This isn’t Father Christmas, but a man inspecting a fake chimney concealing a mobile phone mast (see the large rectangular vertical pipe on the right next to the drainpipe). When I first saw these chimneys, I assumed they were meant to stop people complaining about the effects on their children’s brains.
However, I read recently that in areas with listed buildings, permission will be given only if the masts are disguised. I’m not sure whether to believe this. Here’s an article in German with more pictures, including this very building (scroll down to Suchbild), and here is a BBC news report in English.
bq. Dotted around Britain are fake chimney pots, fake flagpoles, fake drainpipes and fake signs all made of glass-reinforced plastic and concealing mobile antennas.
However, Fürth does have over 2000 listed buildings (some marked in red on the plan below).
(Click on all pictures to enlarge).
I don’t know if they’ve made it to Europe yet or not, but in the States we have a lot of cell antenna towers poorly disguised as trees. There are a few examples on this page: http://danbricklin.com/log/celltowers.htm. He has some other disguised cell tower pictures on this page: http://danbricklin.com/log/morecelltowers.htm
Thanks for the links. Well, the only tree I could find on a German site was probably in Britain, as it was next to a picture of a Union Jack on a flagpole. It was a cypress tree that looked realistic but didn’t bend in the wind. There must be trees in Germany too, but here a tree would look more suspicious than a mast itself. The chimneys are just across the road from me, so if I start to get incoherent, you’ll know why.
The U.S. ones tend to stick out like a sore thumb, usually because they are a a good 15 meters or so taller than the surrounding trees.
What with Germany’s dying forests, it seems we could do with a lot of those here.