Choir 'truly happy' their song used to drown out AfD leader

It was while Alice Weidel was being interviewed on the terrace of a parliament building overlooking the River Spree in Berlin that members of the Corner Chor's mobile phones began to ping with alerts as their song in protest at her far-right party, Scheiß AfD Jodler (Shit AfD Yodellers), blasted out from a 100,000-watt sound system on the other bank.

- Kate Connolly

"We were hugely surprised and truly happy," one choir member told the Guardian.

The choir had not known of the carefully orchestrated plans by the Centre for Political Beauty (ZPS) - an association of action artists led by the philosopher Philipp Ruch - to use their song to disrupt the summer interview, an annual TV fixture in which leaders of the main political parties are questioned in turn.

Neither had the authorities, nor the public broadcaster ARD. The sweet-sounding 19th-century Styrian Christmas yodel, which Corner Chor had rewritten as a three-voice protest song against the far right, managed to drown out much of the hourlong exchange, prompting Weidel to lean into the interviewer, Markus Preiß, and tell him: "I have problems understanding you against this noise."