Hitler vs. Zielinski. French town's mayoral elections 'go viral' due to candidates' surnames

The current mayor Charles Hittler (Charles Hittler) and his young rival Antoine Renault-Zielinski (Antoine Renault-Zielinski) will compete for the position of head of the city.

The third candidate for mayor is Annie Soucat (Annie Soucat).

“Complete madness,” Charles Hittler complained to the BBC. “All my life I have occasionally heard jokes about my surname. Sometimes they drew mustaches on my election posters. But that's nonsense.”

“But now things have gone too far,” Hittler continued. “I saw articles online claiming that 37% of Arcis residents are Hitlerites. My wife is crying.”

The French segment of social networks is filled with "jokes" about the clash between Adolf Hitler and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The mayor says that this attention to his town is already starting to get annoying.

Where do such surnames come from?

“If people were discussing the town and our policies, that would be one thing. But they are only interested in our surnames!” Hittler laments.

How did this Frenchman, a former laboratory manager, end up with such a surname? And why didn't he change it?

“My ancestors are from Alsace, my father was a shepherd there. During the war, he was taken to work in Germany,” Hittler explains.

Alsace is a historically German-speaking region, which is now part of France.

[In French and German, the pronunciation of the surname Hittler coincides with how the name of the Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler is pronounced. Only in German the surname sounds approximately like "Hitler", and in French - approximately like "Ittler".]

“Then he returned and met my mother,” the mayor continued. “Everyone told them, 'You need to change your surname.' This was in 1949, the memory of the war was still very fresh. But changing a surname was a lot of bureaucracy and money, so they didn't change it.”

In France, according to Charles, very few Hittlers remain. All his relatives in Alsace had daughters, so the surname is disappearing there. One of his sons pronounces his surname "Ittley" to avoid misunderstandings. His grandchildren took their mothers' surnames.

However, Charles also has a daughter who bears the same surname Hittler, as well as a daughter-in-law with the same surname, and they are also running in municipal elections, only in other French towns.

“When you are a well-known person, the surname loses its meaning. People look at the person, not the surname. For all my acquaintances, I have always been simply Monsieur Charles. So I decided not to change my surname,” Hittler explains.

In the elections in Arcis-sur-Aube, Charles Hittler heads the center-right list, while his opponent, 28-year-old Antoine Renault-Zielinski, represents the right-wing "Patriots" party. In parliamentary elections in this region, 150 km southeast of Paris, the right-populist "National Rally" gathers many votes.

Where does Zielinski come from?

Antoine Renault-Zielinski, a customs officer, moved to Arcis recently. He inherited the second half of his surname from his Polish mother.

“I am often asked if I am related to Zelenskyy, to which I have to answer no,” Zielinski told the BFMTV channel.

“I understand why people find this funny. Personally, I don't find it funny, but it doesn't bother me either. It would be better if people talked about Arcis for other reasons, but this way we are at least 'on the map',” said the mayoral candidate.

Interestingly, Arcis-sur-Aube is connected to Ukraine in some way.

In 1814, near this town, a battle took place between Napoleon's army and the armies of the Austro-Prussian-Russian coalition. The French lost. This was Napoleon's penultimate major battle before his abdication and exile to Elba.

Two years later, German colonists, invited by the Russian Tsar to the Odesa region, named their settlement in the Odesa region, southwest of Odesa, in honor of the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube. Now this town is called Artsyz.

The famous political figure of the French Revolution, Georges-Jacques Danton, was born in Arcis-sur-Aube.

As for the surname of the Nazi Führer, Hitler (Hitler), it was quite rare in German-speaking countries even before World War II, and almost disappeared after the war.

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