and were harassed by the National Socialists for years when it came to issuing health certificates for their animals. They also systematically tried to destroy the farm’s reputation through false suspicions of epidemics. In the end, farmers were soon only buying from the farm in secret for fear of denunciation. In 1937, the Löwensteins had to give up their business for good and sell it to the master confectioner Christian Lieb as part of the Aryanisation process. In 1942, the whole family was gradually deported to the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz concentration camps. The whole family was wiped out by the Nazi regime…
The accusation can therefore be levelled that the ‘traditional company Café Lieb’ built a significant part of its success story on the backs of Jewish people, who were first systematically discriminated against by Nazi Germany in an anti-Semitic manner and then murdered. In other words, not really any different from a large number of other ‘traditional’ German companies that ensured their profits by using forced labourers, for example. Shortly before the 80th anniversary of liberation from the Nazi regime, the management, probably aware of this dark part of the company’s history, unpacked moulds from the Second World War for Easter and produced targeted rage-bait content with tank-driving Easter bunnies instead of making them available to a museum, for example. The ‘Don’t be like that, it’s part of our history’ statement has nothing to do with taking responsibility. This behaviour is not part of the solution, but part of the problem. Despite this, or perhaps precisely because of it, Café Lieb would like to organise this event again next year and is turning a blind eye to the criticism that has been voiced… Enjoy your meal!
