A small French town has suddenly shot to internet fame, and not for its politics, but for the sheer coincidence of the names on its mayoral ballot.One of the candidates, who goes by the name Charles Hittler. He ran for re-election in Sunday’s municipal elections in Arcis-sur-Aube. And the shocking part is that the opponent is called Zielinski.“It has gone completely crazy,” lamented Hittler, mayor of Arcis-sur-Aube (population 2,785), when contacted by the BBC.“All my life I’ve had the occasional joke made about my name. Sometimes people drew moustaches on my election posters. It was never a big deal.“But now it’s out of control. I’ve seen online articles saying ‘37% of the people of Arcis are Hitlerites!’. My wife is in tears.”French social media was inundated with “humorous” posts about the battle between the late German dictator Adolf Hitler and Ukraine’s modern-day hero Volodymyr Zelensky. Hittler said the attention was getting too much.“If people were talking about the town and our policies, that would be one thing. But all they’re interested in is our names,” he said.
What stopped Hittler from changing his name?
Hittler, a retired French laboratory head, explained how he came to have the name and why he did not change it.“My family comes from northern Alsace [along the German border], and my father was a shepherd. In the war he was taken to Germany in their forced labour programme,” Hittler said.“After he came back he met my mother. Everyone said, ‘You’ve got to change your name.’ This was 1949. The war was a recent memory But it was a huge administrative headache and it would have cost a lot of money, so they didn’t.”He said there were only a few of his tribe left in France. His Hittler cousins in Alsace all had girls, so the name was disappearing there. One of his sons pronounced the name “Hit-lay”, in order to escape embarrassment, and his grandchildren took their mothers’ names. He said he had a Hittler daughter and a Hittler daughter-in-law who were also running to be councillors in the municipal elections, in other towns in France.“Once you are known, the name begins not to matter. People look at the person behind the name. To my familiars, I was just ‘Monsieur Charles’. So I decided to keep it,” he said.Charles Hittler led a centre-right list in Arcis-sur-Aube, while his Zielinski opponent was in the far-right Patriot movement. In national elections, the far-right National Rally performed strongly in this area, about 160km (100 miles) southeast of Paris.
Is Zielinski related to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy?
Antoine Renault-Zielinski, 28, was a customs officer recently arrived in Arcis. The second part of his name came from his Polish mother.“People are often asking me if I am related to Zelensky – to which I have to answer no, pointing out that the Polish name ends in an ‘i’ and the Ukrainian in a ‘y’,” he told BFMTV.“On Sunday I began seeing messages about our names circulating on X and I thought it was just a silly joke. But gradually I realised that everyone is talking about us!“I can see why people find it amusing. Personally, it doesn’t make me laugh, but it doesn’t bother me either. It would be better if people were talking about Arcis for other reasons, but at least we’re on the map.”Sunday’s run-off in Arcis-sur-Aube pitted Hittler against Renault-Zielinski and a third candidate, Annie Soucat. In the first round Hittler led by a small margin over the other two.Arcis-sur-Aude gave its name to a town near Odesa in Zelensky’s Ukraine. In 1814 Napoleon fought a battle at Arcis-sur-Aube against the invading Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies, and two years later German immigrants invited by the Russian govt named their settlement Artsyz, after the battle. The town was also the birthplace of French revolutionary Georges Jacques Danton.Hitler was a relatively rare name in Germany even before the dictator came to fame. Since World War Two it had all but disappeared.
